For Liz Cooper, New Day, her new album out February 20, was born out of a storm of isolation, upheaval, and a reckoning that she didn’t initially plan on documenting. “It’s been a culmination of a lot of different ups and downs,” she says, tracing the record back to early 2020, when she “moved out of Nashville, put my stuff into storage, and immediately went on tour,” only to land in New York just as the world shut down.

“I essentially landed in New York from just being in the studio in February, right before lockdown. For the first time in a very, very long time at that point, I couldn’t tour, which was very shocking to the system for me. It all felt very unnatural.” What followed was a period she describes as “absolutely a non stop whirlwind.”

In the quiet, though, something deeper was unfolding, and the makings of a new album begun to spin.

“I was going through this really intense relationship with a friend, and that was my coming out journey. It was very tumultuous, also extremely up and down.” Over the years that followed, a whirlwind of self discovery and reckoning with self identity forced her to come to terms with both the positive and the negative. “So much had developed and fallen apart and changed and grown,” she says. But at the end of it all, Cooper found herself in a place where she felt comfortably to officially come out not only to the world, but to herself. And in doing so, the crux of New Day was born. 

Though, that’s not to say she set out with the intention to write a coming-out record. “I don’t think when I was making this album, I really thought about it being my coming out album,” she admits. Instead, the songs became survival, and a way to process an isolating time of her life. “It was my way to just really process and push through and focus on something that I could control,” she says. 

Growing up what she describes as “a very conservative area where it was like, if you were queer or different, it was bad,” she internalized a fear and negative connotation with the concept of queerness early on. “I was just like, ‘Well, I guess this is bad. I guess that I’m bad.” For years, she always felt different, but she was always unsure of the disconnect. “Eventually it was like, ‘Oh, okay, yeah. I’m queer. And like, didn’t know then.”

There’s no glossy version of that story, and like so many who find themselves reckoning with the concept of breaking out of barriers that they were once forced into, it wasn’t always a happy revelation. “It’s not all just like, ‘Yay, I’m gay, let’s celebrate.’ There’s a lot of really hard shit that people go through.” Releasing the album, though, has shifted something. “It’s getting easier, I think. I’m just so happy for this record to be out.” Equally as comforting and affirming has been her ability to connect to listeners, particularly queer listeners. “It’s extremely validating,” she says of the feedback she’s received from fans. “It helps me feel less alone and less crazy.”

While the creation of the album certainly helped Cooper come to terms with her own personal life, its journey to release also helped transform her creatively. New Day marks her debut as not only a songwriter, but as the main engineer, producer, and mixer. Instead of bringing songs to a band, she focused within. “It was really all on me,” she says. “It was just me holed up in my apartment and learning how to use Logic and how learning how to record.”

She challenged herself with new structures, working on drum loops with drum machines and letting things go from there.She’d take long walks to write in an attempt to help clear her head from creative blocking.“I didn’t feel safe in my apartment to necessarily be creative lyrically,” she says. But musically, she pushed forward. “For me, I’m really, really proud of that process. I was able to take control for the first time and do it myself.”

That reclamation extends beyond production. “I just want to do my thing, and I want to be able to pivot and be genre bendy and make whatever art that I want to make at any time,” she says. “On New Day, I was able to really hone in on my voice and my writing and my style of what I’m interested in.”

Now, as she prepares to bring the album to the stage, there’s anticipation in her voice. She’s eager to experience a major release, to get back into “the flow state of touring.” After years of fragmentation, she’s ready to “grind it out night after night” and “fine tune and nerd out on just the little stuff.”

At its core, though, the album isn’t about reinvention for reinvention’s sake. It’s about connection.

“I think I just want people to connect and to hear me,” she says of what she hopes listeners take away. In a world that can feel overwhelming, she hopes the record helps listeners. “I hope they feel like they’re not alone.” Even when things hit “the worst level of Hell,” she wants the music to be “a guiding light for someone to be able to get through something really difficult.”

New Day isn’t a tidy conclusion. It’s a timestamp. A survival document. A voice emerging. Not perfectly, not painlessly, but honestly. And that’s more than enough.

New Day by Liz Cooper is out February 20th. More information on Liz Cooper, including tour information, can be found here.