Ashe Unravels The Illusion Of Being A Dream Girl

“Doesn’t the album kind of taste like cacio e pepe?" asks Ashelyn Rae Willison, who identifies as an introverted pop star (from her Finsta handle, of course). The 33-year-old singer-songwriter describes her upcoming fourth solo album, The Girl of Your Dreams, as “comfort food, but peppery, spicy,” and after an advanced listen, I’d have to agree. The album takes you through a cinematic narrative arc that includes being love bombed, betrayed by a former friend, and finding imperfectly perfect love—the morbid kind. 

“The heart of it really is this unraveling of the illusion of the dream girl,” she says. Ashe begins our Zoom, quickly reapplying lipstick in the camera, and recommending monthly vitamin IVs as a remedy for her fast pace of her life. Willson married John Canada, a music artist and drummer, last year, when she also released an album, The Dream, with her supergroup The Favors with Finneas, her longtime collaborator and notably Billie Eilish’s producer and brother. 

I first discovered Ashe in 2019 when I heard her gut-wrenching sleeper hit “Moral of the Story,” which chronicled her divorce and later was re-released featuring Niall Horan. Admittedly, her music was on repeat when I was 23 and coincidentally about to marry the wrong guy. Now, when listening to her latest album, I'm captivated by the sonic sensibility of Carole King, the whimsical romance of starry orchestra strings, and witty lyricism that could only come from painful, personal growth. The concept of being “a dream girl,” is an idealized image that Wilson playfully turns on its head and deconstructs throughout the 11 tracks. It’s a projected archetype that “is something to outgrow,” she says. 

Ahead, I catch up with the artist about her latest project.

How did you go about the creative process behind this album? 

"I started with a bulletin board, a physical back-to-school bulletin board that had all these different fabrics and textures on it, leather and plaid, an entire color palette. I wanted to be able to look at this bulletin board as we were working on the record and get tactile with it. I knew what I wanted it to smell like. There were crushed rose petals on the bulletin board and old keys, that smell of monkey bars or iron. 

I was burning a specific candle every time we worked on this record. I'm such a sensory person. I had pictures of what I thought the album might taste like. So there's a picture of cacio e pepe pasta on there."

Did you have any particular old movies or artists in mind while you were making it? 

"Alfred Hitchcock is my favorite, all-time favorite. I kept thinking of Dial M for Murder or To Catch a Thief, and I thought that was a real time of Hollywood that I grew up loving, and I haven't seen really captured. I thought, if we could nail a bit of Grace Kelly in Hitchcock, that's so honoring who I am and what has inspired me."

I was listening to "Lasso the Moon" [one of the songs from the new album] this morning because that’s how I would want to feel when I fall for someone.

"Like they could get you the moon, you know?"

Yeah, I just wanted to put on a pair of cowboy boots and go on the moon and dance forever. 

"Can I lasso it for myself? Yes. Do I want to? No. So thanks. Go get that for me. I’m so over this narrative of, 'but he’s a good guy.' The bar is on the floor, girls."

What are your thoughts on the bar being on the floor? 

"What a time we're living in right now! I've had friends who are truly impeccable women who do not see it, don't own it, and then settle for the guy who does the bare minimum because 'a guy who doesn't violate you is now a good guy.'

You get the car door opened for you once, and you're like, ‘I'm gonna marry him.’ He needs to keep opening the door and doing a hell of a lot more than that. He needs to go get the moon, and until he does, we're not accepting anything less." 

How do you feel when you hear people’s Stop The Wedding! stories? 

"It's a wee bit emotional in that I wish I had this song back when I married the wrong guy. There's so much good that came from making a bad choice, but there was a lot of bad that came from making a bad choice. I don't know that I would have done things differently, but if I had this song… maybe. 

I've seen so many comments from people that are saying, ‘This has made me rethink my relationship, or better yet, this has made me love my person more.’ I'm taking even more ownership in this relationship I have because this is right, and I would never stop the wedding. That’s really cool."

Do you think being a newlywed had an influence on the new album? 

"I didn't set out to make a love album about how I'm just 'la la la, so happy now and everything's good.' The relationship I have with my husband is the first time I've been in a relationship where he's a whole person and I'm a whole person, and then we come together and create this other thing. 

We're not broken. I'm not looking to him to fix something. Too many people go into relationships viewing themselves as broken and looking for the guy or whomever to fix the thing. Or broken marriages that have a baby as if the baby's gonna fix it. Ahhh! Stop the baby, stop the child! And I’ve been that before: the broken half to someone else’s broken half. It does not make a whole. It makes this toxic other thing."

Do you think in making this album you had to deconstruct these previous feelings of being with someone because you felt broken? 

"Well, it was the deconstruction of the girl of your dreams and who she is, and who he views me to be, or fans view me to be, or the world views. There was a real deconstruction of that, and you can hear that on the record. I really came at these songs from a bird's-eye view, from a million miles away from a lot of trauma and hardship and manipulation. 

The term love bomb is a little bit newer in the lexicon, and it wasn't a term I was hearing when I was being love bombed. I wrote ["Love Bomb"] not from an injured, angry place, but out of an awakening."

It’s really hard in the moment to even realize you are being manipulated. 

"You can’t see the forest from the trees. That’s why we need our friends, even if we don’t want to hear it. Now I have this song, and we can just slip it onto a playlist for some good subliminal messaging."

You hear these stories of women wanting to stop the wedding, but felt that they couldn’t. And this song gives them permission to do that. 

"We learn to trust our women’s intuition more as we get older, if we're willing to tune into it. It has taken me a while to be able to label it or name it. But the ick? That's a female guttural instinct. Listen to that. It's not just you. I think maybe this song could help in the service of that intuition, hopefully."

What are your biggest icks? 

"Well, the guy posting a gym mirror selfie is pretty gross to me. Which, by the way, stop that."

In your song, Funeral you talk about choosing the person who will be the last person to speak at your funeral… 

"I finally found that person, and I resolved myself of feeling that it didn't exist for me. It was special to meet my now husband John, and to feel this enduring, lasting, imperfect, but real love. A real lasting love is morbid. Love that lasts means that you're picking the person who's going to bury you. 

What a lucky journey to have. That's a journey my grandparents are on, and I have watched them go through so many trials and tribulations to that last season of their lives. When I listen to "Funeral," I think of them now. 

My husband had incredible vows, so I sort of thought, ‘Wow, well, if these are his vows, then his speech at my funeral is going to be pretty classy.’" 

What makes you swoon? 

"My sweet man sits down at the piano at the end of a long day and he’ll just start singing a song. He loves Billy Joel. He’ll start singing, 'She’s Always A Woman To Me,' and I’ve never dated anyone else who can sing, let alone marry. He’s got a pretty, lovely, velvety voice."