Three years can change everything. For Kaiyah Mercedes, revisiting the songs she originally wrote at 17 meant more than simply re-recording an old collection of music; it meant confronting a younger version of herself while recognizing just how far she had come.
Her EP, What Comes Next, serves as a snapshot of heartbreak, first experiences, self-discovery, independence, and the complicated process of learning how to love again. Rather than rewriting history, Mercedes approached the project as an opportunity to preserve the emotional truth of who she was while allowing their 20-year-old perspective to reshape the way those stories are told.
Across songs like “Seventeen,” “3 Month Blackout,” “Miss Me,” and “555,” Mercedes leaves pieces of her younger self intact. Some lyrics remain completely unchanged, while others most notably “Seventeen” were revisited with the benefit of three additional years of life experience. The result is a project that exists somewhere between memory and reflection: a record of who she was, who they became, and everything they still doesn’t know about what comes next.
Looking back without losing yourself
Returning to music written during such an emotionally difficult period could easily have become an exercise in regret. Instead, Mercedes found themselves grieving something slightly different: the person she was before the heartbreak ever happened.
“I think I found myself grieving the person I was before I had to write these songs, just like I was when I was writing the EP,” she explains. “But I wasn’t grieving the person who wrote this record. I was instead so proud of who I’ve become despite the pain I suffered when I was heartbroken.”
That distinction is central to What Comes Next. The record isn’t about distancing herself from her younger self or pretending she has outgrown the emotions contained within the songs. It’s about being able to look directly at that version of herself and recognize the strength it took to survive those experiences. For Mercedes, songwriting provides something uniquely powerful: documentation.
“The beauty of songwriting and getting to do what I do as a musician is that I have a physical record of exactly who I was in the moment that I wrote these songs,” she says. “Which by default means that I have a record of how far I’ve come.”
In that sense, What Comes Next becomes more than an EP about heartbreak. It becomes a timeline.
Revisiting heartbreak with a more honest perspective
Heartbreak can distort the way we understand ourselves while we’re living through it. Mercedes believes that, during the original writing process, she wasn’t always able to see her experience clearly.
“Sometimes in the depth of your heart breaking, you can become a bit of an unreliable narrator,” she says.
That realization became especially important when revisiting “Seventeen.” While much of the song’s original writing remained intact, its chorus was rewritten. Mercedes explains that the original version was more focused inward, particularly on self-hatred, whereas the new chorus better represents what she now understands about the relationship itself.
The new lyrics—“You’ve always been you / I’ve always been honest / but never what you wanted” became a defining moment for the updated version.
“That is the most honest thing I added to this rewritten version of the song,” Mercedes says, “and I think that tells all.”
It’s a subtle but meaningful shift. Rather than placing the entirety of the blame on herself, Mercedes is now able to recognize the heartbreak as an experience involving two people, two perspectives, and ultimately an incompatibility that wasn’t necessarily something she could fix by becoming someone else.
Keeping the teenager in the room
Despite making changes to “Seventeen,” Mercedes was intentional about preserving the original voice throughout What Comes Next. They didn’t want the polished perspective of a 20-year-old to completely erase the rawness of who she was at 17.
“I did really want to preserve a lot of the original lyrics because I always wanted this record to feel like an in-the-moment account of dealing with heartbreak,” she explains.
That commitment is particularly evident in “3 Month Blackout,” “Miss Me,” and “555,” which retain their original lyrics entirely. The evolution comes instead through the recording and production.
“Seventeen” was the biggest lyrical departure, but even there, Mercedes knew certain moments couldn’t be touched. The second verse and bridge remained exactly as they were, including lyrics that have stayed deeply personal to her: “I’m yours / but all of me is too much to hold at 17.”
Mercedes remembers writing those words after walking home from high school, putting the lyrics onto her guitar while overwhelmed with sadness.
“I never wanted those to change,” she says.
Those lines therefore carry something beyond their meaning within the song. They are artifacts of a specific moment in her life; a teenager trying to process emotions that felt bigger than she knew how to contain.
