Wrabel Insisted His Debut Album Sound Like the Coolest Thing Ever

GayNrd Editors September 24, 2021

Stephen Wrabel, who performs as simply Wrabel, has been making music for nearly a decade which is why the announcement of his debut album, These Words Are All for You, out today, sounds long overdue.

Released under the auspices of his label Big Gay Records, You, is a refined, masterfully written and cathartically performed collection that recounts love, heartbreaks, personal discoveries, and devastating realizations. Wrabel told New Now Next in an interview, he’s proud of the niche he’s carved out for himself. Beloved for his evocative, piano-driven pop ballads about love and loss. “I love love,” he gushes. “I love cheese. I love drama. I love plain old honesty, plain old, ’Tell me the story. What happened? How did it happen? What were you wearing? What was the weather?’”

Wrable said he knows it sounds cheesy, but that’s how he learned to write songs.

New Now Next: After nearly a decade of working in the music industry, the 32-year-old is finally releasing his debut full-length album, These Words Are All for You, today (September 24). The years-in-the-making record is a taxonomy of Wrabel’s greatest trials and triumphs, referencing everything from gutting heartbreaks (the poignant, atmospheric “London”) to his ongoing sobriety journey (the stirring lead single “Nothing but the Love”). But his biggest point of pride isn’t his songwriting or storytelling skills. It’s his confidence in his creative vision and his ability to articulate it.

thank u @_sammanzella
loved getting to chat with you ❤️❤️ https://t.co/Xg4rdmwuX6
— wrabel . \rā-bəl\ (@wrabel) September 24, 2021

He recalls meeting with his producer, songwriter-producer Stint, to work on the album in 2020: “He asked, ’What do you want to make?’ I said, ’Nothing you’ve never heard.’ He was like, ’What?’ And I was like, ’I mean that. Let’s write that on the whiteboard. That’s how much I mean that.’” He made him a playlist full of artists who inspired him: Augustana, Emeli Sandé, Bruce Hornsby, The Fray. “I was like, ’No tricks, please,’” he remembers telling Stint, laughing. “’If there’s a sound that I’ve never heard before, I’m going to freak out.’ And it was kind of this interesting container that I put us in because if you look up his discography, you listen and you’re like, ’This is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. What is that sound?’”

Wrabel cut his teeth in the industry as a songwriter, collaborating with artists like Kesha and Adam Lambert on pop tracks. And more recently P!nk.

Wrabel collaborated with P!nk in 2019 on the moving ballad “90 Days,” an experience P!nk loved so much, she actually shouted him out in an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “His dream is to make an album,” she told DeGeneres, “and I hope that this is what does it for him.”

Wrabel is probably best known for his 2017 song “The Village,” the pro-transgender anthem and agitprop that put him on the map as a solo artist.

Written in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s proposal to ban transgender troops from military service, Wrabel joined a team of musicians to create a video for Billboard & GLAAD to support trans rights.

The result? The powerful and haunting ballad “The Villlage” and the even more powerful and haunting five-minute video whose story highlighted the daily struggle of a transgender teenager, in this case, a trans boy, and begins with a scene in which the protagonist’s father bursts in on his bedroom as he is attempting to conceal his breasts with electrical tape.

The star of that video, actor August Aiden Black, was as beautiful and captivating as the music.

“In nature, a flock will attack any bird that is more colorful than the others because being different is seen as a threat,” reads the video’s opening titles.

At the time, Wrabel told Billboard that, “This song is the most important thing to me that I have ever done and probably will ever do. It’s the closest thing to my heart, I came out as gay around 23 into a church in Los Angeles that told me I could and should change; that I was unnatural and wrong. I hope this reaches anyone in need of it and makes them feel like they’re not alone.”

Wrabel wrote “The Village” in February of 2017, just after Trump removed federal protections for trans students in public schools. Then when Trump doubled down and announced the ban on transgender members in the ranks of military personnel he says he immediately called his management to “get [the video] out ASAP.”

Around the 1:25 mark, the film cuts to breaking news of Trump’s ban flashing on a television screen.

As the story develops, we follow the protagonist through awkward family dinners and toxic high school hallways until an uplifting ending. Meanwhile, Wrabel croons lyrics about being misunderstood at a piano — “there’s nothing wrong with you / it’s true,” he belts, his cheeks streaked with a rainbow of paint.

But his debut album — whether it’s on tracks like the Billboard-applauded “Good”, the beautifully orchestrated “Wish you Well” (about the “tug of war” of letting go of past loves), the achingly reminiscent and sonically vast “London,” or the lead single “Nothing But the Love” (currently no. 31 on Billboard’s Adult Top 40 Airplay chart) — showcases the talent that has made Wrabel the go-to for heart-shattering slice-of-life songwriting about finding love, losing it, and discovering oneself throughout the journey.

“This record is a collection of pages torn from my diary — stories and truths, Like an autobiography of sorts of the past 8-10 years of my life. My biggest dream and my biggest hope for this record is that it would reach people and make them feel less alone. If they’re in love, that it would help celebrate that love; If they lost love, that it would be a shoulder to cry on. Whoever you are and wherever you are, i hope you know that these words are all for you.”

Wrabel has left his mark all across the pop musical landscape with co-writing/performance credits on tracks as varied and diverse as Celeste, the Backstreet Boys, Ellie Goulding, Louis Tomlinson, Louis the Child, Wafia, Cash Cash, and many more. In addition, he’s released four previous EPs as well as earning 265 million streams across all DSP platforms. But by releasing his music under Big Gay Records, the label he founded as a means of reclaiming creative power over his work, he felt the freedom he needed to produce the album.

He said that although he teamed up with the indie label Nettwerk to distribute These Words Are All for You. “That initial talk was my first time having a candid conversation about my work life, and what I want, and what I am not willing to compromise on. I’ve never felt confident enough to go to a label and say, ’This is what’s happening,’ but I was able to be very upfront.”

Fully owning all his own work he felt liberated to write the debut album he always wanted. “A lot of people will tell you, ’Go out of your comfort zone, branch out, try crazy ideas,” he adds, “and I’m like, that’s all good. But that has to be the exception and not the rule, in my very humble opinion.”

Word.

” these words are all for you ”
the debut album
out now https://t.co/ff8Bm6ue5P pic.twitter.com/E0Qt0H7xmw
— wrabel . \rā-bəl\ (@wrabel) September 24, 2021