My new song “Custody” might strike some as political. I don’t dispute this idea so much as wish to shift attention to what matters more. I believe the song does what songs have been trying to do for as long as they’ve been sung: it tries to say what a particular life is like as it is being lived in particular circumstances. “Custody” tells the story of a young woman detained on the Texas border. It may differ from some songs that touch on similar narratives in that it tries to envision her having agency in the midst of a situation meant to rob her of it, it resists the inclination of the listener to see the character one dimensionally as an object of pity.
