REVIEW: Aubory Bugg Makes Her Debut With “i think i had something once”
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY ALICIA ZAMORA ☆
AUBORY BUGG IS OFFICIALLY ENTERING HER DEBUT ALBUM ERA—The 21-year-old singer-songwriter released i think i had something once today via Dualtone, a 12-track record that pulls from indie rock, folk-pop and alt-country while keeping her songwriting front and center.
The album feels personal without trying too hard to be. Bugg writes about relationships ending, growing up, losing people and figuring out where you fit in. A lot of the songs feel like looking back on something that happened and only now realizing how much it meant to you.
“i think i had something once,” the album’s opening track and title track, is a good introduction to that. It’s simple and stripped back, with Bugg thinking about childhood and the little moments that stick with you. “nosedive” and “i can’t” take things into more complicated territory, while “i’ve come to realize” deals with losing someone close to the artist.
“just embers now” is probably the easiest one to get stuck in your head. The upbeat folk-pop track is about Bugg’s first love and what she took from that relationship even after it ended. She sings, “we’re just embers now but that’s alright / can’t call our season wasted time / ’cuz my angel, girl it changed my life.” It’s a breakup song, but there’s no bitterness to it.
A lot of that perspective comes from Bugg’s own story. She grew up in a blue-collar steel mill town in Illinois, started performing in coffee houses at 13 and later moved to Nashville. She’s also been open about growing up queer in a conservative town and how wanting to fit in while knowing she wanted something different eventually shaped her songwriting.
Before the album, Bugg built an audience on TikTok by posting a cover every day, including her version of Reneé Rapp’s “Tummy Hurts,” which brought in more than 110,000 followers. Now with more than 206K followers, she’s moved well beyond covers and into a project that feels like a proper introduction to who she is as an artist.
There’s a lot of growing up happening across i think i had something once, but Bugg never makes it sound like she has everything figured out. That’s part of what makes the album work. She’s still in the middle of it, writing through what she’s lost and what she’s becoming
