Ashe on the delayed success of 'Moral of the Story,' making music with Finneas O'Connell, and the raw new energy of her debut album

• We launched the Stay Insider Sessions to connect with artists while the world practices social distancing.
• Next up, Ashe discusses her breakout hit "Moral of the Story," writing relatable songs about divorce, and her friendship with producer Finneas O'Connell.
• "The fact that 'Moral of the Story' is having its moment now is absurd," she says. "Finneas and I, I remember us being like, 'We really believe in this record. We think this record's going to be important for my career.'"
• The 27-year-old singer-songwriter is currently working on her debut album, which she says will display a more raw, "brutal" side of her heartbreak.
• "Some of these new records are just getting some stuff off my chest," she explains, "not necessarily being the polite, sweet girl that people expect me to be."

Insider launched the Stay Insider Sessions to connect with musicians while they, like many of us, are grappling with isolation and unprecedented downtime. Next up: Ashe.

"I'm feeling super insecure because I was drinking a smoothie and I feel like I have a bunch of stuff in my teeth," Ashe declares, laughing, almost immediately after she joins our Zoom call.

"I'll let you know if I see anything," I reply, and she offers a small bow of thanks.

If that exchange feels very cozy and familial, it's because that's exactly how a conversation with Ashe feels.

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter, born Ashlyn Willson, has the uncanny ability to make you feel like you've been friends for years. She's unflinchingly warm and guileless, even when discussing some of her most painful experiences.

In fact, it's exactly this artful, instinctive openness that landed Ashe on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in March. Aurally, in terms of melody and instrumentation and production, "Moral of the Story" is a stunning song — but it's her honesty, her shrewdly specific lyricism, that buries the song in your gut.

"Talking with my lawyer / She said, 'Where'd you find this guy?'" she sings in the first verse. "I said, 'Young people fall in love / With the wrong people sometimes.'"

Paired with her elastic, weightless pixie voice, Ashe's meditation on divorce and healing strikes the perfect balance. It doesn't simply float in and out of your ears, or otherwise sit like a heavy weight in your stomach; it takes root and blossoms, becoming rich and meaningful and adaptable in the way that so many hitmakers strive for.

And yet, in an alternate universe, we may never have heard Ashe tell us her own stories.

The California native graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2015 with dreams of becoming "Carole King, just without putting out my own records."

"I felt like I could write songs. I've always felt like I'm a good songwriter," she tells me. "That confidence was always there, but I didn't think I was good enough to sing my own songs."

So Ashe moved to Nashville and began working as a behind-the-scenes songwriter. She even landed a credit on Demi Lovato's 2017 album "Tell Me You Love Me" by cowriting the sultry slow-burner "You Don't Do It for Me Anymore."

But Ashe grew tired of spilling her thoughts, recording them as demos, and handing them to other artists.

"Something just snapped, and I was like, 'No, this lie I've been telling myself my whole life, that I'm not good enough, is just that: it's a lie,'" she explains. "As soon as I made that switch in my head, it's like the universe was like, 'There you go. This is what we've wanted for you the whole time,' and all these things started to line up."

After generating buzz from topline features with artists like Louis the Child and Whethan, Ashe released her debut EP, "The Rabbit Hole," in June 2018. That same year, she moved out of her home and filed for divorce.

Her next two EPs, "Moral of the Story: Chapter 1" and "Chapter 2," dissect that conscious-altering experience. Both were released in 2019 and executive-produced by Finneas O'Connell, Billie Eilish's brother and collaborator.

The first EP's titular song was released on Valentine's Day in 2019 — but finally saw a surge in streams and radio plays exactly one year later, when it was featured in Netflix's "To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You." During the pivotal scene, a heartbroken Lara Jean Covey breaks the fourth wall to lip-sync the song, staring directly at the viewer.

"The fact that 'Moral of the Story' is having its moment now is absurd," Ashe muses. "Finneas and I, I remember us being like, 'We really believe in this record. We think this record's going to be important for my career.' When it didn't do too much, we were like, 'Oh, man. I guess we were wrong.' So when it started to take off, we were like, 'We were not! Wrong!'"

Ashe counts O'Connell among her most reliable collaborators and closest friends

Ashe met O'Connell four years ago, during a songwriting session set up by their shared management company. To hear her tell the story, the two musicians forged a near-instant, electric bond.

"It's one of those unexplainable connections because it wasn't romantic at all. I mean, I was married at the time. And I think he was kind of a playboy when we met."

"Wait," I interject. "His songs are so romantic, I cannot picture him as a playboy in any way."

"Oh, honey," she replies, smirking. "He had a phase, man."

"But when we first met, like I said, it wasn't a romantic connection at all," she continues. "It was just some unexplainable — not even a cerebral, 'we make sense, we understand each other' thing. And it wasn't like, 'I need to foster this relationship because he's famous,' because he wasn't famous when we met."

"Some hippie might say it was because we knew each other in a past life or something and now we've reconnected," she concludes. "I'm pretty agnostic in most respects, but I can totally see that being the case for someone like me and Fin."

As a producer, O'Connell has become known for adding textural flourishes and subtle, everyday sounds to his music — and "Moral of the Story" is no exception.

"He added some things people might not notice but might feel more when they listen to the song," Ashe explains. "There's this really cool reverse-kick sound that comes in before every kick hits, and it really drives the entire beat. That was all him."

"Also, when he was on tour in France, he was at some café in Paris and recorded the sounds of the café," she adds. "There's actually a bunch of French people just talking at this café [in the song]."

