Author Paul Angone once said, “Surviving your 20s is sometimes nothing more glamorous than just holding on for dear life on the back of an inner tube like a kid being whipped around by a speedboat… And your only choice of survival is to just let go.”
Whether you’re in the midst of your 20s on the cusp of adulthood, or are decades removed, one thing remains constant: it’s a decade of life that brings new risks, challenges, and self-discovery.
On her debut album Welcome To 20 Something, which came out in late May via her label The Revalution, Chicago-based singer-songwriter Reva K crafted a collection of pop and rock songs which chronicle the ups and downs of entering adulthood. The singer, who is now in her late 20s, drew from the positive and negative experiences she and her friends had.
“It’s about the highs and lows of being a young adult in today’s world, specifically like this decade, the 2020s,” she told SWT during a recent Zoom interview. “I wanted to capture both the internal chaos of being a young adult and just figuring out yourself as an individual and figuring out where you fit in the world. And at the same time, it’s in this context of a rapidly evolving and changing world, like faster than ever.”
For Reva, that includes the recent explosion of AI use, which she said has created a “huge change in the world”, as well the “unique weird things” she and her peers have experienced with the pandemic in 2020 (social distancing, changing to a more hybrid work from home situation, and less social interaction). There’s also a lot of chaos in the world including gun violence and wars.
“It’s all happened in such a small period and I think it’s harder than ever to just be young and feel young when you see all that stuff going on,” she says.
Even so, the album is full of hope. Reva said she doesn’t think “you can give up hope ever.”
“Specifically in songwriting, I really never like writing a song that is just full-on depressing, like from beginning to end, that just depresses me,” she says. “I don’t think that’s helpful. It’s not helpful to me. I don’t know how helpful it is to people out there, but for me, songwriting takes something that is difficult or stressful, and it helps me process it and find those lyrics that are hopeful and are some kind of light in a difficult situation. And that’s why I write songs.”
“One of the reasons at least to give people out there hope as well, who are going through something difficult. Because we all have similar experiences, the details are different, but something that I feel that someone else out there has experienced. And if I can find the hope in the situation, hopefully somebody else hearing that song, it kind of makes them realize like, ‘Oh, maybe this is not all bad, it’s going to be okay.’”
According to a press release, the album’s eight tracks move from “introspection to empowerment, exploring post-college depression, shifting relationships, and world-weariness through both vulnerable and defiant lyricism.”
The album was written and produced by Reva K and mostly recorded in her home studio which she’s dubbed Blue Banana. It features collaborations with GRAMMY-winning drummer Daniel Konopka (OK Go) as well as GRAMMY-nominated mix engineer Matt Bishop (U2, The Killers, The Beaches).
“This record is me — my friends, our growing pains, the world we inherited, and the hope we’re holding onto. Welcome to 20 Something is about surviving the noise and still believing there’s good out there,” writes Reva K via the press release.
One of the songs that perfectly captures this – and has quickly become a fan favorite – is “The Noise”. It’s why she decided to perform a stripped-down version of the song for our Water Tower Session series. You can watch it here.
Reva says the song is about kicking someone who wasn’t good for you out of your life. Even though they’re gone and “you don’t hear them on the phone…their voice is still kind of in your head, and it takes a while for that to fade away.”
“You still feel messed up from it, you still feel the pain from it and they’re gone, but you go out, you try to do normal things and you still sort of feel the weight and just really messed up and until you go out and start really healing yourself through other people.
That noise from that person in your life doesn’t go away. Like the last line in the song is, ‘I can’t drown your noise until I stepped outside and found the world is not your voice.’ And it’s kind of really as simple as that. You’re just kind of trapped in that old time, old space until you sort of set yourself free from it and go out and meet new people and realize there’s good people out there.”
