By Brett Milano

Imagine looking out at an audience and seeing banners that read “You saved my life.” This became a common thing for the Newton-born songwriter Rachel Platten after the platinum success of her 2015 anthem, “Fight Song.”

“It was hard for awhile to remain grounded,” she said this week. “You start thinking you’re something really special, and that can ruin your art as well as your relationships. After a lot of therapy I was able to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute — You saved your own life, I didn’t do that’. That’s not to say that I don’t go into shows thinking ‘May this reach people, may it make a difference.’ But I say that I’m not a healer, I’m just an artist sharing what I’ve been through. That’s an easier thing to wear.”

She catches herself when this starts sounding like a complaint. “In no way was it only a burden; I saw a lot of my dreams come true after selling CD’s out of my van for 13 years. So it was a beautiful time. But (the attention) could get heavy, the amount of stories and beautiful experiences that people wanted to share with me.”

There’s a few reasons why Platten has been off the radar for the past few years, including the births of her two daughters and a crippling experience with postpartum depression. Both had a strong influence on the just-released “I Am Rachel Platten,” her first album in eight years. Fans will probably notice that there is no outright dance music or electronic pop on it; it stays more in traditional singer-songwriter mode. She’s touring it with a stripped-down lineup (herself on keys with cello and drums), playing mostly small theaters. The smallest venue on the tour is Sonia on Central Square where she plays Sunday; tickets are suitably hard to come by. (She promises a bigger tour later in the year).

“It didn’t start off even being an album, as music as just expressing myself in times of pain or elation or joy or frustration. That was a return to the way I used to make music, which is maybe not what the world would want from the ‘Fight Song’ girl. But it’s a return sonically to how it was when I first started playing on the Boston scene.” Platten had a few of her formative musical experiences here in town; she played some early gigs at Cafe 939 and has fond memories of catching the Allman Brothers and Dave Matthews at Great Woods. But the eye opener for her was an early show by Tracy Chapman. “That shifted my whole idea of ‘Wow, you can be this honest and this confessional in your songs’.”

The best of her new songs, notably the introspective “Bad Thoughts,” address the depression she felt after motherhood and during the pandemic. “I was battling my own demons. And after I made it through the first bout of that depth of pain, I thought I’d write a song for myself — the original title was ‘Listen to This if You’re Having a Panic Attack,’ but that sounded a little heavy.” But she hastens to add that she’s more than alright now. “I feel incredibly resourced. I’ve addressed these bad thoughts and demons that have been pushing me down for so long. I learned I had an amazing community of support; I got better through therapy, meditation, breath work. Songwriting was a saving grace and reminded me that I am not those dark thoughts or that depression.”