Leah Marie Mason's 'Quarter-Life Crisis' Results in Dynamic New EP 'Honeydew & Hennessy' (Exclusive)
"I'm just really excited for this new music and new phase of life, so people can really hear me," the singer-songwriter tells PEOPLE
Back in the day, if Leah Marie Mason was going to steal a little something out of her parent's liquor cabinet, you best believe it was going to be a little Hennessy.
"It would be the one thing that they wouldn't notice was missing," Mason, 23, says with a laugh during a recent interview with PEOPLE. "The song is very nostalgic for me in that way."
Indeed, the memories came flooding back in for the North Carolina native as she walked into the room with co-writers Jason Reeves and Emmi Elliott to eventually pen her somewhat sultry new single "Honeydew & Hennessy."
"It's cool and interesting and different," says Mason, who is currently bringing her Lana Del Rey vibe into the country music genre with impressive songs such as this. "That's exactly what I represent. This song is kind of my vibe."
It's a vibe that has been setting the genre on fire since the moment Mason became a viral sensation back in 2021 with the release of the touching "Far Boy."
"I'm a very upfront, brutally honest person," says Mason, who lays it all on the line on tracks such as "Trust Fund Cowboy" and Holy Water" on her debut EP Honeydew & Hennessy. "But I'm also vulnerable and emotional and I feel things very deeply."
And she also is a young twenty-something that is just like the young twenty-somethings that listen to every note she sings on songs such as the so-relatable "Red Ruby Boots."
"I wore them last night, and I did drink a little bit too much," Mason admits about the boots she bought about a year and a half ago that inspired the song that she ended up writing with Jason Reeves and Nelly Joy. "They are beside my bed right now. I was in North Carolina back home and I needed a pair of boots. So, we went to this rundown consignment store, and I saw these red boots and I was like, I need those. They were $50 and I wear them all the time."
Heck, she wore them on the very day she wrote the song.
"The boots have something about them that brings out something different in me," she says with a laugh. "Every time I wear them, something crazy happens!"
But make no mistake — how Mason has gotten to the place she finds herself now is no magical feat. There is an undeniable talent within every pore of Mason, one that the country music genre hasn't seen possibly since the likes of Taylor Swift, Kelsea Ballerini and Kacey Musgraves first made their way onto the scene. And it's this undeniable talent that one can hear all over "Me or My Hometown."
"I had just gone home for the first time in a while, and it was so weird," she remembers of the inspiration behind the song she also co-wrote alongsideReeves and Joy. "It was the first time being home without any of my high school friends there. And I was like, 'This doesn't even feel like home.' That was the first time that Nashville felt more like home than my home."
She draws in a deep breath.
"You don't think it's going to feel that way until it does," Mason admits quietly. "It was just really sad. It was really hard to come to terms with that, I guess. So, writing that song was very therapeutic, for sure."
It's as if we can hear Mason growing up in every one of her songs.
"I kind of had a quarter-life crisis," admits Mason, who once had dark brown hair and a dream of becoming a book author. "It's a really beautiful thing when people can be very blunt and upfront in some ways, but then also be very artistic and poetic. Combining that is a really beautiful thing, which is what I try to do." She pauses. "I'm just really excited for this new music and new phase of life, so people can really hear me."
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