Lindsey Stirling’s ‘Duality’ Is All About the Fans

By David Templeton | From the July-August 2024 issue of Strings Magazine

In Lindsey Stirling’s stunning video for the song “Eye of the Untold Her,” the first single from her new album, Duality, she re-creates some of her most iconic characters and costumes from past videos, appearing like time-traveling heroes to help her face and overcome some of her greatest demons. 

Those demons are not seen in the video—but they are definitely heard.

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“One problem… the violin,” intones the voice of judge Piers Morgan, who famously dressed Stirling down in the quarter finals of America’s Got Talent in 2010, when she was 23. Attired in the same schoolgirl costume she wore for that performance—in which she played and danced energetically to Taio Cruz’s “Break Your Heart” and Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok”—she plays as the most brutal snippets of Morgan’s commentary echo above the music. “To do what you do, you’ve got to be a world-class violinist. There are times where it sounded, to me, like a bunch of rats being strangled. You’re not good enough.”

Stirling puts the violin down on the stage and begins to walk away from it, only to be confronted by an army of other Lindsey Stirlings, future versions of herself from the YouTube videos that would be seen tens of millions of times and turn her into a stadium-filling superstar—“Artemis,” “Crystallize,” “The Upside,” “Shatter Me,” and even a dance duet with Mark Ballas, her partner on Dancing with the Stars in 2017. At the end of the video, the younger Stirling bravely returns to her violin as Morgan’s final put-down reverberates again. “You’re not good enough.” In response, we hear Stirling say, “Not good enough… yet.”

Not surprisingly, the video, released in early April, caused something of a stir, as evidenced by the hundreds of fan-reaction videos posted in its immediate aftermath. Scores of Stirling’s most ardent followers, alerted that the video would be something special, filmed themselves watching it for the first time, almost all of them bursting into tears within the first few seconds.

“Those reaction videos were really special,” Stirling says during a Zoom interview a few weeks after the “Eye of the Untold Her” release. “Some of them were so powerful. It was cool to see that some people got really emotional. It’s very special to see that.” Stirling went so far as to make her own compilation of her favorite moments from those reaction videos and put them up on her social media pages. “It really meant so much to me to see those responses from my fans. I always want them to, number one, know that I see it, and, number two, know that I appreciate it. It means a lot.”

As she’s done with all of her videos for the past several years, Stirling co-directed the “Eye of the Untold Her” project, something she says she enjoys and would like to do more of. She did, after all, study filmmaking in depth while attending Brigham Young University. “It’s something I think I understand, something I feel like I’m good at,” she says. “I also edit all of my videos, so I usually have some idea of the final edit in my head while I’m shooting it. Early on, I found that I was always telling the director what to do, sharing my ideas, and I finally thought, ‘I need to just be the director on this, because I always know the vision.’”

That goes for the development of her albums as well. With Duality, Stirling says it took a while to develop the vision for the project, but once she had it, she knew she was onto something important, not just for herself but for her fans. “I don’t think, violin-wise, I’m trying anything too far outside the realm of the things I’ve played before, but in terms of the tracks themselves, I took a very different approach,” she explains. “A lot of times in the past, I’ve kind of tried to sit in the middle of two different worlds, one very cinematic and one very modern and fresh, sort of blending them together.” 

For this project, Stirling says, she decided to divide those worlds, giving herself a chance to explore each one more fully. “My idea was that one half of the album would really go hard into the cinematic vibe. It’s a bit more orchestral, a bit more influenced by the film-score world.” The way she plays the violin on those tracks, and the way the music is arranged, is intentionally cinematic, while the other half of the album has a nuanced sense of freshness and crisp modernity that she’s dabbled with but here embraces more whole heartedly. “Basically, I took that middle lane I usually sit in, and I divided it,” she says, “which is why I named the album Duality.”

It’s a topic she’s been thinking about a lot lately. “We’re all so complex. We all have these dueling emotions all the time,” she says. “‘Eye of the Untold Her,’ which represents the cinematic side of the album, is about trusting your inner voice when all the other voices around you are telling you otherwise. That’s a duality. Do I trust my brain, which is listening to what others are saying and considering that, or do I listen to the opposing voice of my heart? ‘Inner Gold,’ on the other hand, is from the other side of the album, but they were both written about trusting yourself, listening to your inner voice.”

