For Jessie Altman, Lovelight is more than an album about falling in love. Released on September 25, the singer-songwriter’s sophomore record traces the emotional journey from recognizing when a relationship isn’t right, to letting go, finding yourself again, and ultimately discovering a love that doesn’t require you to become smaller to make it work. Across 12 soulful, emotionally direct tracks, Jessie offers a message that is both romantic and empowering: you don’t have to sacrifice your dreams, independence, or sense of self to have a happy life with someone else.
That perspective comes from an artist who has spent the past several years finding greater clarity in both her songwriting and her sound. After touring with BBMAK and Tyler Hilton in 2024 and releasing her debut album, Aftermath, that same year, Jessie followed with the Sleepwalking EP in 2026. With Lovelight, produced by Sam Hollander, she found herself becoming more intentional about the story she wanted to tell while still allowing the songs to evolve organically. Tracks including “Wanted,” “Dancing in the Kitchen,” “Play It Cool,” “Barcelona,” and “Stay Away” ultimately helped shape the album’s emotional and musical direction.
Jessie’s influences, from the storytelling of Mary Chapin Carpenter to the soulful voices of Etta James, Nina Simone, and Roberta Flack, can be felt in her commitment to making songs that do more than tell her own story. She wants listeners to find pieces of themselves in them.
On Lovelight, Jessie is also embracing an artistic evolution. She describes the journey from Aftermath to the more sonically cohesive Sleepwalking and now Lovelight as a process of “finding myself”, learning what feels right in the studio, what she enjoys performing, and what she wants to say. The result is an album that balances vulnerability with confidence, grounded intimacy with romance, and the everyday magic of dancing in the kitchen with something a little more ethereal.
In our conversation, Jessie opens up about the experiences and influences that shaped Lovelight, working with Hollander, discovering the album’s emotional arc as it unfolded, becoming more confident in her own musical identity, and why she hopes the record reminds listeners, whether they’re single or happily in love, that they deserve a love that makes their lives bigger, not smaller.
How did you develop your passion for music?
I think it was something that I’ve always had. I don’t remember a time where I didn’t love singing or I wasn’t listening to music or we weren’t going to see music live. It was just such a part of every day, so I think it just kind of came pretty naturally.
What musicians have influenced you the most over the course of your career?
I remember the first. I was pretty young, probably only six or seven years old, and we went to see this concert at Wolf Trap in Virginia, and it was to see Mary Chapin Carpenter. And at what the time I was not a Mary Chapin Carpenter fan. My parents were, so we went, and I remember the whole experience – from having a picnic before going inside and watching the show. But I remember sitting in that show, and it was my first realization into what it meant to songwrite. She’s such a great storyteller and she has such a unique voice. I think, in terms of storytelling, she’s always been a pretty big influence for me. And then you have the incredible singers who I think a lot of singers are influenced by, like Etta James, Nina Simone, or those where that soul just comes out in their voice. And even if you didn’t know English and you couldn’t understand, you could feel what they’re trying to sing. So that kind of combination I’ve always really just loved.
You’ve described Lovelight as “tracing the emotional arc of modern love.” When you look at the album as a whole, what do you think it says about where you are emotionally and creatively at this time?
It’s my first real attempt at describing love, and it’s not because I was falling in love. I’ve been with my husband for almost nine years now, married for three and a half. I feel like I’ve been in love now for a long time, but I was talking to some friends who are dating or some people who are breaking up, and I became really inspired by this idea to give people hope constantly about what it should be to fall in love. I really wanted to tell the story of knowing when somebody is not right for you and, moving on from that, and what it should really feel like to fall in love.
I think now we’re at a time where nobody needs to be saved. We’re all fully developed people. Let’s keep those standards high, and let’s find somebody and hold out for that one person that really just sets your soul on fire, and has the mundane feel special and fun, and encourages you to go after your dreams because I always felt naively like you would have to sacrifice a lot of what you wanted to have the happy home life and be in love, and you don’t have to. You just have to find the person that matches and fits with you.
