Sadness, anger, grief, rage, and despair. Heavy emotions, to say the least, but these are the words singer, songwriter, and producer Cheyenne Benton used to describe her latest effort, ‘Corrupted.’
Released in August, ‘Corrupted’ has been a welcome addition to the New Music Pioneer rotation here at U92. I had the pleasure of a wide-ranging virtual conversation with the San Diego-based artist about the album, independent artistry, hometowns, and our favorite artists of 2025. You can listen to the full conversation by clicking here or visiting our “Moose Tracks” podcast tab on u92themoose.com .
Upon meeting, Benton and I quickly realized how geographically little we have in common and, thanks to alternative media like college radio, found a connection through her music thousands of miles away. “I am a big fan of college radio, especially in the digital age, where everything is moving towards streaming and artists aren't fairly compensated for their streams, so I'm kind of a big fan of, like, these older, more analog ways of music coming back around,” said Benton.
To further try and compare apples to oranges, we discussed how music in communities like Appalachia and my home region of the Mid-Atlantic is generally very intertwined with its people and culture at large. However, among the sunshine and endless summer of Southern California, Benton found an attachment to our country’s other coast. “I feel like, personally, I kind of stick out like a sore thumb here in regards to my sound,” Benton said. “I've been told that my sound almost kind of sounds more like it has an East Coast vibe and an East Coast sound. I'm very open to experimentation in my work, and I feel like I incorporate a lot more pop elements that are a little bit less chill and more intense. That definitely sets me apart a bit from the rest of the San Diego music scene.”
Benton has been creating music since age fourteen, and ‘Corrupted’ is by far the heaviest, most rock-oriented music she has released so far. There is a noticeable switch in sound between ‘Corrupted’ and her first full-length album, ‘Beautiful Chaos,’ a sprawling pop record that runs nearly an hour compared to ‘Corrupted’ and its seven-track, thirty-minute runtime.
“There is a part of me that, during that ‘Beautiful Chaos’ era, wanted to be very poised and very perfect and put together, classy, and all of these things,” Benton remarked. “Then, a bunch of things happened in my life that kind of opened my eyes and made me realize, like, I have this whole other side to me that is outspoken, that is angry, that is fierce, that is, you know, all of these things that I feel like I channeled into ‘Corrupted.’”
“The first song I wrote for ‘Corrupted’ was ‘Sorry,’ and it was written kind of… as a joke! More so, just out of absolute anger that I feel like I really could not express at the time. I was not in a space where I was able to express it. I didn't have the confidence to express it, but I also wasn't in the space professionally where I felt that I was able to express it. So it became this kind of very angsty, angry, like, let me just get this out so I can move forward.”
Besides being an artistic choice, the shorter, quality-driven approach to ‘Corrupted’ is also a factor of Benton being an independent artist. “As an independent artist, … I realized very quickly ‘oh, I just put out fourteen songs in an album format,’” said Benton. ”At the time, everyone's straying away from the album format because of the rise in TikTok and short-form content. …The majority of people don't have the attention span to sit down and listen to a full album, you know, unless you're Taylor Swift, unless you have the massive fan base where they want to sit down and listen, so I was kind of told by multiple people that that may have not been the smartest, move from a promoter's standpoint, I should have just made singles and dropped them, but I am still a big fan of the album format.”
The same principle applies to her self-production. Every song on Benton’s first two albums has been written and produced by her. “Working solely as a producer is more out of ‘I don't have money’ than it is, you know, ‘I don't want to,’” Benton continued. “I love having the creative control, especially as a woman behind the board. That's really important to know: what you're doing and why. But, yeah, I'm totally open to that musical collaboration if and when it comes time.”
Anger is channeled into ‘Corrupted’ from start to finish, and the best representation of this is seen in the album cover. The story of the cover is deeply personal to Benton, who brought just as much refinement into its selection as the music itself. In 2022, Benton partook in an intensive outpatient program and found herself in art therapy when she was given the prompt “draw what healing looks like for you.” Her answer? The pencil art you find superimposed onto Benton’s face for the cover of ‘Corrupted.’
“Before this, I'd had a very transformative conversation with a friend of mine that I met when I was going through this experience that led to this album. And he had told me… ‘Cheyenne, healing is a violent act.’ … I kind of had a moment where that popped into my head during art therapy, and they give you all these different tools, you know, pencils, watercolors, paints, acrylics, everything you can think of. ‘Okay, draw what healing looks like to you,’ and I made this p icture, basically, of a little guy, a little stick figure guy, absolutely on fire. And I'm like, that's me. I can't draw me in any other way. This little stick figure guy, isolated, and he's absolutely on fire, and that's what I felt like healing was at the time. … It's absolutely lighting yourself on fire in hopes of, in a, in a phoenix type of way you transform from it, and you grow from it.”
“And I kind of put those two images together, and I was like, this really gives you kind of like… I feel like you can really see a little glimpse of me. You see both versions of me. You see the actual me, the pain in my eyes, and the vibe of ‘oh, this is kind of dark,’ and then the little guy on fire, which is essentially me.”
“Very, very light-hearted meaning behind the album cover,” she then sarcastically remarked, and we both laughed. As Benton said later on in our conversation, if you’re going to laugh or cry, it’s always better to laugh.
Again, to hear more from U92’s conversation with Cheyenne Benton, visit the full “Moose Tracks” episode here, where we delve further into the world of ‘Corrupted,’ talk about a station-favorite song in “Strangers,” and gush about artists like Lorde, Charli XCX, and Audrey Hobert (who, if you’re reading this, would have a great opening act in Cheyenne Benton).
Album cover sourced via Cheyenne Benton on Bandcamp