Home decor has been transformed from a fashion symbol to a reflection of ourselves. Where before we had to adhere to the strict rules of decorating, the world has now shifted to accept almost all types of expression, giving us the room and freedom to figuratively (and sometimes literally) just breathe. It has now become our safe space, our bubble of calm, or our nook of escape. And this is why what we hang on the walls is as important as what we put on the floors. Specifically, our paintings of choice.
They can be picked up at thrift stores, alleyway art galleries, or at a small stall while on vacation, but we often hang items to our walls that we find peculiar, pretty, or endearing. Surprisingly, what we hang up there has a tremendous impact on our day-to-day life, specifically our moods.
The good and the bad of viewing art
We all know the benefits of creating art. Any creative endeavour will inevitably have a positive effect on the brain, but what fewer people realise is that simply viewing art has benefits in itself.
When viewing art, blood flow to the brain increases by around 10%, meaning our higher cognitive functions are far more active.
Art can also give you a dopamine boost. When looking at particularly beautiful or enticing art, our brain releases a form of dopamine, and some believe the chemical reaction, mixed with our own emotional responses can give the same effect as falling in love!
For homes that are dull and dreary, art can easily spruce them up, but the effects go further than that. In a home filled with art, inspiration is closer than ever. By hanging art on your walls, you can easily find yourself inspired to try something for yourself – and we all know the benefits of exploring our own creativity.
It can also alleviate stress, and help with your mental well-being. Even depression can be alleviated for a little while by staring at a painting if you’ve chosen the correct piece.
But therein lies the key; ‘picking the correct piece’. The only way to truly find benefit from art is to choose something that not only evokes emotion but evokes the correct emotion.
Researchers at UC Irvine made a study into the impact of bombings. Essentially they exposed people to an array of images, all depicting bombings. They found that by staring at disturbing images we can develop a form of PTSD – or at least you were more likely to cite PTSD as the problem. Disturbing images have a profound effect on the brain.
What is even more interesting is that certain images can encourage action, an emotional and moral black and white reaction to the subject matter. So, if we were to hang such a painting in our bedroom or living room, we might find ourselves often trying to solve the problem in the subject matter, and it might cause some distress over time.
Because of this, we need to be careful when picking our art, lest we end up picking something that upsets us in the long run.
So how do you choose the correct art for your home?
By browsing. It’s pretty simple, but the more you look at art the more you will realise what sparks that wonderful connection. Try and ask yourself; “What emotion am I feeling right now?” Anything that is calming or happy or contented is good. These types of paintings are excellent for the home and will help you bring that sense of beauty and calm you’re striving for.
Anything that is confusing, shocking, or uncomfortable should be given a pass. As stated above, pictures have a profound effect on our minds, and some art pieces are meant to create uncertainty and discomfort – but these are not necessarily meant for the home.
But if you’re desperate to hang Goya’s “Saturn devours his children” in your home, a good idea would be to put it somewhere where you won’t see it every day, or where such emotion will not be unwelcome. In your home gym perhaps, or even in your art studio – somewhere where this type of panting will enhance and not disturb. Certain ‘unwanted’ emotions can be very welcome in the correct setting.
Choosing the correct art for your home comes down to what you want to feel every time you look at it.
Buying any old thing to stick to the wall is not always the best course of action. Art is extremely personal, and it must be something that evokes the right type of emotion for you.
Considering the effects of colours
The colour of your painting will have a profound impact on not only the feel of the room but also on your emotions.
We often forget that colours in of themselves have an intense effect on our psyche, which is why red is used for warning signs and soft blue for a baby shower. At the same time, pastels are often used in living rooms as they are calming, and brighter colours can be found in kitchens or children’s playrooms to excite energy.
Although very few empirical studies have been made into colour psychology, what can be said is that colours have an effect on us, and part of that effect goes hand in hand with our own experiences. The colour orange might evoke a feeling of bravery and vibrance for some, while for others it could evoke instead nausea or aggression.
But with or without empirical studies, colours do have an effect. Red, for instance, tends to get people to react faster – which is why it is used so often in advertisements. It encourages a call to action. Passion, both on spectrums of love and anger, can be found in the colour red.
Blue in turn can suggest stability and safety, calmness and healing. Different shades will, of course, create different effects. But the core essence of the colour should remain stable.
What all this means is that your painting might be evoking certain emotions not due to the subject matter, but because of the colours. Some people are more susceptible to the influence of colour than others, so if you find a print you like, perhaps try and find out if you can change it to a lighter or darker tone for your bedroom.
Conclusion
In the end, our decisions for art are indicative of our own experiences, our own stories, sensitivities, and our current emotional state. Whatever you pick, be sure that when you look at it – whatever it evokes – it does not exacerbate those darker places in our minds we often tend to dwell in.
After being in canceled in 2020, Made In America, the two-day Philadelphia festival curated by JAY-Z and produced by Roc Nation, has announced the lineup for its September 2021 edition. Justin Bieber and Lil Baby are headlining this year’s event, which will also feature performances from Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Roddy Ricch, Bobby Shmurda, Baby Keem, Lil Durk, A$AP Ferg, Moneybagg Yo, Freddie Gibbs, Tinashe, Morray, 42 Dugg, EST Gee, and more. Tickets are on sale now. Check out the lineup below.
