“Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night” has become a defining song for you. Can you take me back to the journey of writing it?
Avery: It was a long journey with that song. I wrote it after a weeklong social media break, right before graduation in March 2024.
I was really going through it. I was scared of graduating. I knew I wanted a music career, but things weren’t really working for me on TikTok. A few songs had done semi-well, but I had no label, no manager, and no real fan base. I still had this goal and a feeling that it would work out somehow.
It was St. Patrick’s Day, and I had to go to work. I started playing my guitar and writing the verses, and I was so excited. The next day, once I’d written the chorus, I made a demo all on acoustic guitar. I sent it to my partner at the time, and she called me at work and said, “This is it. This is gonna be the song.”
After I graduated, I saved up a few thousand dollars to record it in Nashville and get it fully mixed and mastered. That version was actually a very country, midtempo song, and something compelled me to tease it later that year. I sped it up to double speed, so the vocals sounded kind of chipmunky, and it took off.
I was living back at my parents’ house and working three jobs, thinking, “Oh my God, I’m going viral!” I got label outreach for the first time, including my current label. They loved the song, but they told me it should be a pop song. They flew me out to LA, where I worked with a pop producer for the first time, and we made the final version.
