I wrote “Play Your Ace” because I loved playing with the metaphor of poker and the thrill of love. The whole song is Vegas energy - fast, bold, and full of spark…
“The casino of love is full of players”

This was me in full lyric-writing heaven: the metaphor, the double meanings, the inner rhymes all firing at once.

Some of my favourite double meanings:
“Bring your wild card ’n we’re all set"
“Cause baby you know I’m the full deck.”

I loved writing double sets of inner rhymes:
“Now that mysterious sends me delirious”
“Our love’s on fire and my heart’s a diamond”

And Cass absolutely lit it up - her ad libs on “fire” and “diamond” are some of my favourites ever. And there’s me, laughing and talking at the end!

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. January 2022
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
ABC AUSTRALIA RADIO DEBUT November, 2025
RELEASE DATE December 12, 2025

Finalist, Pop - The USA Songwriting Competition 2024
Finalist, Pop Top 40 - Great American Song Contest 2024

I wrote “Somewhere In Between” as the soundtrack for the moments in life when you’re leaving what you know, but haven’t yet arrived where you’re going. In the pre-chorus, I wrote the line“This is the drive of my life” because it isn’t about a destination. It’s about embracing uncertainty and trusting that the journey itself is shaping you.
“I’m on a journey,
To a place I’ve never been,
I’m everywhere and nowhere,
Somewhere in between.”

This song is about the way I’ve lived my life, having the courage to trust my intuition, to choose the road less travelled even when the world expects the freeway. It reflects every leap I’ve made that looked risky on the outside but felt right in my soul.

It’s about packing up a life and crossing borders, both literal and emotional. It’s about that liminal space between who you were and who you’re becoming.
“I’ll leave the stop lights, the short-cuts, the freeway,
I’ll take the detours, the back roads, the long way.”
Because the unplanned, uncertain, intuitive way is the one where we find ourselves.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California May 2022 & November 2023
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED October 3, 2025

The lyrics of “Switchback” were the first lines I ever wrote, it’s the song that galvanized me into becoming a songwriter.

It’s inspired by the switchbacks of Tuna Canyon Road, the irrepressible memories of a recent relationship, and the feeling of driving away from someone after the final goodbye.

The metaphor mirrors those mountain bends: each time you reach the apex, you catch a glimpse of the road behind you - where you’ve been and what you’re leaving. It reflects how I kept being drawn back, again and again, before finally choosing the road ahead and moving on.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Tuna Canyon Road & Topanga Canyon, California. March 2020
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED February 24, 2024

Hall of Fame - Great American Song Contest
First Place Winner - R&B/Hip Hop, Great American Song Contest 2024

I wrote “Winning Most Losing You” from the clarity that hindsight gives. Letting go of a difficult relationship opened the door to my dreams and an incredible new chapter of my life.

Sometimes painful endings really disguise beautiful beginnings. What feels like loss can be the exact moment the universe rearranges itself in your favor.

As I wrote in the lyrics:

“When forever,
Turns into never,
Sometimes the prize,
Comes in disguise.”

“Now the stars can watch me shine.”

It’s a reminder that closure isn’t just an ending, it’s a threshold and catalyst for what’s next.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. October 2022
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED April 29, 2024

Winner Honorable Mention, R&B/Hip Hop - Unsigned Only Music Competition 2024
Finalist, Adult Contemporary - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024
Finalist, Unsigned - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

I wrote “We Got This” about my fabulous soul sister Cass. It’s a celebration of our wild ride through music and friendship in this lifetime.

I first wrote the chorus while I was walking in Topanga Canyon, a YES moment:

“We’re going up up up,
’Cause we have got got got,
Ain’t gonna stop stop stop,
’Cause we got this.”

And of course…

“We’re on this crazy ride,
Couldn’t have more fun if we tried.”

I’d written most of the lyrics when I shared them with Cass and said, this is our song! She instantly made it bigger. “Going” became “strutting” and we finished the rest together, because when we write side by side… “like drum’n’bass.”

Big vibe. Big heart. Big friendship.
That’s us and that’s “We Got This.”

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California & Cassandra Howell, Byron Bay, Australia. November 2023
MUSIC Cassandra Howell & William Lefler
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED May 16, 2025

“If Love Is Money” is my signature song.

It is about self-worth, giving myself all the love I need, and not accepting relationships that offer less than I deserve. The metaphor of love and money expresses the “costs” paid in my past versus my autarkic source of wealth - my love for myself - alongside a powerful declarations of self-worth:
“My heart is my own, it’s not up for rent”
“If love is money, I’m banking on me.”

I’ve always been self-sufficient this song simply gives that truth a melody. It’s where wit and resilience meet self-empowerment, and love for oneself is the richest love of all.

