brynne Isn’t Quite Ready To Leave Behind His Hometown

On his new single “hometown”, brynne admits that he’s scared to grow up. 

In January, brynne, a Los Angeles-native musician, graduated from being a self-described “angsty iPad kid” and turned 20 years old. For the past three years, the singer has released several singles that chronicled the heartbreak and angst that followed him throughout his teenage years. His music is often uncategorizable or genreless, something that he told me was international in our first interview. Last year, brynne’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach paid off: “why do i still see you?” an alt-pop track about an ex he can’t escape that recalls bixby began to gain traction. Yet as he’s grown more confident as a musician, largely thanks to the guidance of his chief collaborator stvphn, brynne has challenged himself to release ambitious singles. As he’s evolved, his music has gotten tighter and sharper as heard in recent tracks “cpr” and “dont u wait”. 

This past week, three weeks after turning 20, brynne released what I consider to be his most formidable single “hometown”, which details his fear of growing up. Following a tradition of coming of age music in pop culture, brynne writes candidly about what it means to leave behind the person you once were. “Moving too fast but I ain’t gonna show it,” he sings on the chorus. “Can’t slow the time down/ Even for a moment/ Cause I can’t think straight when the tides keep rolling.” 
In the week since it’s been released, brynne’s received some of the best streams of his career and was placed on the Spotify curated playlists the New Music Friday Philippines and .org, which highlights the best in Asian American music. 

“‘hometown’ is about how everything is changing so quickly and I wish I could just slow it down. Take my time. Enjoy every moment that I can,” brynne told me in an interview this week. “But it seems like I just can’t. I go through all these emotions looking back in the past, looking at myself now and being scared of the future, all relating back to a sense of home.” 

The lyrics, which brynne wrote with stvphn, are introspective and observant about coming of age. “I’m sick of myself gonna throw up/ All I ever really wanted was the closure,” he sings in the chorus. The deeper fear of “hometown”, brynne explains, is “you don’t want to be remembered by the person you were. And yet you’re so scared of who you will become in the future.” 

Growing up in a predominantly Filipino neighborhood in the metro-Los Angeles area, brynne “didn’t really have much to feel out of place with.” “I grew up eating a lot of Jollibee,” he said with a laugh, referencing the FIlipino fast food restaurant with it’s famous spaghetti. The hardest part of growing up in a city as vast as Los Angeles, he said, was finding time to slow down and take everything in around him. “hometown” references this in its question of who we become when we leave behind the places we couldn’t take our time to enjoy. 

“hometown” is produced by stvphn, who has been instrumental  in developing brynne’s confessional, moody music. But the track actually was made nearly two years ago and only recently unearthed by the pair as they were revisiting old beats. “I love instrumentation but [when we first made it] I wasn’t ready for it yet. I felt like I couldn’t quite give it the expression and sincerity that I wanted just yet,” brynne said. “This is like stvphn child. He really loves it and I really love it too. It’s such a beautifully detailed, groovy production.”

After the pair relistened to it last year, brynne knew he was ready to give it a go. He added with a humble laugh, “I think I did pretty good.”