You might think you know Rachel Platten, the singer-songwriter behind the inspirational, never-give-up hit “Fight Song.” Since debuting a decade ago, the catchy, upbeat tune has been a motivational anthem for everyone, from cancer patients to presidential hopefuls.
But “Fight Song” revealed just one facet of Platten’s multidimensional personality—the “really encouraging, empowered side,” she says. Her latest album, I Am Rachel Platten, invites listeners to get to know her on an even deeper, more personal level, including her struggles with “rage, jealousy, fear, grief and all the things that the human existence entails,” she says.
“I really feel like it’s my proper introduction to the world,” she adds. “This record was the first time that I really vulnerably shared these [other] parts of me…. It’s like I didn’t own the shadow side of me because I was too afraid to be anything but grateful and cheerful and empowered and excited. And I thought that’s who I was supposed to be because I broke out with ‘Fight Song.’”
Songwriting as medicine
Platten spent most of her 20s and early 30s trying to make it as a musician, cobbling together a living by playing late-night gigs, doing commercials, performing in cover bands and touring in her mother’s car. Then, at age 33, she released “Fight Song.” It wasn’t an immediate hit, but when it finally took off in January 2015, it catapulted Platten into the global spotlight almost overnight. She signed with a label—something every aspiring musician dreams of—and even performed on stage with Taylor Swift.
At the urging of her label, Columbia Records, Platten released the album Waves in 2017. She’s proud of Waves but, in hindsight, says she wasn’t ready to produce new music so quickly. The album—and the way Platten was being marketed—didn’t necessarily feel authentic, either.
A lot has changed since then. Over the last eight years, Platten parted ways with Columbia Records, gave birth to daughters Violet and Sophie, endured the pandemic, and started her own independent record label with her husband, Kevin Lazan. Through it all, Platten says she struggled to keep her head above water, battling postpartum depression and anxiety, as well as chronic pain, insomnia and panic attacks that left her feeling disconnected from her body. Songwriting—along with therapy, medication, journaling and many other mental health strategies—helped her heal.
“These songs that I wrote for myself were my medicine,” she says. “These songs saved my life.”
Take “Mercy,” for example, which Platten says she wrote “in the middle of a breakdown” in late 2021. Her younger daughter, Sophie, was just a few months old and had been in the hospital with a high fever; her husband, meanwhile, was passing a kidney stone. And Platten was still in the throes of her own postpartum mental health challenges. One night, she fled, sobbing, to the recording studio in the backyard of her Los Angeles home.
“Something in me broke,” she says. “I remember feeling like, ‘Oh my God, I cannot take any more. I can’t take one more thing….’ And that wail of pain turned into a song within 20 minutes…. In that moment, when that song rushed through me and my pain turned into music—and beautiful music—it was almost like an answer. ‘You are going to be OK, and your songwriting is the way out.’”
Other tracks on I Am Rachel Platten poured out in a similar way, as Platten was wrestling with her personal demons. “Bad Thoughts” is based on a mantra Platten repeated to herself over and over again while suffering from anxiety after the birth of her first daughter, Violet: “I’m bigger than these bad thoughts.” She originally titled the song “Listen to this if you’re having a panic attack” and incorporated guided breathing cues to re-center herself.
But several of the songs on the new album reflect Platten’s healing journey as she overcame her struggles and gained newfound confidence in herself. She wrote “I Don’t Really Care (Set Me Free)” about finally shedding the people-pleasing tendencies she’d had since childhood. “Love me as I am or don’t love me at all,” she sings defiantly. “I don’t really care what you say, what you think about me/ Almost lost my mind trying to make everybody happy/ I know who I am/ I don’t care who you want me to be.”
Motherhood ‘ripped my heart open‘
Her new identity as a parent also shines through. Motherhood “ripped my heart open in the most beautiful and ferocious way,” she says, which led to an emotional depth in her songwriting and creativity she hadn’t previously been able to access. She wrote the song “Girls” as she reflected on everything she hoped and dreamed for her daughters as they grew up, like learning to trust themselves and not being afraid to make mistakes. “It was kind of like a prayer over them, and, as I was writing it, I realized it was also for me and my inner child and for all the women and girls that I loved,” she says.
She also believes pregnancy, motherhood and the struggles she faced allowed her to expand her vocal range. “Because my voice has changed, how I wrote and what I do with my voice on songs is different,” she says. “There are so many more ballads on this record and so many more long, held notes where I can shape and bend the vowel and have fun with it and play with it and really express, through my voice, pain and grief and fear and joy and light. You can hear a lot more soul in my voice.”
Finding her own definition of success
I Am Rachel Platten is raw and deeply personal. But, beyond the lyrics of her new songs, Platten has also opened up about her mental health struggles on social media and on stage. She wants other new moms to know they’re not alone and that it’s OK to ask for help. And, in doing so, she’s received a “humongous” amount of love, support and reassurance from her followers in return, she says.
“Because I was asking for help, it was like a clarion call,” she says. “If I had kept that to myself, I think I would’ve really missed out on the most beautiful connection that happens when we are honest about what we’re going through and are brave enough to share.”
Her vulnerability and mental health advocacy has not gone unnoticed. In October 2024, the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City honored Platten with its “Voice for Change” award—a recognition that, she quickly realized, meant so much more than other forms of validation she had been seeking.
“To be rewarded for this deeply inner work that I did to save my own life, it was so meaningful,” she says. “It really hit me that that was what success was for me…. We should all really examine that definition of success and understand what it means for us personally and not what we’ve been told it is. What is it really in your heart, what really lights you up, what’s really going to make you feel fulfilled when you look back at your life?”
This article appears in the May/June issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo by Jess Lynn Hess.
