SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Imagine what it might be like for a British person to visit America for the first time.
NINA NESBITT: Your roads are huge. There's actually room to drive. The portion sizes are, like, quadruple the U.K., which I love because I love food. And everyone is so much friendlier.
SIMON: Scottish singer and songwriter Nina Nesbitt spent two years traveling across the U.S. recently, and her travels inspired her new album, "Mountain Music." It's kind of a soundtrack of her journey through the States and of her own life.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAGES")
NESBITT: (Singing) Blue skies, long roads. Stopped the car in Idaho. Motel rooms and super 8s capturing the golden days. I miss you and me and wintertime, log fires sipping mulled wine. How easy I lose sight of the good old times. Thinking back to when I was in New York, falling in love with my future.
There's just so many parts of America that brought me such joy and happiness and excitement seeing these places for the first time, these sort of motels and small towns and feeling like when I'm older, I'm going to look back and be like, oh, they were the golden days.
SIMON: Yeah. I want to ask you about a particular line in the song "Pages." The song pages, of course, opens the album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PAGES")
NESBITT: (Singing) Two years from 30, and life scares me more each day.
SIMON: You sing two years from 30, and life scares me more each day. By our calculations, you're 30. How do you feel about life now?
NESBITT: I feel like I had this thing in my head of turning 30, and it being really daunting. In the music industry as well I feel like there's a pressure to kind of be young, and I didn't really know what the roadmap of me getting older looked like, I guess. I feel like you have a coming of age maybe in your late teens, early 20s, but I feel like you have another one at the end of your 20s, early 30s now. Just kind of going into that next decade and knowing you're going to make decisions that are kind of going to impact the rest of your life. But feels good to be on the other side.
SIMON: Anything you can point to that you have learned at the age of 30 that you didn't know when you were, well, a few years younger?
NESBITT: When I was younger, I thought everyone knew what they were doing and everyone had life figured out. I've learned no one has a clue what they're doing. So in a way, that's terrifying, but it's also made me more confident in my own decisions, and I think just wanting to trust my instincts more is quite a liberating place to be.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ON THE RUN")
NESBITT: (Singing) I lit a burning log, left food out for the dogs and tiptoed down. I put the shoes on by the door. Those creaking wooden boards didn't make a sound.
SIMON: The album, of course, is called "Mountain Music." What is it about the mountains that you're trying to capture and evoke in your music?
NESBITT: I think as the record went on when I was writing it, I was in a record shop, and there was, like, a folk section. And there was a section called mountain music. And I thought that's a really cool title. I like that. And when I looked it up, I seen it kind of came from the Appalachian Mountains in America. And part of the, like, origins of it were from Scottish and Irish settlers, which I thought was a nice sort of connection to that. And I wanted to take inspiration from the sound of American folk, but tell you know, my honest story of growing up in Scotland, living in London. And, yeah, it just felt like the perfect title.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ON THE RUN")
NESBITT: (Singing) If they ask you where I've gone, I'm on the run. (I'm on the run).
You know, I love pop music, but I feel like, personality-wise, I'm never going to be a pop star.
SIMON: Parenthetical, as they say. Why do you say you'll never be a pop star?
NESBITT: Well, I've got two left feet, so you'd never see me dancing. My humor is too dry. I'm just too Scottish, really. I think you have to play a game with pop music. And to be honest, I just want to make music I love and put it out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MANSION")
NESBITT: (Singing) Park up, sit back for a moment in your car.
SIMON: Can I get you to talk about your song "Mansion"?
NESBITT: Yes. So "Mansion," I wrote it for my best friend who was in what I like to call a situationship.
SIMON: In a situationship?
NESBITT: So it's like a relationship. But instead of a relation, it's a situation. You're not dating, but you're not together. And it's basically just a song reminding her what she's worth, and it's using this image of a mansion in the middle of, like, a really gray, gloomy city, covered in vines and roses, and everyone is stopping to stare at her, but she's got the curtains shut, and she's inside, and she's unaware of her own beauty. So it's kind of just, you know, talking to her, telling her, look around you, remember who you are.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MANSION")
NESBITT: (Singing) You are a mansion. (You are, you are, you are). You are a mansion. (You are, you are, you are).
And I feel like it's also a message to my younger self because I think when I was younger, if someone told me they like me, I'd, you know, I'd be like, oh, my God. I'm so excited. And sometimes you need a bit more than that. So, yeah, and it was the first song that I've ever written on a mandolin as well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MANSION")
NESBITT: (Singing) Don't you know how pretty you are? He doesn't know how pretty you are. I know your paint has chipped, and you're falling apart. But I think you're a work of art. So open your eyes. Let the vines grow. They can watch as they're passing.
SIMON: Let me ask you. We're on, I guess, what we call the cusp of a momentous election in this country. What can an album like you've done now give to people in these contentious times, do you think? Anxious times, also.
NESBITT: I've definitely felt the world has become even more unpredictable and scary. But I would just love to provide an album that feels like a warm hug or an album where you can let your hair down and dance about your house.
SIMON: Well, thank you. Nina Nesbitt, the great Scottish musician, and her new album is called "Mountain Music." Thanks so much. Hope you come back to the U.S. soon.
NESBITT: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIG THINGS, SMALL TOWN")
NESBITT: (Singing) The sun sets around the corner. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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