What inspired your album Inamorata?

To answer this question I have to mention how I decided on my artist name. Romaine is my middle name, and I was named after my great aunt who died in a plane accident when she was 19. For years no one in my family said her name due to the pain it brought them. However, my mom wanted to change that when I was born. She wanted Romaine’s name to be honored, she wanted to break the silence.

I use that concept a lot in my music- breaking silence. Silence of heartbreak, self doubt, insecurity, but the good feelings too we often feel too nervous to share. Inamorata is Italian for “female lover”. The album was originally going to be entitled “Lost Love Letter”, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized this album wasn’t about what I hadn’t said, rather about what I have learned, and how those lessons impacted me today.

How long have you been writing music?

I wrote my very first song, “Muscle Memory” during a really challenging part of my life. After the experience of writing that, I was hungry for more. But every time I sat down to write again, I couldn’t get feelings out on paper the way I wanted to, in a truly organic way. It was a year later when i found myself scribbling lines in my cubicle at work or on my office’s rooftop terrace. You can’t chose when you write music, you have to wait for it to come to you. Inamorata took three weeks total to write, record, and produce, and I’d say it was worth the waiting and the frustration along the way.

Photographed by Celeste Finelli / Styled by Rachel Kiser / Modeled by Ellie Muraca / Directed by Kaley Roshitsh / Assisted by Kitty Wu