Not far from her Connecticut hometown, 25-year-old Chelsea Cutler sat backstage and waited for her set time at Governors Ball, a New York music festival.
Cutler is no newcomer when it comes to the music scene. Since her arrival in 2017, Cutler has reached more than 2 billion streams on Spotify. Earlier this year, she was one of the few listed on Forbes “30 under 30” in the music category.
For those who know Cutler, her success was a long time coming. Her mom told CBS News’ Jamie Yuccas that she knew her daughter was going to be a performer when she was around 9 years old. But Cutler had other plans back then.
“I wanted to play soccer my whole life, for sure,” Cutler said. “I played in college, but like wasn’t very good. So that dream, like, ended very early on.”
When that dream ended, another one started. In high school and college, Cutler was casually posting music to the online streaming service SoundCloud. She said it was mostly for friends, but then the record labels started to call.
In 2018, her song “Your Shirt” went viral. Her parents again pushed her to pursue music.
“My parents kind of sat me down and they were like, ‘You need to leave college,'” Cutler recalled.
With their support, Cutler dropped out and began touring the country with her friend, Quinn XCII. In 2019, she signed with Republic Records, and a year later, her album “How to Be Human” peaked at number 23 on the Billboard 200 Music Chart.
But even as her star was rising, Cutler was struggling with panic attacks, anxiety and depression.
The song “Devil on My Shoulder,” on her most recent album “When I Close My Eyes,” is about depression.
Cutler said she is able to manage her depression and anxiety through medication and treatment, but it is not always easy.
“I’m really grateful for medication, I’m really grateful you know, I’ve been in therapy consistently for four years now. And I’m, like, the hugest proponent of therapy,” she said.
The singer has also used her music to talk about her sexuality. When her love song “Lucky” came out, Cutler told people it was about her dog, but it was actually about her girlfriend. She said talking about the experience was nerve-wracking but acknowledges that it has helped a lot of her fans who see parts of themselves in her.
“When people come up to you and say, ‘You really helped me. I was struggling. I appreciate your music.’ What does that do for you?” Yuccas asked.
“It’s so awesome that something that I do so exclusively for my own healing can be so helpful to other people,” Cutler responded.
Cutler will be going back on tour this fall, and then she said she plans to spend some time in her home studio writing more music and reaching new heights and audiences.
“In a lot of ways I would tell you right now, I don’t feel like I’ve made it. And there are a lot of things that I wanna accomplish still,” she said. “I’d love to be able to sell arenas someday.”
“Winning a Grammy would be really cool…What I do think matters, though, is real people, you know, real people that I can engage with and interact and real people whose lives genuinely are affected by my music. Like, that’s more important to me,” Cutler said.
