‘The South Is My Twin’

Sarah Morrison brushes past the fact that The Doors’ frontman Jim Morrison is her cousin—they never met, and I imagine it only comes up in two truths and a lie—but the irony isn’t lost on me. Her own music, performed on a double-stacked keyboard, is experimental, poetic, and filled with literary references—and not without a little darkness.

“Every poem I start turns into a song—that’s what it wants to be,” says Morrison, a Tallahassee folk singer-songwriter and Florida State University creative writing graduate. “It’s hopefully thought-provoking and maybe not always super enjoyable to listen to. It’s not super happy, but maybe there’s something cool about that.”

Photo by Chris Cameron

Inspired by “sad girl songwriters” like Fiona Apple as a child, Morrison is now driven by the pursuit of an innovative song.

“I was thinking more about song structure and listening to weirder music and trying to understand what I could do to tap into something deeper and more important than my earlier sad feelings,” Morrison says. “Craft came into play a lot later for me. And I’m glad that’s the case because I write weird music now, which is good.”

Morrison had long been drawn to songwriting. Performing was a nightmare.

“I was so nervous, and I hated it,” she says of her first gig at a house show. “I was 19 when I started playing live and then had to force myself to keep doing it because it felt like it was worth it—even though it made me want to die for a good bit of time.”

Once intimidated by performing, Morrison opened for fellow Tallahassee local Ethel Cain at The Moon on May 5 of this year. Photo by Chris Cameron.

Morrison’s music might be “weird,” but that doesn’t make it unrelatable. Her debut album, Attachment Figure, frames her most serious relationship. She recorded it at the height of the pandemic, only now realizing how that impacted its subject matter. A common theme is interacting with screens more than people; her own “phone addiction popped off” then, she says.

“I was in my early 20s, and a lot of people in their early 20s nowadays have the curse and the blessing of social media to curate a version of themselves that, in real life, they can’t quite achieve or aren’t confident enough to go for full throttle,” Morrison says. “I was aware of how different I was in my really vulnerable, close, intense emotional relationship with this person that I wrote an album about, and then how different I was online with trying to promote myself and my music and be this other kind of person. That was a big conflict and question of the album.”

In the past few years, she has felt that “pressure valve” open.

“I’ve noticed in my life more cohesion between different versions of myself,” Morrison says. “I don’t feel as much pressure to be a certain person for a certain audience or situation, and that’s just being comfortable and confident. Maybe the writing of the songs and getting it all out helped me come to terms with all of those big questions and anxieties. And that’s one benefit of songwriting—you can parse through your feelings in a song.”

Morrison describes her next album as “goth Sheryl Crow.”

“It’s more pop-ish; it’s like if Sheryl Crow played in a weirder setting, like playing to no one at a beach bar—just sad,” Morrison says. “I’m writing a lot about how to have a good life and feel good but have all of these terrible things happening in the world all around us. A theme that has been in my head throughout the writing of this new album is the vacation on the beach and what a vacation can do to a person, kind of numb them from the actual horrors going on in their lives.”

Photo by Chris Cameron

Growing up in Pensacola Beach, Morrison saw that escapism play out in real time.

Morrison doesn’t see the world through rose-colored glasses—not even home. She feels a sense of pride and loyalty toward Tallahassee, but it’s more than that. In it, she sees pieces of herself.

“No matter how happy, beautiful, and joyous it can be—the people, Southern hospitality, and joy—there’s always some sort of sourness to being here, which I deeply relate to,” Morrison says. “It’s personally hard for me to stay in this joyous, happy mood all the time, so I feel like the South is my twin in a way. Like, I get it. I see her. We’re dealing with heavy stuff, but it’s a beautiful, beautiful place to live.”

Morrison doesn’t see herself becoming a music icon like her cousin—quite the opposite. Instead, she suspects her future will resemble that of the “unsung women of music” she admires—PJ Harvey and Lisa Germano.

“I think that’s where I’ll end up one day: unknown and forgotten,” Morrison says. “I’ve been listening to them a lot and just being like, ‘Wow, they’re so good,’ and thinking about them being not-so-famous and if that has anything to do with the great work that they made.

“It’s also freeing for the artist to not have an expectation of what to make because they’re not on a widely known label, or they don’t have a fan base to appease. So it’s kind of cool.”

Attachment Figures

Find Morrison’s 2023 album on all major streaming services.