Memphis, Tennessee native Ethan Healy found music as a source of creativity at a young age with his first song releasing in 2015. Healy returned with a full self-released debut album following his college graduation with Subluxe (2017) and its hit single ‘Reckless’. Over his career, the singer has credited artists such as Khalid and SZA, and his hometown as big inspirations. On his upcoming album Force of Nature, under Big Youth, Healy comes alive in a new light to create a unique universe of sound. The full album releases on July 18, 2025.
We briefly discussed Healy’s physical therapy workload, certain films which impacted how we view art, and the creative processes behind filmmaking and songwriting before diving into the main interview segment.
B-Sides: I was reading about how you went to med school before switching the music. How has the process worked out for you?
Healy: I’ve been doing music as a hobby for three or four years and I don’t know —I just uploaded a song to Spotify maybe in my first year of med school and it naturally just grew, took off, and found a bunch of ears which is amazing. I took it as a sign to keep going and take it a bit more seriously, but I finished school, got my doctorate in physical therapy, then I didn’t practice for four or five years. Right after I graduated, it was just like tour, move to L.A., you know the whole thing, run the gamut. But honestly, they both felt like my yin and my yang in a way —they still do. I love Harry Potter and I think of the analogy of how Voldemort splits his soul up into different avenues or horcuxes, that’s how music and medicine feel like to me. They’re both two parts to a whole that I’m able to, during school there were moments when I didn’t make music for three, four months. Then there would be a two, three week stretch where I just didn’t go to class because I was finishing mixing an album. They both exist to offload the stress of the other in a way. If one gets too cumbersome, I can create some distance and lean into the other. It happened really naturally. There’s this really cool common denominator between the two of physical therapy and music of connecting with people and reaching people. There’s a bit of self discovery within both of those processes too. Like whether you’re listening to a song and it resonates with you, and teaches you something about yourself that you weren’t ready to accept or even privy to. With the PT journey, just reaching your full potential and recognizing who you are, and what you can accomplish. They both came naturally, I just ran with it.
B-Sides: Yeah, they both ground you in different ways. It’s so needed, because when creating music you can just pour yourself into something. You’ve created all these songs or this specific sound and you put it out into the world, and you’ve let so much of yourself go in a sense. How do you gain that back?
Healy: That’s a great question. I think just like living, not pressuring myself into thinking ‘Alright, let’s churn out the next one.’ Music is a such a volume, art is such a volume game nowadays. Specifically music though, the market is so saturated and there’s so many songs uploaded every day. I like to think the truth will out always. I try not to force myself to do anything. I think living life and breathing, talking about early about creating that space for music. I treat picking up a bigger caseload and treating unique cases, now that my album is kind of done I’m working on some really crazy neurological cases which are taking a lot of my mental capacity. I’m having to learn and relearn stuff. I think that time away from the creative process, it’s refreshing. It’s like a cold reset in a way. In like a month or two, I’ll get back in the studio and things will come out and happen naturally, because I’ll have had lived so much more life and have met so many different people and lived so many different experiences. I’ll bring it into the studio and into the creative process to help inform what I’m feeling now, who am I, who do I want to be, what demons am I wrestling with. I think creating space from it and allowing that inspiration to come naturally and accepting the weights.
B-Sides: That’s a pretty cool outlook! I’ve primarily focused on solely making art. I definitely need to find something that will take me out of it.
Healy: Do you have any other like hobbies that you do too?
B-Sides: I’m trying to skateboard. It’s not going well.
Healy: I had a brief stint in skateboarding, too. We made videos and stuff. We were nowhere near as good as some of these other people, but I think that kind of exercise has such a fun, creative aspect to it. I feel like you can pull some of your creativity out of it. It’s another way to appreciate your style and who you are. That’s cool.
B-Sides: Speaking of style, what’s inspired you for your new album Force of Nature?
