Taylor Barton is a multi-decade, multi-hyphenate creator and force of nature. Her poignantly haunting new Get Off My Ship EP and riveting novel Condom Eddie find Taylor at the very top of her game, tackling topical issues with a poet’s pen and a composer’s ear.
Get Off My Ship was released by Green Mirror Music on June 2.
“Get Off My Ship” is an atmospheric meditation on challenging subjects,” said Taylor, a veteran Event / Film Producer, writer, and singer-songwriter. She has released eleven full-length albums, four books and produced over fifty events.
A multiple ASCAP award winner, Taylor’s voice has been described by Vanity Fair as “beautiful and seductive,” while Rolling Stone called her “beguiling.” “She waxes poetic without slipping into pretense and uses decidedly non-Hallmark phraseology,” noted Newsday.
Produced by acclaimed singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Joseph Arthur, the 5-track Get Off My Ship wraps weighty lyrical messages in timeless melody, cultured arrangements, and layered textures woven around plaintive acoustic guitar.
Featuring Taylor’s guitarist husband G.E. Smith (Hall & Oates, Dylan, Saturday Night Live Band) and drummer Josh Dion (Chuck Loeb, Candy Dulfer), it channels sensations of sorrow, outrage, and isolation stirred by political and societal events.
EP opener and second single “Sleep In My Bed” is the ballad of a toxic relationship told from the perspective of the victim of a sexual predator. “It’s got a huge message about the #MeToo revolution, and my new novel also takes that on,” Taylor explained. “I wrote it as a theme song for the book, because it felt like the book could be a movie and it needed an anthem.”
Influenced by the quiet strength of Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading, and Joni Mitchell, as well as contemporary songsmiths like Chris Stapleton, St. Vincent, and Sarah Jarosz, Taylor displays a gift for making serious topics listenable and shaping political comment into deeply emotive art.
Get Off My Ship continues with exquisite lead single “Crown of Thorns,” the wartime lament of a woman separated from her soldier husband, before the empowering title track “Get Off My Ship” draws a line on governments acting as doctors, against women. Meanwhile, EP closer “If Your Son” is a call-to-action for the LGBTQ+ community, written as a letter to a prominent politician.
Released in tandem with the EP, Taylor’s new novel, Condom Eddie (May 24th) is a searing psychological thriller told from the standpoint of a woman who discovers that she has a biological twin brother who is a convicted sex offender.
Started by Taylor in 2006, she rediscovered the unfinished manuscript during the pandemic and resumed writing and research. “It’s fiction, but a composite of many stories, so very close to me, some very far,” said Taylor. “It’s nature versus nurture; innocence versus violence; purity against a monster.”
The release of Get Off My Ship was marked with a special show at the Talkhouse near Taylor’s Amagansett, NY home, and ongoing performances accompanied by a full band or alongside G.E. Smith. Visualizer videos made by Joseph Arthur accompany the EP’s singles.s
Get Off My Ship and Condom Eddie are available on Spotify, Apple, Kindle, Amazon and all other digital retail outlets.
