Interview: Syd Taylor
Written by: Oliver Heffron
In the echo chamber of pop’s polished perfection, Syd Taylor has made a decidedly imperfect, deeply personal noise. With After the Fact—her debut, self-produced solo album, out today—the Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based artist introduces herself on her own terms: just Syd, a guitar, an open heart, and a belief that imperfection is its own kind of clarity.
On the inspiration for her new album and deciding to go solo, Syd explains, “I had written a song which was ‘Love of Your Life,’ and that was the first song that I fully produced and fully finished. And I was like, you know what—I think I need to write an album and just do it myself, and not have anybody else involved. No one telling me what things should sound like, how I should look. Pretty much nothing.”
Before After the Fact, Taylor spent over a decade fronting the band Stereo Jane with her twin sister, Emilia Paige—a tight-knit, familial unit shaped by their father’s own musical past in a bar band called, hilariously, Nailing Betty. “The day we were brought home from the hospital, he was auditioning bass players,” Taylor laughs. “So we’ve really been around it for a while.” The sisters started their band at age eight, built a following, and chased pop stardom. But twinhood—especially onstage—comes with entanglements.
Photo Credit: Zhenya Minaeva
“We were always the girls, the twins,” she says. “And I think it made it really hard for us to find our identity.” The decision to step away and make a solo record wasn’t about a rift—it was about reclaiming space. Emilia now tours as the drummer for Suki Waterhouse, and, Syd says, “Our relationship has never been better. We both say it’s the best thing we ever did for each other.”
So, what does a solo Syd Taylor sound like? For one, a far cry from the pop sheen of her Stereo Jane days. With After the Fact, she leans into classic rock textures and introspective songwriting—Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, and the Stones were on repeat during production. “It was a pretty big switch up for me,” she says. “But also so natural, because I was just going straight back to everything that I’ve listened to.”
And you can hear that liberation in the title track, “After the Fact"—an exuberant, riff-led anthem that feels like dancing alone in your bedroom at 2 a.m., which, fittingly, is exactly how it was conceived. “I sat down and I was like, I just want to write something that makes me feel good and makes me feel like I could dance in front of a mirror,” she says. “And then I came up with that riff... and was like, wait, this would be a really fun way to start the song.”
The track quickly became a mirror of the entire album’s energy—and, ultimately, its namesake. “The more that I performed ‘After the Fact,’ the more I really identified with it. It just embodies who I am and the confidence that I’ve stepped into since writing the album,” she says. “I told everyone at an acoustic show that night, like, this is the name of the album. Just so I couldn’t back out.”
Recorded during a self-imposed three-month isolation in her LA apartment, the album pulses with the urgency of someone finally letting themselves take up space. “It was like a purge,” Taylor says of the writing process. “I didn’t see my friends that often, and when I did, I had all this new music to show them. I wrote my heart out. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
Much of the album’s muscle comes from the fact that Taylor produced it entirely herself. She’d made demos before, but this was different—an all-in, learn-as-you-go crash course in Pro Tools, layering, and self-trust. “I was constantly looking at YouTube videos, trying to figure out how to do things,” she admits. The result is a record that radiates exactly the kind of messily human confidence that most pop records spend millions to fake.
Take “Heaven,” a soaring, intricately layered standout that she calls the most technically challenging track to produce. “I added the most tracks to that one—like, double the amount of all the other songs,” she says. “It just came so easy to me, trying to add all these cool little bells and whistles and panning. But at a certain point I was like, okay, I need to stop adding things... because it’s getting a little crazy.”
Other tracks, like “Leave Me Out of It,” didn’t initially click. “I had friends over for a listening party, and most said it was their least favorite,” Taylor admits. “But then one friend was like, ‘This is your best song. Do not cut this.’ And now it’s kind of become one of my favorites.” That ability to shift perspective, to re-see herself in her own work, feels like the heart of the album’s ethos: nothing is static, nothing is final.
Tonight, Taylor will play After the Fact from front to back at a release show at Permanent Records Roadhouse in LA. In the fall, she hopes to take it all on the road. “I belong cooped up on a tour bus,” she laughs.
“I know I’m not perfect,” Taylor says. “So why pretend to be some perfectly polished pop version of myself? I wanted to get as far away from that as possible. And in doing that, I made something that feels perfect to me—which is imperfect.”
With After the Fact, Syd Taylor doesn’t just go solo. She makes being flawed sound like the most confident move of all.