Although not the first song I wrote, “If Love Is Money” is particularly significant to me because it marked the moment I truly recognized myself as a songwriter - poignant, considering its very core is about self-respect.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. June 2021
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED February 24, 2024

Semi-Finalist, Performance - International Songwriting Competition 2024
Semi-Finalist - Unsigned Only Music Competition 2024
Highly Commended 5 Stars - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

I wrote “Heart Popping Love” as a celebration of passion, sexuality, sensuality, and the happiness of being in love. Personally, I have never wanted or needed grand gifts or dramatic declarations as proof of love, nor marriage as the defined path for love or relationships. “Heart Popping Love” sets aside those societal norms and goes straight to the exhilarating, rapturous feeling of being head-over-heels - a super fun, feel-good love song.

The chorus captures the playful rush of it all:
“Heart rocking,
Heart stopping,
Heart popping love.”

The second verse arrived in pure 3am inspiration, I literally woke up laughing (one of my favorite feelings!):
“Baby you got me droppin’ to my knees,
Baby you make my heart skip a beat,
Come on be my doctor, [doctor],
Hit me with the defib, [boom boom],
Baby I need your open-heart surgery.”

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. September 2021
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED September 8, 2023

Outstanding Achievement in Songwriting - Great American Song Contest 2024

Cass and I wrote the lyrics of “Hot Mess” together. It began one morning when Cass was driving along in Byron Bay buzzing on a lyric in her head - “less smooth more gritty, more ugly less pretty”. On a video call an hour later, we hooked onto the title “Hot Mess”, and in 20 minutes bouncing off each other, laughing hysterically, we came up with the entire song. This was so much fun to write.

The direction Cass took the music is fantastic, I love the funky swagger organ by Lachy Doley!

“Hot Mess” we’ve all been there!

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California & Cassandra Howell, Byron Bay, Australia. November 2023
MUSIC Cassandra Howell & William Lefler
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED June 7, 2024

Semi-Finalist, Performance - International Songwriting Competition 2024
Semi-Finalist, AC - International Songwriting Competition 2024
Semi-Finalist - Unsigned Only Music Competition 2024
Semi-Finalist 5 Stars - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

“Not Your Time” is a song I had to write, it’s soul-baring and profound.

It is a window to a specific moment when I wanted to let go of life. I felt a visceral sense of pointlessness to life. Alone, at the moment of wanting to leave this world, I heard a voice say: “This is not your time…”

The first lyrics I wrote depicted my experience of that otherworldly, surreal moment:
“The world falls silent colors fade,
Angels listen and the sky turns gray,
The ultimate test of will,
In this moment time stands still.”

The crescendo of the final chorus, exhales the magnitude of that moment through the convergence of my voice: “I hear the words,” the ethereal voice: “Not your time,” with my quandary, when I came much later to write this song, encapsulated in the most honest line I have ever written: “Will I write I found strength, will I write it comes again, will I write it comes again sometimes.”

In vulnerability lies strength and a transcendent source of growth. Sharing our most vulnerable experiences is a powerful form of connection, one filled with compassion and empathy; a gesture which says “you are not alone.”

“Not Your Time” remains my most personal work, the song I was never meant to leave unwritten.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. April 2021
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED October 18, 2024

Finalist, Adult Contemporary - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024
Finalist, Singer Songwriter - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

“Breathless” is intensely personal. It captures desire, longing and sensual, iridescent moments.

This song manifested its own memory… a soundtrack I haven't forgotten.

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California May 2020 & Namibia October 2020
MUSIC Cassandra Howell & William Lefler
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED February 24, 2024

Semi-Finalist 5 Stars - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

Cass wrote the first version of “Singing Out Loud” as a birthday gift for me. She initially wrote it in-flight, but realized while waiting at the baggage carousel that she had lost it when she shut down her laptop. So she wrote a new version right there and then in Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX and sang it to me that very evening, on my birthday. It was the best birthday present ever!

We added more lyrics together for the rest of the song and recorded it in studio a few days later. This song is about us, our friendship and the ebullient fun we have together, especially driving down the canyon and PCH: “Singing out loud with the top down…”

LYRICS Cassandra Howell, LAX Baggage Carousel, California & Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. November 2023
MUSIC Cassandra Howell & William Lefler
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED August 23, 2024

Semi-Finalist 5 Stars - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024

“Seven in your Heaven” is inspired by the symbiotic differences between two people in a couple and how each person elevates the other to their best self. The defining lyric of this song is: “The best of us is the both of us”.

I had fun writing this song using retro and cultural references, pairing two elements whose greater union becomes a euphemism for a well-matched relationship:

“I’m the five in your four, studio”,
“I’m the queen in your game, casino”
“I’m the quake that’ll shake your status quo.”…

LYRICS Stephanie Morton-Small, Topanga Canyon, California. January 2021
MUSIC Cassandra Howell
RECORDING ARTIST Cass Eager
RELEASED July 3, 2024

Semi-Finalist 5 Stars - The UK Songwriting Contest 2024