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Alicia Witt is relishing in the success of her new music.
After her single “Chasing Shadows” has spent more than a month on Billboard’s AC chart, the pianist and actress, 46, says she has “no words” for the accomplishment as she releases her album The Conduit.
“To have been in the top 30 for 5 weeks, to know that this song I made up is being heard on the radio to that extent, it’s a deep, deep glow,” she tells PEOPLE. “It’s just something I will forever be so proud of. I’ll always be so glad that The Conduit was the album that first got a song on the charts — it just feels incredible and makes me even more excited to be about to go on tour.”
Witt — who most recently starred in two Christmas Hallmark films in 2019 and 2020 — says her upcoming album is inspired by some of the greats of the 1970s.
“I’ve had so many musical inspirations throughout my life — but this album, in particular, is an homage to the great singer-songwriters of the ’70s, like Elton John, Billy Joel, Carole King, Paul Simon and Barry Manilow (to me he is one of the all-time greats),” she says, adding that she directly refers to the decade in her track “Any Midnight.” “The soaring strings feel like a real tribute to those incredible albums where big, cinematic string sections were so gloriously expected in pop music.”
“Although it may not be apparent from first listen, a big inspiration for parts of the arrangement of ‘Last Surviving Son’ is Eric Carmen’s soaring instrumental breakdown in ‘All By Myself,'” she adds. “And then there’s ‘Face Change’ and ‘The Ocean’ — both of which could be arranged in that classic style, and when I play them solo on the piano they’re singer-songwriter ballads.”
About her track “The Ocean,” Witt reveals that it was pitched to several male country artists but she “absolutely loved taking [it] into this trance-pop realm.”
“I wanted ‘Face Change’ to feel like a journey to the outer reaches of the galaxy — spinning off this realm for a moment,” she adds.
Along with her album out now, Witt is set to release her book Small Changes on Oct. 4.
Tracklist:
01.Talk To You
02.The Conduit
03.Down She Goes
04.Face Change
05.Any Midnight
06.Last Surviving Son
07.Chasing Shadows
08.Lie To Me
09.I Hope It’s Me
10.The Ocean
11.Someday
OVERALL RATING: 4 stars
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