Photos / Ella Gillespie Bailey
Story / Mariana González
Blythe Woods has spent years writing at least one song a day, keeping her ideas in notebooks, voice memos, and whatever space she can find nearby. Now, she has started deciding which of those stories she wants to make public.
Her debut album produced by Alex Casnoff, “Loser’s Guide to Life,” will arrive on January 15, 2027. The project’s first two singles show that Woods writes about the uncomfortable moments of growing up without rushing to turn them into lessons.
“Rowan Wait Up,” Blythe Woods’ first single, begins with a fairly simple situation. Two friends still care about each other, but they no longer know how to talk. The closeness they once shared has gradually faded, and every conversation seems to leave a little more distance between them. She is still trying to understand when everything changed and whether there is anything she can do to keep the relationship from falling apart completely.
“Rowan Wait Up” was released in July as Woods’ debut single. Its video, directed by Meriel O’Connell, arrived later alongside the album announcement. By then, Woods had already shared “Loser’s Guide to Life,” the second preview and the song that gives the album its name.
Woods wrote “Loser’s Guide to Life” while sitting in her backyard and thinking about what it feels like not to fit in. She realized that calling someone a “loser” can be enough to place yourself on the other side, among the people who are supposedly popular. The song questions that divide and, more importantly, what some people are willing to do to avoid being left out.
That does not mean Woods has always been comfortable with being different. She admits that she wanted to be cool but came to question what being cool actually meant. For her, fitting in is not worth it if it comes at the expense of someone else. She would rather be called a loser than become the kind of person who puts others down to get ahead.
At their core, both songs are about the desire to belong. In one, Woods tries to recover the closeness she once shared with someone who still matters to her. In the other, she decides that pursuing a group’s approval is not worthwhile if she has to change the way she treats people. She does not claim to have resolved either situation. She writes about them while she is still trying to understand them.
“ROWAN WAIT UP” VIDEO
“LOSER’S GUIDE TO LIFE” VIDEO
For someone who has spent so much time writing privately, putting these songs into the world changes what they mean beyond her own experience. They are no longer only records of moments she was trying to make sense of but pieces of her life that other people can now interpret, relate to, or see themselves in. That shift feels especially fitting for an artist whose writing has always been rooted in the uncomfortable parts of being a person and figuring out where you belong. Blythe Woods does not need to have those answers yet. There is something more interesting in hearing her work through the questions themselves.
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