Ryan Beatty was about to embark on the final leg of his “Calico” tour in 2024 when he cut the song “Phantom” with frequent collaborator Ethan Gruska. He was in Los Angeles, the city he calls home, when they worked on the tune, a lilting, slow-burning track that gradually blooms like a flower. At the time, he knew there was something there; perhaps it could be a bridge away from his critically acclaimed third album “Calico,” a gorgeous record that grappled with the end of a relationship by examining its finer details, as if to grasp at them one last time before they slipped away.
“‘Phantom’ felt like it was this last breath of ‘Calico’ and this new life into whatever was next,” Beatty tells Variety of the first song on his fourth record “Sweet Fortune,” out this Friday. “It feels like a farewell and a hello at the same time. I love that.”
Indeed, “Sweet Fortune” isn’t decidedly different for Beatty, but rather an elevation, or perhaps evolution, of the Americana sound that he probed on its predecessor. Across the album’s 10 tracks, Beatty sings of the joys and challenges of a long-distance relationship, opening himself up to the listener in a way that feels plainly confessional, as though he’s drawing a direct line to his lived experience.
