When critics describe the new album by Leighton Meester, they use phrases like “surprisingly good.” “Good” because “Heartstrings” is an impressive debut that recalls Joni Mitchell or any number of other early ’70s, Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters. “Surprisingly” because Meester is an actress-turned-singer, a strange and exotic creature from whom not much is usually expected.
Meester tries to look on the bright side. “I think that’s just kind of the nature of it, and that’s what I can expect if people don’t know anything at all about me, except for a select few things that I’ve done,” she says in a phone interview. “I do think it’s funny that they have such a low bar. I’m not sure why — I think it may be because I’m an actor and they’re not superopen to that. But I think generally, when people hear an album, they want it to be good.”
She’s being nice: People don’t always want albums to be good, and everyone knows that actors are particularly prone to the recording of entertaining, ego-driven catastrophes. For every Zooey Deschanel (She & Him) there are a dozen Jennifer Love Hewitts (“Let’s Go Bang”). Meester tried not to think about that. “When I’m making music, I don’t think about anything else. That doesn’t really enter my mind. I think people have low expectations, but they’re gonna like it or they’re not gonna like it. It’s cool to change people’s minds, but I’m not going to appeal to everybody.”
Meester, 28, is best known as the star of the departed CW show “Gossip Girl,” which she seems to go out of her way not to mention by name. She was raised in Florida and moved to New York City before high school to pursue an entertainment career. “I grew up singing in church, and I did musicals and plays and loved listening to music,” she says. “I got really into writing poetry when I was in my early teen years, and then towards the end I started thinking, I could turn these into songs. Looking back, if I had a vision of what kind of music I’d be making and what I’d be saying at this age, as a grown-up me, this’d be it.”
Meester did a guest feature on the Cobra Starship hit “Good Girls Go Bad” in 2009. The track brought her to the attention of Universal Republic, which planned to turn her into a dance-pop star. “I signed a record deal and wound up being swayed into (an uncomfortable) direction. … I think the whole time I was kind of just not happy with it. I had some fun, it was a huge learning experience, but ultimately I really couldn’t see myself doing that anymore.”
Nothing much ever came out of Meester’s major-label deal, except for a minor hit, “Somebody to Love.” The label sent Meester a lot of songs she didn’t want to record. “I think I was sent one song about being drunk on the dance floor, kind of a thing? And I was like, ‘I think it’s fine, but it’s just not me at all.’ And that’s when it ended. … I was writing my own music by that point, and that way of doing things isn’t going to be my way. It doesn’t match up with my kind of music, either.”
Meester took a credibility-building role as a country singer in the Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle “Country Strong,” and eventually sat down to write the songs that would comprise “Heartstrings.” “It wasn’t any kind of grand decision … it was like, ‘Let’s sit down and write some music that’s just for me.’ And it was fun and it was exactly right and it was what I needed and ultimately it’s my — it’s what I like.”
Meester put out “Heartstrings” herself and is touring to support it. She’s hoping to find a balance between singing and acting, but the latter lately has been slow going. “Movies that I’m able to do and get financed but that I like are kind of few and far between.”
For actors, who have little say over what roles they get, and even less over how the finished product eventually turns out, music offers the irresistible: instant gratification and total control.
“It’s personal, it’s me, I had control and say over every aspect of it,” Meester says. “Every word, every note, every instrument and harmony, the way I put it out. Everything.”
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Park West, 322 W. Armitage Ave.
Tickets: $22; 773-929-1322 or etix.com
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