Unionizing Creativity in Fanfiction and Beyond with Leanna Firestone’s Debut Album The Answer
Words by Angelina Singer
It’s not often that you meet an artist so unapologetically authentic, that she’s not afraid to tell it like it is — no matter who she upsets in the process. I really love Leanna Firestone’s attitude, and there’s so much of it on full display in her debut full-length album The Answer, available now. From top to bottom, this album builds on the emotional depth of her previous breakout hit “Strawberry Mentos” with an added angst that you typically only find with artists like Avril Lavigne or Olivia Rodrigo. And there’s so many layers to explore on each track. From clever double-entendres as seen in “Best Friends New Boyfriends Union”, to the anthemic post-breakup opening track that’s been stuck in my head since I heard it (“Victory Lap”), there’s so much in this album to dance (or cry) to.
I’m so grateful I got a chance to chat with the artist herself ahead of the album release (and her U.S. headlining tour kicking off May 22nd), and we talked about all about The Answer, how she got to where she is now in her music career, and the viral fanfiction culture that inspired her to write songs. Now, she’s hoping to be famous enough that she gets sued by Firestone Tires someday (even though that’s literally her legal last name).
I wanted to start off by asking what inspired this album. She shared that the starting spark to what built the flame was a combination of burnout from touring, as well as wanting to keep moving forward at the time.
“The problem with that, was that every other project, single, tour, whatever that I had done before then, was all on the back of some big, bad thing happening in my life that gave me a lot of material. And so, at the beginning of 2025 when I was taking this break, I was like ‘any second now, something really bad is going to happen and it’s going to give me inspiration for whatever I’m supposed to do next.’ And I waited like that for probably a month or two. And then that wasn’t working… Luckily for me — not lucky for the people involved — almost all of my best girl friends broke up with their boyfriends at the beginning of 2025. Which I was like, ‘Girls, I’m so sorry… but this was the spark that I needed.’”
This turning point marked the beginning of Firestone’s Taylor Swift 1989-era, where she started prioritizing time with friends over dating. That’s not to say that her friends didn’t try to date again, but her shift in perspective allowed her to curate an album centered around the pitfalls her friends experienced while they were trying to date new people. I think it’s really refreshing that Firestone’s songwriting brings a lot of freedom to people that need to be brave enough to break away from a relationship that’s no longer serving their best interest.
“The album is created out of being with my girls, and being with my girls through their darkest days,” Firestone adds. Which flows nicely into my next question about the tongue-in-cheek tune “Best Friends New Boyfriends Union”, that came out of her unfortunate experience being relegated to second fiddle in the wake of new gentlemen callers arriving onto the scene.
“BFNBFU is the moniker that I use in the song, because Best Friend’s New Boyfriends Union — boy, is that a mouthful. One of my best friends broke up with her boyfriend… we’re a [friend] group of four. She got rid of this man, [and] not too long after she started seeing this new guy… It’s very important to me and my best friends that whoever we’re with is liked by the other members of the group. Truly nothing is more important than my female friendships. I’ve centered everything around my friends in my adult life, more so than my romantic partners, because I’ve found it’s more fruitful that way. It was casual and new, but she was introducing us. So my girl brings us over to meet this new man, we’re hanging out… we’re the friends that hang out all day… She breaks out the fake yawn, and is like ‘I’m really tired, you guys should leave,’ that’s what she meant… You’re telling us to go because you wanna have sex. We’ll respect that and leave, but we will not forget about this.”
The song came out of this experience of being essentially tossed aside with a new guy on the scene, and the feelings that come up when social dynamics change. I found the emphasis on the “F-U” part of the moniker especially funny, because it’s just subtle enough to almost pass over your radar if you aren’t paying attention. But it also sheds light on the way that friendships ebb and flow with time, and not everyone is mature enough to handle these changes in stride. The songstress also joked that perhaps this tune hints at her also potentially being in love with her friends in question, so while it’s a subtle nod, I found the poetic approach to be clever within the context of her musical narrative.
