Stephen Sanchez, the 19-year-old Tennessee native, steps into the role of a crooner in his newly released Ep Easy On My Eyes.
“If my bones were emotions, I pulled out my entire skeletal frame for this record,” Sanchez told PEOPLE. Not a stranger to a whirlwind romance, Sanchez chronicles every stage of falling in love with the powerful lyricism made to shine by a laid-back production style.
From a fateful meeting in the opening song “Hey Girl” to the depths of a relationship in “Mountain Peak”, Stephen Sanchez sticks to his roots, letting romance take the center stage. His writing, however, flourishes in this record. By offering a more mature glance into relationships, this Ep adds nuance to Sanchez’s growing discography.
This maturity also seeps into the instrumentation, as Sanchez experiments with his customary sound. “See the Light” takes on a new folk-oriented sound with an acoustic guitar taking over his usual electric, while “Easy On My Eyes”,the song the album gets its name from, completely forgoes his iconic guitar for a more piano-focus ballad. In “Please Don’t Go Home Yet”, Sanchez reunites with his guitar but plays with the harmonica and lets the violin take the spotlight, adding complexity to the sound landscape of the record.
Any discussion of the newly released record would be incomplete without mentioning “Until I Found You”, the single that single-handedly launched Stephen Sanchez’s career out of his bedroom and into the limelight. With more than 475.4 K videos under the official sound, Sanchez’s career started when his song blew up on TikTok, garnering a fanbase and bringing broader attention to his developing musical career.
“I was obsessed with the style of the 50s when I was growing up,” Sanchez tells Rolling Stone, and “Until I Found You” was definitely born out of his “dream of being a 1950s singer,” establishing his sound and image as one reminiscent of an older generation of musicians. From the lilting guitar to the slicked-back hair and Marilyn Monroe look-alike in the Music Video, Sanchez embraces this style throughout his discography, apparent in his preference for laid-back production style, simple instrumentation, and vocal-leading records.
When the slicked-back hair falls into unruly curls, Sanchez likes to remind himself and his fans that he’s just “a kid who loves his friends and his music,” content to just let his fans share his feelings and passions wherever that may lead to. His intimate style and ever-growing fanbase, however, suggest Stephen Sanchez is an up-and-coming artist to watch out for. With every record, Sanchez grows into his throne as the leading romantic of a new generation of musicians.