The 1972 album that inspired Tyler Ballgame’s beautiful debut record: “There is such power”
There’s a timelessness to Tyler Ballgame’s music that has us music fans questioning if it really is 2026 we currently find ourselves in.
Released this year, his debut record, For The First Time, Again, whistles with the winds of the past and pulls all the greatest influences of nostalgia into view, vignetting it with a retro rose tint.
Of course, nostalgia is on trend right now; the crippling reality of modernity has made us all look backwards and celebrate what we once had, but Ballgame’s record has somehow done it without baseless pastiche. Somehow, For The First Time, Again makes me feel like I am back in the glittering worlds of Laurel Canyon, not cosplaying at a fancy dress party.
So it’s no surprise that Ballgame’s richest influence comes from the iconic words of classic rock. The Beatles’ White Album, Randy Newman’s Sail Away and Tea For The Tillerman by Yusuf/Cat Stevens all crop up when the songwriter is asked about influences, but perhaps none felt as pertinent as Nick Drake’s 1972 magnum opus, Pink Moon.
It was the enigmatic songwriter at his very best, confiding in his guitar in a way that Ballgame and countless others would be influenced by thereafter. “There is such power,” Ballgame confessed while celebrating the album.
He continued, “I think there is something about everything stripped away, and it’s just the writer and his voice and just how he wanted it to be presented after he was maybe a little bit over the spell of being an artist and having his tunes presented and produced. He wanted it just how he was writing it in his room, and it takes you into that space. I still think it’s evergreen. Probably gonna be listening to that album for the rest of my life.”
As Ballgame rightly points out, Pink Moon was the sound of Drake embracing the purity of his artistry. He had constantly struggled with the expectations placed on musicians in the ‘70s, artists who also had to straddle the line of fame and stardom, which was ultimately an entirely contradictory concept to Drake the musician. He thrived on intimacy and authenticity, of which Pink Moon was a proud celebration.
Sure, on For The First Time, Again, Drake’s album isn’t exactly the first reference that comes to mind when you’re showered with all of the cultural signposts Ballgame is erecting. But a deeper dig into the album and a more concentrated listen certainly reveals clearer similarities between the two.
After all, Ballgame, whose real name is actually Tyler Perry, created the stage-named persona in a bid to tackle the very exposing nature of artistry and fame. Like Drake, there is an uncertainty with how much to give the world, and instead of trying to focus solely on the music. While Drake never quite cracked it and Ballgame is only beginning that journey, what is clear is that there is a shared desire to put the music before any of the other nonsense.
As Ballgame admitted to Far Out: “Underneath all these songs is a message that needs to be heard, and that’s serving something bigger than myself”.
