Back when the situation wasn’t amusing at all, writing the song helped her deal with it.

Shelby Bond sounds almost amused when she remembers the dead-end relationship that gave rise to her latest single “Option”:

I don’t wanna be an option
Ain’t a game of window shoppin’
Either you like this or you lost it
I’m never gonna be an option

Back when the situation wasn’t amusing at all, writing the song helped her deal with it.

“I kept getting very emotional during this time because I was confused,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why am I still talking to this boy? What is it about him that is really keeping me in a chokehold?’ But then I decided one day, ‘You know what? I don’t have to do this. Nobody’s holding me at gunpoint. I literally can just walk away. Right now.’”

Yet there were still her feelings for him, and the hurt, but she had to do it, hurt or not.

“Sometimes, you just shouldn't be with somebody, or they're not good for you, and they’re never going to change. You can’t really change people.”

And then the biggest conclusion: “The main idea of the song is basically just know your worth, and don't let anybody treat you like you're an option because we are people. It felt like he was walking through the mall, ‘Oh, I like this one. I like that one.’”

Knowing her worth, she is launching her lovely, liquid voice on a career as a singer and songwriter. In “Option” and the three other songs she has released this year, that voice goes up and down the scale, flowing over, under, around and through notes and words and phrases.

All four songs, “Blessing,” “Burnt Out” and “Unhinged” in addition to “Option,” will be among the 10 or 11 tracks on Virgo, the album she plans to release next year.

Shelby has said that her music is R&B, soul, pop, alternative and EDM, and Virgo will feature a range of styles.

“Option” and “Unhinged” have a distinctly bluesy feel. “Blessing” — “I’m a blessing / you’re a curse” — is set to a trippy electronic tune, and “Burnt Out” is pop that will have your heart pumping to the same beat as the music.

She has been singing her entire life, she says, “pretty much ever since I could talk,” and began writing songs shortly after that.

“And I would say I started writing things that made sense on pen and paper when I was about 12.”

Her music comes from her head and heart. She has not yet written the music for her songs, but they have the shape she wants. Sometimes she takes a beat she has heard to a producer, to give an idea of what she wants, “and then make it exactly how I want it.”

She tells the producer, “I have an idea here. I like what this song does in this part, and I like this song. Can you try to do a blend of that, but in this way?”

“And if they get what I'm saying? I say ‘Oh, thank God,’ because I feel silly sometimes bringing these ideas.”

But she also plays guitar, and sometimes, writing lyrics, a melody pops into her head, and she will find some chords or perhaps even pick out a melody and take that to the studio.

Other times, she will take an idea of a melody into the studio and work with the producer to get the music.

Her focus has been and still is on studio recordings, but once the album is out, she wants to begin performing in public.

Her music, she says, comes from her experience and her heart.

“It's kind of like therapy in a way,” she said. “If I go through something that is kind of weighing really heavy on me, I can write a song about it, and it really helps me get a better understanding of how to deal with it, or sometimes just heal me.”

As, for instance, with “Option.” “Burnt Out,” she said, “is about literally just being burnt out.”

“It’s about how you can feel burnt out with life and you just want to give up, but you have to keep going because you know it’s going to get better. You’ve felt this way before, and you are going to feel okay eventually. You just have to get there.”

She wants her songs to be relatable to the lives of other people, and she hopes they will be touched by her music.

“If I can touch the lives of other people through my voice, then I'm going to be perfectly content,” she said.

Stay connected to Shelby Bond on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

Websites:
Option Single on YouTube
Linktree
Apple Music
Spotify

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