The album moves through a lot of things, like heartbreak and memories to discovery, and a more grounded kind of love. Did you know that emotional journey was happening as you were writing the songs, or did you only recognize that arc once the whole album came together?
I would love to say I went in with the plan- Same … but no, I realized it afterwards. I am more of an off-the-cuff person. I started writing, and I was writing for a really long time, and then I got into the studio…it would’ve been February 2025. I got into the studio to write with Sam Hollander for the first time and Grant Michaels, and we wrote in two days. We wrote “Reverie”, which ended up on the album, and “For the Hell of It”. And that just sparked the direction. It felt very natural, and I had more that I wanted to tell. So then that kind of just gave me a general direction of where I really wanted to go. And although admittedly I was really just exploring these themes, what kind of was coming out. And then a week or two before going to the studio I got back in and was like, “Okay, I now know exactly what it is that I’m trying to say, and now I’ve got a lens. So let me get really specific. What is missing from this album?” And in those last, the last two weeks before I went in to start recording, I wrote “Wanted”. I wrote “Dancing in the Kitchen”. I wrote “Play It Cool”. I got back in the studio, got to write “Barcelona” and “Stay Away” with Sam. And those are five tracks that bumped other things off of the album. I was like, “Okay, now I have clarity. This is what I want to say,” and we went back in and did it.
I know it’s like children, but do you have a favorite song on the album?
It changes all the time. For a long time “Slow Love” was one of my favorites. I just love the theme of it. “For The Hell Of It” has been my favorite. “Wanted” has, of course, been a favorite of mine. “Barcelona” was the first one that I came off the track, I just… Yeah, it changes. It’s impossible to say.
I just got back from New York. I was supposed to play the Sag Harbor Music Festival, but a Nor’easter came and ruined all of our plans. But I ended up doing a live, in-studio recording session and performance that will hopefully come out soon. And I just had the best time singing “Play It Cool”. Right now, that’s just the song that I’m really having so much fun singing.
The album feels incredibly vulnerable, but there’s also a sense of confidence running through it. Did becoming more open as a songwriter make you feel more confident as a performer?
I think singing about things that I actually feel and that I’ve actually experienced does make me more confident. I don’t really necessarily think about specifically “Okay, now is time to bear the soul and open up.” I tend to be a pretty open person anyway, I think, but what I’m singing about, I’m just having fun sharing it. There’s no part of it that I feel weird or embarrassed about. And actually today, I made an acoustic version of Lovelight, which is going to come out next year, and I’m listening to the masters today, and I’m in my closet and I’m blasting it, and my husband’s office is upstairs and he calls me, he goes like, “I love that you’re just jamming out to your own music right now in your closet.”
You mentioned working with Sam Hollander and he’s worked with artists like Panic! At the Disco and Train. What was it about his approach that made you want him to be the person guiding Lovelight from beginning to end?
If you are ever lucky enough to meet Sam, he’s really just a wonderful person, a wonderful collaborator. I learned so much from him. And he really is great at finding… he’s great at everything that comes about songwriting, and finding the hooks, and all of those things that you need to really have in a pop song these days. But he’s really great at pulling out the soul of it, and making you, when you’re listening to music, you just feel it in your body and in your bones, and now my dog is walking in. It’s a family affair here. And so it just, it felt like a no-brainer if, he was interested and open to producing and writing with me which he was. It was, like, a no-brainer to just go for it. He’s just great, and I, every time we get to work together, I just learn so much.
Was there a particular song where you and Sam had a completely different idea of what it should sound like before you found the version that ultimately made it onto the album?
Not really. We had some small changes in opinions but on the whole I think we both shared a vision for the project. And as I said, he’s really collaborative and he leaves so much space for an artist’s voice, and at the end of the day my name gets stamped on it and my face is on the cover of it. He was always completely open to when I had ideas, and that’s always fun. I feel like you want to be able to go down the rabbit hole. And even if you get to the, you get to the bottom and you’re like, “Okay, actually this was not a good idea, it was better before,” I want somebody that’s willing to kind of go in the hunt, because I would be willing to do that with them and just see how it shakes out.
