Melody Briar is a songwriter whose musical roots stem from a lifelong study of piano, voice, and classical music. Her work is distinguished by emotionally nuanced songwriting, lyrical storytelling, and an enduring commitment to authentic expression. Inspired by personal experiences of grief, love, and transformation, Briar creates music that bridges intimate reflection and universal emotion. Through atmospheric production and deeply personal narratives, she explores themes of memory, vulnerability, mortality, and healing, inviting listeners into spaces of empathy, contemplation, and connection.
“The Intangible Man” explores the transformation of a loved one from a tangible presence into memory, story, and eventually something almost mythological. When did you first realize that this was the emotional center of the song, and how did that realization shape the way you wrote it?
In the year after my dad passed, people in my life who never got a chance to meet him would ask me about him and what he was like. I was always grateful for the opportunity to talk about him, but it was also devastating to realize that the only way people can know him is through the stories I tell. I also found myself incredibly frustrated because it’s impossible to capture a person’s essence with just words. This experience inspired the song, and my goal became to capture the traits and complexities of my dad as much as I possibly could while ultimately acknowledging that no descriptors could ever be enough.
Grief can be an incredibly difficult subject to translate into music without becoming overly literal or sentimental. What did you learn about songwriting while trying to capture the contradictions of grief, particularly the way love, guilt, longing, and memory can exist simultaneously?
When writing about grief, there’s a temptation to water down the true emotions or to create false happy endings because that’s what people want to hear. But grief is chaotic, raw, and vulnerable, with no resolution or end. I learned that, in order to truly capture the experience of grief, I needed to let my emotions and ruminating thoughts dictate the lyrics, melodies, and compositions. Some songs are bittersweet and nostalgic; others are much darker and pessimistic. But by allowing each one to fully dive into the emotional thesis lyrically and sonically, I was able to capture how love and loss feel for me, and how intense many different emotions can feel all at once when experiencing the death of a loved one.
You have a background in piano, voice, and classical music, and the piano is central to your creative process. How does that classical foundation influence the way you approach songwriting, arrangement, dynamics, and emotional storytelling, even when you are working within a contemporary alternative or indie-pop sound?
After studying and playing piano for so many years, I view the piano as my secondary voice, and I try to implement a lot of my technical knowledge from my classical studies when writing a song. Classical music can sometimes be viewed as rigid or strict, but for me, I’ve always found performing classical pieces very freeing and powerful. There is an ordered chaos that comes perfectly together through each intricate detail, creating one full experience that moves the listener. I try to approach each song with that same sensibility, even when using more modern sounds.
The production on “The Intangible Man” moves between intimate acoustic textures and sweeping, cinematic string arrangements. How did you decide how large or small the song needed to feel at different moments, and what were you hoping those changes in scale would communicate emotionally?
All my songs begin with me at the piano, and so a lot of what is being played by synths or other instruments originally was my acoustic piano. When I’m performing my songs for myself, I can tell through the experience of playing where emotional swells in the song need to exist, and I take notes of where I want the impactful moments to be. I also let the lyrics guide the shape of the song tonally and dynamically. For “The Intangible Man,” there is a rhythmic and chanting quality to it that feels almost obsessive, which mirrors my experience of desperately trying to explain to others in words how interesting my dad was.
Memory is one of the most fascinating themes running through the song. When someone we love dies, our memories of them can become more vivid in some ways and less reliable in others. Did writing “The Intangible Man” change your own understanding of memory or the way you remember the person who inspired it?
Absolutely. When writing this song, I thought a lot about how one’s memory takes on a life of its own after one dies. There’s a tension that exists between the experience of being in their physical presence and the act of remembering. Over time, real people are transformed into stories that are supplemented with the things they left behind – a painful substitute for having known them. But there’s also something profound and beautiful in that transformation. Though memories and belongings can never recreate the person, they allow fragments of who they were to persist in the world and take on meaning beyond their lifetime.
Your forthcoming debut album, Green Aventurine, explores grief, love, mortality, vulnerability, impermanence, and healing. How do you see the individual songs connecting to one another, and what does the album reveal collectively that a single song cannot?
Thematically, each song focuses on an aspect of grief, but the emotional tone varies greatly throughout the album. In some moments of the album, childhood memories are recalled sweetly and fondly, and in other moments, guilt and self-loathing are the main focus. Together, the songs paint a complete portrait of what it was like to lose my dad so suddenly. Grief is often reduced to short-term sadness, with the expectation that a person will go back to how things were before. But it is life-changing, and the album as a whole reveals the inner turmoil that people usually keep hidden after experiencing loss.
There is a striking tension in your music between deeply personal storytelling and universal emotional themes. How do you decide which intimate details belong in a song, and how do you transform something that is specifically yours into an experience that another listener can recognize as their own?
For this album, I allowed myself to write very detailed lyrics about my experience because I had a lot of ruminating thoughts that I had to get off my chest. When I’m struggling with a question or fixated on an idea, I have to fully immerse myself in it and get it out of my system or it can really take control of my life. Though honesty is vulnerable, I found it cathartic to channel all of my thoughts in specificity into song. Even if others may not relate to some of the unique details, the underlying emotions that I feel are universal in the realm of grief, and I hope that my honesty will allow others to feel seen and understood in their own experiences.
Artists such as Phoebe Bridgers, Lana Del Rey, Caroline Polachek, and The Cranberries occupy very different corners of alternative music, yet each has a distinctive relationship with atmosphere, vulnerability, and emotional drama. What artists have shaped your musical imagination, and what have you consciously tried to move away from in developing your own sound?
My parents listened to a wide array of artists and genres when I was growing up, and I give them all the credit for my diverse taste in music. Artists such as David Bowie, Sarah McLachlan, Manu Chao, Yanni, and Nirvana were very influential on me as a kid. Their work shares the characteristic of feeling deeply personal and honest, using their respective styles and talents to highlight the emotions they aim to encapsulate. When developing my own sound, though, I like to clear my mind and not commit myself to any genre or style, and I seldom have any direct references. I try to let my songs form independently of what others may expect, and I allow myself to implement any sound or technique that the emotion calls for.
You began writing original music following a period of profound personal loss. Looking back at that transition, what did songwriting give you that other forms of processing or expression could not, and when did you first realize that these deeply personal songs might become something larger than a private form of healing?
Throughout my life, listening to music and playing classical piano has helped me get through challenging times and process difficult emotions. But when my dad died, there weren’t any songs that captured the deep pain I felt, and I had so many thoughts swirling in my head that I couldn’t escape from. One night shortly after he died, I sat at the piano and just started writing songs about what I was feeling. Over the first two years after his passing, I ended up with a full album. After giving it a lot of thought and talking about it with my family who had heard many of my songs, I decided to pursue recording and releasing the album as a way to honor my dad and also to hopefully provide a musical space for other grievers to feel less alone.
With Green Aventurine introducing your work to a wider audience, what do you hope listeners ultimately carry away from these songs? If someone finishes the album and feels changed in even a small way, what would you most want that change to be?
My wish is that, by listening to me being vulnerable and honest, others will feel less alone in their pain, particularly if they are grappling with the death of a loved one. The album showcases the wide array of emotions that exist within love and loss. If my music evokes change in someone, I hope it is that they give themselves permission to feel any emotion that arises in their grieving process without judgment or pressure that they pretend to be happy or “move on” for the sake of others’ comfort. I also strive to honor my dad through this album, and I hope people walk away knowing how much I love him.
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