noelle may be releasing her debut record at the young age of 21, but the moment has been years in the making. At age eight, the singer from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario was wowing viewers on YTV’s The Next Star talent show; a decade later, she went head-to-head with Julia Michaels as a contestant on CTV’s prime-time competition The Launch. But on 30k, we hear a singer who’s savvy enough to play the modern pop game—as she dishes out sassy, trap-kissed R&B tunes like the title track—but wise enough to understand where her velveteen voice truly shines: in chill serenades that chronicle the elation and frustration of love with jazzy, neo-soul sophistication. “When I was younger, I did lots of YouTube covers and I always wanted to sing like Whitney Houston and Adele and do all the big, belting notes,” noelle tells Apple Music. “But then I zoned in and realized what really moves me are those soft, airy, emotional songs. The writers that I always work with will be like, ‘OK, what’s your idea for the session today?’ And I play them the idea, and they’re like, ‘OK…another ballad.’ But it’s what I love!” Here, noelle tells us the stories behind 30k’s six tracks, which chart the course of a rocky romance, from the first kiss to the kiss-off. “Forever Yours” “I love old jazz. It’s something I grew up listening to because my mom loves it as well. So, I really wanted to have a couple songs on the first EP that had a hint of jazz in them. For ‘Forever Yours,’ I just wrote about the feeling you get when you’re first falling in love with somebody, and how you feel like you could be with them forever. It just felt right to sing it in a jazzy but still happy vibe.” “Therapy” “I was in a relationship with somebody that had mental health problems, and some of my family also struggles with it, so therapy is a topic that’s really heavy on my heart. The song is about reassuring them that you’re going to be there for them, and that you can be that outlet for them to tell their deepest, darkest secrets and you’re never going to turn on them. I think it’s really important to have somebody to talk to—whether that’s your family, whether it’s traditional therapy, whether it’s your partner. Knowing that there’s somebody who’ll be there for you is really important.” “Seasons Change” “This is another jazzy one. I actually wrote the initial idea for this in my bedroom, and then I was driving to Toronto to do the songwriting session for the song, but I couldn’t help myself—I wrote the whole thing on the 401 [highway] on the way there. This was around three or four years ago; I don’t think I even had my driver’s license yet—my mom was driving. ‘Seasons Change’ is about young love—it’s a right-person, wrong-time situation, where one of the people in the relationship isn’t quite ready yet, and it’s intimidating, so I’m just like, ‘I’ll wait.’” “Hope You’re Happy” “This song is a little bit vengeful, for sure, because nobody wants to see their ex with somebody else, being happier with them. So, the chorus is kind of sarcastic, but in the end, I do really want them to be happy.” “Hate That I Miss You” “This is a really, really special song to me. It’s about a relationship where one person was treated really poorly, and then years later, you can’t help but still miss them. You know that it was terrible for you, and you should never go back because of what they did to you. But you still miss them a little bit here and there. Something will remind you of them, and you’re just like, ‘No! Stop missing them!’” “30k” “When I wrote this song, I was getting over somebody, but that day, I wanted to write a really fun song. So, we were like, ‘How can we make getting over somebody sound super fun?’ We decided to write a song about how to get over somebody if you’re rich. We pretended that I was rich, which is kind of a joke, because when I wrote the song, I was working a part-time job at David’s Tea with, like, $500 in my bank account. So, we wrote about flying to LA and shopping and going to the club. It’s funny: There’s a line that says, ‘30,000 in the air and in my bag right now,’ and my producer was like, ‘$30,000 in the bank? That’s a reasonable amount of money. I mean, it’s comfortable, but why are you flexing on that?!’ I just didn’t want it to be too crazy.”