Tyler Ballgame announces debut album, For The First Time, Again

The track comes accompanied by a video from Ballgame’s friends and roommates Joey Casale and Victoria Gagnaire Stein. Recorded live, the song is the first one that Ballgame wrote explicitly knowing there would be a record and that it would change his life. “I had met [producer Jonathan] Rado and he told me to write the biggest song in the world, so I sat down at my kitchen table for two days and put the puzzle of the composition together. It’s turned into an anthem about love of love and the fools it makes,” he explains.

Ballgame traces the genesis of For the First Time, Again to a pivotal moment that almost didn’t happen. Stuck in his native New England, depressed and isolated during the pandemic, living in his parents’ basement, Ballgame knew in his heart he was destined for a life in music. As he says, “I think I’m meant to sing for people.” Feeling he had little to lose, Ballgame applied online for an office job in Los Angeles, where he’d never set foot, and got the gig. With encouragement from a counselor, and the support of his family, Ballgame left the East Coast, he says: “in desperation to find myself.”

Soon, Ballgame was renting a room at Venice Beach, and playing his own songs at a weekly open mic. These low-stakes baby steps, Ballgame says, “spiraled out into a community. The move was the best thing that ever happened to me. It opened my eyes to the nature of risk, and the nature of betting on yourself. My whole album is about that experience.”

Tracklist:

1. For the First Time, Again
2. I Believe in Love
3. You’re Not My Baby Tonight
4. Matter of Taste
5. Got a New Car
6. Down So Bad
7. Goodbye, My Love
8. Ooh
9. Sing How I Feel
10. I Know
11. Deepest Blue
12. Waiting So Long