Chelsea Cutler is an American singer, songwriter and producer from Westport, Connecticut, who built a following uploading acoustic covers to SoundCloud as a teenager, left Amherst College mid-degree to tour, and went on to release three solo studio albums for Republic and Mercury Records while co-creating the three-part brent project with fellow singer-songwriter Jeremy Zucker. Her catalog has passed 3.1 billion Spotify streams as of mid-2026, and she has sold out Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre while remaining, by her own repeated description, an artist who writes almost exclusively about her own mental health.
Chelsea Emily Cutler was born on February 11, 1997, in Westport, Connecticut, a date consistently listed across Wikipedia, her Apple Music artist profile, Genius and AllMusic (German-language sources give February 12, likely a timezone artifact of the same date). She has described Westport's “artsy spirit” as part of why her parents settled there, and has recalled a childhood soundtrack of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones playing at Compo Beach and aboard the family boat.
Her father, Dave Cutler, is a professional illustrator and Society of Illustrators member who graduated with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York. His children's book, When I Wished I Was Alone, was named a “Best of” Read to Me Picture Book by Borders in 2003. Dave Cutler's own studio biography notes that he lives near downtown Westport with his wife Carol, that his son Dylan is a senior engineer at Google, and that his daughter Chelsea is “a rising singer/songwriter who has headlined sold-out Radio City Music Hall shows.” EthniCelebs identifies her father as Jewish. Cutler has said her parents “got me and my brother into guitar and piano lessons when we were young,” per Songwriter Universe.
Cutler attended the Pomfret School, a Connecticut boarding school, graduating with the class of 2015. It was there, in 2014 at age 17, that she began posting covers and original songs to SoundCloud as a creative outlet. Pomfret's alumni profile series, “Remarkable Griffins,” now traces her arc from “bedroom-constructed SoundCloud uploads to more than two billion cumulative streams” within three years of her 2017 breakthrough.
In fall 2015 she enrolled at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where she studied history and played varsity soccer, continuing to make music from her dorm room and later an apartment studio throughout her freshman year. During her junior year, after being offered a support slot on Quinn XCII's national tour in 2018, she made the decision to drop out of Amherst to pursue music full time. “It was seriously one of the hardest and one of the easiest decisions I've had to make because leaving school meant leaving what society views as the traditional path,” she told OC Weekly. She has said her parents were “kind of the ones who encouraged” the leap, per Citylifestyle. She is now based in New York, New York.
Cutler's earliest documented song, “You,” was released May 22, 2014. While at Pomfret she uploaded unusual acoustic covers of DJ Snake, ODESZA and Jack Johnson to SoundCloud purely as a creative outlet. In spring 2015, blogger Kian McHugh, owner of the music blog The Kollection, discovered her page and began offering promotion and informal management help. Through her Amherst freshman year, her audience kept growing, and she began exchanging music with artists including Gnash, Kidswaste and Adventure Club.
By 2017, the self-written and self-produced “Your Shirt” had accumulated tens of millions of Spotify streams, hit number one on the HypeMachine charts, reached Spotify's Global Viral Charts, and peaked at number three on SoundCloud's Pop Charts. That year, labels began reaching out; in fall 2016, during her sophomore year, she signed a year-long deal with Ultra Records, the EDM label home to Calvin Harris and Kygo, reportedly using her signing money to buy a Jeep Wrangler. Ultra released her debut EP, Snow In October, on October 6, 2017. The same year brought her first outside collaborations: Louis the Child (“Slow Down Love,” number 42 on Billboard's Dance/Electronic chart), Quinn XCII (“Flare Guns,” later RIAA Gold), ayokay (“The Shine”), Kidswaste (“Tonight” and “More Colors”), and Kasbo (“Found You”).
Management during this period ran through Visionary Music Group, founded by Chris Zarou and also home to Logic and Jon Bellion. In 2018, VMG partnered with Mutual Friends, the management company run by Jesse Coren, adding Cutler alongside Quinn XCII, Jeremy Zucker, ayokay and producer 6ix to a shared roster.
The pivotal break came in early 2018, when Coren offered Cutler a support slot on Quinn XCII's “The Story of Us” national tour, which required leaving Amherst mid-junior-year. Her first live shows were rough by her own admission; a March 2018 review from the Observatory in Santa Ana noted “it was hard to believe that this was among her first live performances,” describing her running around the stage with visible excitement while telling the crowd she had “recently dropped out of college to do music full time.”
