“I really didn’t want to put a bunch of songs on a record and go, ‘Oh cool, I like these songs, they’ve made the cut,’” Taylor Moss tells Apple Music of her debut LP, Firecracker. “I wanted to make them flow and have a direction—that was the biggest vision I had, and it took me a while to get there.” Key to achieving that vision was placing the songs in chronological order, with each a chapter from the past few years of Moss’ life. “‘Firecracker’ is Taylor three years ago, and [closing track] ‘Life Ain’t Cheap’ is Taylor now,” she smiles. “I used to love to party and drink, and I still do, but I’m almost 30 and hangovers are way worse. Now I’m thinking about the future and going, ‘Oh shit, should I get my life together?’” The album is ostensibly divided into three eras, with the opening three tracks serving as an introduction to Moss­—who was born in the small New South Wales coastal town of Ulladulla—before moving into the “heartbreak” era and, from “Wrecked My Plans” on, the “love” era. Along the way she infuses her country music foundations with lashings of slick, melody-charged pop and rock, not to mention a good dose of humor, even when on the wrong side of infidelity (“Gone Fishin’”). “I try and make light out of every situation,” she says. “If we constantly focus on all the bad things that happened to us we won’t be in a great state of mind.” Here, Moss explains the story of Firecracker, track by track. “Firecracker” “Me and my best friend, Alys Ffion, wrote the whole album together. And Alys was like, ‘We need to introduce you and your personality—this is who Taylor is.’ Yes, it’s who I was three years ago, but I’ll always be a firecracker. It’s a description I get all the time. Also, it’s just a fun party song. I love starting the record with a really high-energy song.” “The Women Who Raised Me” “I had an idea to write a song called ‘Shania’ because I’m obsessed with Shania Twain. But then I went, ‘Why make it about one artist when I can make it about a lot of female artists?’ I wrote a list in my phone of my favorite artists—not just country, pop as well—like Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Hayley Williams from Paramore, Katy Perry. As a little girl, I grew up listening to these women, and they’ve paved the way for my sound and inspired me. I hope that through my music I can inspire young women to do the same thing.” “Country Proud” “I was born in a little country town called Ulladulla, and whenever I say to someone that’s where I’m from they’re like, ‘Where’s that?’ And I was like, this is a perfect anthem for those country folks who go, ‘No, I’m unapologetically country and I always will be.’” “Ego” “I was dating someone and he had a huge ego. It’s quite funny, every time I’d introduce him people would be like, ‘Not sure about this one.’ I was stuck in the lust of it all but, when I was out of it, I was like, ‘Whoa.’ And then this song fell out. I think we wrote it a year after it all fell apart.” “Small Town Problems” “I grew up in Ulladulla, small country town, moved to Noosa, big costal town, but it’s also very small—everyone knows everyone’s problems and everyone loves to gossip. We love to talk about people—this isn’t a smalltown problem, this is a world problem. It just annoyed me when people go, ‘Oh, smalltown problems.’ Well, it’s actually not, and that was the whole idea behind the song.” “Gone Fishin’” “The reason I put ‘Small Town Problems’ and ‘Gone Fishin’’ back to back is because people gossip in any situation but, in this situation, the gossip was good because I found out the truth about somebody. They were fishing at a bar. And the only reason I found out is because someone said, ‘Hey, I saw such and such with such and such.’ Without that community and connection, people being honest with you, I wouldn’t have found out he’d found another woman.” “Wrecked My Plans” “I rang my mum [after being cheated on] and was like, ‘That’s it, I’m done, I can’t do this anymore.’ And, literally two days later, my partner walked into my life, and I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ My plan was to be single, career-driven, I was not going to engage anymore. Then this guy comes in and I was like, ‘What are you doing? You’re destroying everything!’ But it was instantaneous, the minute we met. He actually said to me, ‘I’m going to marry you one day,’ and I went, ‘Yeah, I know.’” “Lifetime Subscription” “This is my humor coming in. I texted [my partner Dave] 30 days after we’d been together and it was just like, ‘Your monthly trial is over, do you want to resubscribe?’ And he just replied, ‘You’re a dickhead. Of course I do.’ The world is about subscriptions now. We’re so used to pressing that button and going, ‘Yep, subscribe, take out money from my account monthly.’ So I just thought it seemed like a really relevant thing to embed in a song.” “Wild Mama” “Like I said, I rang my mum and was like, ‘That’s it, I’m done with love.’ Then I met Dave and was like, ‘Shit, I’m going to have to reverse that conversation now.’ And I kept it on the down-low probably for a month. I rang my mum and was like, ‘I’ve met a guy and I think he’s the one.’ And her response was, ‘Oh, Taylor, bullshit. I’ve heard that one before.’ Mum knew I had a bad track record. Trying to convince your mother that this one’s good is tough. A week after I told my mum, Dave flew up to Queensland and said, ‘Let’s go to your parents, I want to meet them.’ It was love at first sight for them too.” “Dream Baby” “Once I finally found someone who loved me, and loved me for who I am, it made me go, ‘Wow, am I dreaming? Or is this reality?’ It’s the most unapologetic love song.” “Life Ain’t Cheap” “Dave and I are both in the music industry—he’s the drummer for The Wolfe Brothers—so we are both fighting for the same dream. We both want to be in the music industry and we both want to make money. But we also want to buy a house, have kids, and get married. Being in the industry, money comes in ebbs and flows, and it made me go, ‘Maybe we won’t get those things right now, we will eventually but, in the meantime, we just need to keep hustling and keep trying to bring in that money to pay those bills to put food on the table to do all those things.’ We’re in an industry where money ebbs and flows but as long as we have each other’s backs and we love each other, that’s all that matters.”