For comparison, here’s the studio version of the song:
As an artist, her 20s have been especially exciting thanks to some notable national and local attention. For example, SPIN interviewed her and reviewed her single “Drive”, and she was selected for Fender Feature social media campaign (which to date has 1.1 million views). Some other highlights:
– Billboard Brazil: Named one of “5 Artists to Watch” following reviews for “Can’t Stop” and “Drive”
– Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago 2025 named her as runner-up for Best Pop Artist
– American Songwriter featured “Come Clean” on the Hot Indie Favorites playlist
– Songwriter U Competition (Nashville) Top 10 Rock Finalist for “State of Mind.”
And now featured at SWT as part of our Water Tower Sessions series! Ahead of her release show June 27 at Opus in Chicago, Reva K caught up with us recently to discuss the session, her new music, and what’s next for her.
What are a few artists and songs that you’ve been digging lately?
Let’s see. What have I been listening to? In April, I went to MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee. They played here in Chicago and that was a great show. I think their voices sound fantastic together, harmonizing. Both of them are awesome. I love both of their latest releases. So good. And then what else am I listening to? I really like the new Hilary Duff album actually. It takes me back to being in middle school and it’s nice to hear fun pop music. I think the lyrics are thoughtful and I really appreciate that. I think she did a good job with it. And then somebody told me about an artist called Lala Lala. She just put out a recent album too. And I love the new album. Oh my God. It’s just like synth pop. It’s so good.
Can you tell me a little bit about the space that you recorded the session? Why did you film it there?
It’s my home studio. I called it Blue Banana just because randomly I think I was writing credits for it one day and I didn’t just want to call it like, oh, Reva’s home studio. So, I had started eating bananas a lot and my favorite color’s blue, so I was just like “Blue banana.” And it’s something that actually makes me laugh too when I think about it. And it’s nice when sometimes it gets stressful and I’m recording this in Blue Banana, my home studio. I can’t take this too seriously. But yeah, this is where I recorded most of the album except the drums and the bass. And it obviously has all my instruments, but just all the stuff that is important to me too, like my CDs and things like frames that my friends have given me and stuff.
And I love recording here. I prefer it more than a recording studio that just feels very sterile. So, it’s probably the most meaningful space to me because this is where the songs are written and born and practiced and everything.
What are a few special items that you can see during the session?
Let’s see. So above my computer, you can see sort of the top of a really tiny guitar and that was … It’s a toy guitar. It’s the first guitar that I got when I was probably six years old. My grandma bought it for me and that was sort of like the moment too when I got that guitar when I decided I’m playing guitar, that is my decision for life. So, it’s a really special guitar obviously and it reminds me of my grandma. I was very close to her.
So, in the shot from the top, there’s like a photo. You can see the bottom half of a koala and my best friend got me that from Australia.
She is big on traveling and whenever she goes, she always brings me back things. She’s always been very supportive of my music just from high school. We’ve been friends forever. And then another thing just from good friends, I’ve got plants there.
My other friend, who is also my sister’s friend, is a big plant person and she just gives everybody plants like whenever you show up at her house. Oh, and of course the other frame there, it’s like a square frame in the shot and it’s got a bear playing a blue guitar and a little bunny playing like a trumpet. And that is from my sister who is literally my best friend, like we’ve been close forever and she was the first one to tell me when I was just practicing in our room. We used to share a bedroom, and she just looked at me once while reading and she was like, “You know, you’re actually kind of good.” And when she said that I was like, “Oh whoa, my sister just told me I’m kind of good. I must actually be good.”
Because like compliments from your siblings, those are like first prize. That’s hard to get. So yeah, having that stuff, it feels like these people who are so supportive of me are sort of with me in the room.
The session version is more stripped down compared to the studio one. What do you like most about performing in that manner?
Something that I just always like about stripped down songs in general is you get to really appreciate the lyrics and the melody more and that’s always the backbone of a song. So, a lot of like songwriters will always say too, like if you strip something down to a melody and its lyrics, like it’s got to still be able to hold its own. Everything is just sort of supporting it. So, I love being able to showcase just like the bare bones of the songwriting performing it that way. I also got to try out some different effects like some of my tools that I’ve not used before. I have my little synth, it’s called a Korg Volca FM. And I literally found a YouTube video like the day before I filmed it figuring out how to program it to play a beat and then the pedal that I’m using.
