She’s a successful singer, author, model – and only 21
When she was 6, Valerie Lighthart loved to sing — perhaps a bit too much.
“It was a compulsive thing where anytime I felt anything I would sing about it,” Lighthart said. “It was really annoying to all of my friends and family. I sang so much in first grade my teacher had to designate a time where I could sing to the class each Friday.”
From there, Lighthart has written fiction and poetry, acted, modeled and directed short films and even documentaries for a hydroplane racing team she followed to Poland, England and Estonia.
Did we mention she’s only 21? But now the Germantown-based Lighthart is largely focused on music again, last year dropping “V.A.L.,” a promising EP of catchy and vulnerable bedroom pop songs — featuring production by electronic brother duo Immortal Girlfriend and Four Giants (whose credits include WebsterX’s “Blue Streak”). She has another EP and album already in the works.
“I’ve always been really ambitious, and my creative journey has been figuring out how to tell the stories in me,” Lighthart said. “I feel music is where I can tell these stories in the most direct and powerful way, in the most meaningful way. I think music is my medium. I found it, after a long time searching.”
Artistic endeavors: My background is in long-form fiction. I started writing at a really young age. I wrote five books between 11 and 16. It was born from my love of reading. As a kid, I moved around a lot and felt rootless, so I developed this inner realm to escape to. I was really inspired by fairy tales and wrote a lot of fantasies.
I have also been acting since I was a teenager in short films, and was into photography as a teenager and fell into modeling. I did my first big short film in summer 2017. And the executive administrator for (the US A-Team, which competes in hydroplane boat racing) used to live in Milwaukee, and when I was 15 I met her at a work party for my Mom, and she told me how this racing team needed a filmmaker. She said she couldn’t pay me, but I could travel with them.
Focusing on music: In my later teen years, I really fell in love with folk music. I felt like it was a way to tell a really detailed and rich story through music. It felt really rewarding to condense these novel-sized ideas into a number of lines and to be able to sing, because that is what I loved first and foremost.
When I was 17, I was writing my first songs and performing a little bit. When I was 18, I was featured on a song from this Indian musician, Luvkush Sengar. I was supposed to act in his music video, and I told him I also sang and I ended up with a feature on the song. That was when I knew I wanted to get serious about recording my own songs. I got to participate in the whole studio process and learn how songs went from something that is just written on a piece of paper to being fleshed out.
Making “V.A.L.”: Last March, I was cast in Immortal Girlfriend’s music video for “Daybreak” and we jelled really well musically and started collaborating. (”V.A.L.”) was a marriage of our two styles, this intersection of the folk I was doing and the pop and electronic music they were doing. I felt like all of my creative ideas were finally really being valued and I felt like my voice was finally being heard for the first time. To be invested in and believed in as an artist is an absolutely transformative experience.
Favorite songs so far: I’m most proud of “Doe Eyes.” It was the most difficult for me to write and get out into the world. I was in a three-year relationship, and I wrote it two months before I got out of that relationship and was understanding that this thing was over before being ready to emotionally come to terms with that. It’s the most intimate, the most emotional and the most honest song I’ve made.
I also really like “I’ll Be Damned.” It was the first thing I put out, and there’s this nostalgia of it being the first and it’s also really catchy and gets stuck in your head. I listen to a lot of Joni Mitchell, and melodically it’s the thing that’s most in line with the thing that I love.
In the works: I am working with a live band for the first time and am excited about the potential possibilities with what that can do with the live show. I have a three-song EP in the works, “The Places,” about a few places that are near and dear to me. I wrote most of the songs traveling, and its kind of in the realm of ‘60s folk, with a lot of harmonica, and some marching band-style horns. I’m aiming for something in the Joan Baez realm. I also hope to release a fulllength this year, and it will do the full spectrum; it will start really aggressively pop and in the middle it will translate to folky and orchestral and in the end will be a dark, electronic and folk mix.
Next gig: Opening for the Hussy, 8 p.m. Saturday, the Cooperage, 822 S. Water St. $10 at the door and eventbrite.com.
Watch two exclusive performances from Valerie Lighthart at jsonline .com/music. Sound Check appears around the 15th each month online and in the Journal Sentinel.