Owen Ragland’s unique sound was first influenced by his father teaching him piano at 3 years old. It was later shaped by his time listening to electronic music on YouTube and studying jazz in college. His penchant for creating music that feels good to write, perform and hear with friends manifests in his pop project Whitworth, from which he released his debut album, “Earth to Dreamer.”
Despite finding genres “complicated,” Ragland describes his music as “bedroom pop” — a sound that, as Whitworth, pushes the limits of what can be created by one person in one room.
“You can't necessarily have a real orchestra in your bedroom, but you can have a fake one,” he said on St. Louis on the Air. “There is this element of limitation to what I could achieve, and that does affect the sound.”
Those limitations are hard to spot throughout “Earth to Dreamer,” especially in “Standard Faces.”
“[‘Standard Faces’] has definitely become a great example of ways I sometimes think something is maybe a little bit easier to do than it actually is. It can sometimes be easier to write music that's very complicated when you're alone, but when you start expanding it into a band arrangement, it becomes a game of cat and mouse — trying to figure out what we can actually achieve,” Ragland said. “That song has at least four different time signature switches. My goal was to create this really uneasy feeling where you don't really understand the groove, but you are still grooving.”
“Earth to Dreamer” sonifies Ragland’s experience living and producing music in Los Angeles, studying music in New York and the cyclical nature of creating art. In “Sun Won’t Set,” Ragland shares his concern about stasis when writing music — and his love for Japanese synthesizers.
“[‘Sun Won’t Set’] is definitely one of the songs that came out of COVID, because I was in a space [where] I was worried I would be stuck in my head forever, you know? There was this real feeling [that] I could just be writing this album for the rest of my life,” Ragland said. “On some level, it’s a song about writing songs — so much that perhaps it was the only thing I would ever do. … It was just a question of, at what point is this unhealthy? How do I keep growing as a person if this is all I do?”
Ragland said he’s excited to release more music in 2025, teasing that his next song “Friends” will debut on his birthday in January. “Next year is going to be Whitworth shining optimism,” he said.
“I’m grateful to now be in a position to better understand what I want to say. What I’m coming to realize is that optimism is revolutionary, and we need artists to take that risk to be optimists,” Ragland added. “I have consistently chosen to be optimistic, and it has paid off in great ways.”
For a special producer’s cut of Owen “Whitworth” Ragland’s conversation with host Elaine Cha, including how his friend Jordan Ward inspired Ragland to sing, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
