Though “Love Is Letting Go” is rooted in a serious subject matter, the collab with Keaton came about from something quite light: an innocent Instagram story. Ashe reposted a video of Keaton singing and then begged the Annie Hall star to duet with her. Soon after, she heard from Keaton’s team.

At first, Ashe considered covering a jazz song with the actor. She’d already put “Love Is Letting Go” in the vault; however, knowing “that [they] had some connections” regarding loss, Ashe sent the song to Keaton. Two weeks later, they were in the studio together.

For decades, Keaton’s musical talents were only seen in movies she’s starred in films like Annie Hall and And So It Goes. Her duet with Ashe marks Keaton’s first major release as a recording artist outside of Broadway cast musicals.

Ashe called it “crazy” that she gave an opportunity to a Hollywood icon. “I just feel really honored that it's that song and that she sounds so perfect on it,” Ashe tells Elite Daily over Zoom, while sitting next to a framed photo of the pair that’s perched on her piano. “It had to have been this song, and I think it's really honoring to her, her voice, and her story.”

Ashe quickly fell in love with both Keaton (the actor) and Diane (the person). “She's very self-deprecating, but also kind of unapologetically herself,” Ashe says. She saw a lot of herself in the way Keaton would act and make people laugh. “I just was so captivated by who she was and is as a woman,” Ashe says.

If Diane Keaton is Ashe’s No. 1, Carole King is No. 2. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has written beloved songs like “You’ve Got a Friend” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” to name just a few.

After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 2015, where she studied contemporary songwriting and production, Ashe moved to Nashville in the hopes of becoming a professional songwriter.

“By Nashville, I was really in my Carole phase,” she says, having recently bought a home in the area. It’s there that she started to familiarize herself with King’s music and began refining her own sound: emotion-filled, acoustic-heavy songs.

With Rae, Ashe says she’s feeling “liberated.” Her voice has never felt more her own. Still, on some songs, like the single “omw” and the heartfelt ode to her hometown “San Jose,” Ashe has a secret: “You’ll still hear Carole in there.”

Ashe isn’t one of those musical wunderkinds who knew they always wanted to be a singer. “I didn't know what the hell I wanted,” she says. “I didn't think I was good enough to be a music artist [and] dealt with a lot of insecurity around that.”

So when Ashe performs on stage, she channels the charisma of iconic rockstar Janis Joplin. While Joplin is “a little bit more rock-and-roll” than she is, Ashe matches some of Joplin’s frenetic energy on stage.

“I'm running around stage whipping my hair around and getting on my knees and doing back bends,” she says, though her stage presence is less intimidating than the rock icon’s.

“She was so intense and rock-and-roll, and I can be,” she says. “Angry Woman,” a song about women expressing themselves however they please, certainly has that Joplin-like intensity. “But I think I have a little bit more of a sweetness,” she says. “I'm smiling most of the show.”

As for another musician who knew how to light up the stage with a huge smile: Queen’s legendary frontman Freddie Mercury. Mercury was a vocal powerhouse on stage, able to electrify entire stadiums full of people with his live performances. It’s a talent Ashe aspires to perfect one day. In fact, she regards Mercury as “the best performer of all time.”

“I’ve always been really inspired [by him],” she says. “I just think if the artist looks like they're having fun, then so is the audience.”

While Ashe’s music doesn’t tend towards stadium rock like “We Will Rock You” or “We Are the Champions,” traces of Queen can be heard on Rae tracks “Shower With My Clothes On” and “Hope You’re Not Happy.” These guitar-driven songs are a far cry from Ashe’s early days in Nashville, when she got her start as a featured singer and songwriter for electronic acts on songs like “Right To It” with Louis the Child and “Love Me For the Weekend” with Party Pupils.

“I love live drums, I love acoustic guitar, and ... I think there was a part of my soul that was aching for that,” Ashe says of her transition from EDM to folk-rock. “[But] I'm grateful for the way I started out because it gave me a lane to start creating in the way that I wanted to.”