A journey that didn’t need to be rearranged
One of the most striking elements of What Comes Next is that its emotional progression isn’t manufactured. The songs appear in the same order in which Mercedes originally wrote them.
“The best part about this EP is that it exists in the order that it was written,” she says.
That decision allows listeners to experience the project as Mercedes experienced the heartbreak itself. There was no need to artificially construct a narrative arc because the growth was already there.
“I purposely set out to preserve the journey of heartbreak exactly how I experienced it,” she explains.
The EP consequently moves through the confusion and pain of heartbreak, toward independence, and eventually toward the possibility of falling in love again. For Mercedes, that progression reflects the strange intensity of being young and experiencing major emotions for the first time.
“Being a teenager is experiencing every emotion and experiencing it as firsts,” she says. “I wanted to make this record show those feelings in the most honest way I could.”
Not knowing what comes next
Even after living three additional years beyond the songs, Mercedes isn’t interested in pretending she has figured everything out. The title What Comes Next intentionally leaves the question unanswered.
“I’ve definitely learned that the human heart works in mysterious ways,” she says. “I also know that my experience with heartbreak is entirely unique.”
Life has continued to change since the songs were written, and that unpredictability has become part of Mercedes‘ understanding of herself.
“I don’t think I’ll ever know What Comes Next,” she admits. “The best I can do is write about it when it happens.”
That philosophy seems to capture the heart of the project itself. What Comes Next isn’t ultimately about reaching a final destination. It’s about accepting that there may never be one definitive answer.
Finding community through being different
Mercedes‘ experience as a young queer and disabled artist has also shaped her understanding of independence and belonging. She describes the relationship between those identities and her sense of self as a dichotomy. Living with disability has required her to develop independence, but it has also brought periods of profound isolation.
“I’ve lost a lot of friends, and even the people I do have in my life will never truly understand what it’s like to live inside my body,” she says.
At the same time, being queer and disabled has introduced her to communities she never expected to find.
“From fans to others in the industry and even some friends, I’ve met a lot of people who DO understand and support me no matter what.”
That balance between isolation and connection is another example of the complexity Mercedes embraces throughout her work. She doesn’t present her experiences as being entirely positive or entirely negative. Both realities can exist simultaneously.
Allowing herself to be messy
There can be pressure for artists discussing disability, queerness, heartbreak, or other deeply personal experiences to transform their struggles into inspirational stories. Mercedes doesn’t believe those two things have to be mutually exclusive.
“I think both realities can exist at the same time,” she says.
She wants to talk honestly about her life so that other people don’t feel alone, but she also refuses to suggest that she has everything figured out.
“I certainly do have a messy human experience,” she says.
That honesty extends to social media, where carefully curated images can make someone’s life appear much more perfect than it actually is.
“I personally find it so important to be truthful on social media that I am certainly not perfect,” Mercedes explains. “Life is a slap in the face to me sometimes too even when social media can make me look like things are perfect.”
For an artist whose latest project is literally built around looking backward, that transparency feels particularly fitting.
From shrinking herself to taking up space
Perhaps the greatest transformation between 17-year-old and 20-year-old Kaiyah Mercedes is confidence.
“When I was writing this EP at 17, I was a shell of a person,” she recalls. “I’d had all of my confidence stripped away and I had shrunk a lot in how I moved through life.”
Now, she sees taking up space completely differently.
“Making this music has given me back my self-assuredness,” she says. “Now, taking up space means not being afraid to be in the room, and certainly not being afraid to be yourself when you get there.”
That change is visible not only in her music, but in the way she presents herself. Mercedes describes herself as having transformed into a “loud, bold, bright” version of herself one that feels more authentic than ever. The contrast between her younger and current selves is striking. At 17, she was concerned with being accepted. Now, she has learned that authenticity can be more valuable than approval.