O'Connell also played the song for his sister, who suggested a small but crucial lyric change in the penultimate chorus: "You can think that you're in love, when you're really just in pain," becomes, "when you're really just engaged."

"Finneas is very careful about what he shares, so I was honored that he even showed 'Moral' to Billie and she had that moment," Ashe tells me.

"I didn't want a bunch of collaborators or writers on the records. I didn't want it to feel, like — God love the pop superheroes, but when you look at their album credits, it's like, freaking hundreds of people," she continues. "At the end of the day, even with this album I'm working on, I want to keep it very tight."

Circling back to "Moral of the Story," Ashe admits that she was worried its specificity would alienate listeners, but now feels that it actually adds to the song's power and relatability.

"Even if you haven't had to call your divorce attorney or hire a divorce attorney, you can think about, 'Man, that must've been a really painful experience,' and it makes it so much narrower," she explains. "I think more often than not, the songs that are talking about real life s--- usually breaks because there's so much noise."

"The music industry, God love it, and I'm in it, but it's full of noise. It's like, just don't put anything out if the thing you're going to put out is fluff. The world doesn't need that. Put out what the world needs, which is honesty."

The song has also helped fans work through their own damaging experiences, Ashe says, especially when it comes to unhealthy relationships.

"One of them told me that in the middle of my concert, during 'Moral of the Story,' they had gathered together with this one friend that was in an abusive relationship and convinced her to leave the relationship," she tells me. "At my freaking show. I'm like, 'This song is not about me anymore. It goes way past me.'"

Ashe's existing projects are packed with cathartic and revelational lyrics

"Moral of the Story: Chapter 2" is particularly intimate, kaleidoscopic — and, in her words, "brutal."

Ashe shares her personal favorite lyric, from the EP's opening track: "I'd rather be hated for who I am."

"That one, 'In Disguise,' was just about trying to recognize who you surround yourself with," she explains. "That was the real premise behind that song: 'Be careful about who you keep close to you,' especially coming from my perspective in the music industry. Not everyone is out to help you."

"There's a lot of people, a lot of wonderful, good people in the music business, but not everyone is. It's a song about, 'Be who you are and be careful.'"

Another standout track, "Immature," is sobering and self-deprecating. In my opinion, Ashe would never strike a living soul as anything other than mature, which makes the song all the more jarring.

Indeed, Ashe says she wrote it "in the thick of my marriage," almost from the perspective of her ex-husband.

"Have you ever been in a relationship where you look at the color red and you're like, 'My whole life, this is the color red,' and someone comes in and tells you, 'No, that's the color blue. You're wrong?'" she explains. "You start losing your mind and you're like, 'Wait. Have I been wrong this whole time? Maybe I'm crazy. He's got to be right. This is blue and I'm insane.'"

"That's how I was feeling in my life and in my marriage. I was being told that I was a certain way, and I was like, 'I really don't feel that way, but if you're telling me that I'm X, Y, Z, then I must be and I'm really the crazy one.'"

With so many open wounds and so much hard-won life experience on display in her music, it's almost jarring how youthful and sunny Ashe appears in real life.

I wouldn't be surprised if she still gets carded at bars; her impossibly line-free face grows flushed when she laughs, which is often, and when she seems excited or energized by a topic of conversation, which also happens a lot. Combined with her colorful, '60s Hollywood aesthetic, she could be the love child of Maggie Rogers and Margot Robbie.

But Ashe says her new music won't necessarily display her as "the polite, sweet girl that people expect me to be."

"'Moral of the Story' is a really mature record. It's me making sense of heartbreak and going, 'It's tough to go through something you thought was going to last forever and then it doesn't, but you're usually better for it,'" she muses. "It's like the end of grieving, the acceptance phase."

"I think my fans, in many ways — I mean a lot of them call me 'Mom.' I think they all view me as pretty level-headed. But some of these new records are just getting some stuff off my chest," she grins. "I would maybe say it's a little bit less of, 'It's better for me, it all worked out,' and was more like, "No, f--- that. That was awful.'"

Of her forthcoming single, Ashe is tight-lipped about details, but allows one hint: "My ex-husband probably won't like the song. Let's just say that."

Ashe is currently 'cranking away' on her debut album: 'Honestly, I'm the busiest I've ever been in quarantine'

It's a weird time to have your debut on the Billboard Hot 100. While many artists have seen their 2020 plans derailed by the coronavirus pandemic, Ashe says the success of "Moral of the Story" is "changing my plans way more than Covid has."

"I've just been cranking away. I'm working on my debut album right now," she tells me. "Honestly, I'm the busiest I've ever been in quarantine. Life is pretty insane."

"Some days are completely like, 'Oh, I could write a whole album,' and other days are like, 'Wow, I'm feeling really uninspired,'" she muses. "It's pretty hot and cold with me."

Even so, Ashe says she's enjoying the ability to be creative on her own terms, in her own space — even though people have been frothing at the mouth for, as she puts it, "the follow-up to 'Moral.'" (She rolls her eyes at the phrase.)

Given the song's winding and unconventional path to success, I suggest, it seems strange to try and engineer a similar hit. "That's so silly," I say off-handedly, and she cracks up.

"Yeah! You definitely can't plan much in your life. I mean, I was married and I thought it was going to be for forever, and then a year-and-a-half later, I was like, 'This is the most miserable thing I've ever been in and I have to get out,'" she says, smiling and shrugging.

"Life will surprise you, so I don't really plan too far ahead, honestly."