Healy: I think thematically and visually, the Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas. When I think, if I were to plot my inspiration over the last two years I watched that film for the first time New Year’s Eve 2023. He walked so Wes Anderson could run, that’s how I kind of look at it. I think watching that film really piqued my interest and breathed a lot of inspiration into me. I went on a deep dive and looked at color theory and motifs throughout the film so that was a big source of inspiration for me. I read a lot, as much as I can. I’ve fallen off, but I’ve gotten back into it. One of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, is a big source of inspiration for me, in terms of using a surreal dream-like environment as a medium for some of these messages and stories he’s telling and ways grappling with himself. Pulling some of that surreality, but still keeping it grounded, Murakami is such a huge inspiration for me. I think also being undated by natural disasters in a way like L.A.. We just went through one of the most catastrophic natural disasters ever. My dad lives in Florida so I’m always keeping an eye on hurricanes and stuff. My mom lives in the Bible Belt, in Memphis, so it’s near tornado alley. All of my friends, family, and myself personally having such a close proximity to things like natural disasters made me recognize the sheer power and force that they hold and possess. It made me reflect on the duality of something like nature. It can foster and engender beauty and growth, and in the same breath it can completely wipe out a forest or a city or put people out of their homes. It was a big, that was my big… I do a lot of the reflection on a project after the fact. I try not to create and analyze at the same time. Trying to keep the creative process just creative, then shape it after and look at it after. On the post-production side of this album, I was reflecting on it and was like “yeah a big source of inspiration was how dynamic nature can be,” and how I see that in myself, in other people whether it’s relationships I’m in or stories I hear about other people and friends. Those were all the big ticket inspirations for me, for this project.
B-Sides: Did the inspirations hinder some songs while you were writing? Or did it come naturally for certain songs?
Healy: I like to think it came more naturally for some of them. It came more naturally for some more than others. This project was the first time I tried not to hold myself to an unreasonable standard. Every time I went into the studio to work or went into a session collaborate with people, I’d set parameters to a degree, but not go into it thinking I have to make the best song ever. It was more so, “Let’s let this be explorative”, “Let’s let this be fun.” Some of the songs took three hours. ‘RUNNING LAPS’ came together in three or four hours and was basically done. Other songs took the whole two years, because I think I hadn’t lived the life yet to be able to really fill in the gaps and see the vision for what the song could be or what the environment was going to be adorned. So, it definitely depended on a song by song basis. I will say a majority of the songs came a lot more naturally because I was like “whatever, whatever I make is what I make.” A big process in this album is learning to accept myself and be okay with that, and reframe what I was making, who I was, and who I am in a more positive light.
B-Sides: Those thoughts and ideas of taking the time to understand yourself is something that spreads across all creative fields. For me personally, with screenwriting it’s thinking about features and taking the months or years to develop the characters.
Healy: There are so many arcs you have to think about like independent arcs or joint arcs with relationships. So yeah, there’s a lot of time, effort, and patience that you have to have. You’d get a kick out of this actually, before I moved to L.A. when I was making music back home in Memphis, the way I’d go about it was I wrote as much of a script as I could and created an actual story arc to the project. I was a lot more prompt driven then. Surely, you’re familiar with the Hero’s Journey or Dan Harmon, that’s the one I was referencing mostly. It gave me shoe-ins. I filled in seven out of this eight point structure, “Okay, what’s the one that was missing? How can we introduce this main character coming back after appreciating this change?” Immediately when you told me you were into film, especially screenwriting, I was like “Oh I have to bring this up.”
B-Sides: For short films, it’s more of a condensed aspect. I feel like that’s the same with EPs and short-form albums like you have to get everything in there to tell the story. Were there any songs that you wanted to put on the album but didn’t or vice versa?
Healy: Totally! Absolutely, towards the tail end there were one or two I was trying to make sense of. I’d say I knocked two or three off the project, because I didn’t agree with them. I don’t think they bolstered the collection of songs. They stood out like sore thumbs in a way. Literally a week before delivering to mastering I was like “I’m scrapping this song and I’m doing a completely new one.” Fortunately, that was one of the ones that came together really quick. It was great, because I had played with my band before so I brought them in. It was a great seamless process. There were definitely ones I wanted on there really badly, but knew it didn’t really work. There are none on [the album] that I don’t want there, because I was super intentional about not putting out anything I disagree with. In the past, I’ve not really taken my perspective or stood my ground with in my art. I’ve leaned on other people like “What do you think about this one? I’m not really sure how I feel about it,” and they’re like “I love it. Put it on [the album.” Turns out a year later, the song or project’s still out and I cringe every time I listen to it. I don’t want to experience that. I want it to feel evergreen for me. There aren’t any songs I don’t want on there. If anything, there are a few that I did take off last minute. I want to finish them eventually, maybe like a deluxe thing.
B-Sides: That would be really cool! What was it like working with Hailey Knox on ‘PICK ME UP’?
