In 2023, I worked with Cassadee Pope on a brand-new bio to reintroduce her to the pop-punk/rock world after a decade as a chart-topping country artist. This year, we worked together to create a bio for her new album, Hereditary:
CASSADEE POPE’s fourth LP, HEREDITARY, has been a long time coming for the Nashville-based singer/songwriter – not just in years, though those have been many. Pope’s first full-length since 2021’s Thrive marks her boldest, most resonant reimagining yet, a return to the upbeat, high-octane pop-punk sound she built her career on some 15 years ago.
As a teenager, she and her band Hey Monday quickly rose to acclaim in the new-millennium emo scene, signing to Pete Wentz’s Decaydance and releasing a pair of cult classics via Decaydance/Columbia. In her 20s, she launched a country music career, headlined by a first-place finish on The Voice, a chart-topping album (2013’s Frame by Frame) and platinum singles (“Wasting All These Tears On You” and “Think of You” with Chris Young). Now, in her third decade, Pope is truly back where she belongs – aided by the benefit of years of personal introspection and a desire to fully understand her true identity.
Her comeback single, “People That I Love Leave,” was released to critical and fan acclaim in 2023: features in PEOPLE and Rolling Stone, a performance at the historic Rose Bowl Parade, guest DJ sets at Emo Nite LA, a top 5 slot on TikTok’s Pop Music playlist and a special appearance at the 2023 When We Were Young festival duetting with both Yellowcard and Simple Plan. But despite all these highs, she admits recentering herself in the musical world she grew up in was far from easy.
“The last year was tough,” she says. “As fun as it was to come back to the rock world, it also required me putting in a lot of time to let people know what I was doing. I think the move back to pop-punk confused a lot of people, so it took me planting the seeds and putting in that work.”
Indeed, Hereditary has been a labor of love for Pope for more than two years, kickstarted by a trip to Los Angeles to visit her best friend, fellow songwriter Ali Tamposi (5 Seconds of Summer, blink-182) and dozens of subsequent sessions with a team of close collaborators including Tamposi’s husband Roman Campolo (BTS, Elton John), Dan Swank (Knox, Taylor Acorn), John Harvie (Games We Play), Mitch Marlow (In This Moment), Hosu Yoon and Mason Sacks.
“When I was in LA with Ali, we wrote a song called ‘More To Me’ that felt very pop-punk and in my wheelhouse,” she remembers. “Ali looked at me and said ‘Dude, this is what you should be doing.’ That song was the catalyst for me musically, but it was really important for me on a personal level, too. I’d gone through a breakup and spent so much time living with negative energy. Once you go through the other side of not resenting someone, you have so much time that you used to spend thinking of this person or not going to places because you’d run into them. When you finally let that go, you feel so free.”
The album’s 12 tracks are, in many ways, the reclamation of the grief Pope has experienced throughout her life, whether she’s laughing off the pain (“Rom Coms,” an ode to perfectly imperfect relationships), lamenting her own propensity for self-sabotage (“People That I Love Leave”), boldly embracing her sexuality (“Almost There”), leading a ceremonial eulogy for a failed flame (“I Died,” a collaboration with “The Rap Girl” Daisha McBride) or helping a loved one navigate the strains of addiction (“Three Of Us”). They find Pope trading in her trademark “y’allternative” sonic blend for one more reminiscent of the modern emo scene’s glory days, replete with sky-high hooks, hooky energy and biting lyricism.
Her emotional and lyrical intelligence has never been more precise than it is here: the joy never more resonant, the anger never more harnessed. It’s the result of a decade and a half as a professional songwriter, yes, but also a relatively newfound willingness to unlock the why behind her feelings.
“Hereditary represents everything I’ve learned about myself up to this point,” she says of the album’s title. “I’ve done a lot of work in therapy and trauma therapy digging into my past and growing up and trying to recognize the source of these emotions. All that information is really important and tells you a lot about yourself. Now I’m able to process things and ask myself, ‘Where does that come from? Why am I feeling this way?’ Every time, it leads to my childhood.”
All the self-doubt, insecurity and heartache have only made Cassadee Pope stronger than ever, underwriting Hereditary with a leveled-up sense of purpose – another new gear for an artist who’s already racked up half a billion cumulative streams and guested on a Third Eye Blind album, among other career highlights. There’s even a pair of Hey Monday reunions on the books, first at this fall’s When We Were Young festival as well as 2025’s Emo’s Not Dead cruise. After years spent inside the machine, everything’s come full circle for Cassadee Pope, though she’s now finally confident enough to sit back and enjoy what’s to come.
“In the past, I’ve definitely let the industry bog me down,” she admits. “I came into this year with a sense of surrender. I had such a tight grip on everything and wanted things to happen a certain way. I feel like the second I loosened my grip is when things started coming through. That’s not the way I usually work, but I’ve learned there’s no point in getting freaked out about things I can’t control.” XX
Evan Lucy | Storytelling & Biography Writing 