Underground Radar: Lily Forte's Don't Gild the Lily

On Excess, Grace, and the Album That Found Its Name

Lily Forte's Don't Guild the Lily Album Artwork

Article Contributed by LJ Portnoy.

The Phrase That Named Everything

There's a phrase Lily Forte stumbled across while researching lily flowers, a deep dive that started, she'll tell you, because she couldn't decide whether to self-title her debut album. Don't gild the lily. It means, roughly, that beauty isn't found in excess. That adding to something already whole only diminishes it. The moment she found it, the album had a name. And more than that, it had a through line.

Don't Gild the Lily is eleven tracks built around that exact premise, owning who you are, the polished version and the one crying on the floor about a breakup, with equal honesty. The LA-based singer-songwriter describes it as an album about embracing everything life has to offer, "whether it's good or bad." Simple in theory. Harder in practice, especially when you're writing from the middle of it.

The Inspiration You Didn't Ask For

The record didn't start where it ended. Forte began writing in a genuinely happy place, in love, creatively alive, but hungry for an audience. Those early songs, Loners on the West and Stardust, carry that energy. Then came a breakup, mid-process, and the album shifted. Out of the Blue and The Luckiest arrived from somewhere rawer. Sometimes, the most honest material finds you whether you're ready for it or not.

What makes the record feel cohesive despite that emotional whiplash is Forte's instinct for restraint. She describes her songwriting as poetic, less interested in spelling everything out than in leaving room for the listener to find their own way in. "People can relate to it in their own way that might be different than the experience I had," she says. At the same time, this album pushed her toward bluntness in ways her earlier work didn't. More directness. More edge. The kind of thing she admits she probably wouldn't say out loud to someone's face, but that felt right to sing.

Live, Loud, And Built in a Garage

The production, done largely in a garage studio with collaborator and co-writer James Cain, leaned hard into live recording, real drums, bass, guitar, and trumpet. Stardust, which started as a quiet piano ballad, ended up with an electric guitar solo and a full rock build at its center. The evolution of that one track feels like a microcosm of the whole album: something that knew what it wanted to be once you stopped trying to control it.

Forte talks about her influences, 70s rock, jazz, the blues, Lady Gaga's fearlessness, the Beach Boys' harmonics, with the ease of someone who absorbed them young and has been quietly metabolizing them ever since. Comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Lana Del Rey follow her, and she takes them as the compliment they're meant to be while keeping the line clear. Inspired, not imitated. She's landed on "bluesy pop" as the closest shorthand for what she does: the warmth of the blues, the accessibility of pop, and a voice that knows when to hold back and when to open up.

Portrait of Lily Forte - Photo by @juliamckay

Beauty in Everything, Lily Forte Shows a Her Sentimental Side

The closing track, Beauty in Everything, is where the album exhales. A slow ballad, nostalgic without being sentimental, it wraps the whole record in the only conclusion Forte was really building toward: there is still beauty. In the past, in the present, in the parts that hurt.

Asked to reduce the album to a single word, she paused, then said, "Grace. Things take time. Give yourself that."

Don't Gild the Lily is now available. A deluxe version and a classic rock cover are already in the works. But Forte isn't in a rush to move on from this one yet. The album is still becoming what it is, and it's blossomed into a beautiful work of art.