Harry Hudson Discusses Journey With Cancer and How ‘Just Living’ Inspired His New Album
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Ralph Lauren’s Pink Pony Fund, IndieLand sat down with Harry Hudson to discuss his personal journey with cancer, his efforts to help those still fighting the disease, as well as dive into his new music.
In the intimate interview, Hudson shared details of his upcoming sophomore album, Hey, I’m Here for You (out November 20th), which marks a major sonic departure and significant artistic growth for the 27-year-old singer-songwriter. Moving away from the folk-pop sound of his 2018 debut, Yesterday’s Tomorrow Night, he wrote and recorded much of his new LP in Kentucky last year with a pair of producers and started to explore what his next direction would be. It also includes the new single, “Overwhelmed.”
“I think the inspiration came from just living,” he says. Hudson’s twenties have been plagued with a remarkable number of hurdles: At age 20, he was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer that originates in white blood cells. Thankfully, he beat the disease by age 21 and channeled the journals he kept during chemotherapy into some of his earliest releases. Just as he was releasing his first album, however, Hudson’s father died, flipping his life upside down once more.
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“I thought I knew what death and that stuff would feel like, [like] grieving,” he explains, “but you don’t know until you go through it and it’s such a difficult thing. It’s the hardest thing to go through. I never even dealt with the grieving process, so this year was my grieving process.”
Along with his new album, Hudson is launching his own therapy foundation. Hey, I’m Here for You will work as an extension of Hudson’s previous work with Teen Cancer America and help see through projects he has already launched for the foundation. This includes the $500,000 he raised in 2017 with close friend Kylie Jenner to create a new cancer lounge at Vanderbilt University.
Hudson joined in Ralph Lauren’s More Conversations, More Love campaign to help in their fight against cancer, and by sporting the brand’s “Live Love” graphic tee. One-hundred percent of the purchase price from the sale of each graphic T-shirt and 25 percent of the purchase price from the sale of all other items in the Pink Pony Collection will be donated to the Pink Pony Fund of the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation or to an international network of cancer charities.
The collection is available in select Ralph Lauren retail stores, on RalphLauren.com, at Macy’s, and in select global wholesale stores. Learn more about Pink Pony and the More Conversations, More Love campaign here.
