“Dedicated, passionate, and unique”: three words former Perry student, photographer and friend, Kenna Ketcher used to describe senior Makenna Webb and her singing. Webb recently accomplished a personal goal as she released her first single titled “let me leave”. 

Webb recalled singing ever since she could talk and said, “My mom, she went to college and did music and so she’s always been very musical. We’ve always had a musical family.” She has been in the Perry choir program since her sophomore year and also played in the orchestra during high school. 

Choir director, Jameson Staley says her best genre is pop. He said, “This particular single that she released is a pop ballad which I think is a strength of hers for sure.”

When asked about the backstory of her song, Webb said, “It was actually based off a really complicated and depressing breakup kind of deal.” She remembered back to the night before her breakup. Webb said, “I was deciding that I had to break up with this guy… I woke up in the middle of the night and in my mind popped the first verse.” She said she remembered writing the first verse that night through tears. 

Within the next two days, she had the rest of the lyrics and the piano accompaniment drafted. Once Webb had her demo, she brought it to a producer where she worked side by side with the producer for nine hours to professionally engineer the final song. Webb said, “I loved recording with him [the producer] because… when you’re [producing] it with someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s really confidence building.”

Ketcher captured the album cover photo for the single. The homemade studio was created with a plethora of colored lights and projectors for the effect Webb envisioned. Ketcher said, “It was my first time photographing something for an album cover, but not my first time creating my own studio and making a vision of a photoshoot become real life.” The seven-year friend of Webb’s said, “Makenna deserves all this. She is seriously so amazing.”

Webb said that one of her favorite parts of the experience overall was releasing the song and seeing her song as an end result. The song is available on all platforms including Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Music, and TikTok. Webb also described her hope to create more songs that feature raw emotion and more upbeat songs for her audience to enjoy. 

Webb also submitted this song as part of her application to the commercial music program for Brigham Young University to which she was accepted. She plans to attend BYU in the fall as a music major and hopes to one day own a small studio for herself and other artists to record and produce music.