After the tour, she self-released two independent mixtapes, Sleeping with Roses (2018) and Sleeping with Roses II (November 2018), both supported by sold-out headline tours in fall 2018 and spring 2019. In March 2019, Cutler signed to Republic Records, a UMG label whose roster includes Taylor Swift and The Weeknd. She has said the choice was “a no-brainer” because the label felt “really competitive... willing to adapt and pivot” and made her “feel like the team was passionate about my vision.” Shortly after signing, she released the joint EP brent with labelmate and close friend Jeremy Zucker, led by the RIAA-certified-Platinum single “you were good to me,” which the two performed on The Today Show.
Cutler's debut solo full-length, How to Be Human, arrived January 17, 2020, peaking at number 23 on the Billboard 200. She wrote and produced 14 of its 16 tracks solo, with lead single “Sad Tonight” reaching number 32 on Mainstream Top 40. She performed the song on Late Night with Seth Meyers and sold out two nights at Terminal 5 in New York. A slot at Coachella 2020 was cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic; that same year she released “Crazier Things” featuring Noah Kahan.
Her sophomore album, When I Close My Eyes, followed on October 15, 2021, a 13-track record featuring the singles “Walking Away,” “You Can Have It,” “Calling All Angels” (featuring Quinn XCII) and “Devil On My Shoulder.” Speaking to NPR about the latter track, she said it was “the first time I labeled my depression as this external thing and not this internal thing that's innately a part of me.” On New Year's Eve 2022 she sang John Lennon's “Imagine” in Times Square, becoming, per Wikipedia, the youngest artist to do so at age 25. In April 2022 she played Coachella's Outdoor Theatre across both weekends, joined onstage by Jeremy Zucker and Quinn XCII during the first weekend set.
Her third album, Stellaria, arrived October 13, 2023 on Republic and Mercury Records. Cutler handled pre-production through mixing and engineering herself alongside collaborator Kevin White, known for work with Kiana Lede and Bazzi, recording across New York, Los Angeles and Big Bear, California. The cover art was shot in Joshua Tree, an image she said captured “being present” rather than a staged studio shoot. In an Uproxx interview tied to the release, she reflected on having once chased “data and quantifiable things” like chart position and award nominations, framing the album as a shift toward qualitative growth instead.
Cutler's friendship with Jeremy Zucker is the defining creative relationship of her career, spanning three joint projects across more than six years. The two first crossed paths in 2016 at a University of Connecticut frat party, where Zucker was performing and Cutler was visiting a friend, despite neither attending UConn; they had already been aware of each other via SoundCloud. Their creative partnership properly began in December 2018, when Zucker invited Cutler to a remote one-room carriage house studio in Connecticut; a four-day session there yielded the songs that became brent.
The pair followed with brent ii in February 2021, recorded remotely in upstate New York amid the pandemic, and a companion livestream release, Brent: Live From the Internet, that May. The trilogy closed with brent iii on November 1, 2024, their first full-length rather than EP under the name, written over roughly a year across New York, Los Angeles and Big Bear. Speaking to Grammy.com, the pair traced the project's title back to a 2019 drive past a street called Brentwood Road. Cutler has called the bond “sibling-like,” describing the original 2018 session as “three days [that changed] the trajectory [of] our lives,” and telling Read GEM in 2025 that “it's really, really important that at the end of the day, we're friends first... healthy friendship is really, really important in being able to collaborate well together.” Zucker has echoed the sentiment, noting “we know when to give each other space... we're good at not getting upset with each other.” The two deliberately ended the trilogy at three chapters; Zucker explained on the Zach Sang Show that he hates “endless sequels” and loves “when things are wrapped up.” In September 2025 the two appeared together for a Rolling Stone rooftop conversation moderated by Leah Lu and a Hollywood Reporter-covered “Musicians on Musicians” event in New York.
Cutler co-headlined the “Stay Next to Me” tour with Quinn XCII across August through October 2021, including sold-out nights at Radio City Music Hall and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. In fall 2022, she headlined the extensive “When I Close My Eyes” Tour, Parts I and II, across North America with support from Arden Jones and ayokay, playing dates including Grand Rapids, Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Omaha, Bozeman, Spokane, Vancouver, Oakland, Los Angeles's Wiltern, San Diego, Tulsa, and an international stop in Jakarta. Reviews from the run singled out Arden Jones's ukulele-driven opening sets, including “horror story,” “Mr. Sunshine” and “Parallel Parking,” as effective crowd-warmers ahead of Cutler's headline sets. Jeremy Zucker made a surprise appearance at the Wiltern show to perform “you were good to me.”
In January 2023, Cutler played the inaugural Lollapalooza India in Mumbai alongside Imagine Dragons, The Strokes and AP Dhillon, telling Rolling Stone India she “didn't even really know that music could be a viable thing for me” when reflecting on her college-era virality. That May she made her Boston Calling debut, bringing out Noah Kahan for “Crazier Things.” Following Stellaria, she launched the “The Beauty Is Everywhere” tour in 2024, kicking off in Atlanta and including a sold-out Radio City Music Hall show on February 23, 2024 (drawing nearly 6,000 attendees), plus stops at the Hollywood Palladium and Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. After brent iii, she and Zucker mounted their first-ever joint headline tour together in late 2024.
