Leighton Meester's rootsy redesign "Heartstrings" offers a much clearer look at the actress/musician/model than her prior forays into glossy pop — and naturally, tabloid blogs are trying to use her lyrics for a gossipy peek into her private life.
In particular, the album's Fleetwood Mac-reminiscent title track inspired a round of articles speculating on which ex might have been Meester's inspiration, replete with thoughtful breakdowns.
The 28-year-old Meester, who has protected her privacy more carefully than many young stars, said she didn't intentionally obfuscate details in her songwriting to avoid this scenario. But she finds such lyrical sleuthing a bit uncomfortable, not to mention inaccurate.
"That's sort of what takes a bit of joy out of this process — it's all beautifully positive, but you know for people to focus on that would really be sort of sad, because I think they're missing out on their own experience," the former "Gossip Girl" star said in a telephone interview this week.
"That's what those people are built to do and they're going to do it I suppose. But (the lyrics are) truly not specific enough. It's just me and my feelings and my experiences and my heart. And truly, no one song is about any particular experience. It's really just sort of the culmination and the piling up of experiences."
And yet, Meester says the musing-on-muses phenomenon — of course also a Taylor Swift-related tradition — extends beyond the blogs.
"One thing that's strange is to say (live): 'I wrote this song about a breakup.' And then I can hear people in the crowd going, 'Who is it?' 'Who's she talking about?' First of all, that's not the point," Meester said. "And also ... I'm sure people deal with this all the time but it reduces it in a way that I don't like.
"It's so strange and sad to try to link these (songs) to a Hollywood hunk. It's sort of sidelining I suppose my actual message or accomplishment."
Said accomplishment took more than two years of Meester's life, as she worked on the songs — both at home and in the live setting, where she's been playing some of the tunes on "Heartstrings" for years now — while continuing a film career and spending four months performing "Of Mice and Men" opposite James Franco and Chris O'Dowd on Broadway.
Working closely with producer Jeff Trott (an industry vet who has produced Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow and toured with Tears for Fears), Meester eventually formed a succinct nine-song collection of California folk and '70s AM pop — completely forsaking the dancefloor shine she flirted with a few years ago, most notably with the Top 10 Cobra Starship collaboration "Good Girls Go Bad."
Here, Meester contributes acoustic guitar, mandolin and ukulele and she served as sole songwriter on the entire collection. Her passion for folk-pop largely grew from a fondness for Joni Mitchell that dates back to her earliest moments of consciousness.
"Growing up, I'd heard her just floating in and around my house. My dad would play her music," said Meester, who married "The O.C." star Adam Brody in February.
"I wasn't conscious of her at all, it was very subconscious. Those melodies and her voice and her style just sort of seeped in and that was how I thought of music, and how I became attracted to songwriting."
A teenaged Meester was in Toronto shooting a TV show — which one, you ask? "Some WB show," she shrugs, "when WB was still a thing" — when she went into a record store and bought her first Joni Mitchell CD, "Miles of Aisles."
"A CD!" she emphasized, laughing. "That's when I really started to listen really intently. That's a live record, and within the next year or so, (I went) backwards and listened to 'Ladies of the Canyon' and 'Blue,' and to hear the difference between her actual recorded songs and then how she played them live, it was very interesting.
"It really came at a time that was meaningful for me," she added. "As music does, it can touch you and be unexpected."
She's not done touting her Cancon influences. Neil Young also loomed large.
"Him, I can really relate to," said Meester, who stars in the buzzed-about comedy "Life Partners" opposite Gillian Jacobs. "His songwriting, his voice, his simplicity and the access that I feel to him listening, the access to that root and depth. It's very human. It makes me feel good when I listen to him.
"You know, he has a use, and he's very connected to that in his music. It's a wonderful, warm feeling listening to his records."
— Follow @CP_Patch on Twitter.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.