From there, we talked about the title track “The Answer” — a much more solemn ballad that connects to some more serious themes around heartbreak and all the struggles that it can bring.
“A lot of the album is about heartbreak and trying to move on. And being successful at that, and sometimes being very not successful at that. I found in the conversations I was having after these breakups with my girls, was many of them always had a feeling that the relationship they were in was not right. And they were trying to make it work for whatever reason, because they had been in relationships that were, so they were like ‘this is better than that, at least. This person on paper is perfect, it’s everything I want, but for some reason it’s not clicking.’ All of them had this intuition, this knowing, that it wasn’t right, and just trying to make it work for whatever reason… All of these people were with different people, and yet always having this feeling inside of them all the while they were in these relationships…”
So “The Answer” is about trusting your gut feeling and trusting yourself to know what’s right for you and what’s not, despite the pressures of society. If there’s doubt, Firestone has learned that the doubt itself is often the answer. And this song illustrates the through-line of what all her friends seemingly experienced in separate relationships, while she got to see their struggles and uncertainties from the sidelines. From here, we went a little deeper and I asked her about the hints at religion-based terminology in her songs “Renaissance” or “Judas”, and what inspired their inclusion on the album.
“I grew up in Tennessee, at the fringes of the Bible belt. In my town, I believe there was once a study that my town had the most churches of any county in Tennessee. So I grew up around a lot of religion. Specifically, around a lot of people believing in a way that I could never convince myself to. Similar to the story of “The Answer”, it was a lot of trying to force myself into these religious contexts that I never really was a believer about. A lot of my life, whether I believed or not, was influenced by these judgments made by religious people around me or their commandments or their beliefs. [These judgments] really soaked in and influenced the way that I viewed myself and the context in which I exist in, even now, and the way that I carry myself in the world. And my music is still influenced by where I grew up. So a lot of the songs have references or are influenced by those judgments, more than they are influenced by the beliefs that I do not carry.”
She went on to explain that when she mentions Judas, for example, it’s not meant to be a commentary on the actual biblical context, but rather to work as a vehicle that shows her struggle with not feeling accepted. “So when I’m talking about being Judas, or betraying myself… it’s not actually because I subscribe to that belief system, but maybe because I’m scared that when people look at me, they see a non-believer, they see someone who’s not worthy of love, or of compassion, the way they would offer to somebody who does subscribe.”
I really appreciated her sharing this so candidly with me, and I definitely relate to the toxic cultures that can form around religion, since I myself grew up with it as well. And despite the fact that I am a person of faith, I absolutely recognize and get upset with the hypocrisy and unkindness that often emanates from people that forget the importance of what’s at the core of these beliefs — which is a relationship with Jesus, not religion as described by flawed human beings who only seek to divide and control one another. This album touches on that pain point so fluently, and when she shared this with me, I wished I could reach through the screen and give her a massive hug. Despite Firestone’s tough-girl persona, she’s as ordinary as anyone else, and deserves all the same love and respect as anyone would.
From there, we took a lighter look at the album, and I asked her what song she feels the most proud of, that ended up exactly how she envisioned it to be.
“With this I took the year to write it and refine it… For this project, I had over 40 songs — I think, closer to 50, actually — and these were the ten that I had dwindled it down to. So all of them, I feel, incredibly captivated by because I had the time and the space to decide whether or not I still liked them… I found that these were the most timeless to me, of any of the songs that I wrote in the last year. The one that I would say I really connect with still, and the one that came out the most perfect, to me, is the song “Not Yet”, which is the sixth song on the album.”
This particular song is very relaxed and gives the most Phoebe Bridgers vibes of the album, in my opinion. The message is all about being guarded emotionally in love due to being through unhealthy relationships in the past. There are also other moments that are more grounded, sharing an unfiltered look at the songstress, both in her relationships and her career during moments where it felt that things were stalling out on both accounts. Light vocal harmonies create an ambience that you have to hear for yourself to believe. It’s a breath of fresh air, a welcome departure from an already-stellar album that must have been hard to narrow down sonically.
