Andy Grammer Channels Grief from Late Mom’s Breast Cancer in New Album, Monster (Exclusive)

For Andy Grammer, he’s sticking to the age-old advice of “write what you know.” And since 2009, when his mother Kathy died of breast cancer, the singer has been channeling his grief into his music career.

On October 4, the 40-year-old singer is dropping his new album Monster, hoping to show a more vulnerable side to the singer, who’s been known for his upbeat and inspiring songs.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of its release, and for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Grammer opens up about the devastating loss of his mom 15 years ago and how his music career continues to be an outlet for honoring her.

Grammer was 25 years old when his mother died from the disease. “We caught it really late,” he says. “It was pretty quick from when we learned about it to when she actually passed away — within the year.”

Her death, he says, was difficult to cope with but influenced the way he approaches not only life but his career.

At what point after your mother’s breast cancer battle did you become an advocate?

Breast cancer has always been something that’s had a huge impact on my life and it’s just very personal and very real to me. But I became an advocate when I started to have some cultural significance.

So I’ve gotten to partner with a lot of incredible organizations about it. And Susan G. Komen is the latest and they’re fantastic. They reached out to me to be a new ambassador and it was just an easy yes. As much as everybody knows about breast cancer, there’s still more people being affected by it. So it’s just really good to talk about it as much as possible, make sure people are getting their scans. 

I truly think there’s a shot that if we caught it earlier, my mom might still be here.

In what ways has your personal experience with breast cancer translated into your music career?

I’m doing this one man show right now and one of the themes is like this quote that I read when [my mother] passed, which alluded to the idea that good deeds done in the name of people who have passed on are somehow helpful to them where they are. So the way that I kind of processed my mom’s passing was I did something called “Kathy Grams.”

I would say at shows, “If you or anybody is going through trouble, if you tell me what’s going wrong, I will try to write you a specific Kathy Gram,” a little song as a way to honor my mother. So I did that for a long time. I’m singing some of the songs that I wrote for people and that was one of the ways that I kind of got through it.

There’s not that many pop singers singing about grief. It’s kind of a wild topic to write bangers about. The age-old advice is to write what you know. So once my mom passed, I became pretty fascinated with just the idea of what happens when we pass. And then the idea of how do you honor people that have passed.

As you continue to honor her, what was the inspiration behind your new album, Monster, and how does it differ from past projects?

There’s a lot of pieces of ourselves that we keep hidden and it’s different for each person. For me, I like to keep the peace and make everybody happy. I am a card carrying people pleaser. But I think that I just hit a point in my life where there were some things in my personal life and my business life where the truth was more important than keeping the peace.

That’s where Monster comes from — these things that we keep hidden. You can’t actually be authentic because you’re hiding a piece of yourself. So for me to sing about things that I was a little bit angry about, I was a little bit nervous. I’m known as the super upbeat guy, but I found that it was really rewarding and healing to sing about it. 

And the monster’s not as scary as you think he is.

Considering this is a very vulnerable album for you, what are you most looking forward to with the release of Monster? 

The stories. A lot of my music people use almost like taking an Advil when they’re going through something. When I go out to the bus after a concert, there’s a bunch of people that are there who want to tell me why they used “Keep Your Head Up” for a certain thing they’re going through or my song “I Am Yours” and they talk about how they walk down the aisle to it at their wedding. So I’m really interested with a whole new set of songs, probably a year from now, the stories of how it gets used. And I feel super connected when they share that with me at a meet and greet.