Caroline Strickland - Martha's Calling
Gentle guitar strumming with sparse piano pearls mark "Martha's Calling," the new single by New York singer/songwriter Caroline Strickland. The song paints the perfect backdrop for the singer's warm vocals to shine and the track to unfold.
It is rare that an artist is willing to talk in great length about the inspiration for a song, its meaning, or where this all sits in the bigger picture. The more I am intrigued by the story that Caroline tells about how "Martha's Calling" came to life and why she chose the name "Martha." Hence, I didn't want to leave anything out, but let Caroline explain this here in her own words, starting with the previous single "Loving You Right" and how the mellow track relates to her new song:
“I wrote this track during the spring of 2023. If 'Loving You Right' is the initial running away from one’s problems, the admission of fault and lack, the facing of the mannequin void, the heartbreak of leaving someone, 'Martha’s Calling' is the deliriousness that follows, the hope in some spirit to save you, the faith in the void to fill itself, the desperation for a sign to tell you where to go and what to do.
After running for so long, a figure I decided to name Martha came along. I decided she was calling me, a phone spirit haunting me. I had lost my job in March 2023, and I hated that job, but the fall to insecurity and uncertainty ripped off the curtains covering the faults within me and my life, and everything began to change. Though I technically wrote this song before I wrote the first song on the project ['Loving You Right'], it comes second to signify the moment in the journey from uncertainty to groundedness in which the person has seen the problems, whatever they are, once and for all, and has run as long as they could. Now they’re tired, and in the breathlessness and blurred vision of the gasps after a long run, magic or god or a sign feels like the only answer. When you are lost, you want something magic to look for and to save you."
Caroline continues, explaining where "Martha" comes in:
"So, Martha came to me, one day last spring, a little after I began to realize I wasn’t loving right. It sparked that possessed and twisted search for a sign or higher power or something. When you are lost, you want something magic to look for and to save you. She lodged herself in my ear before I even knew the sun was setting on my life as I knew it. Even when the sky grew purple, and the golden sun began to truly die, Martha didn’t leave. She got louder and more obvious and she kept f*ing calling. Martha’s Calling. Martha’s Calling. Martha’s Calling. She rang when I was writing other songs, she rang when my old boyfriend and I were breaking up, she rang when I was crying and she rang when I was praying. My mannequin void of a self couldn’t face the call, couldn’t hold up the line to my lips and spit out the good stuff. Phone tag! Tag, you’re it."
Caroline comes to a conclusion I didn't see coming. She says:
"Martha is sometimes a devil. But sometimes she is the angel-agent of a 1980s muralist failing to come through on the set design for the Joffrey Ballet’s new work debuting this upcoming season. And there I was, a painter on Cape Cod, trying to redeem myself.
This section you just read lacks any sense because Martha came from nothing, didn’t come from a real place. She showed up on the coast and I picked her up and took her for a walk on the beach. I tried to lock eyes with her, but she was always looking somewhere else. I didn’t have the guts to trust her, to realize she was simply an omen that things will fall apart. She is the sign that all is about to collapse. After that comes the rebuild, the construction of better and brighter things, the last stretch to wholeness, and the rest of this five-song project.”
Makes me realize that we all, at times, have a "Martha" sitting somewhere, calling us. Thanks for the beautiful reminder, Caroline, and all the best for the five-song project!
Listen to "Martha's Calling," our Song Pick of the Day:
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