Conway native, ex-’The Voice’ contestant’s video tackles loneliness during pandemic
Cecily Hennigan won’t leave her loved ones without saying “I love you” again.
The Conway native and former contestant on NBC’s “The Voice” made that clear in her recently released song “Apart,” which lays out the struggles of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. If she’s learned anything through the pandemic and the resulting social distancing, it’s to be “more serious about the way we love.”
Though she put her energy into spending time in nature, writing poetry and keeping a journal, she missed things that once seemed routine and even mundane.
“My grandparents live next door, when I was a kid I went over there every single day,” Hennigan said. “Man, I couldn’t even go over there right now if I wanted to.”
Hennigan, an 18-year-old songwriter, said she was uninspired at the beginning of the pandemic, which hindered her songwriting. But she realized the loneliness and longing for human interaction wasn’t unique to her. Once she started writing, the lyrics for “Apart” were finished in roughly 45 minutes, she said.
“I was like ‘What do I write about?’ And the only thing to write about was everything going on, and that was this pandemic,” she said.
Hennigan, who now lives in Nashville, has become something of a local celebrity over the past few years. Not only did she earn a spot on Blake Shelton’s team on “The Voice” when she was 16, she also posted a viral video of herself singing in the McDonald’s drive through. More recently, she performed outside area nursing homes during the pandemic and sang at a local Black Lives Matter protest.
In the music video for “Apart,” which dropped earlier this month, Hennigan stands in a dark box. It’s a symbol for isolation from others, according to James Carter, who lives in Murrells Inlet and produced the video.
Carter said the video and the idea of isolation can extend to situations beyond the pandemic. An Army veteran who was deployed three times in Afghanistan and Iraq, Carter said he related to the idea of being separated from his loved ones. But that’s not the extent of people who can find meaning in the song.
“Seeing that person, my significant other, after being back from overseas, when I felt like I was in a box,” he said. “A lot of people who are trapped and battling mental illness, they feel like they’re in a box.”
The video, which had close to 2,700 views on YouTube as of Monday, also features Hennigan in a field in the Conway area, which Carter said shows hope and light in the face of dark circumstances. To Hennigan, the fields mean something special.
“I want to be able to look back on [the video] and be like, ‘That is my home,’” she said.
Though she wrote the song early in the pandemic, it took about six weeks to produce and release on streaming platforms. By that time, cities were tentatively reopening and people began slowly returning to public spaces.
But Hennigan says the timing of the release meant something — the song served as a reminder of the months of isolation and distance from each other.
“It ended up being released at a perfect time,” she said. “Let’s not forget what we were enduring for these last few months.”
The pandemic also meant Hennigan couldn’t sit down in a fully staffed recording studio to produce the song like she may have imagined. Instead, she sat in her bedroom alone with an electric guitar. Though it may have been a less polished, professional sound, Hennigan said it turned out more authentic.
“I want my music to sound like I’m sitting in the room with you,” she said. “It was a perfect representation of what life feels like [during the pandemic] in our bedrooms and in our spaces.”
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Conway native, ex-’The Voice’ contestant’s video tackles loneliness during pandemic."
