With one foot in the real world and the other in a charmed dimension of his own making, Amos Lee creates the rare kind of music that’s emotionally raw yet touched with a certain magical quality. On his eighth album Dreamland, the Philadelphia-born singer/songwriter intimately documents his real-world struggles (alienation, anxiety, loneliness, despair), an outpouring born from deliberate and often painful self-examination. “For most of my life I’ve walked into rooms thinking, ‘I don’t belong here,’” says Lee. “I’ve come to the realization that I’m too comfortable as an isolated person, and I want to reach out more. This record came from questioning my connections to other people, to myself, to my past and to the future.”
On “Worry No More”—the mantra-like lead single to Dreamland—Lee shares his hard-won
insight into riding out anxiety. “I’ve had a lot of episodes with anxiety in my life and now I feel much more equipped to handle them, partly because my family and friends have always been so supportive of me,” he says. “Music has also been so healing for me, and helped me to find a place in my mind that isn’t purely controlled by fear.” To that end, “Worry No More” gently exalts music’s power to brighten our perspective, with the song’s narrator slipping into a headphone-induced reverie as they wander a broken world (“I’m listening to the sounds of Miles/Spanish sketches, playground smiles/Crowded streets and empty vials/For all to share”).
Special Guest: Mutlu
Mutlu (pronounced moot’-lu) is a first-generation American whose parents moved from Turkey to the United States in the 1970s. He discovered the strength of his voice in high school while singing in a Broadway revue. He liked being on stage but didn’t anticipate pursuing it as a career. However, while earning a marketing degree from Drexel University, he spent innumerable hours practicing guitar, writing songs, and playing open mic nights. Now roughly fifteen years into a career as a professional musician, he believes that his Turkish heritage informs his perspective as an artist.
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