Not far from her hometown of Connecticut, 25-year-old Chelsea Cutler sits backstage and bides her time at Governors Ball, a music festival in New York.
Cutler is not a newcomer to the world of music. Since his arrival in 2017, Cutler has achieved more than 2 billion streams on Spotify. Earlier this year, he was one of the few listed on the Forbes “30 under 30” in the music category.
For those who know Cutler, his success has been a long time coming. Her mother told Jamie Yuccas of CBS News that she knew her daughter would be a player when she was about 9 years old. But Cutler had other plans at the time.
“I want to play football my whole life, for sure,” Cutler said. “I played in college, but it didn’t look very good. So the dream, like, ended very early.”
When the dream ends, another dream begins. In high school and college, Cutler casually posted music to online streaming service SoundCloud. He said it was mostly for friends, but then record labels started calling.
In 2018, his song “Bajumu” went viral. His parents again encouraged him to pursue music.
“My parents were like sitting me down and they were like, ‘You have to leave college,'” Cutler recalls.
With their support, Cutler left and began touring the country with his friend, Quinn XCII. In 2019, he signed to Republic Records, and a year later, his album “How to Be Human” peaked at number 23 on the Billboard 200 Music Chart.
But even as his star rose, Cutler struggled with panic attacks, anxiety, and depression.
The song “Devil on My Shoulder,” on his latest album “When I Close My Eyes,” is about depression.
Cutler said she was able to manage her depression and anxiety through medication and treatment, but it wasn’t always easy.
“I’m so grateful for the medication, I’m so grateful you know, I’ve been in therapy consistently for four years now. And I’m, like, the biggest advocate of therapy,” she said.
The singer also uses his music to talk about his sexuality. When his love song “Lucky” came out, Cutler told people it was about his dog, but it was actually about his girlfriend. She says talking about the experience was stressful but admits it has helped many of her fans see a part of them in her.
“When people come up to you and say, ‘You really help me. I’m struggling. I appreciate your music.’ What use is that to you?” Yucca asked.
“It’s amazing that something I do exclusively for my own healing can really help someone else,” Cutler replied.
Cutler is returning to tour this fall, and later he said he plans to spend time in his home studio writing more music and reaching new heights and audiences.
“In many ways, I’m going to tell you right now, I feel like I haven’t succeeded. And there’s still a lot I want to achieve,” he said. “I’d love to be able to sell the arena one day.”
“Winning a Grammy would be really cool… What I think is important is real people, you know, real people I can interact with and interact with and real people whose lives are really influenced by my music. Like, that’s more important to me,” Cutler said.
