Meet the Up-and-Coming Songwriters of Boston College
From string quartets to rock bands, jazz ensembles to a cappella groups – the music scene at Boston College is filled with a wide range of genres and musicians from different backgrounds. It is here that we also find new songs coming to life, where lyrics and melodies offer a vessel for students to navigate their inner world and the world around them through creative expression.
Seeking to dive deeper into the original music being produced on campus, I had the opportunity to speak with four students and songwriters – Eden Cassidy McPherson, Abby Hayes, Tom Vosganian, and Noah Ross.
Eden recently released her first single, healer, on October 3rd, 2025, which she wrote and produced by herself. But she began her musical journey playing the violin, which has since become her main instrument, at around age 4. She has also always enjoyed singing, performing in her middle school choir and at open mics during her middle and high school years. Since coming to college, she gradually began writing her own songs. “It started more off as like poems … I would just write little poems or things that sounded good together … I started freestyle rapping, like all the time… It was just funny lyrics, but it was just really fun. And surprisingly, I think that might have helped.” As vocal melodies would pop up in her head, she would keep them in her voice memos. Eventually, she started to record her ideas in GarageBand. “Must have been senior year of high school, or like the beginning of college, that I got a mic. And I think that’s when I was like, ‘Oh! Let’s just do this.’”
For Abby, her singer-songwriter roots trace back to middle school: “I have been singing since, like … I want to say since sixth grade … and then I play guitar. I taught myself how to play the summer before my senior year of high school, so I’ve been playing for, like, two years now.” Being a self-taught musician, she started performing more frequently in high school. She also has a musical presence on social media platforms such as TikTok, where she shares videos of herself singing and accompanying herself on guitar, as she performs both covers and original music. “I started writing… around the same time I started playing guitar, because it was kind of easy for me to play chords together, and then be like, okay, I can make something out of this.” She describes her music as indie- or bedroom-pop.
Noah and Tom, on the other hand, have been members of Pedestrian – a band with a mixture of shoegaze, punk, and classic rock sound – since September of their freshman year. It all started when Noah, now the bassist of the group, formed the band and asked Tom, the lead guitarist, to join. Tom explained, “Noah said he was putting together a band in the Music Guild’s GroupMe, and I felt like checking it out. Then we jammed, and it seemed as though we were kind of on, like, similar musical wavelengths … We also have a lead singer, Cecilia, who’s very good and provides some good dynamic … obviously a much different range than Noah and I’s voices. And yeah, five drummers later, you know, we’re still doing this and trying to … make our mark on the BC band scene.” Their songwriting process began as members started bringing in pre-written material. Noah recalls that he and Tom both brought in some songs that were already written: “Tom came in with one called Orange Flower, which is a lovely, jazzy number – with a bassline that lives in my head, rent-free, 24/7, 365.” Noah also came in with a song titled “Convenience Store Angel,” and according to Tom, “it could be something The Smashing Pumpkins or … some other similar group wrote.”
The songwriting process looks different for every musician. “It kind of depends on each song,” Abby explains. “I’ll think of a random lyric, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that could be good.’ And I’ll put that in my notes app. And then, sometimes I’ll come back to it, sometimes I don’t. But when I come back to it, I try to build upon the lyric that I wrote already … And then sometimes when I’m practicing guitar, I’ll come across … a melody … and then I kind of build lyrics off that.”
Eden, who describes her music as chill, bass-heavy, and experimental, says that the idea for her first single came from her sleep. “I thought of the instruments first from a dream. So, I woke up, and then I was like, ‘That was good!’ … So, I took a voice memo of it.”
For Pedestrian, their songs also often start from instrumental ideas. “Every now and then, Noah will send me lyrics without chords to it. But, you know, the songs that we have right now, and I think some of our best songs, started out with Noah putting together a main riff or some chords, and I’ll throw some lyrics in there.” Tom thinks back on their previous songwriting sessions,“I think our most productive session was around late February of last semester. And we just kind of sat down and pulled out some things we had in our back pockets, and then tried to work some lyrics in there, and we managed to get some stuff ready for Battle of the Bands that semester.”
Personal experiences are often what inspire many people to write and perform music in the first place. Abby started out by writing from her imagination, but her songs have become more personal over time. “I feel like over the last year, a lot has happened in my life, so my songs started to become more personal … I feel like I can connect to it more.”
“There are three kinds of things that I write about,” Noah points out. “The first is falling in love, the second is feeling like a creep, and then the third is … being jealous of other people … because those are the things that are really emotionally salient, and the latter two are by far the easiest to write about, because writing about happy things without sounding cringey is extremely difficult.”
Songwriting is not always an intuitive process, and most people experience roadblocks along the way. “Songwriting does not come naturally to me, Noah explains. “I think [there are] very, very few people for whom songwriting comes naturally.”
Feedback from others also plays an important role in many people’s songwriting. “I would send out the first thing to some friends,” Eden thinks back on the suggestions she received from her friends. “I think [my friend] just said to add more instrumentals. And then my other friend … she was like, ‘You could add more bass.’ And that really changed it a lot.”
Abby shares her music with her roommates, family members, and her producer. When she gets critiques, it is a balancing act to decide whether the song would be better if others’ suggestions are incorporated, or if she should stay true to her original ideas. “I feel like I used to really reevaluate, like, ‘Oh my god, this song is bad, and then this song must also be bad.’ But I don’t know, it’s so subjective… I want to make stuff that people want to listen to, but I also don’t want it to not sound like me.”
I asked the four songwriters what advice they would give to people wanting to start writing their own music.
“Just do it,” Eden says. “I was really scared to release [the song], because I was like, it’s just not perfect … And then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, no one cares, and you should just release it.’”
Abby also has a similar message. “I would say just keep writing. Even if you think it’s bad, even if you don’t like it … But you just have to keep pushing yourself… because your writing will get better. You just have to start somewhere, and I think that’s the hardest part sometimes.” She also encourages new songwriters to welcome feedback. “Be open to critiques, because I think it can make your songs a lot better.”
“If you do want to really dedicate yourself to writing music, I think it’s always best to have a second set of ears on it,” Tom says.
Noah believes that “all good songs are pop songs.” He elaborates, “People ask me, ‘what’s your favorite [band]?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, Radiohead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’, but really I’m just listening to Carly Rae Jepsen all day … The fundamental elements that make a pop song good are the elements that make any song good.”
He also highlights the difficulty of writing music. “You’re trying to do something really hard, which is to take your emotions and put them into something that someone else can get something out of… It’s especially hard to do it in a way that’s beautiful, because human emotions are usually anything but.” Although there is a lot of trial and error, the important part is to keep going: “because somewhere in there, a song will pick you if it deems you worthy, and you’ll get to write it.”
You can find Eden’s new single, “healer,” on all streaming platforms. Abby is currently working on recording new music, and you can follow her for updates and more of her music on her TikTok (@abbyhayesmusic) and YouTube (@abbyhayes). Tom and Noah’s group Pedestrian has also been working on writing and recording new music, and you can find them on Instagram (@pedestrian_group). A special thank you to the Boston College Music Guild for helping us connect with musicians and songwriters on campus.
Spotify link for healer: https://open.spotify.com/album/4nHAoMZ5Wlirkq7XcWkroz?si=YtBh4lY0QiazBNv396NDWg
Abby's TikTok profile: https://www.tiktok.com/@abbyhayesmusic
Abby's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@abbyshayes
Pedestrian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pedestrian_group/
Written by: Alex Bates
Edited by: Katie Breuche