Q&A: 'American Idol' winner Abi Carter bringing No Amount of Dark tour to Pittsburgh

Abi Carter’s No Amount of Dark tour got off to a great start last week — other than some faulty air conditioning in Texas.

“In a 15-seater van where only the front AC works and nobody gets any airflow in the back, it’s quite miserable,” Carter said Wednesday. “We’ve already driven like 30 hours in this situation.”

The Season 22 winner of “American Idol” remained in good spirits, however, in a call from a Starbucks in Dallas while the van was being serviced. Carter is touring in support of her 2024 debut album, “ghosts in the backyard,” with an Oct. 28 stop at City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District, which will be her first visit to the city.

Carter, who wowed “American Idol” judges during her audition with a stirring rendition of “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish, has released a pair of singles this year. After getting her start as a street busker, Carter has become even more comfortable in the spotlight.

“I feel like who I was as a performer, even a year ago, even when I was on the show, I’ve definitely grown,” she said. “I think that the show, ‘American Idol,’ helped me figure out how to perform, but then I’ve definitely honed it into my own thing now, something that I feel really represents me and that I’m very comfortable with and represents my art and my songs and everything.”

In the Zoom conversation from Dallas, Carter spoke with TribLive about her “Idol” experience, her two newest singles, her 2026 plans and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.

How would you describe the past 16 months since you were on “American Idol”?

Wow. Liberating, honestly. I feel like I’ve gotten the opportunity to just be who I am as a person and to explore the things that I want to do as an artist, explore the kinds of songs that I want to write, the kind of person that I want to be, and how I want to come off and convey myself. That has certainly been a journey. It’s certainly been a learning curve, like how to present yourself out in the world. What do you want people to see? What do you want people to feel when they listen to your things? Or what do you want them to understand about you, looking at you? That’s just been very interesting. I’ve gotten the opportunity to very personally curate what that’s going to be and what my music is about and who I am. I’ve just gotten to choose what I do, and I get to go on tour if I want to, and I get to play shows if I want to, and I get to release music. It’s all things that I love.

Does it feel like you’re maybe more in control of what you want to do, your destiny, vs. when you’re on “American Idol,” you might have to do certain things and now you just have that freedom opened up to you?

“American Idol” is a show, and every week they have themed weeks. So like this week is rock ‘n’ roll week, and the next week is songs that make you want to dance. The next week after that is Disney week. So you have to choose things. It’s hard to be an artist in that capacity when, I don’t know, if you’re making songs or your genre is just very different than the genres they’re pushing. It can put you into a little bit of a rough spot sometimes, but it also gave me this opportunity to be an artist, because I certainly wasn’t one before. I was just a busker on the side of the street. Going on that show and trying out all of those different genres helped me figure out where I felt I landed the best. So now I get to have that choice for instance. I find something that I love and then the next week we change genres. I’m like, ah, crap, now I gotta go do that real quick. But it was awesome. It was like a bootcamp for what the industry is like and a trial run for what you want to do.

Do you miss those busking days at all?

Oh, of course, I miss it all the time. In fact, I’m doing a little thing on this tour where I’m using an app that allows people to submit a request or choose something that I’ve put in the app, maybe just a random song. They get to vote for it, upvote it, kind of like Reddit. And whatever the top-voted song is, whether that’s something that a random person has submitted that I’ve never done before or something that I’ve maybe suggested, I play that in my set on the tour. It reminds me exactly what busking used to be like, just being on the side of the street and taking those requests. It’s always my favorite thing to do things I’ve never done before because it keeps things very fresh. And it’s just fun. It’s just interesting.

When you were performing the Billie Eilish song for your audition, how nerve wracking was that, because it really looked like you put yourself into the performance?

Well, absolutely, that song became a classic the moment it was released, I feel, and so many people have related to it in a way that is quite unprecedented. I think that it really conveys so many emotions that so many people around the world struggle with. And to know that that was the moment that could quite possibly change my life, and evidently has, it was a lot of weight. There was a lot of weight to that. I just remember hoping that I would do it in a way that would resonate with people in the way that Billie Eilish made it resonate with people. And absolutely, that was nerve wracking. I didn’t know if I was gonna live up to it.

I remember thinking that I was probably not even gonna be aired. I was doing these auditions, I went through the whole process, and the whole time I was just generally calm because I was like, oh, this isn’t even gonna make it. This isn’t going on TV, they’re not gonna use this. And even if I do make it through, I’m gonna be some extra in the background, somebody that gets eliminated in the next round and it’s fine. I feel like if you set your expectations really low, it gives you the opportunity to be calmer in the moment. So I just kind of blacked out. I went into that room and I had not a thought in my mind except for what I was singing and what the song was about. I think that’s what helped me to connect to it so well and sing it the way that I really intended to.

It looks like the judges certainly had higher expectations for you after hearing that.