“‘Not Yet’ is more like a recap of what’s been happening with me. So because that one is about me, I feel more personally connected and afflicted by that one, because it really summed up the year that I had had previous to 2025.”
While all the other songs on the album are written about her friends’ experiences, “Not Yet” is a deep dive into her own life, with all the emotions that go along with it. I really enjoyed hearing about this change in tone, and it’s intriguing the way basically all the other songs are lighter-hearted and cheeky, while this one takes a more somber tone that will make listeners think.
As we finished up our conversation, I asked Firestone a bit more about her musical process, and how she writes these songs that quickly become earworms whether you want them to or not.
“I would say I almost exclusively start with lyrics, better songwriters than me do both. I do almost-exclusively words. I also, through like writing fanfiction, was always very involved [with words].”
Of course, I had to immediately ask what fanfictions she had written, but she wasn’t comfortable sharing that — which I totally understand. It’s tough enough being taken seriously as an artist these days at such a relatively young age, and not everyone understands the artistry and creative spirit that exists even in something as common as fanfiction (at least, the good ones, anyway).
“I will say, to make it broad, I did write more niche fanfiction, I’m not willing to share that. My more broad fanfiction was absolutely [about] One Direction, and 5 Seconds of Summer. I was on Wattpad, I was an author, people did wait on my updates. And I will just say, there was no better practice, for creating music… than being forced to update week-by-week and having people be like, ‘this chapter sucks, I can’t wait for another week’. But I always came from a creative writing background and was very interested in that.”
When you listen to this album, I think it’s obvious how much she put into it on the storytelling level. There’s a character, a series of events, and an emotional response that you can feel when you listen. Before wrapping things up, I asked her who her biggest inspirations are, and she had a great answer that beautifully connects to her overall style.
“Yes, I would say my musical influence is, any girl with guitar that you can think of. And whoever pops up for you [that’s it].” And of course, I immediately mentioned my OG favorites, like Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift, because they were some of the most trailblazing girls with guitar in our generation. “I would say the closest one to me, at the moment, is maybe Maisie Peters or Lizzie McAlpine — like, those are my girls.”
I was surprised by Firestone’s intention to chill out her musical style, to which I encouraged her not to lose her abrasiveness (in the best way possible). I think more and more people are learning to listen to female artists and take them seriously, and that never would have happened if every female artist was convinced to stay quiet and demure. While I think Leanna Firestone seems like a positively lovely person and a fantastic musician, she’s got a spark that can’t be tamed, and I would hate to see her tone it down. But that’s just my opinion — I’m sure no matter what stylistic direction she chooses, she’ll stay true to her spunk, talent, and whimsy, with the bravery to diplomatically (or not so diplomatically) call people out when she needs to. She promised that she’s always going to make music that she loves first, in the hopes that others will too. And I assured her that they will.
Her last piece of advice for aspiring musicians?
“I have one main piece of advice that I give, and that is… everybody who wants to do music is so serious about music. And that is a good thing, it’s a good thing to be that invested in something… but I think sometimes you get so caught up in the desire to create music, or to be an artist, or whatever and it becomes your sole focus. Making music, to an extent… is boring. You should diversify your life more, and your music will get better, because you have left it behind, if that makes sense. What I tell people, every time they ask for songwriting advice, is like, watch a movie. A lot of being a better artist is having more to say, and if you’re constantly focused on how to make a really good song, how to write a really good song, you’re losing the context in which your writing gets better… to be a good musician, you have to have a fulfilling life.”
If you’re ready to experience Leanna Firestone’s debut full-length album The Answer, you can listen to it here. And if you’re lucky enough to live in or near a place where she’ll be touring this spring, consider seeing her play this album on stage too.