Musician Mom Canyon Opens Up About Resilience, Hope, and Embracing Her Bruised Ego

When Canyon, a singer-songwriter whose first name was inspired by a Neil Young song lyric, became a mother, the job of bringing babies into the world did a number on her health — and her self-confidence. To cope with the emotional pain stemming from a multitude of physical issues, she turned to her guitar and transformed those feelings into lyrics. 

What she didn’t realize is that the song she’d bring to life would impact so many listeners who would identify with her struggles.

“Bruised Ego,” Canyon’s first single off her forthcoming album produced by Connecticut musician Rob Griffiths (due out in summer 2025), is both catchy and upbeat yet vulnerable, capturing the unseen undercurrent of self-doubt bubbling beneath happy smiles. The song kicks off with a sense of proud self-determination — “I’ll be the one with the bruised ego, the black eye and skinned knees” — before revealing that outside appearances often disguise inner turmoil. 

Canyon’s smoky voice aches with insecurity in the pre-chorus — “Can you love me through the shame, resentment, and the pain? Can you love me like it’s the first day?” — in a way that feels so relatable, before breaking into a cathartic chorus.

“The song is definitely one of the most personal ones I’ve written,” Canyon, who lives in Westport, Conn., with her husband and two kids, tells Rockmommy. “I realized just how much I rely on my outward physical appearance, just for a sense of identity. It was really humbling for two years just dealing with all of the big changes to my body and getting older, of course, that’s humbling as well.”

As of this writing, “Bruised Ego” is Canyon’s most-streamed song on Spotify, offering proof that getting older and embracing imperfections fuels great art. And for Canyon, who recently turned 40, it’s only the beginning. We recently caught up with Canyon to talk about her new music (including her latest single, “Victorious”), kids, mom guilt, and more.

The edited transcript is an excerpt of the full YouTube interview (below), between Canyon and Rockmommy editor and founder Marisa Torrieri Bloom.  

Rockmommy: Hi Canyon! I cannot stop listening to your new song, “Bruised Ego.” But I want to start off by talking about your name, Canyon. It isn’t the one you were born with?!

Canyon: Technically, it was a quick turnaround when my mom changed my name. Like, it was the same day. She was planning on calling me Emma the whole time I was in her stomach. But there was this Neil Young song, which is kind of a deep cut, called “Thrasher,” and apparently that was playing in the [birthing] room, and she heard this part of the lyrics where he says “crystal canyon,” and then she changed my name to Canyon!

Rockmommy: I mean, it fits you perfectly.

Canyon: I feel like the story is crazy. I feel like I would be living an alternate life if I would have stayed Emma. I’d probably be an accountant.

Rockmommy: That’s so funny. You mentioned Neil Young. Did you grow up with a lot of music around you, or did you come from family musicians?

Canyon: I grew up in a small town in northern California where, you know, we lived remotely. We lived in the Tahoe National Forest, which is not a neighborhood where, you know, kids are hanging out. We didn’t have cable TV, so I only had access to the tapes and CDs that my mom had, and then radio. The Rolling Stones. I didn’t discover them until, I want to say, like, 10, 15, years ago! But my mom played piano, and she’s a writer, so, and my dad was a musician as well, so it runs in the blood, apparently.

Rockmommy: So did you sing or pick up a guitar or piano first?

Canyon: My mom actually was responsible for putting me in classical guitar lessons starting in third grade. I was resistant to playing guitar. I still remember fighting with my mom about not wanting to play, but I’m so grateful I did, and I dabbled in a bunch of different instruments — I played viola, just a little bit of piano, and I played drums for a year.

Rockmommy: Did you see the instrument as more of a vehicle for like, your thoughts, your words?

Canyon: Exactly, and I still look at guitar and piano like that. I’ve never been like one to sit down and just, like, come up with a cool guitar riff. It’s just a tool to help me get the melodies out.

Rockmommy: I want to fast forward to 2014, because that’s the last time you put out a full album, before you had kids. Where was your head space?

Canyon: I moved to New York on my 18th birthday. Right after I moved to the city, I started playing out, but I never recorded any music. It took me a long time to get the first album done (Half) — I did that in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2014, and I was really happy and excited to finally have that tangible proof that, “see, I’m a musician!” even though I had been performing live for so long before that. And yes, I did not have kids at that point.

My son was born three years later. And then my daughter was born two years ago. In that ten-year period, I did do some regional touring, but starting the family really is an all-consuming thing. My daughter’s two and a half [now], and I’m still not sleeping through the night, but hopefully soon. I’m officially done breastfeeding — I breastfed for five years of my life! My body is mine again and I have so much more free time! I’m so ready to go!