It’s called the Splash from Crazy Tube Circuits and there’s one of the buttons on there, it sort of holds this like atmospheric reverb and I’ve never been able to use that until now. So very cool to try these new features that I’ve never used before.
What were some specific things that you noticed playing it like that? Were there lyrics that especially stood out more?
I really loved the verses and how the first verse sets up these lyrics. The second verse takes those lyrics from the first verse and references them and sort of elaborates or puts them in a different light or a new context. And I think that’s really cool. If you sort of wrote out the lyrics and compared them verse one to verse two, you can sort of see the parallel of it and I hope stripping it down like that’s something that people kind of caught a little bit more.
Why did you decide to film it in black and white?
I love black and white shots in this room. I’ve noticed just working in here a lot and like taking photos for other things that the lighting just looks beautiful black and white. And black and white is always associated with a more simplistic kind of stripped-down thing. So, I think it complimented the style of like the session
Anything else noteworthy about your experience filming the session?
I would say the one thing that was also different about this was that I filmed it in the morning because the lighting is really good in the morning. And I’m usually somebody who is more awake and active like evening time, like that’s when I will sing and write and practice and stuff. So just like waking up, like literally I woke up and I pretty much had everything set up the day before and I plugged in and played and like you’re hearing morning vibes Reva in this session and it’s different. It’s definitely different. Maybe that’s why I went for more stripped down too, because I’m like not awake in the morning and I’m just like, “I can’t have loud things like just want something simple, quiet, like chill.”
How would you describe your sound and songwriting style?
So big, big influence from like the ’90s and ’80s, 2000s even. I am big on melody. I think that is the most important thing, melody and hooks and not just hooks within the vocals, but within the guitars, the drums, the synths, everything. I love a catchy song and that’s something I look for in everything that I write, and I basically classify it as indie pop rock.
What do you think makes your music stand out from others?
I would say what I said earlier is really the hooky-ness. It’s not a big album. It’s eight songs and I’m somebody that likes to get to the point. Most of the songs are, I think the longest song is “The Noise”, which is four minutes, but that’s kind of an exception. All the other songs are like one to three minutes, and I like to be very concise, and I want to get these songs stuck in your head. I don’t like excess and that applies to my arrangements as well. I want to get things done successfully as a musician and a songwriter with as little as possible because I think simplicity is what sticks and that’s my thing.
What got you into music and songwriting?
So, what got me into music was I don’t really know what it was. It was more just like being drawn to it when I was introduced to it. So, like in preschool, I remember they played “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong and I just really loved it, and my dad bought the CD for me and I was so excited. I was so young at that time, and I can’t believe I was excited about Louis Armstrong and along with that, like my parents played a lot of Beatles music in the car and like ’80s music. And going on car rides and listening to music, that was one of my favorite things. It still is. And then when I turned about like 12, 13, I was in middle school and that’s when I started sort of dabbling in songwriting. I didn’t really take it seriously probably until like 17 or 18, but what really drew me to it was it was such a good way to sort of like A, process my feelings and B, entertain myself because middle school I did not have a lot of friends and it was something that like musicians, artists, rock stars, like they’re cool.
They’re called cool, right? Everyone sees them as cool people and so being uncool I was like, “Oh well, I should be like them.” And I started sort writing ideas in my room and eventually, like instead of it being something that I thought would get me friends, like it just became the thing that I fell in love with and I would like come home every day and practice for two hours and after a point I stopped caring about who was texting me or if anybody was calling me or inviting me to like a party or something, like I just played guitar and wrote songs because I fell in love with it.
How has Chicago impacted you as a songwriter?