“Inner Gold,” the second single to be released from Duality, features vocals by Ryan Jillian Santiago, who performs professionally under the name Royal & the Serpent. In the video, Stirling and Royal—part of a group of dancers who are given gold stars for their uniformity by a panel of stern judges—eventually break free from the pack. From the costumes to the setting to the propulsive editing, it appears that the concept of the video was perhaps part of the song from its first writing. 

“I always write music with the intent of being onstage,” Stirling says. “It’s why I started this whole journey. Not to get famous, not to just write music people will listen to. From the beginning, I told myself, ‘I want to write music so I can put on a show.’ I want every song to be an experience for the people who see it, whether that’s onstage or in a video.”

Taking this approach helps her through the writing process, which Stirling admits is often challenging. “I find writing to be a little bit suffocating,” she says. “It’s definitely my least-favorite part of the process. One of the things that keeps me intrigued and excited and inspired when I’m stuck in a writing room for months is imagining what I will do with each piece live. ‘Oh my gosh, this one feels explosive, so lots of dancers. This one feels intimate, so maybe the staging will be more simple, and this other one, that one feels blue. There will be a lot of blue in this performance.’ That’s really how it happens. It’s very visual. That’s how I write.”

With a national tour planned for July through September supporting the release of Duality, it’s no surprise that Stirling has been thinking about how to visualize the dual nature of the album onstage.

“It will be divided into halves, sort of, but technically more like thirds,” she says. “Maybe it’s something I get from my filmmaking background, but I like my shows to have a three-act structure. I like my concerts to have a specific place where I start, then a place in the middle—with a totally different feeling there—and then a place where I end. Since Duality is more of a two-part concept, I’m creating an experience that demonstrates different versions of duality within the three sections of the show. I’m really excited about it.”

For example, the new song “Firefly Alley,” clearly an example of the cinematic world she was describing, will be presented during the tour in its own dual manner, blending lots of flowing fabric with choreography that is tightly controlled and flexibly inflexible. “It’s all about flow versus rigidity,” she says. “It’s about control versus surprise. That song was written from a place of thinking about letting go of my need to control everything. I’m at a place in my life and career where I’m beginning to learn how to let go and maybe be willing to be surprised by things that are outside of my control.”

For example, she’s recently learned that her music is widely used throughout the circus world—a realization that thoroughly delights her. “I’ve been doing more aerial routines in my show, so I’ve met quite a few aerialists, professional circus people who are very familiar with my music because of that,” she says. “I think that’s so cool. I’m like, ‘Oh, so there’s a reason I’m so drawn to this circus kind of art. It’s part of who I am.’” 

In fact, Stirling says that on her vision board—where she keeps images that inspire her and encourage her to keep pursuing her dreams—she has long had pictures from Cirque du Soleil. “I hope that someday I get a chance to write music for them or create a show with them,” she says. “That would absolutely be a dream come true.”

As a performer who often shares the statement, “We are magical creatures,” the notion of a Cirque du Soleil show built around her brand of inspirational pop grandeur—perhaps with actual magical creatures in it—seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

“Right?” she says. “It has to happen.”

There is no doubt that her fan base would love that. Which brings her back to the subject this conversation started with. “You know, another reason I love all of those ‘Eye of the Untold Her’ fan reaction videos is that, first of all, that video was made for them, the true fans who’ve been there from the beginning,” she says. “They are the ones who will understand it the best. 

“Also,” Stirling continues, “I wanted them to feel powerful while watching it. I hope people watch it and think to themselves, ‘Yes! None of us know what the future version of ourselves will be.’ Even today, I don’t know who I will be in ten years. We have to just trust in our own instincts, our own belief in what we can accomplish, and not listen to what others are telling us. So, to hear my fans talking about that when they came out of watching the video, I love that. They felt it; they got it. 

“I have the best fans.”