Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen Share New Song ‘Like I Used To’

Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen have teamed up for a new song, “Like I Used To.” The single was produced by John Congleton, who has worked with both Etten and Olsen in the past, and was released on Thursday with a music video directed by Kimberly Stuckwisch and filmed around Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California.

“I have loved Angel Olsen’s music for a long time,” Van Etten wrote on Twitter. “She has sent me inspirations and support in my high and lows along the way. I never thought I would get the courage to send her an unfinished song and ask her to do a duet with me and here we are…Thank you, @AngelOlsen, for calling my bluff and lifting me up, and making this song better than it ever could have been. I hope you all enjoy this collaboration that has spanned a year in the making. I am so happy to share it with you. Xo”

Thank you, @AngelOlsen, for calling my bluff and lifting me up, and making this song better than it ever could have been. I hope you all enjoy this collaboration that has spanned a year in the making. I am so happy to share it with you. Xo

Listen + watch:https://t.co/ObaTrOwSte pic.twitter.com/JpkGPoduRy

— Sharon Van Etten (@sharonvanetten) May 20, 2021

In a statement, Van Etten elaborated on how the collaboration came about: “Even though we weren’t super close, I always felt supported by Angel and considered her a peer in this weird world of touring. We highway high-fived many times along the way…I finally got the courage in June of 2020 to reach out to see if she would want to sing together. I got greedy and quickly sent her a track I had been working on.”

“I’ve met with Sharon here and there throughout the years and have always felt too shy to ask her what she’s been up to or working on,” Olsen says. “The song reminded me immediately of getting back to where I started, before music was expected of me, or much was expected of me, a time that remains pure and real in my heart.”

Van Etten recently released Epic Ten, an anniversary reissue of her album Epic that includes covers by Fiona Apple, Lucinda Williams, Big Red Machine, and more. She’s scheduled to perform at the Ohana Festival and Outside Lands this fall.

In March, Olsen released the box set Songs of the Lark and Other Far Memories, containing her previous two albums All Mirrors and Whole New Mess, plus demos, outtakes, covers, and other recordings from the same time period. She’ll also be performing at Outside Lands in October, as well as the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago this September.