Healy: So fun! She’s extraterrestrial, so gifted. She lives and breathes beautiful art and storytelling. It was super collaborative. Initially, I had written half of a verse for her, sent the song in and asked if she wanted to work on it with me and my friend Austin [Brown]. Her and her boyfriend Angelo, who works on all of her music, came in. We built the entire thing from scratch. She needed like twenty minutes to do her vocals. Meanwhile, I’m toiling in the studio endlessly sometimes. This perfectionism comes out, and she’s like “That sounds good! We’re done.” She’s so goofy and light-hearted. It made the process really comfortable and streamlined it, because she and Angelo weren’t afraid to say no or yes. It was really fun! I hope I get work with her more in the future. I’m actually going out to L.A., and we’re going to shoot a live recording of it with the band.
B-Sides: Nice! That’s cool.
Healy: Yeah, I’m super excited. It’s going to be fun!
B-Sides: Are there any other creatives that you’ve love to work with in the near future?
Healy: I really want to keep working with Austin Daniel Brown. I was introduced to him through my management. He ended up producing four of the eight songs with me. One of them he did all by himself. He’s just like virtuosic and we see eye-to-eye creatively. Again, a big thing whether it’s the writing room or the studio, you need to feel a degree of comfort and common ground with the people you’re collaborating with. Obviously, iron sharpens iron. But I think having common denominators and common ground, and an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish together is really important, and Austin and I have that. He plays instruments that I’ve always wanted incorporated into my music. I’ve just never known the people that play them or never played them well enough myself. I look forward to working with him more in the future. I want to say that we’re going to try to do my next album together. Besides that, I think big dog-eared artists or collaborators is this one producer El Guincho. He did a lot of fka twigs’ projects and Lahai, the Sampha record which came out last year or two years ago. He’s so talented. I’d love to work with him. Michael Uzowuru is another really talented producer. He did a lot of Rosalia and Franck Ocean. I stan Frank Ocean. I love that man to the end of the earth.
B-Sides: He’ll come back eventually.
Healy: Eventually. If he doesn’t, it’s fine because I have endless memories to all the stuff he’s put out. There might be one more… SZA. Always. SZA and Yebba. Yebba’s from “West Memphis,” technically what it’s called, or the Little Rock area. We’ve talked and met in the past, but have never worked together. I’d love to work with her.
B-Sides: What sounds would you like to explore with these producers or artists on the next album considering your new one comes out pretty soon?
Healy: Something Austin and I really accomplished with this record that’s about to come out is that it’s expansive. It covers a lot of ground, but it’s grounded in this acoustic instrumentation. It feels tethered to the earth, but still feels free flowing. Almost like one of those wacky inflatable tube men in a way. That’s a pretty bad analogy, but I think honing in on that anyway. We found a really cool pocket, at least for me. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, Michael McDonald, and Patti LaBelle. The guitar tones that they incorporate are really cool. I feel this weird affinity for not necessarily yacht rock, but there’s this emotional element to the chord they’re playing. I still firmly believe in keeping a touch of modern within music whether that’s some cool synth work or using binaural audio like when people use those ASMR ears. I think using a little bit of all that while still keeping things grounded and being free and explorative to reference classic art, but putting our own spin on it in a way.
B-Sides: Are there any modern artists that you’re diving into or obsessed with at the moment?
Healy: At the moment, there’s this artist LIIM who is so cool. I want to say he’s based in New York. It feels like he could’ve been part of Odd Future. I even think that Tyler shared him on his story a couple months ago. One of my friends sent him to me two, three weeks ago and I’ve just been obsessed. A few days ago, I was riding my bike and put his EP on loop for like an hour. I was like rinsing it, it’s so good. There’s this laxity that he performs with while also there’s a confidence in it too. The tonal pallet is right up my alley. It’s not downtrodden, it’s just mellow. There’s this artist Becky and the Birds I’ve been obsessed with for years. We’ve collaborated before in the past on my las album. She’s pushing boundaries with her production. She’s a producer, songwriter, artist, and she inspires me on the daily. She’s making stuff that’s so unencumbered. It’s sort of off-putting in a way, but it feels familiar still. She can hit whistle tones like nobody’s business. The range is ranging. It’s kind of crazy. Leon Thomas is so so good!
B-Sides: Yeah!
Healy: It’s crazy he went from Backyardigans to Victorious and now he’s like truly victorious. He’s winning. I think I watched his TinyDesk for like a week straight when it came out. Honestly, when I’m in the creative process I try not to listen to a lot of music. Now that I’m out of it, it’s like give me everything. I feel like Kirby with music. I want to feel this and reenter the zeitgeist in a way. I want to be sensitive to all the different and emerging sounds that are coming out to stay sharp.