I think it’s been interesting because I have not found a lot of pop girls around here yet at least. Honestly, it feels a little lonely in that space, but what I love is that there’s so many supportive and kind musicians here. I mean, like just the community is so, so kind and it doesn’t matter what genre you are. I have made so many friends going to open mics and playing a few shows and they’re so excited and happy to share my music and excited about my accomplishments. It’s very genuine and everybody has each other’s back and that’s something that I just love so much about like the community here in Chicago and it’s helped build my confidence. That’s a big thing that the people in the city have done.
What got the ball rolling for the writing and recording of the album?
I actually did not even think that this would be an album. I thought it would really take two or three more years to get an album together, but the first song I recorded unknowingly obviously for the album was “The Noise”. I basically was coming out of this period that is referenced through the album of just a lot of crazy things happening in my personal life, my family. It was a very bumpy road, like my pretty much early mid-20s. I think realizing that I had finally gotten to a point where things were calmer and feeling better, that’s what allowed me to sort of sit back and reflect on all of that and just start writing these stories and feelings down and creating this. The music came out very quickly and that’s why I said I had no idea this was going to be an album until I was sitting there with all these songs.
I think I had definitely 10-ish maybe that I was considering and then I narrowed it down to the strongest eight. So that’s where it started.
You produce the album, which is not something a lot of newer artists are able to do. Can you talk a little bit about why you decided to tackle that challenge and how recording at your home studio helped with that?
So, I actually had to tackle that challenge years ago. I had to sort of face that beast around like 2018, when I started learning to produce myself because I had just not been able to find a producer that could capture the sound I wanted. And on top of it, you need a pretty good budget for recording something, especially like a full album. Producers are not the cheapest unless you connect with somebody and start collaborating and I haven’t found that. So, I think around like 2018 or 2017 I joined an online production academy because I was sitting there with these songs that I had written on my computer and I was like, “I hate that I can’t put these out into the world.” I love these songs and I learned sort of the basics from that production academy. And then I started listening to music and just every day practicing and trying to mimic things and exploring all the different things. I use Logic Pro, that’s where I record my music and all the plugins in there and different effects and everything.
Learning to produce has been the most freeing, one of the best things I’ve done for myself in music because I love the fact that I don’t have to rely on anybody to make a song and put it out. I mean, that is just amazing. Like to be an artist and to not have that limitation is just unbelievable and it is definitely a big thing to take on, especially with an album. It caused a lot of stress. I would lay in bed sometimes and be like, “No, this isn’t sounding good. What if I don’t get it to sound good?” Because when you’re doing it yourself, it’s all on you. There’s nobody to save the day.” So it’s a lot, but like I said, I’m so happy that I learned and I’m so happy that I did that for this album because it’s my first album and I feel like I’ve been able to represent myself in the most authentic way because I both wrote it and produced it and recorded it in the room too.
I set up all the mics and everything. All the sounds are things that sounded good to me and as a first album for me to present that to listeners and fans, I love that I can do that.
What were some of the biggest surprises and/or challenges at making the album?
The song in the live session, “The Noise”, was the hardest one for me because I am a fast song girl. I love upbeat stuff that comes very easy to me, and I really had to get out of my comfort zone to slow down and put this song together, and it took the longest to get right. It was the one where I had the most doubts about it and I wasn’t sure if it was even going to get done. So, that song itself was the biggest challenge and aside from that, just general challenges, doing it alone and not having anybody to like bounce ideas off of and getting sick of hearing it over and over again and forcing myself to take breaks even though I don’t want to because when you’re in the zone you just can’t pull away from it.
I wouldn’t count them as major difficulties at all. I would do it all over again just because I had such a good time in general putting this album together.
It sounds like you had some help from Daniel and Matt with the reporting.
Yeah. So, Dan Kanapko from OK Go, I was really excited because he played drums on some of the tracks and he has a production partner who played bass as well on some of the tracks. It was Dan, Chris [Love], and I had Nate [Barnes] play drums on “Drive” and “Can’t Stop” and Andrew [Brown] do bass on “Drive” and “Can’t Stop”. I don’t play bass and drums, so I had them fill in the gaps there and I don’t mix my music as well.