Rockmommy: I remember when we met in 2019 … I think you were singing a song, called “Kiss me Slow.” And your young son was playing on the sidewalk. I found myself comparing my insides to your outsides, like, “wow, her life must be perfect … she’s got it all figured out.” And then I did see, like, over the next few years, you and your family had some serious health challenges at the same time as COVID was happening. Can you kind of talk about those?

Canyon: Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s always crazy to look back on these huge, pivotal moments in your life once you’ve had the perspective of moving through the meat of them. So we discovered, actually really recently, as like earlier this year, that my son, who’s seven now, has a really rare immune deficiency disorder where he just doesn’t have a properly functioning immune system. It’s literally one in a million. There’s three other people in Connecticut that have it, and he wants to meet the other people that have it.

But it’s called Job’s Syndrome, and … it explains why, back during the peak of COVID, he was getting so sick like we didn’t understand at the time why his body was not responding to the traditional treatments.

I was touring, doing like a small run the Northeast opening for my buddy Chris Trapper. And I remember just feeling so bad when I found out my son was in the hospital because before I had left, we had just gone to the pediatrician, and they had checked his lungs and are like, “he’s clear …  for some reason, he didn’t respond to the antibiotics. We’ll put him on another round.” And I felt like, “okay, cool.” I could go do music. And then, of course, I had to cancel everything. That was an easy decision to make. My job as a mama’s always number one. And that was a clarifying moment for me too, when I realized I was like, I really don’t care about anything other than my kid being okay.

Rockmommy: When you could finally move through that, and then you had your daughter, when did you realize, “OK, I’m ready to do my art again?”

Canyon: I think the signs were really clear to me while I was still in the thick of raising both of my kids when they were younger … I have a huge backlog of songs that I’ve been writing over the last several years. I think when we sat down and counted them before we started this new album, I think I had 24 that were three-quarters of the way done, if not completely finished.

I always knew I was going to get back to it, because I never feel like it left me. I just didn’t have the time to devote to focusing on it.

But I think, I really felt 100% sure, like it was time to get back to work in earnest, when my husband and I had the conversation about how we are not going to have another child. We’ve had a boy and a girl, and we feel so lucky to have been blessed to have both. And I was like, ‘we’re done.’ And once we agreed we were done, I was like, “Okay, time for me to go back to work now!”

Rockmommy: I want to talk about “Bruised Ego,” the first single off your new album that’s coming out in 2025. You get right to the point right away. It kicks off with this sense of confidence, like, ‘I’m going to move forward,” but then it segues into these moments of internal self-doubt. What inspired the song?

Canyon: The song is definitely one of the most personal ones I’ve written, because I lost a bunch of hair [and] bunch of melasma come out. I just went through big body changes [after my pregnancies]. I have a couple autoimmune diseases as well that I don’t usually talk about, but that has a huge impact on my life and just my health I realized just how much I rely on my outward physical appearance, just for a sense of identity. It was really humbling for two years just dealing with all of the big changes to my body and getting older, of course, like, that’s humbling as well.

Rockmommy: Can you talk about the impact this song has had?

Canyon: I wrote this clearly for myself at the time. I wanted to be really honest about that and honor that, and I didn’t want to hide behind, like, ‘Oh, I’m just writing this in general for anybody.’ Because I had not talked at all about my hair loss. I had not talked about any of that stuff. I hadn’t talked about my health stuff either. I think I really try to always put my best foot forward and not complain, and kind of power through, push through things.

But then I realized that so many people are dealing with similar stories. What a shame it would be if I wasn’t willing to be vulnerable, like, truly and really talk about it, because then it’s a missed opportunity to connect with people.

And that’s the whole reason why I write songs in the first place, to connect with people. It dawned on me when I was down in Nashville a couple months ago and I had such a hard time performing the song in front of a group of other songwriters because I was so open and vulnerable when I was doing this one workshop there, I realized I’ve got to share this. And yeah, it’s been beautiful to see how other people have been willing to share their stories.

That’s the only way I’m going to ever do things going forward, because I just see the power in it.

Rockmommy: So for all those moms who are over 35 (or over 40) what is the takeaway? What advice can you give?

Canyon: I’m so glad you asked that question, because I was actually just talking about this last night too. I was up working super late last night at the studio with a buddy of mine who flew into town and I were doing a duet, and I was telling them, “this is the best demographic.”

For women, 35 plus is the best demographic for anything, in my opinion, [because], especially after having kids, we become even better multitaskers. We are incredibly organized, we’re focused, we know what we want and what we don’t want. Our sense of self is so much stronger. I remember in my 20s, like, I just was, like, constantly apologizing for, like, being, for taking up space.

If you’ve been lucky enough to become a parent, you know how it causes you to level up on so many different ways in your life than you ever could have imagined. So I feel the most prepared ever to do music. Now music is easy compared to parenting!

Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.