B-Sides: I am definitely the same way with screenwriting and film. When in the process, I can’t get too into it because I feel like I’m imitating them.
Healy: Yeah, totally. You almost lose sight and lose a sense of your voice in a way. That’s a good point.
B-Sides: Why did you choose ‘HELL OR HIGH WATER’ and ‘THIRTEEN’ to be the album’s opener and closer?
Healy: That’s a great question. Honestly the moment I fleshed out ‘HELL OR HIGH WATER’ for the first time before sending it to a couple friends to put some music or play on, I knew that one would open the project. It wasn’t really a tangible thing. It was a gut feeling like this feels like an intro. It sets the scene for me, that’s a big reason why. The project begins and ends for me in Memphis, visually and environmentally. In [the song], there are a lot of allusions to Memphis. I situated myself down on Mud Island looking at the Mississippi River. The imagery bled into the songwriting process. There are allusions to these forces of nature at the frontend so it feels like hope to me. Starting with a very hopeful energy, I’m taking the reins and control over my life. That’s why that one starts it, and ‘THIRTEEN’ closes it because it’s such a Memphis song to me. It’s originally made by Big Star, a classic, and [they’re] from Memphis. I grew up listening to them. The project being bookended by these songs is like these love movements in a way. [In] ‘HELL OR HIGH WATER’, the armor of the relationship is broken from several blows of being broke or doubtful of if this is the right person or if I’m wasting their time, or vice versa. It’s taking that and saying “No, we were made for each other. We’re soulmates.” The end of the project is confirming that. It’s an ode to young love, because that’s where I’ve felt in my relationship for the last two years. I see my partner for who they are and realize my actions have ramifications. Ones I might not even see. I chose those two because it ends and starts in Memphis, and it contains the album in a loop of love. It bookends the album beautifully with love.
B-Sides: It basically completes the arc.
Healy: Yeah, totally!
B-Sides: What was the scariest part of being that open with your songwriting? If there are any, or if it’s just freeing?
Healy: I’m less scared of other people hearing it and appreciating it. I think the fear comes from inside me like I’m fearful of confronting some of those things. I’m a historical, serial ignorer or avoider like if I’m overwhelmed by something I’m not gonna touch it. not gonna do it. I’m going to distance myself from it. The fear comes from within me being afraid of acknowledging some of these faults or acknowledging some of the realities of life or avenues of life that could use work. Or extra attention or tending to. Yeah, I don’t really care about how other people perceive it. It’s like music is very therapeutic for me. It’s one of the main reasons why I do it is to connect with people. The main one, for myself, is to discover more about myself, to grow, and to build on who I am. It hasn’t always been like that. Or maybe it has, and I hadn’t been aware of it. But yeah, I think the main fear is kind of confronting some of these things. One example is ‘RUNNING LAPS,’ my friends and I, Austin and Saul, made it before my birthday last year. It feels like a very self-reflective time for me. I’ve been feeling like there are parts of me like my behaviors, or subtle behaviors or habits, that I hadn’t acknowledged or kept in check. So I was very intentional going into that session. I was like “Let’s make things. Let’s shed a positive light on this reflection, but I’m gonna get into it.” I’m not going to be afraid of it. The only way out of something is through it. I was a lot more conscious of going through it this time.
B-Sides: That’s such a beautiful perspective with creating art, and being so open to change in general and understanding yourself. Newer artists or ones that are rising in popularity are encouraging a lot more with their music compared to past songs, that aren’t superficial, but that mask themselves in a way.
Healy: Totally, yeah. I think transparency, like when you look at currencies within art these days, I think the one that has the best exchange rate is transparency because ultimately when people listen to your music or watch your films, they’re trying to enjoy themselves because music and art are fun. But again, you learn more about yourself in the process in this subtle way. I think people are becoming more aware of that. That things like art are emotionally driven. Listeners aren’t dumb. People are smart and so when they hear a song that is, for lack of a better term, superficial or not really saying anything. It’s like [they] don’t really feel connected to this. It’s an interesting point you brought up, because I’ve noticed a lot of art these days is very dichotomous. It’s either a top 40 safe song or “I’m going through existential dread and I need to talk about it. Maybe you can connect with that and resonate with that. And you’re not alone.”
B-Sides: That’s the beautiful part with the latter, just wanting the audience to connect with you and be able to bring up their own experiences to shed light on what they’ve been through. I think that’s the whole point of being creative is telling someone how you’re feeling and they’ll tell you back.
