Singer-songwriter Francesca Blanchard recently released a new video for her song "Free." Prior to its release, the song itself was featured on ABC's long-running medical drama "Grey's Anatomy."
"I was performing a lot over the last two years," Blanchard tells Seven Days in a recent phone interview. The bilingual artist dropped her first full-length album, deux visions, in 2015. "I was kind of burning out a little bit," she continues. "I needed to get out of Burlington. I needed to breathe, and [to] leave this beautiful state for a second."
After mountain climbing with Outward Bound on the West Coast and volunteering as a music and theater teacher in Ecuador, she returned to the Queen City this summer with intention to reevaluate the trajectory of her next album cycle. "Free," along with "My Heart," a track released earlier this year, are a pair of older songs Blanchard decided to unleash in the meantime. They may or may not appear on her forthcoming album.
"['Free'] was written out of a need — it sounds cliché — to be free [from] my insecure thoughts of what my music is, others' opinions [and] what will the future hold," Blanchard explains.
In the video, director Kayhl Cooper of Noise Ordinance plays with this concept — the hunger for sovereignty — by juxtaposing open spaces with confined ones. We see Blanchard basking in a sunny meadow, but she also sits in a parked car and in an attic with a low ceiling. At one point, she's literally backed into a corner. But the overwhelming sentiment is positive and uplifting, never dwelling on a sense of entrapment for too long.
As for the new album, Blanchard says it is "still in the works."
"There is a bigger body of work coming," she explains. "I just don't have any details, unfortunately."
In the meantime, watch the clip from "Grey's Anatomy" below — but beware! It may contain spoilers.
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Bio:
Jordan Adams joined Seven Days as music editor in 2016. In 2021, he became an arts and culture staff writer. He's won awards from the Vermont Press Association and the New England Newspaper and Press Association. In 2022, he became a freelance contributor.
As a young child, Jesse Clements frequently traveled from Boston to Vermont to spend time with her aunt, Joan. Their favorite shared activity was drawing. They would lose themselves in the process, surrounded by craft supplies and pencils strewn across the basement floor. As Jesse presented her creations, Joan lavished praise. "She was just the most encouraging [person]," Jesse, now a grade school teacher in Berkeley, Calif., recalled during a recent phone call with Seven Days.
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