After many years of sharing her talents with East Enders, Julia King is ready to share even more of herself.
On Friday, the Greenport-based singer-songwriter released “Rebel on the Inside,” the first single off her upcoming “Inside Out” extended play, which she will release on June 21. In a message to fans over social media, King said the track unpacks “the struggle between outward conformity and inner rebellion.”
“Last summer as a very difficult summer for me,” King explains of the track. “I had some struggles with some friends, some people who I performed with and [felt] this distress of always having to hold everything together … I was feeling let down and I had to remind myself to get up and get back at it, put a smile on. Keep all your hurt, keep all your pain, make that your strength, let it drive you instead of crush you.”
As she wrote the the tracks for the forthcoming release — a process she carries out in the morning over a cup of coffee with an acoustic guitar and pen and paper — King says she was “really turning the mirror on myself.”
“[The EP is] really getting into the parts of myself that may not be as nice and kind of letting those air out,” she adds. “I think by shining a light on your darkest areas, you start to let the light in and you can heal those places that maybe aren’t as good, aren’t as conducive to success or happiness. I think a lot of this album sheds the light on on me and some bad tendencies that I have.”
King has become a staple of the East End’s music scene over the past decade, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, a tumultuous period for live performers. The Greenport resident began writing songs after her great aunt gifted her an acoustic guitar she could no longer play due to an injury. She wrote her first song ever, “Prom Hopping,” on that guitar while she was in high school.
“I didn’t grow up with really any money at all, and guitars are expensive, it was not something [my parents] were going to buy,” King says. “[‘Prom Hopping’] was during the time of very emo bands. I remember it was hilarious, some of my friends at the time thought it was great, but I can’t really remember how it goes.”
In 2019 King released “Radio Therapy,” her first full-length album. She has since released various singles, including last year’s unique take on AC/DC’s “T.N.T.,” which she imbues with hard rock attitude and outlaw country swagger. Her forthcoming EP will also include a cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.” Although the track is known for Randy Rhoads’ iconic guitar riff, King says her version is more akin to a “piano ballad.”
“I’m a Long Island girl and classic rock runs through and through here,” King says of these cover choices. “I kind of grew up on that, listening to it on the radio, hearing it everywhere. I love rock and roll. I wouldn’t say it necessarily influences my writing, but it definitely influences my energy … I love Joan Jett, I think she’s awesome, another Long Islander. I just love her edginess.”
King recorded “Inside Out” down in her old stomping grounds, Nashville, where she says she “kind of came into my own as a writer” while attending Belmont University. Among the songs she recorded is “Something in the Silence,” in which she adopts the perspective of an antagonist close to her who hurt her. She will release the track as the next single from her new EP on May 24.
“I truly own the situation like it’s my own,” King explains of the unique perspective from which she sings the first-person song. “We’re all guilty of these things. It could be a friendship, it could be a relationship, we’ve all been in the situation where we have done something and someone says ‘You know what, I’ve had enough of you’ … There’s two sides to every coin, and we’re all guilty things, so I took it to heart. I own I own all the things in the song as if they’re my own, but I wrote it in that other perspective.”
“Inside Out” will also boast a rerecording of “Never Be Lonely,” which appeared on her debut EP, “The Morning After.” She described the track as “one of the best” songs she’s ever written, which she feels “never got its day.”
King appears in celebratory spirits for her new material. She plans to throw a release party for “Inside Out” at the Lin Beach House on June 21. On Friday, she sold every ticket offered for her “Rebel on the Inside” release party performance at Greenport Harbor Brewing Co.‘s Carpenter Street location. The intimate setting — a fogged, flower-draped, LED-lit stage next to brew tanks in a room cramped with friends crowding barrel tables — lent itself to King’s artistic mission.
“My dream of reaching people’s broken parts through my voice and through my songs is what drives me,” she says. “And, you know, I hope to carry on that legacy of songwriters before me who were the comfort I needed through lonely times during my childhood. I was alone a lot, so I would put music on, and I would not feel alone anymore. I’ve always wanted to be that voice and to carry on that legacy. I always want [the audience] to feel seen, I want them to feel heard, understood no matter what place they’re in, up, down, left, right. I try to use my own stories and my own experiences to to comfort other people.”