Cutler was in a long-term relationship with Tilly Burzynski, whom she met through a mutual friend around 2018 and began publicly dating in 2019. In June 2023 she wrote a public essay describing her journey coming out as bisexual, reflecting that she had once viewed it as “an unfair card” before finding community and confidence through music and queer friendships. She has said that “when I did finally start publicly dating my girlfriend, the outpouring of love and support... made it extremely clear to me that I would never be alone.” Speaking to Connecticut Public in September 2023, she recalled “a huge reluctance to kind of take on any responsibility for like representing the LGBTQ community,” adding that “over the last five years I've really grown into this place of feeling much more of a fierce responsibility.”
Stellaria's “You're All I Ever Dreamed Of” directly chronicles the anonymity and fear of the relationship's early days, written about a period when she and Burzynski met secretly in hotel rooms across New York and Boston. The relationship, which lasted roughly six years, appears to have ended around mid-2024, reflected in her May 2025 EP if i could just stop the time, (may 2024–may 2025), which she framed around “the loss of a great love” and explicitly described as “not the album,” but a stopgap release. Her 2026 Substack essays, including “SORRY I'M OBSESSED WITH YOU” and “GIRLS LIKE GIRLS!”, continue the same candid, self-reflective writing about queerness, body image and past internalized shame.
Cutler has spoken extensively and consistently about living with depression, anxiety and panic attacks, framing nearly all of her songwriting through that lens: “[In] 99% of my music, I write about my mental health... it's really more about the relationship between me and myself,” she told OC Weekly. She credits four-plus years of consistent therapy and medication with helping her manage touring, and has partnered with the American Psychological Association's “Listening Well” series as a mental-health advocate. In a July 2022 CBS News feature, she revealed for the first time that her song “Lucky” was actually written about her girlfriend rather than her dog, as she had initially let fans believe. Despite years of commercial success, she has publicly admitted she still doesn't always feel like she's “made it.”
Visually, Cutler carries roughly 25 fine-line tattoos across her arms and hands, deliberately placed to stay unobtrusive; one, on the inside of her middle finger, reads “human,” commemorating How to Be Human. At her 2023 Boston Calling set she performed in a white and red Patriots jersey, and has said she drinks two Red Bulls before most shows as a pre-performance ritual.
Cutler's label history runs from Ultra Records (2017–2018, EP Snow in October) through independent mixtape releases (2018–2019) to Republic Records, which she signed to in March 2019, later joined by the Mercury Records imprint starting with Stellaria in 2023. Her master recordings run through her own imprint, CC Ventures LLC, under exclusive license to Republic Records, a division of UMG Recordings, a structure visible on every album's copyright line since How to Be Human.
She has been managed since 2018 by Jesse Coren of Mutual Friends, in partnership with Visionary Music Group, founded by Chris Zarou, the same umbrella representing Quinn XCII, Jeremy Zucker, ayokay and 6ix. Pollstar reported that in 2018 the combined VMG/Mutual Friends touring roster, including Cutler, sold 440,000 tickets, a figure that alone would have ranked 51st on Pollstar's Year-End Top 100 Tours. The same report quoted VMG leadership explaining that Cutler's independence from Live Nation or AEG “allows us to do a little more handpicking” of venues based on relationships and history.
As a songwriter-producer, Cutler holds 317 total credits according to Dork's credits database, including 153 songwriting credits and 88 production credits, with 46 tracks co-written alongside Jeremy Zucker alone. She has repeatedly emphasized hands-on control of her records, writing and producing 14 of 16 tracks on How to Be Human solo and personally handling pre-production through post-production on Stellaria.
Cutler was named to Forbes' “30 Under 30” list in music in December 2021, at age 24, alongside artists including Iann Dior, Lil Durk and Giveon. An Instagram post from December 2025 shows her celebrating a second such honor, though this had not been independently verified against Forbes' official Class of 2026 list at time of writing. Her catalog had crossed 2.5 billion global streams around the time of her first Forbes listing, a figure that grew past 3.1 billion on Spotify alone by mid-2026. Her breakout single, “Your Shirt,” is RIAA-certified Gold.
