Yola performing on stage

British singer-songwriter Yola has admitted to feeling ‘creatively stifled’ during her time working with Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach and his Easy Eye Sound label.

Offering a track-by-track breakdown of her latest EP My Way in a new Rolling Stone interview, Yola highlights how the creative process for this project marked a significant departure from her previous work.

The musician’s 2021 album, Stand for Myself, was produced by Auerbach and released under his label, but the experience had her “feeling creatively stifled, as though her full range of artistry — as a singer, arranger, producer, and instrumentalist — was sidelined.”

According to Rolling Stone, Yola “fought to get her preferred musicians on the record, fought to have the track Dancing Away in Tears released as a single (a fight she lost), and fought to insert herself more into the recording process, to little avail.”

“It’s cookie-cutter bullshit, is all it is,” Yola says of Easy Eye Sound’s creative process featuring in-house songwriters and musicians.

“It’s what they did in the old days: People have no agency. That was something that was celebrated, so I can see how people hold that up as a way to operate. But it’s also a waste of my skill.”

It’s an experience — one of several — that influenced the title track on My Way, in which Yola sings “You wanted control/ but this is misery”.

“I like a diss track.” she says of My Way. “This song is about when you’re trapped and you can’t just evaporate because you have to be in this space. It’s about the levels of which I had to go through, mind gaming, after someone tried to mind game me.”

“And this isn’t just one person. This is a genre that would find me all the fucking time… As much as My Way was about work, it also reflected into the personal space. My Way is the decentering of everyone else’s narrative from my narrative. My Way equals agency, me being able to have a say over my own life, for the first time, at age 40.”

The post Yola slams Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label for giving her “no agency” over her music: “It’s a waste of my skill” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.