Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and producer Talia Billig began composing her most personal project to date, taali, by trying to not write about herself. On the other side of three emotionally candid projects Billig, who records as Taali, reoriented herself creatively. A seasoned pop songsmith, she began tracing an arc of transformation, and she ended up with s suite of chamber pop propelled by sweeping melodies, a live-wire rhythm section, and lyrics urging the listener to look deeper inward and take action. She was able to burrow deep into crucial themes and get closer to herself, a feeling she condensed into an unadorned, soul-stirring 13-song statement about grief, self-discovery, and empowerment. In many ways, Taali’s writing regime took her back to her roots as a songwriter. She wrote her first songs at Manhattan’s New School while studying jazz performance. At that time, she recalls, she was “working much more in service to the song.” The process of making taali felt like a way to discover what she could achieve with a more unstructured approach. Working with an accomplished cast of collaborators—including Grammy-nominated co-producer Brian Bender, Grammy-winning bassist Ben Williams, and drummer Dustin Kaufman—Taali is confident the album will loom larger than its cultural moment. “I hope it would encourage somebody to consider that they might have the tools to shift their situation,” she says. “To build something better out of it, to take a terrifying leap.”