Fletcher – Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?

Today marks the highly anticipated release of Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?, the third studio album from critically acclaimed Queer singer/songwriter FLETCHER.

Out now via Capitol Records, the multi-platinum-selling hitmaker’s latest LP arrives as she shares her new single “Hi, Everyone Leave Please” — a brutally honest track that’s equal parts confessional outpouring and self-reclamation. The video was directed by directed by Birthplace, comprised of Pfion Vince and Madison Phipps.

Both produced and executive-produced by FLETCHER and GRAMMY® Award-winning producer/songwriter Jennifer Decilveo, Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me? is the most emotionally daring offering yet from FLETCHER. As she opens up about a period of intense personal reflection, the Asbury Park-born artist matches her most incisive songwriting to date with a raw and stripped-back sound rooted in her force-of-nature vocal work.

Co-written and produced by FLETCHER and Decilveo, “Hi, Everyone Leave Please” centers on a chameleonic vocal performance from FLETCHER. At the chorus, FLETCHER delivers a plea for peaceful solitude, shifting into a tender fragility that’s brilliantly contrasted by the track’s fuzzed-out guitar riffs. Built on a hard-hitting arrangement of live drums, bass, guitar, and synths, the track ultimately achieves a profoundly cathartic impact, morphing into a soaring anthem that boldly states her needs: “Hi, everyone leave please/I need a moment to say/Bye to who I’ve been/Hi to who I’m next.”

FLETCHER shares, “‘Hi, Everyone Leave Please’ is a song that has been living inside of me for a long time.

It is plea for freedom. For space. For myself. It’s me finally saying out loud the things I’ve carried: the tension I feel about competition, the frustration of the constantly moving goal posts, the sadness of the never-enoughness, the weight of the inescapable burnout. The core of how I’ve always grappled with the pains of being an artist in the music industry.

I’ve had this dream of being a massive pop star since I was a little girl. But somewhere along the way, the thing that once lit me up started to dim me. This song is the moment I finally gave myself permission to say, maybe this dream doesn’t fit me anymore.

I’ve stood close enough to the top of the mountain to see what’s up there. And for me? It isn’t what I thought it was going to be.

Music is so sacred to me. It has saved my life time and time again. And that is what I’m fighting to preserve. My love for it. Along with my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Much like the album title, this song started as something addressed to everyone looking at me. But it ends being addressed to only one person. The girl looking at me from the other side of the glass. Can I have a moment to myself? What if I jump off the pedestal? Will I hear my own thoughts without the noise of everyone else’s opinions, projections, dissections, and expectations? And if the dream I’ve had my whole life, that everyone rallied around me to make come true, doesn’t feel good anymore, is that okay? Can I let that be okay?

It is a record full of questions, for myself, for family and friends, for fans, for the industry, for the world. It captures that fine line I’ve always struggled with of desperately wanting to be seen and loved by everyone but also my deepest desire to know myself out of the spotlight and off of the stage.

I’m not all of who I once was, and I’m not yet who I’m becoming. I’m somewhere in the in-between. That’s where this song lives. Where this whole album does, really. In the liminal, blurry space of letting go and making room for new dreams I don’t even have the words for yet.

This entire album is about that feeling. And this song is the seed it grew from. It’s the permission slip to let go, to evolve. Even when the stakes seem like they couldn’t be higher and there’s everything to lose. But when you’re standing at the fork in the road of either losing yourself or losing everything else? I’ll choose the latter every time.

I’m ineffably grateful for this journey. For both the love and resistance I have received over the years. There isn’t a moment of it I would undo. I hope this record keeps you company like the way it has for me, and meets you where you are. That it serves as a reminder of your own bravery and that it is okay to protect your peace. And to continue finding yourself on the other side of all the noise.

Forever Cari, Forever Fletcher”

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