Faye Webster Is Underdressed and Running on Instinct

A white silhouette stares back at me for the duration of my conversation with Faye Webster. The faceless video chat placeholder made up of little more than two circles grows and shrinks with the volume of her voice. Every now and then, a small icon of a microphone with a slash through it pops up in the corner, indicating that Webster has momentarily muted herself. We’re talking about her new album, Underdressed at the Symphony (out March 1st), and rather unironically, that “default user” icon could use a bit more style.

In a way, the digital wall between us speaks more to Webster’s nature than anything that might be on the other side of that screen. She’s certainly present for the conversation, but she’s veiled; she’s thoroughly honest in her responses, but often doesn’t elaborate. It’s as if she’s hiding herself in plain sight.

It all aligns with the surprisingly literal backstory of the Underdressed at the Symphony title, that of Webster’s streak of attending the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the last minute and thus not always living up to the unspoken dress code. Call it somewhat of a mask, a defense mechanism, or just plain shyness, it’s clear that some sense of anonymity helps put Webster at ease.

“It was really therapeutic for me,” she says of her symphonic escapades, adding,

''I just kind of felt like
I was going to a place where nobody knew
me, and I didn't know them, and I didn't
know what I was watching.''

To take her words at face value, it seems as if she’s interested in staying just outside of the limelight. Her brush with virality certainly suggests as much.

Her songs like “Kingston,” “Right Side of My Neck,” and “In a Good Way” have all made the rounds on TikTok, soundtracking various trends and countless lip-syncing teens. “I Know You” alone has over 350,000 videos to its name – that’s 350,000 individual pieces of content, many with hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.

However, Webster seemed to intentionally sidestep any attention that her inadvertent social media dominance might have brought her way. She wasn’t on TikTok before any of these shenanigans, and she decidedly did not hop on the platform once her music was plastered all over it. In fact, she only knew of the phenomenon thanks to her friends. “I'm not really, like, on the internet. I'll see videos [just because] people text it to me,” she admits. “I knew it was happening because people would tell me.”

She's content to watch her songs grow in popularity from a distance. Where some artists might have attempted to fan the flames of the virtual moment, racing to crank out video after video in order to put a face to the disembodied voice, Webster remained unplugged. At the same time she was everywhere, she was keeping to herself.

And yet, her success is largely thanks to her brazen vulnerability and willingness to shine a light on her innermost thoughts. With each new project, she has come forth with more and more conviction, unafraid of lyrics using the real names of the people she knows or digging into the details of her day-to-day life.

Her 2017 self-titled sophomore effort first established the blueprint for her idiosyncratic, low-key brand of slice-of-life storytelling. The two projects that followed, 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club (which came with a Consequence CoSign) and 2021’s I Know I’m Funny haha, found Webster refining the formula, folding in the sense of humor referenced in that latter title. Songs like “Kingston” introduced many of the quirks that would go on to define Webster’s artistic identity: slightly deadpan vocals, deep emotions packed into short verses, deceptively simple choruses, and, of course, the now-viral asides (“He said baby – that’s what he called me – I love you”).

With Underdressed at the Symphony, she’s come through with the most potent distillation of her personality yet. Whether she’s silly and in love on “He Loves Me Yeah!” or admitting to her self-destructive tendencies on the title track (“I’m depriving myself of happiness/ Something I’m really good at”), the record is Webster revealed.

“I'd run things by somebody and be like, ‘Hmm, should I not say this about whatever?’ They're like, ‘No, you said it for a reason,’” she explains. “I feel like the past couple records, I really struggled with that. Whereas now, I’m like, if that's what was on my mind, I feel like it was meant to be on my mind for a reason.”

More than just a reference to Webster’s habitual escape to the orchestra, Underdressed at the Symphony works to describe the many paradoxes at the heart of Webster’s work: vulnerable reserve, planned improvisation, and understatement that stands out in a crowd. She’s honest enough to share intimate details from her life through quotable lyrics, but self-aware enough (or, perhaps, self-conscious enough) to feel the need to ease the tension with a wry, often self-deprecating joke. She says,

''There's a lot of honesty in my
songwriting, and
I think that's why
I have so much
comic relief''

It’s a responsive safeguard she illustrates right at the beginning of our conversation. Fresh off an Australian tour with a North American run including Coachella on the horizon, she admits to feeling overwhelmed before quickly qualifying herself. “But in a good way, but excited,” she says, undercutting a moment that might otherwise be “too honest.”

Alternatively, take her new cut “Wanna Quit All the Time”: “I wanna quit all the time/ I think about it all the time/ It’s the attention that freaks me out,” she sings over wailing pedal steel. Once again risking being overly candid, she turns around and pokes fun at her mopey disposition in the stanza that immediately follows: “Overthinking in my head again/ I’m good at making shit negative/ Right now I hate the color of my house.”

Instances like these find Webster fully embodying the duality of her nature, giving into both her instinct to share everything that’s on her mind and her hesitation to call attention to herself. Taken literally, it’s somewhat of a difficult contradiction to reconcile. Instead, Webster seems to not reason with the two impulses, letting her gut take the wheel.