I think once I’ve recorded it and put it together, I’m like, “I can’t do this. I can’t hear this anymore.” I think the objectivity is really gone and Matt Bishop, the mix engineer, he did a really good job like taking what I sent over to him and polishing it and cleaning everything up and getting the balance right. They’re great. I mean just the team that contributed to this. I’m so lucky to have them work on it.
How did you get connected with them?
Online. There’s a few websites where you can reach out and hire session players and I hit them up and I sent over the songs and they loved it and they were really excited to work on it and obviously that’s what I want and that’s what I look for is somebody who isn’t just kind of coming and playing something for the sake of it. I want to work with people who are into the music and feel passionate about it and they definitely were.
You listed some pretty impressive accomplishments on the press page. What’s it been like having your music featured in a variety of ways like that?
It’s unreal, especially because like the majority of it happens in this room, just me and my instruments. So, it’s crazy that not just like local Chicago is supporting, but even some of the national things, national media is paying attention and liking it. It really does feel crazy like that. I’m just making this in my room. It’s insane.
Which one felt the most surreal?
Well, the most surreal one was probably Spin because I have just known that magazine for so long and like seeing my little interview, seeing that on the Spin page online with the logo, like I’m just like, “This is nuts.” And it means a lot. I mean all of them, it means a lot because it’s not easy to market yourself and everything. It takes a lot to just get in front of the right people and for anybody out there, listeners like radio, the publications, all that, like I mean even you Josh, like for anybody to just give their time and listen and either write about it or play it in the car or play it on their radio station, like there’s a lot of music out there and everybody’s busy so I don’t take that for granted at all. It really truly means a lot.
What’s next for you? What are you most excited about in the coming months?
I’ve got an album release show on the 27th that’s going to be at Opus in Chicago. It’s going to be not just a show, it’s a party. We’re going to have food and it’s going to be a good time, like lots of friends and some people who have helped with the album. I don’t know if you remember, but I actually saw your live session with Cesar Pino, C3ZR. I know him from high school and he’s cool.
He actually owns Opus and we still like to meet up and do stuff together. And he played piano on “Can’t Stop” at the end. He was also in the music video for “In Too Deep”. He was a power ranger so it’s going to be a fun time. There’s going to be some giveaways. Some of my favorite companies from Chicago supported me too. So, like Lou Malnati’s, Potbelly, Vandal Candle, and then Free Guitars for Kids who are not based in Chicago, but I’ve done a lot with them. They help kids get guitars who can’t afford guitars. I really love what they do and they’re a part of it as well. So yeah, it’s definitely going to be a party, and I can’t wait to play these songs live for people.
Do you have any plans to tour around the Midwest or U.S.?
I want to. I don’t know if it’ll happen this year. I’m doing more Chicago area shows for this year, but I do want to think about that for next year. At least start with like a Midwest situation, like neighboring states and start with that and go from there.
Anything else you’d like people to know about the album?
If you like physical media, I’d recommend grabbing a CD because I’m a graphic designer too. I designed the artwork and photographed most of it and I had a really good time putting that together and I want to say like seven copies left, but we did this little zin that I designed like just imagery and artwork based off of the lyrics and there’s like a secret note on the back and got a lot of like people loving that. So definitely check that out because it’s artwork to go with the music.
You can connect with and listen to Reva K at the links below:
Website: Therevalution.com/
Instagram: Instagram.com/revakmusic
Facebook: Facebook.com/RevaKMusic
TikTok: Tiktok.com/@revakmusic
Twitter: X.com/RevaKMusic
YouTube: Youtube.com/@revakmusic
Bandcamp: Revakmusic.bandcamp.com
Spotify: Reva K on Spotify
Apple Music: Reva K on Apple Music
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