That same confidence carries into her latest release, “I’m Gonna Be Famous (How Cute!),” a loud, carefree song that turns the idea of being told to make yourself smaller into an unapologetic anthem for taking up space. Where What Comes Next documents the process of rebuilding her sense of self, the new track reflects what that self-assurance can sound like when Mercedes fully embraces it. Rather than asking permission to be seen, she leans into being bold, expressive, and impossible to ignore
What her younger self didn’t understand
If What Comes Next could become a conversation between Mercedes at 17 and Mercedes at 20, the two versions of herself would have very different ideas about what it means to belong.
Her younger self might say: “You don’t understand, I need to be better like everyone else. They already judge me, why would I want to give them anything else to judge.”
Her 20-year-old self has an entirely different response:
“Being different is actually what makes people like you more. Plus anyone who judges you is clearly not someone you want to have around.”
The physical changes between those versions of herself tell part of the story, too. Three years ago, she didn’t have the red hair, tattoos, clothing style, or makeup style she has today.
“I just wanted to be liked, but I didn’t know how,” she says. “Now I do, and that means not caring for people who don’t like me because judgement has no place in my life anymore.”
It’s perhaps one of the clearest examples of how far the songs’ writer has traveled since they were first created.
The song that still hurts
That growth doesn’t mean the songs have lost their emotional weight. “Seventeen” remains the most difficult song for Mercedes to perform live not because of technical challenges, but because of what it asks her to emotionally revisit.
“I’ve performed it live less than three times so far for some early surprise performances and I definitely get quite emotional, especially in the bridge,” she says.
Those original lyrics still reach them.
“All of those lyrics hit me really hard still, and my heart breaks for that girl who wrote them.”
The live setting intensifies everything, with adrenaline making the emotions feel even larger. Yet despite the difficulty, Mercedes loves performing the song.
“I think it’s very cathartic every time.”
When heartbreak becomes something to laugh about
Interestingly, not every song carries the same emotional weight years later. For Mercedes, “3 Month Blackout” has undergone perhaps the biggest transformation in meaning. Originally, she wasn’t completely convinced by the words she was writing. The song also felt sadder when performed simply on acoustic guitar. Now, however, it feels completely different.
“It makes me laugh and dance and smile,” she says. “And it feels a lot like retribution.”
That evolution demonstrates one of the most interesting aspects of revisiting old music: the artist doesn’t necessarily change the song; the artist changes the context surrounding it.
Learning that love isn’t always returned equally
One lyric in particular has gained new significance for Mercedes over the past three years: “If my love was enough / I’d have everything I wanted.” At 17, she understood the sentiment emotionally but didn’t necessarily understand why loving someone deeply wasn’t enough to guarantee the same love in return.
“I’ve always tended to love more than I’ve been loved, and I never quite understood the lack of reciprocation,” she says.
With time, she’s developed a different understanding of emotional capacity. Not everyone experiences or expresses love in the same way, and giving more of yourself doesn’t automatically mean receiving more in return.
“I always believed the more of myself that I devoted to something, the more I’d get back in return,” she explains. “Now I know that’s not the case.”
Rather than seeing her sensitivity as something that needs to be corrected, Mercedes has learned to value it.
“I actually feel really lucky that I get to experience so much emotion even if I don’t always get it in return,” she says. “I love being sensitive and loving. I just didn’t understand it all back then.”
And perhaps that’s ultimately what What Comes Next captures so beautifully: not the disappearance of the person Mercedes was at 17, but the growth that came from finally understanding her. The heartbreak remains. The memories remain. Some of the wounds still surface when she sings them. But now, those songs also serve as proof. Proof that she survived the version of herself who once thought she needed to become someone else to be worthy of love. Proof that the teenager who wrote those lyrics had something important to say, even when she didn’t fully understand it yet. And proof that three years later, Kaiyah Mercedes can look back without wishing that girl away.
She can simply recognize her. And keep asking the question that started it all: What comes next?
Keep Up With Kaiyah Mercedes Online: Instagram / Tiktok / Spotify / Apple Music
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