“Faye is one of the most instinctual artists I've ever been around,” explains Drew Vandenberg, who has mixed and/or produced all of Webster’s albums since her self-titled LP. “And we try to capture [it] as fast as possible.”

Referring to her style as a sort of “subconscious songwriting,” Webster gives herself and her collaborators little room to think twice. Spontaneity and intuition drive the writing and recording process, liberating those involved from the curse of overthinking.

“The recording process for me is [all about] first impressions,” she says, and the sentiment couldn’t have been more true for Underdressed at the Symphony. The bedrock of the project is a sort of creative impulsivity, with many second or third takes ultimately making the album. “One of the rules we have is to record everything, even our first take. Because we always mess up, but then it's like, ‘Oh, we really like that.’”

“Ever since I've worked with Faye, it's not like you get a bunch of recordings or demos ahead of time so you can sketch something out and come in with an idea,” bassist Bryan Howard adds. “She presents it right before we record. So, you listen to it once or twice, and then you go in and play it maybe three, four times – and you got it.”

Withholding demos and limiting takes are just a few of Webster’s secret weapons to help her get out of her own way, allowing for happy accidents and ensuring that the result is true to those who helped create it. Underdressed at the Symphony takes this idea further than any of her past projects.

“Faye was actually writing some of the songs during the session. She didn't have all the songs completed,” pedal steel player and longtime friend Matt “Pistol” Stoessel recalls. “Normally when we record, she comes in with a demo and we listen to it and we kind of figure out the chords and start playing the song until we get something that sounds like a song. But this time… we would just kind of go on walks and hang out [until we’d] get a text message like, ‘Hey, come back to the studio, we're ready for you.’”

It’s a sort of organized unpreparedness, a plan to have no plan that only works because Webster has established such a close, intimate inner circle, largely bringing along the same producers and band members for each new project. It allows her to arrive at the studio with, say, a six-second voice memo and emerge with “But Not Kiss.”

"I was kind of just like, 'Trust me,'" she says of the song’s origins with a laugh. “I remember playing [the “But Not Kiss” demo] and everybody just waiting around for me to write the chorus for the day, ‘cause they were like, ‘Yeah, Faye, we see the vision. This is great, but it's six seconds long.’”

Trust her they did, and the results speak for themselves.

Of course, after even the most successful trips to the studio, you have to come home. The anxieties of life and the realities of a rising profile creep back into focus. But unlike when asked about a specific song or her love of chess, Webster tenses up at the topic of fame or success.

Perhaps it’s a subject she feels is best kept between friends like “Lego Ring” collaborator Lil Yachty or chess opponents Daniel Caesar and Tyler, the Creator – but not a journalist. “I feel like that's always a conversation I'm having and maneuvering," she considers of her career trajectory. "The homies give good advice."

Talking about her interests is fun, talking about her work is a necessity, but talking about her lot in life isn’t interesting to her. Even her friends respect that reserve.

“She always makes me laugh, whether it’s on purpose or on accident, only God and Faye know,” close friend and tourmate Maya Hawke says over email. “[But] all humorous and personal anecdotes are strictly confidential.”

It’s not so much that the idea of fame makes Webster uncomfortable – she seems fine with Faye Webster the artist racking up streams and nabbing accolades. Rather, it’s as if she’s naturally resistant to the idea of bringing too much concentrated attention to Faye Webster the human. Staring down the default user icon on the screen before me, I’m once again reminded of the sentiments of “Wanna Quit All the Time.”

Inevitably, the thought enters my head: If Webster fantasizes about giving it all up, why doesn’t she? As I broach the topic, her tone of voice hints that “I think about it all the time” wasn’t a line fabricated for the sake of a song. But she livens up when we zero in on one specific topic: human connection.

“I feel like that is why I'm still doing it,” she says of performing live. “I feel like the physical moments of collectively bringing all these people [together] and everybody relating to each other in one way or another just because we're all here, and being able to see how much they relate to my music… yeah, those are my favorite moments.”

Sold-out rooms full of people singing along to every word, perhaps even with tears in their eyes or in the embrace of someone important to them, has a tangible effect on Webster. Talking about the smallest moments of connection, it’s clear how much humanity lies at the heart of even silly little tokens of gratitude.

“[At] my shows, I get an insane amount of Pokémon plushies, and it makes me really happy,” she says softly. “Or, like in Australia, somebody gave me a Vegemite yo-yo. I don't know, I think it's really sweet.”

Webster will be the first to admit: Sometimes you have to escape to a place where nobody knows you. But she also nurtures true affection with those close to her, and expresses genuine humility when it comes to her fans. She doesn’t reject the spotlight outright – she simply knows how to take care of herself.

''Whatever I end up
doing, I feel like I'll
always make sure
I'm okay first.''

If that means holding onto her privacy or an impromptu trip to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to publically hide amongst a sea of formal attire, she follows her instincts. Why shouldn’t she? They haven’t let her down yet.