Nicole Atkins’ ‘Drama’ Is a Pop-Rock Work of Art

Strolling along Bradley Beach on the New Jersey shore while talking on the phone with the Scene, singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins ponders a question about why she titled her new album Drama. After considering it for a bit, she says ultimately it was just the obvious choice. 

“All of my feelings just felt so big while I was writing this record, and I wanted that reflected in the sound,” Atkins says. “No half measures. Big drama in the arrangements to reflect how I felt inside and what was going on everywhere outside. Maybe secretly hoping that this drama would cancel out all the rest. Just felt like a moment to call it what it is.” 

The album — her seventh studio recording and first since 2020’s Italian Ice — will be released Friday via Sun Records. As Atkins envisioned, it sounds big and dramatic. The arrangements, which include horns, woodwinds, strings and a choir, are exquisite and set the stage for Atkins’ passionate, dynamic vocal performances. It’s not a concept album in the strictest sense, but it flows like one.

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Atkins connected with Sun through an old friend, Chris Isaak. They met in 2007 when she was the opening act on his summer tour and have been friends ever since. Isaak — who like Atkins has called Nashville home for a little more than a decade — signed a deal with Sun in 2021 that allowed him to bring artists to the label via his Wicked Game imprint. When he heard some of the songs she was working on, he suggested she sign with Sun. 

“I thought he was fucking with me,” Atkins says. 

He wasn’t. Isaak even makes an appearance on the record, duetting with Atkins on “Cue the Symphony,” one of the album’s two outstanding duets. The song is an homage of sorts to Roy Orbison, who is an important influence for both of them. 

After signing with Sun, Atkins began to consider which songs she would record.  

“I had more songs than I knew what to do with,” she recalls. “But once I had ‘Singing in the Mirror’ — that came after I knew I was making the record — that just helped me go through all of my songs and be like, ‘Oh, this one works with this, and this one works with this, and you know, this one is a twin for this.’”

“Singing in the Mirror” is informed by the feelings of loneliness and isolation Atkins sometimes experiences in her marriage. It’s a theme that runs throughout the record. Her husband Ryan McHugh works as a tour manager, so they are often apart, with either one or both of them out on the road. 

“It’s definitely a weird life,” she says. “But it’s also how he makes his money, and it’s how I make my money. So there’re long stretches where we don’t get to see each other, and then we’ll see each other for like two months straight.” 

To help fulfill her sonic vision for the album, Atkins enlisted the help of producer and Wilco multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone. Sansone is a kindred spirit. They share a love for the orchestrated pop-rock masterpieces of the 1960s and 1970s — records like the ones Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote and Bacharach produced for Dionne Warwick. 

“The reason that Nicole came to me about making this record in the first place was that she knows my love of ’60s and ’70s records … and she has a really deep love for that stuff too,” Sansone tells the Scene by phone from Rome, where he is on tour with Wilco. “We were not afraid to wear our influences and our tastes on our sleeves, but we also didn’t necessarily want to make a record that was like putting on a costume.”

Atkins and Sansone collaborated on the sophisticated arrangements that give the record its big, dramatic sound. Sansone calls her “a tornado of ideas.”

“I had a lot of ideas, and he helped me refine them,” Atkins says. “And it’s also great that he’s a multi-instrumentalist too.”

Sansone played a variety of instruments on the record, including electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass and various keyboards and percussion instruments. He played the majority of the album’s evocative guitar solos.

“When Pat sent over the guitar solo on ‘Cue the Symphony,’ I just cried,” Atkins recalls. “I cried my eyes out. It was, like, so perfect.”

They recorded the basic tracks over four days in early February at Creative Workshop. In addition to Atkins on vocals and Sansone on bass, those sessions included Dan Creamer on piano and organ, John Paul Keith on electric guitar and Davey Horne on acoustic guitar. Horne also shared vocals with Atkins on the album’s other duet, “Curtain Call,” which they co-wrote. Eric Slick and Danny Banks split the drum duties. 

Over the following weeks, additional recording — including horn, woodwind, string and vocal overdubs — took place at a few different Nashville studios. Then Sansone began work on the mix.

“It was a big record to mix,” he says. “It’s not a simple record. So I spent a lot of time and care in getting the mixes together.”

Sansone’s diligence was born from his great respect for Atkins. 

“I was very honored that she trusted me to kind of guide the ship,” he says. “Somebody like her, with that much creativity and with so many ideas herself. … Nicole is a force, you know. She is a true artist.”

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