“The demos of these songs actually are more produced than the end product,” Cassadee Pope tells Apple Music of the process that yielded her new acoustic set Rise and Shine. “The way it came about was really because of the pandemic. I wanted to do something that I could give to my fans, that could fulfill something in my heart musically that I probably won't get this year, not touring and playing shows, and I also wanted to do something that was safe to execute. I knew doing an acoustic record, I could do that remotely and not put anybody in danger, including myself.” The Florida-bred country-pop singer and songwriter, who found her first success fronting the pop-punk outfit Hey Monday, mostly worked with her co-producer Todd Lombardo remotely. Pope wasn’t interested in a subdued, stripped-down approach to conveying intimacy—she was thinking more along the lines of the emphatic, rhythmic strumming of the emo singer-songwriters of her youth. “When I was doing preproduction with Todd, I told him, ‘I really want this record to sound like an acoustic Dashboard Confessional—like a country Dashboard record,’” she says. “I told him I really want the guitars to have a lot of open tuning, and I want there to be two guitars most of the time, where one is more rhythmic and one is more lead.” Here Pope talks through each of the songs on the record. Let Me Go “It's a song that's really about frustration and about how you can come to crossroads with someone that really doesn't understand you, really doesn't agree with what you want. It doesn't coincide with what they want or even coincide with how they picture you. It's talking about waiting for the other person to decide to let you go because you can't let go of the hope that maybe things are going to change. And I'm a believer that if you want out and you're not happy, just get out. Don't wait for the other person to decide.” Hoodie “It's a song about taking a trip down memory lane. The boys that I've dated through the years have all been those emo boys with hoodies. I distinctly remember finding somebody's hoodie and being really excited that I had a reason to reach out to them. It's funny because we're never discreet. We always think we are, but they know that it's just a dumb excuse to get in touch. And whether you're the receiver of that text or call or you're the sender, you know what's going on. I was really excited to get this song sounding the way it does, because it's not that deep, and I wanted the music to replicate the levity of it and also the emo, pop-rock aspect of the time of my life that the song is talking about.” California Dreaming “It's been one of my favorites for a while, and my mom loves that song. I know it's probably the most country song on the record, so I really wanted to lean into that, but not too far to where it didn't work with the other songs. I was thinking about what would take the song up a notch. I definitely thought my boyfriend Sam Palladio's beautiful blendy harmony voice would be perfect on it. The song's about someone from my past that really hurt me and broke my heart, and I'm having the man that's making me happy and that I'm in love with singing harmony on it. He does this harmony at the very end of the song that just gave me chills all over when he sang it. And that's probably one of my favorite moments of the record, is when he goes into his falsetto voice and it just ends the song in a really sad, tensioned way.” Counting on the Weather “That song, really, for me, is the coziest on the record. I wanted to make people feel like they're wrapped in a blanket on a couch in front of a fire. The simple things in life are sometimes just the most beautiful, and that's what the song talks about, just using an excuse like the weather to be with the person you love and just be together. It's definitely the love song of the record. In this time that we're in, where we can't really go many places without feeling a little unsafe, I thought this was timely as well, just to try and find those moments of simplicity that we can lean into and enjoy being home together.” Hangover “This is actually a Hey Monday song. It was on our last EP called Beneath It All. I wrote it with Butch Walker. This is by far the oldest song on the record. When I was thinking about doing this record with the intention of alluding to what I'm going to do full-band-wise later on, which is more pop-rock, I thought, ‘Well, what better way to do that than to put my old band song on here?’ I chose ‘Hangover’ because I always felt like it could be a country song, and it just held up over the years.” Rise and Shine “A message that I really wanted to focus on for this record is mental health. Everybody is dealing with everything going on in the world differently. I'm very open and vocal about feelings and mental health, and I've been in therapy for probably three years now and just done a lot of inner work. I want people to feel safe going into a place of feeling whatever emotions they have inside, and I hope that ‘Rise and Shine’ is one of those songs that helps them get into that place of letting it out.” Sand Paper “I remember really wanting to come up with a word that meant changing the shape or smoothing out people's rough edges or whatever. I was having such a hard time. Nothing sounds good in a song that you try and use in that regard. I mean, you could use, like, a hammer or you could use a chainsaw or whatever. Then I came across sandpaper and it just felt so perfect. At that point, I just felt really like I wasn't able to show my true colors and embrace the rough edges that I had naturally from my rock background. So I felt like sandpaper was the perfect usage to explain that.” Built This House “In 2017, I just leveled my life, between personal and professional. I eliminated the people in my life that I felt weren't working in my best interests, and also just got out of a relationship that I just wasn't happy in and I didn't feel like myself. That's what the song talks about, about getting rid of the old one and building a new foundation. When I wrote the song, my boyfriend and I bought a house together. And this house really feels like me and it feels way more comfortable than I've ever felt in any other place. It just made me realize this physical house means a lot to me, but I have built a house in my heart and in my soul through that whole experience a few years ago. No matter what tries to shake me or what comes my way and what tries to level this house that I've built now, I have such a solid foundation that I've been able to tackle obstacles that I wouldn't have had the strength to do before.”