Lovelight is your sophomore album and that’s an interesting point in an artist’s career. Now, you’ve established yourself but you’re still figuring out exactly who you want to be. How has your sense of your musical identity changed since the first album?
With Aftermath I wasn’t thinking about necessarily having it be so sonically cohesive. I really was… each song, it was like what did I want to do with each individual song? And while the whole album was thematically about, life after some kind of change or loss and what does life look like sonically it was a little… it wasn’t as tight. And I think after Aftermath I had then a clear vision for my EP Sleepwalking, which is very sonically cohesive. It really tightens up and tells a story. So I feel like it was like graduating. It was this constant evolution of finding myself, what feels good in the studio, what am I liking when we’ve released it, what am I enjoying performing, and just be on this journey. I think as artists part of our job is to constantly evolve and change.
You mentioned earlier about performing live. There’s something very different when you’re performing something that’s deeply personal to you for the first time and having an audience experience. What are you most excited or nervous about sharing the songs from Lovelight?
I don’t think I have any nerves about it. I just am super excited. I love looking out into the audience and seeing what people are resonating with. And a favorite moment for me is always, it’s, a lot of the times you go to these shows and it’s a date night, and I love looking out into the audience, and if it’s, particularly with Love Light, which they’re almost all just songs about love- And falling in love and being in love, so I love looking out into the crowd and, you see these couples give each other a look or give each other a little bit of a squeeze, and that just, it’s just the best, it’s the best feeling.
An album can be very intimate when you’re making it alone or in the studio. How do you translate the intimacy into a live performance?
I’ve always been taught, especially when it comes to live performance, people don’t really care about why I wrote it, why I sing it. They care about how the song makes them feel and how it can be reflected in their own lives. And so that’s what I really try to do. I’m really… There’s like Roberta Flack, for example, she never sang the same song, the s- the song the same way twice. She was so in it and just emotionally invested in it and discovering the song as she was going along, and I try to do that. I don’t know if I’ve got the mastery like she had, but I’m constantly working towards that.
Are there any songs on Lovelight that you’re particularly excited to hear an audience sing back to you?
I was just talking about this with my manager. She was saying that she can’t wait for me to sing “Stay Away” and have the crowd sing that hook back with me. So yeah, that, that one.
If Lovelight were a place, what would it look and feel like?
I think it would, you know the concept of h- heaven on earth? And heaven on earth is going to be dancing in the kitchen with my husband and our dog and sitting by the fireplace. That’s that kind of cozy, just full encompassing, feeling really whole. That’s what I think Love Light… It’s what I, that’s what I want people to feel when they listen to it, just in the most grounded way possible, and yet sometimes completely ethereal and romantic.
What’s one lyric from the album that you think says something about you that you couldn’t have articulated any other way?
I’m going to go through the track list in my mind. Maybe from “Endlessly,” “Like a Dream, a Mirror Looking Backwards.” My grandfather used to say, “Life is like a dream,” and he would say it, in terms of memories or people that you’ve lost. And I think that as an artist, I am always reflecting on experiences, conversations, and it always feels, just memories, you can’t catch them again. They’re memories, so I like to look backwards and reflect and try to hold those as close as I can, even when they’re evaporating.
What’s one thing that you hope listeners understand about you after spending time with you on this record?
I would love for them to walk away with the reminder of knowing, for the single people out there, for the reminder of knowing that you deserve everything that you’re after. You are- you deserve… so hold out. Don’t settle. The rest of your life is a really long time, so find somebody that counts and that treats you the way that you deserve. And for the people already in love, enjoy the ride because it’s really special.
Listen to Lovelight wherever you get your music. Follow Jessie on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Spotify.
