Ashton Edminster Is Done Being Your 'Great Girl'

Ashton Edminster has been plotting her world takeover since the age of 3. The Midlothian native, who has had music on her mind since she could speak, had supportive parents on her side and had mentally mapped out her career. Now 24, Edminster is on a promising trajectory as she invents her own genre of pop.

We catch up with Edminster just days before the release of “Headin’ Out.” She swings by a recording studio in the Design District after a shift at her day job — as a barista at a coffee shop in Highland Park.

“I like coffee,” Edminster says, “and one day, I might never have to make a cup of coffee again, but at least I’ll know how to.”

For as long as she can remember, Edminster has found solace in pop and R&B melodies. She grew up listening to the sounds of Chaka Khan and Mariah Carey. Though she says there’s no history of anyone in her family working in the music industry, her parents were supportive of her craft early on.

“My mom would hear me singing growing up and she was like, ‘She's like really on-pitch for a 3-year-old,’ Edminster recalls, laughing. “I'm really glad considering how corporate my parents are, that they really just took on having a creative child and that they just dived right in because if not, I don't know if I'd be able to be where I'm at now.”

Edminster’s parents told her that if she were serious about music, she would need to build a résumé. This included making treks from Midlothian to Dallas on weekends to take voice lessons and perform small gigs. By high school, Edminster had opted to take online classes so she could focus on music full-time.

She began releasing singles and EPs at the age of 15, taking on an acoustic, coffee-shop-style sound.

But as an adult, Edminster finds herself more drawn to pop and R&B. Her latest single, “Headin’ Out,” which dropped last month, sees her questioning the nature of a relationship. As people are embracing the term “situationship” more, Edminster wanted to write a song capturing an all-too-relatable experience with which anyone dating in their early 20s is familiar.

“Songwriting, for me, has always been about filling in the gaps of songs that people might not have to turn to in situations like these,” says Edminster. “There's so much to be said about toxic relationships, falling in love, and breaking up, but I feel like there's nothing about the in-between. I really wanted to talk about what it's like to be led on and be scared of getting feelings for someone, and then in turn being let down by like the same things.”

“Headin’ Out” features a percussive instrumental over which Edminster delivers silky, layered melodies.

“If I call you, if I call you at midnight / Would you pick up right away / Or just leave it for another day / Or just leave it for another day / Would you come through / Would you come through if I needed you right now / Would you already be headin’ out,” she sings on the song’s chorus.

The song precedes a full-length project called The Great Girl Mixtape, which she wrote alongside local producers CJ “SPCMN” Serrato, Jack Hymel and Thaniabear. Edminster hopes to drop the album “by the end of summer.”

The mixtape’s title alludes to something Edminster has been called more times than she would’ve liked.

“It's for the person who wants to experience love so badly and gets so close every time, but it's just not there,” Edminster says. “It's the whole aspect of everybody saying the things like, ‘Oh, you’re a great girl, you're a catch. Who wouldn't wanna be with you?’ It's all this stuff, and it's just like, ‘Where is the line between people telling me what they think I am and how desirable I am to someone else versus what I think of me?’ It's something that I've been wanting to reclaim for a minute.”

When writing songs, Edminster takes various approaches. Sometimes she’ll record voice notes on her phone. Sometimes, her producers will create an instrumental track, and she’ll begin freestyling in the booth, building the song around the beat. For The Great Girl Mixtape, she took on an even mix of these methods. However, she is slightly biased in her craft.

Many times, she prefers to start and finish one song over the course of one session.

“As someone with ADHD, I tend to just word-vomit and all of my thoughts come out all at once," the singer says. “So, I feel like some of the best songs are made in just one night.”

Edminster's ADHD is also why she doesn’t believe in the concept of love at first sight, though she does believe in soulmates. On an upcoming song called “Only Be You,” Edminster reflects on a painful breakup and her inability to let go of what they shared. The song was written about her first boyfriend, for whom she was “hellbent on him being a soulmate.”

Another song on the mixtape, called “Cologne” has her coping with distance in a relationship but holding onto things that remind her of this person.

“I want you to hold me ‘til I smell like your cologne / I wanna be the person you think of when you’re alone / I wanna be the girl that always feels to you like home,” she sings on the song’s chorus.

Edminster describes herself as an “association person,” who notices these minute details in each person she meets. In turn, she likes to incorporate particular details into her personal aesthetic; that way, she always stays on people’s minds.

“I like to approach myself in a way where you remember me by certain things,” she says. “I'm always wearing a vanilla perfume, I always have ribbons on my purse and in my hair. I like very specific things. I remember I was dating someone and I loved the smell of their cologne so much that I bought my own bottle of it.”

It’s hard to pin down what Edminster likes to do when she’s not making music. Though she doesn’t have a recording studio set up in her home, she often finds herself crafting words and melodies on guitar, which may result in a phone request to SPCMN, Hymel and Thaniabear to bring over recording equipment.

Even when she and her roommate and creative director Madi Bounds are simply hosting friends for dinner parties, the hangouts can often turn into jam sessions in her living room.

But this is a result of letting go of insecurity, which she feels is the biggest issue independent artists face. Having begun to put out music in the age of Vine, on which, she claims, she had over 50,000 followers when she was 13, to now, when she's crafting three to four-minute-long pop tracks — an anomaly in the age of TikTok — Edminster is finally making the music she’s always wanted to make.

“My earlier stuff, that I released when I was 14, has the most streams to this day,” says Edminster. “I think that put a lot of pressure on me, because I was like, ‘Oh, what if people only like me for this sound?’ I feel like I've finally gotten to the point, especially with this project, where I kind of don't even care how it does because I think the music is so good.

"If I can do what I've already done with no label, and little to no promotion, at least for all the past projects, then what is stopping me from pushing more and going further?”