Hayley Orrantia is a force to be reckoned with!
Releasing her latest single “Nights and Weekends” just last week, along with her very personal EP The Way Out earlier this year, the 25-year-old standout showcases heartbreak and the 5 stages of grieving in her music. Things are taking a turn for “Nights and Weekends,” as the song is a feel-good, dance around your room track that’s the ultimate pump up jam when you’re getting ready to go out with your girlfriends.
“I had so much fun with this song! My EP, ‘The Way Out’ had a lot of weight to it – dealing with how I navigated difficult emotions and trying to come out on the other side of my heartbreak. I felt I really needed something to balance all that sadness,” says Orrantia in a statement. “I just wanted to put something out that would make people dance and have a good time. Whether that’s joining your friends for a night out at a bar or just dancing around your bedroom in your favorite pajamas.”
Celeb Secrets Country goes in depth with Orrantia about the new track as well as what to expect from season seven of The Goldbergs.
Listen to “Nights and Weekends” below and let us know what you think of the song by leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post.
Celeb Secrets Country: Your new single “Nights and Weekends” was released just last week. Can you tell us the inspiration behind the new single and what the writing and recording process was like?
Hayley Orranita: “I wrote this song awhile back with three of my songwriting friends in Nashville and we kind of just wanted an upbeat, fun song that was about looking forward to the nights and weekends where you can go out with your friends or you can just hang at home. I’m kind of known for putting out these sad ballads, so I really wanted something that I could dance to while I’m on stage performing.
The recording process was pretty easy. Brandon Day, who was one of the writers and actually the producer of the song, did a great job. He also played guitar on the song and I’m sure there were plenty of other instruments that I wasn’t there for that he played, but he’s just a very talented guy. He came into the room and kind of laid down a vocal and we worked together trying to find a way to make it a fun, country pop song and something I could definitely dance along to, and I have been in my car to be honest.”
CSC: Can you give us a behind the scenes secret of the making of “Nights and Weekends” that fans wouldn’t know just by hearing the song?
HO: “That’s tough. I don’t know if this is a cool secret but there was a lyric in the chorus that we were ready to have in the mix and was ready to go and we changed it super last minute. It was one of the big parts of the chorus. With some lyrics, once you actually get to singing them you’re like, ‘this doesn’t really flow as easily as I thought it was going to be.'”
CS: Do you remember what the lyric was that you changed?
HO: “The new line is ‘your Levi blue eyes looking at me / your Levi blue eyes flashing all over me.’ I think was the original. It wasn’t a big change, but it was enough that when you’re trying to sing ‘flashing’ it doesn’t really work or flow right. I’m glad we changed it because it’s a lot easier to say now.
Photo Credit: Matthew Berinato
CSC: Talking more about your EP that you released earlier this year... you mention the details of the heartbreak you went through, which were exceptionally difficult. Do you have any advice to give others who are experiencing heartbreak?
HO: “When you’re in it, it feels like everything. I remember being in high school and feeling like the people in this room will remember everything that happens here and it will carry for the rest of my life and whatever pain and heartbreak I was feeling now is going to be the only thing I’ll ever feel. But that’s just not true. Being out of that for a number of years and looking back, I don’t even remember half those people. It’s very similar to heartbreak where I feel like you’re in it and you feel like you know what love is and you lost it or whatever, but at the end of the day you give it a year or two and you have no idea who is going to be in your life and the new people you’re going to meet, and the experiences you’re going to have. So if you can, just try to look past your situation and know that there is absolutely more than enough to look forward to.”
CSC: The music video for “If I Don’t” was recently featured on CMT’s 12 Pack Countdown. Can you talk about the making of the video? Did you come up with the visual concepts?
HO: “I wish but no. Emma Higgins was the director and I found her because she had directed a music video for a new artist, Ingrid Andress. It’s so good. So I saw the music video and I was like, ‘okay. Whoever directed this knows exactly what I’m envisioning for my own song.’ So I called her and she was excited and willing to do the video which was awesome. I kind of told her the story of my situation and said that the song represents denial. I definitely wanted to touch on my own personal experience — I’m a very literal person with my music so everything is very real. I wanted to make sure that the music video could be that way, too. She found some really great ways of making it metaphorical with visual aspects of what denial would feel like and I could not have pictured a better video for this song. I talked to four different directors who were Grammy nominated or award winning music video directors and they had no idea. And to be honest with you, I only talked with male video directors and that’s not to say that they’re bad by any means, clearly not, but I think there was something about being a woman and hearing my story from my perspective that she really connected with it on a level that maybe they weren’t able to.”
THE 50th ANNUAL CMA AWARDS – “The 50th Annual CMA Awards,” hosted by Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood, broadcasts live from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Wednesday, November 2 (8:00-11:00 p.m. EDT), on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/Image Group LA)
HAYLEY ORRANTIA
CSC: You play Erica on The Goldbergs and season seven has just started. Can you tell us a little about the upcoming season? Do you have a favorite episode?
HO: “Our first episode is a homage to the National Lampoon’s Vacation movie and it was really fun to film even though it was kind of a grueling week. We shot in so many different locations, from the desert to Disneyland, and we had some of the cast from the Vacation movies that had been doing little cameos in this episode. I was so excited to work with them and I think people who are fans of the 80’s and that movie are going to watch this and appreciate the attention to detail that we put into the show. Since the season just started I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how people react to it. I don’t know how our producers do it, but they do a great job of getting a lot of fantastic actors, especially from that era, to do cameos on our show. It’s so cool me because never in a million years did I think I would be doing this and working with some of these people. But it is very fun.”
CSC: What’s it like balancing a music career and an acting career?
HO: “Not easy. A lot of people are like, ‘are you ever going to take a vacation?’ I feel like I do for the most part. When we’re filming the show our schedules are always a little up and down. I could be working like crazy one week and barely at all the next. So when I do have down time I try my best to write songs or get in the studio and then when we have the big hiatus between seasons, I try to dedicate that time to going on the road and performing.
This past summer, I opened for Colbie Caillat’s new group called Gone West, who are a country pop group and they are phenomenal. I’ve always been a fan of Colbie, but the fact that they combine their voices to be in this group, they just make magic. I’m so excited that I got to open for them over the summer and for me just getting up on stage is great but also being amongst artists that I genuinely believe are talented and are great people is awesome. So it’s hard to balance everything but I feel like if you really want to make something happen then you will.”
Hayley Orrantia performs at the Maui Jim Broadway Stage at Bridgestone Plaza on Friday, June 7 during the 2019 CMA Music Festival in downtown Nashville. (Courtesy of CMA)
Make sure to catch Hayley in the seventh season of The Goldbergs on ABC Network and follow her on Facebook and Instagram for the latest news on music and tour dates!
