EDwen watches it all fall apart

When EDwen started work on what would become Confessions of a Capricorn, he was in the early stages of a new relationship, envisioning the album as one that would capture the heart-fluttering bloom of a fresh romance taking root.

This idea is reflected in slinky, R&B-tinged songs such as “Go” and “Soulties,” the latter of which finds the singer crooning about how he’s found the one. “You’ve really got me feeling soul ties,” he offers, his voice gliding above the groove like an alpine skier cutting their way through fresh powder. 

But beginning with “Work on Your Soul,” the mood curdles, EDwen delivering lines about betrayal and heartache and deception – a byproduct of the relationship taking a sharp, sour turn that led to its abrupt end. “When I started, we were really in the honeymoon phase. … I was really deep in love, and I thought, ‘I’m going to make this album all about him,’” said EDwen, who will celebrate the release of a remixed version of Confessions of a Capricorn in concert at Classics Victory’s on Saturday, July 20. “But as you go through the tracks you start to realize, oh, this is not really what it’s cracked up to be.”

In the year since the release of the original version of the album, EDwen said his relationship to the material had evolved, and that he had learned to let go of the anger that fueled later tracks such as “Horoscope,” a syncopated, soul-kissed number on which the singer largely eschews blame (“You gave me all the reasons to/To be so distant towards you”) and swats aside any attempts at an apology (“Sorries don’t heal these wounds”). 

“I was pointing the finger in a lot of the songs. And it was a lot of ‘You’ and ‘You did this’ and ‘You did that,’” EDwen said. “But I realize now how angry I was, and I didn’t really have to be that angry. It’s more like, okay, I played a part in certain things, too. When I listen to the album, I feel like sometimes I give a more one-sided perspective of the relationship I was in, to the point where I’m not really looking at the role I played. And that’s what I take from it now. It’s not about everything he did. I can talk about what I did wrong.”

EDwen described the musical evolution he’s undergone in recent years as driven by a willingness to embrace vulnerability. Revisiting his debut album, Luvtape, from 2022, he now said it sounds like a musician eager to prove themselves rather than one willing to invite listeners in. “It’s like, I can sing. I can do this,” he said. “And I love that first album, but it wasn’t really, truly me.”

Confessions, in turn, arrives far less guarded, with the musician embracing his insecurities and missteps, revealing more of himself in the process that he ever intended going in. 

EDwen traced some of this harder early shell in part to his experiences coming out as gay at age 12 – a reality that his church-going parents initially struggled to accept. “They didn’t really understand it and my life was tough,” EDwen said. “Nobody around me was really thrilled about it, honestly, but I had to stand my ground. And when I look back at that now, I realize I had to grow up really fast, and be more of an adult, which gave me a tough skin.”

This drift toward more open-hearted songs has been accompanied by a gradual shift in musical direction, as well, which EDwen attributed to a newfound comfort level with his voice and a vastly improved technique. “When I started singing, I was always belting,” said EDwen, who first gravitated toward big-voiced singers such as Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson and Whitney Houston. “And then I realized, okay, you don’t always have to go extra hard. And it’s not always about making a bop. Sometimes it’s about pulling back and letting people know more about me.”

In a way, EDwen said leaning into this idea has helped to bring his music full circle, returning him to the teenage years when he first picked up a pen and began writing as a means of coping with the sense of isolation he then felt. “When I first started writing, music was therapy for me, because I didn’t know how to cope with the way people were seeing me when I first came out,” he said. “Then when I started making my first album, it turned into a whole different thing, where I wanted to look like the star, where I wanted to be the star. But with Confessions of a Capricorn, it feels more like it did when I kept a journal. It feels more like me.”