Cutler released the solo EP if i could just stop the time, (may 2024–may 2025) in May 2025, and later that year contributed to “Starry Eyed” with Good Neighbours. On January 23, 2026, she released the single “BAD” on Mercury Records, billed in a Universal Music Canada press release as “the beginning of a bold & liberated new chapter,” timed with the launch of her Substack newsletter. She has also appeared on “nobody should have you” with Hayley Kiyoko, from Kiyoko's girls like girls the album. As of this writing, Cutler has referenced a forthcoming full album beyond the recent singles and mixtape rollout, though no confirmed title or release date has surfaced publicly.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2014 | Begins posting acoustic covers and originals to SoundCloud while at the Pomfret School; releases earliest known song, “You.” |
| 2015 | Enrolls at Amherst College; blogger Kian McHugh discovers her SoundCloud and begins informal promotion. |
| 2016 | Meets Jeremy Zucker at a University of Connecticut frat party; signs a year-long deal with Ultra Records. |
| 2017 | “Your Shirt” breaks out; debut EP Snow In October released via Ultra Records; collaborations with Louis the Child, Quinn XCII, ayokay, Kidswaste and Kasbo. |
| 2018 | Drops out of Amherst mid-junior-year to support Quinn XCII's national tour; self-releases Sleeping with Roses and Sleeping with Roses II; December carriage-house session with Zucker yields the first brent. |
| 2019 | Signs to Republic Records; releases brent EP with Zucker, led by 2x-Platinum “you were good to me.” |
| 2020 | Debut solo album How to Be Human reaches No. 23 on the Billboard 200; Coachella slot cancelled by the pandemic. |
| 2021 | brent ii and livestream Brent: Live From the Internet; sophomore album When I Close My Eyes; co-headlines “Stay Next to Me” tour with Quinn XCII. |
| 2022 | Sings “Imagine” in Times Square on New Year's Eve; plays Coachella both weekends; headlines the “When I Close My Eyes” Tour with support from Arden Jones and ayokay. |
| 2023 | Debuts at Lollapalooza India; plays Boston Calling; releases third album Stellaria on Republic/Mercury. |
| 2024 | “The Beauty Is Everywhere” tour includes a sold-out Radio City Music Hall show; releases trilogy-closing brent iii with Zucker; first joint headline tour with Zucker. |
| 2025 | Releases EP if i could just stop the time, (may 2024–may 2025); joins Zucker for Rolling Stone and Hollywood Reporter events. |
| 2026 | Releases single “BAD” on Mercury Records and launches her Substack; appears on Hayley Kiyoko's “nobody should have you.” |
Her birth date is consistently listed as February 11, 1997, across Wikipedia, Apple Music, Genius and AllMusic. An alternate November date circulating in some secondary sources has no corroborating primary source.
Yes. She left Amherst College during her junior year in 2018 after being offered a support slot on Quinn XCII's national tour, a decision she has called both one of the hardest and one of the easiest she's made.
Cutler and Zucker met in 2016 and began collaborating in December 2018, releasing three joint projects together as “brent”: brent (2019), brent ii (2021) and brent iii (2024), the last a full-length rather than an EP, which the pair deliberately made the trilogy's final chapter.
No confirmed Grammy nomination or win has been publicly reported. She has referenced chasing a Grammy nomination as a past goal in interviews tied to Stellaria.
Her fall 2022 “When I Close My Eyes” Tour featured support from Arden Jones and ayokay, with Arden Jones's ukulele-driven sets drawing specific praise from reviewers on the run.
| Release | Type | Date | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snow in October | EP | Oct 6, 2017 | Ultra Records |
| Sleeping with Roses | Mixtape | 2018 | Independent |
| Sleeping with Roses II | Mixtape | Nov 2018 | Independent |
| brent (with Jeremy Zucker) | EP | May 3, 2019 | Republic |
| Brent (Live in New York) | Live album | Jul 19, 2019 | Republic |
| How to Be Human | Studio album | Jan 17, 2020 | Republic |
| brent ii (with Jeremy Zucker) | EP | Feb 5, 2021 | Republic |
| Brent: Live From the Internet | Live album | May 5, 2021 | Republic |
| When I Close My Eyes | Studio album | Oct 15, 2021 | Republic |
| Stellaria | Studio album | Oct 13, 2023 | Republic / Mercury |
| brent iii (with Jeremy Zucker) | Studio album | Nov 1, 2024 | Republic / Mercury |
| if i could just stop the time, (may 2024–may 2025) | EP | May 2025 | Mercury |
| BAD | Single | Jan 23, 2026 | Mercury |
Chelsea Cutler's touring history intersects with several artists documented elsewhere on The Ring, most notably Arden Jones, who supported her 2022 “When I Close My Eyes” run before their own Age Tape Machine era. Readers interested in her label ecosystem may also find context in coverage of other Republic and Mercury-adjacent artists across the wiki, as well as pieces tracking the broader alt-pop and bedroom-pop touring circuit she came up through alongside Quinn XCII and Jeremy Zucker.