By Harper Stephens

Editorials Editor

Blue Springs South is home to many talented students. Anywhere from football to basketball, band to choir, theatre to academics, the students here at South are full of talent and ready to show it.

Sophomore Elise Dryer released her first album earlier this year. The album is actually an EP, which stands for extended play. An EP is just like an album with fewer songs on it. This EP has a total of six songs on it, one of them was released as a single, titled “Only Me”. “Only Me” is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You can buy the full EP directly from Dryer, herself, for $6.

The songs on the EP, in order, are: “Life’s A Gamble,” “Only Me,” “Way To Go,” “Confusion,” “Stay A Little Longer,” and “Just One More.”

Even though the CDs aren’t selling quite as well as Dryer would like them to, she is really excited about this whole experience.

“I really like what I am doing and I am really confident in what it’s going to be,” Dryer says.

Dryer says this all started two years ago. She was really bored one day and started rhyming words. She wrote out a whole song, including verses and chorus, and that is how her first single, “Only Me,” came about.

“I played it for my mom when she got home from work and then she cried, and I was like I have a chance at this,” Dryer says.

Dryer recorded her songs at a studio in Blue Springs called Soundworks.

Dryer is involved in tons of activities here at South, including concert and marching band, Scholar Bowl, Math Club, FCA, and she is a sophomore representative.

“I do so many activities, it’s crazy. I am busy all the time,” Dryer says.

Dryer says the CD’s music genre is adult contemporary pop, but she hates being asked what genre her music is because it is always changing.

“It’s ever-changing and there’s always a new flavor in every song. Dryer says.

When she is older, Dryer plans on making and recording music, and this is the start of it all.

“I’m actually about to send CDs to a recording company up in New York called Fueled by Ramen,” Dryer says. “They do my favorite bands, and I feel like I can be a part of what they are doing.”

Dryer says that she hasn’t been through everything she has written in her songs.

“I don’t have any personal experiences that I write from, but I write like I was in that personal experience,” Dryer explains.

She says when she wrote about bad breakups, she was 13 and had never been through a bad breakup.

“The second song [I wrote], “Stay a Little Longer,” it’s about someone dying and then the person being sad because they didn’t stay a little longer,” Dryer says. “They left and now they’re in pain and it’s depressing.”

Dryer’s family and friends have been really supportive throughout this whole thing.

“My dad thinks I’m going to be a starving musician and that I can’t do this as a career, and I’m like, ‘watch me’,” Dryer says. “With my friends, I think I over-hyped it with them, and I was just so excited and now it’s like ‘oh, you’re talking about your CD again.’”

Dryer says she can’t pick a favorite song off her album because her songs are like her children and she can’t pick favorites.

“When I do listen to my CD, the first two I go to are “Life’s A Gamble” or “Way To Go.” “Way to Go” is hype and up-beat and you want to dance to it. “Life’s A Gamble,” the music and all the aspects of it are so just so good.”

Dryer isn’t inspired by her favorite musicians like most would think.

“[My inspiration is] probably my own boredom that one day, and then my mom when she was crying and that just told me that I have a chance at this,” Dryer says.

Dryer is also inspired by former South student, Julia Curry, who is now majoring in music at University of Central Missouri.

“She has taught me so much and helped me grow in my music and she has inspired me a whole lot,”  Dryer says.