(laughs) I guess so. So I worried the whole time that I had shot myself in the foot, like maybe I’d done my best performance and everything was just downhill from there. But luckily I got a couple more moments on the show to really express myself, and it was great. It was a great time.

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Now that “ghosts in the backyard” has been out for almost a year, what can you take away from the experience of making your debut album?

Oh my gosh, I think that I take away a lot of knowledge honestly. I got a whole lot of experience doing that. I got to understand what it even looked like to release a song and what that looks like. And when you pitch it to DSP, getting it on playlists and how promoting it goes and how much social media goes into that. It’s a learning curve, and I think I’m gonna be on this learning curve for the rest of my life. I’m certainly gonna be continuing to struggle and learn and succeed. I think that I would love to take more time on my art. I think that I really wanted to release things as quickly as I possibly could to be able to capitalize on that momentum coming off off “American Idol.”

I’m so proud of everything that I did. Every song on that album feels so directly from me, but man, I was stressed out. (laughs) I was so stressed out during that time feeling like, I don’t know, maybe they weren’t good enough. Maybe I wanted more time to work on production or fix a vocal, but it was very much like we have to get this done. We have to do it now. We have to do it before the end of the year, and we can’t wait too long. Otherwise, you’re getting into Christmas music, and nobody’s gonna listen to your album because they’re listening to Christmas music. So we just went as fast as we possibly could. At the end of the day, it was amazing and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy about it. But in the future, I certainly wanna be able to sit with these a little more and create a world around the songs that I’m making and more visuals and things like that.

How does that then tie into the two singles released this year? Do you feel like you’ve had more time with them?

Totally. I wrote “2009 barbie dreamhouse” in January when I was at my sister’s house. She had just given birth to my first niece. I remember sitting in her house at the piano looking around and realizing that she had made such a beautiful thing. She had made this safe home where love and support and kindness just spilled out. My niece was gonna grow up with so much love around her. That wasn’t necessarily the life me and my sister had growing up. So I remember sitting down and writing this song about how I wanted to build that for myself and how I could see the struggles that we went through and realized that we had the opportunity to take that into our own control and the life that she wants, the life that she builds. It’s just up to you to get that.

But I released it in September. I sat with it for such a long time, and it turned into this amazing thing. If I had written it then and released it a month later, it would have had different lyrics, and it would have been a whole different song. I wouldn’t have done the production the way that I did. It wouldn’t have a wicked guitar solo in it because I wouldn’t have been able to make that. I think sitting on things for a while also gives me the opportunity to make sure that you love it because sometimes you can be so close to a picture and not really take a step back and see it for the entirety of what it is. I feel like you can make something to be really proud of at first. And then a week later comes and you’re like, why did I write that lyric? Like why? That was stupid. That was cringey. That wasn’t good at all. And I thought it was great in the moment. This has given me the opportunity to sit with it and be like, yeah, I really do like that, and I really am proud of that. I would write that today and I would release it again today, exactly the way that it is.

What about your other song, “melancholia sober”?

That was so much fun. I think that I wrote that in July or something like that. It was right before my birthday, and I was thinking about what it was like to grow up and how I feel like I’m constantly stuck in the state of missing people, missing friends, missing a vibe that I used to feel so connected to and I mean like childlike whimsy and a lack of responsibility and care. Things aren’t so serious to you when you’re a kid, and I was just sitting there in this room with these two other writers and missing that, and I remember being like, man, what do I want to write about today? So I went on Pinterest and sometimes you can get inspiration from photos or small little quotes. The girls are on Pinterest, they are making some stuff there still, and I just remember seeing some things and childhood photos with some sort of ethereal whimsy grain on it, and I was like man, God, I miss that so much.

So I wrote this song about wanting to grow and about wanting to live in the moment and to take things as they are in the moment now, to enjoy them the same way that I enjoyed them at the time back when I was living in that era. I just realized that I’m actually living, like the good years are right now, the best years of your life are exactly where you are and where you’re living. Amazing things have happened to me, and why can’t I stop being sad about not being seven years old anymore. That makes no sense. I wrote that song about thinking that I’ve been happy, that I have been living in a moment and realizing that I’ve actually been missing it this whole time because I’ve been holding on to something that doesn’t exist anymore. So I came up with this concept of “melancholia sober.” It’s almost like an addiction. I think that depression in a way is 100%, it’s like an addiction, it’s like a mental state, and my mental state was melancholy and I was like, you know what, I wish that I was melancholia sober. I wish that I was no longer a melancholy-aholic and living in the moment, so I’ve made a vow, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna be happy. I am gonna be melancholia sober. (laughs)

We’re nearing the end of 2025, so what are you thinking about for 2026 and the future beyond that?

More music, more shows, more touring. I love meeting people. I’m a massive extrovert. I love talking to people for the first time. I love connecting with people, and this is my favorite part of my job, to be able to go on tours and to play shows, to actually sing and to meet people, that’s like 100% what I wanna do.