LA singer-songwriter Casey Baer on her pop-rock single “ptxd”
Written by Tiara Grace
Photos courtesy of Jordan Knight
Casey Baer is the next pop-rock star, with a growing following of over 216K monthly listeners on Spotify, the LA-native, continues to make music for those who resonate with dealing with relationship woes. Baer has been performing since she was young and continues to make waves in the industry as a solo artist. Now is the time to stay locked in on her rise to stardom. Read on to know more about Casey’s inspirations, where she got the idea to name her song ‘ptxd’ and her experience touring with Jesse McCartney and We Three!
I want you to tell me where you hail from! What made you want to become a professional singer-songwriter?
Baer: Well, this is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. I've known since I was three years old at the Hillary Duff concert, bawling my eyes out because I wasn't on stage with her. Ever since then, I promised that little girl that I was going to be on that stage.
That's awesome. Oh, my gosh, flashbacks. That's crazy. That's so cool that you got to see her, because I only saw her on TV.
Baer: I'm born and raised in LA, so that kind of helps with being able to see all that kind of stuff.
That is so cool. Well, now we get to talk about you heading into that space of being on stage. First of all, your latest song just came out, “ptxd.” I had the pleasure of listening to it. So good. It's super catchy and at the same time makes you want to dance in your room. I know there's a message and there's a background to it so what made you want to write this song specifically?
Baer: First of all, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yes, so “ptxd,” it stands for ‘post traumatic ex disorder;’ Like, PTSD, just kind of like a little play on the term. Just a lot of toxic relationships and toxic guys that led me into other relationships where I'm like, “Oh, this is normal. This is what's going to happen.” When I go into a relationship, I'm going to be like, “Oh, I'm going to get ghosted” after I think we had an amazing date. So many different things can happen, but I'll just go into the next relationship with that preconceived notion of an already experienced relationship. We were talking about it while we were writing the song, me and Sophie Simmons, my incredible co-writer and executive producer extraordinaire. She was like, “You just have PTSD from your exes” and we were just kind of like, “ptxd.” [And that’s how the] song was born.
Since this song is about relationship trauma and you also are very open about mental health, I wanted to ask you, when you were writing this song, was there a specific part that might have been a little bit more difficult to write or do the lyrics kind of just flow out of you?
Baer: So actually, this song has kind of had an interesting life. So we wrote it back in December of last year, and we wrote the hook super quickly, and it just kind of started flowing, and we're like, “Oh, my God, this is amazing, like so great.” We kind of got stuck a little bit going into the verses and the pres because we're like, “the hook is so strong, this needs to match it.” We came up with something where we’re like, “The hook is really much better. Let's take a day.” A week later, we came back and tried to rewrite the verses and pre's, and we did, and it was definitely better. We're like, “Okay, let's just see.” We did still feel like the hook was stronger. So then, about a month later, we tried to go back in and we still felt like the rest of the song matched the strength of the hook. So Sophie was like, “Let me bring in my friend Alma”. Alma helped us fix it up and kind of tied the whole thing together in one big package.
Like you said, it kind of had an interesting start, but it ended up ending and forming this really powerful pop rock song that I think a lot of people are going to resonate with. So that's really cool. I also wanted to jump back a bit to the past. You have a song called “never have i ever,” which has over 6 million streams on Spotify. It's so good. I was like, “Oh, this is why it has 6 million streams.” I wanted to know personally, why do you think that song has really resonated with your listeners?
Baer: Well, thank you. I feel like ‘never have i ever’ really just kind of strikes a chord with people with the whole long distance relationship aspect of it because, I mean, it's definitely something a lot of people go through and struggle with. It kind of plays on certain special occasions like “Wish me happy birthday, made Christmas plans in June”. It has that reminiscent kind of feeling to it, which I think is comforting. Also, it's a good crying song, I got to say. Yeah, I did cry when recording it and writing it at the end, you can kind of hear, like, my voice crack a little bit.
Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, I don't want to say good to know, but it's cool to know that it really was an emotional experience for you to write that song. I also watched the music video. I'm a really big music video fan, so I also just really liked how it was crafted. It just felt like I was watching a film, like a little independent film. It was really well done and I thought it was great. The guy who played the boyfriend. Is that a friend of yours?
Baer: Yeah!
Awesome. Another kind of blast from the past: You went on tour with Jesse McCartney. Like what? That's so cool! Then I saw that you also went on tour with We Three. So I want to know what your favorite memories are of touring and also if you have any tour life pet peeves?
Baer: Okay. So touring is my favorite thing in the whole world. The Jesse tour was my very first tour, and it was the most magical experience I could have ever dreamt of. It was so much more than I could even imagine going on that tour, I was homeschooled in high school and didn't go to college. I definitely grew up a little bit later than others, and I really feel like I grew up on tour, and that experience did that for me. Being able to be with a group of people that all have one common goal and interest is so amazing. It's a whole big family. It was definitely very difficult for me coming home after being on the road for two months with my touring family. The post-tour depression was definitely something that was very difficult, and I kind of knew that it was going to be hard, but it was definitely harder than I expected; Just bonding with everybody on tour and sharing those experiences with those people is something that you can't replace. I just got back from Europe. I was on tour with Tokio Hotel, and that's totally a whole different thing because it's another continent, and I'd actually never been to Europe before up until that tour. Being able to go and see things that I've never seen before and experience so many things that I've never done while doing what I love was so special.
Just for even being a young artist, to be able to go on all these tours is so cool with really strong names in the industry. Congrats to you!
Baer: I appreciate it.
So my last question is: What does the future look like for Casey? Do you have any late 2023 plans?
Baer: We definitely have a lot of fun, exciting things planned. So definitely keep your eyes out and hopefully we'll be able to announce some things very soon. I'm really excited. There's so much I've been dying to share, but I think that's kind of where I'm going to leave you with that for right now.
We're anxiously waiting to see what you do next, so that's so awesome.
Click here to watch the official “ptxd” music video on YouTube right now!
You can follow Casey on her socials below:
