Paul Thorn Announces New Album Life Is Just A Vapor
Album due February 21, 2025 via Thirty Tigers
Photo Credit: Jeff Fasano
November 22, 2024: Today, Southern singer-songwriter Paul Thorn announced his new album Life Is Just A Vapor will be released on February 21 via Thirty Tigers. The album is an outspoken account of the life lessons Thorn has experienced throughout his unique and extensive career, and a reflection of his 6 decades on this planet. Along with the announcement, Thorn also shared the lead single and album opener, “Tough Times Don’t Last,” a bluesy, resilient track offering words of support and encouragement meant to uplift the listener, especially in times of struggle.
"’Tough Times Don’t Last’ is a song that everyone can relate to as we’re all looking at something that’s hard to face at one time or another,’” Thorn explains. “There are two kinds of people in the world. There are people that lay down and cry when faced with adversity and there are those that understand that you have to sometimes fight your way back up. Things can get better but you have to stay tough to endure and this song is about that."
When it comes to songwriting, less is more, and simplicity is strength. Just ask Paul Thorn, who’s spent three decades turning soulful grooves and small syllables into songs that pack a big wallop. Maybe he learned the power of minimalism from his years as a pro boxer; maybe it just comes naturally. But whether he’s targeting heads, hearts, hips or the occasional funny bone, he somehow manages to condense large nuggets of wisdom into tight little mantras, the kind embroiderers stitched onto pillows before internet memes existed.
Whether he’s expressing love, warning an ex’s new conquest about the dangers ahead, extolling the value of holding off on sex, or listing the ingredients for making a marriage work, Thorn delivers his messages with consummate skill — and pinpoint precision. One minute, he’ll unwind an outrageous tale full of wild characters (often accompanied by his own cartoonish illustrations); the next, he’ll tug at heartstrings with confessions of love, loss or failed dreams, balancing wit and pathos with an ease only the best storytellers can pull off. One of Thorn’s favorites was his friend and mentor John Prine, who inspired the title tune. “I'm just trying to put out a good body of work that will be remembered like John's music,” Thorn admits. “I'm trying to carry on his tradition, to keep it alive.”
Thorn has earned wide-spread acclaim throughout his career from the likes of Rolling Stone who said, “Thorn knows a thing or two about shaking it onstage. Much like Elvis Presley, Thorn has distinguished himself early on in his career with a live-performance energy that has enraptured audiences.” NPR called Thorn “a natural-born Southern storyteller with humble stage banter and musical delivery that's gritty and gruff,” while Guitar World exclaimed that his storytelling is “sometimes heartbreaking, other times exuberant, at all times universal.”
“I like for people to be touched by music and get something from it, something that they can take with them throughout the day,” Thorn says. “Every song on this album, there's a message in it of some sort about how to live life.”
Life Is Just A Vapor Tracklist:
1. Tough Times Don’t Last
2. Courage My Love
3. She Will
4. Chicken Wing
5. Life Is Just A Vapor
6. Geraldine and Ricky
7. I’m Just Waiting
8. I Knew
9. Wait
10. I Love You Like A Cigarette
11. Melodies
About Paul Thorn:
Paul Thorn has created an innovative and impressive career, pleasing crowds with his muscular brand of roots music – bluesy, rocking and thoroughly Southern American, yet also speaking universal truths. Among those who value originality, inspiration, eccentricity and character – as well as talent that hovers somewhere on the outskirts of genius, the story of Paul Thorn is already familiar. Raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, among the same spirits (and some of the actual people) who nurtured the young Elvis generations before, Paul Thorn has rambled down back roads and jumped out of airplanes, worked for years in a furniture factory, battled four-time world champion boxer Roberto Duran on national television, signed with and been dropped by a major label, performed on stages with Bonnie Raitt, Mark Knopfler, Sting, and John Prine among many others, and made some of the most emotionally restless yet fully accessible music of our time. He’s also appeared on major television shows such as Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live, been the subject of numerous National Public Radio (NPR) features and charted multiple times on the Billboard Top 100 and Americana Radio Charts.