In a statement accompanying the announcement of this year’s festival last month, JAY-Z said: “We are thrilled to announce Made in America 2021 on the legendary Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This year will be like no other, as Made in America celebrates 10 years of music history making moments. The artists’ performances will be even bigger and Cause Village will host a wider range of amazing philanthropic organisations. We look forward to sharing incredible memories with our festival attendees and the city of Philadelphia.”
LINEUP ALERT! Justin Bieber, Lil Baby, Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Roddy Ricch, Bobby Shmurda, the list goes on… Who are you most excited to see? https://t.co/SBji1Vol1apic.twitter.com/5VuGqKKXjy
— Made In America Festival (@MIAFestival) June 14, 2021
The official studio cut of ‘Higher Power’ came out on May 7, marking the band’s first piece of new music since their 2019 album Everyday Life. A futuristic video for the track, which is set to appear on their as-yet-untitled ninth studio album, arrived on June 8. The new version of ‘Higher Power’ comes ahead of Coldplay’s in-person performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this Wednesday (June 16).
Tyler, the Creator has shared a new teaser video titled ‘SIDE STREET’ on his Twitter page and YouTube channel. The clip shows Tyler kissing a woman while holding a dog before driving off in a pink car. It features an appearance from Odd Future mainstray Taco Bennett, who walks up to the woman and asks, “Baby, who the fuck was that?” The video concludes with the phrase “Call Me If You Get Lost.” Check it out below.
Since the release of his 2019 album IGOR, Tyler, the Creator has released the singles ‘BEST INTEREST’ and ‘GROUP B’, as well as the Coca-Cola ad track ‘Tell Me How’. He also teamed up with Channel Tres on ‘Fuego’ and Brent Faiyaz on ‘Gravity’.
Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which follows 2019’s GREY Area LP and last year’s Drop 6 EP, is set to arrive on September 3 via Age 101. Little Simz previously shared the singles ‘Introvert’ and ‘Woman’, both of which landed on our Best New Songs segment.
In the early months of 2020, I stumbled upon a YouTube channel called Modern Chinese Cultural Studies, run by literary and cultural historian Christopher Rea. I had developed a recent interest in Chinese silent movies and was delighted to find this YouTube channel chock full of such movies. Some I’d seen, others I’d only read about—all accompanied by newly translated English subtitles that were often quite different from subtitles I’d previously seen on the market.
Over the next year, Rea—a professor of Chinese at the University of British Columbia—and his team continued to upload Chinese films from the 1920s-40s (including sound pictures), and it was during this time that I discovered the YouTube channel was actually part of a much larger project. In addition to providing improved subtitles for the films, Rea was building out a (still-growing) website and a free online film course. A plethora of information, free to access for anyone interested in early Chinese film history.
It was also around this time that I learned the project had begun with Rea’s latest book, Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949, now available from Columbia University Press. Our Culture reached out to Rea to discuss the book, the YouTube channel, the difficulties of properly translating Chinese films, and what he hopes to achieve in the long run.
In starting off, could you tell us about your interest in Chinese film began? How did your interest lead to the book Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949?
I’ve been interested in Chinese films since high school. I was a Chinese Language and Literature major in college, and continued doing Chinese literary studies in graduate school. I watched a few 5th generation Chinese films of the 1980s and ‘90s during that time, and found them fascinating. As for this particular book project: I’d written a book about the history of laughter and humor in China in the early 20th century, The Age of Irreverence (2015). Laughter is not strictly a literary thing—it spans forms and genres—so I watched a lot of films, too. I liked a lot of the films I saw and became interested in doing a project on them.
Your book covers fourteen Chinese films made in the years 1922-1949. How did you choose the films, and why did you choose that particular set of dates?
There have been a lot of chronological histories of film in China—from the early days to the present—but I really wanted to focus on films as texts and treat each film fully. If you include more chapters and cover more films, either you’re going to end up with an enormous encyclopedia, or you’ll give short shrift to each film. So, I tried to strike a balance.
There are only so many early Chinese films that 1) survived the fires of war, and 2) have been released from the archives. The date 1922 was set by availability: the earliest complete Chinese film that is fully available, Laborer’s Love, is from 1922. As for 1949, that was an obvious point to stop, because the new Communist government set in motion huge shifts in cultural policies at that time. These changes (which took several years to implement) impacted not only filmmakers but studios, which had been private and were suddenly nationalized. Virtually all filmmaking became subject to top-down government directives, culminating in a major re-org in 1952.
I chose my favorites from what’s available and devoted each chapter to a particular film. I talk about how the films relate to Hollywood cinemas and to European cinemas—and what was going on in China at the time, including efforts to articulate an indigenous cinematic style. Each chapter tries to understand the film 1) as a work of art, and 2) within the historical context of its production and reception. The book is very much a starting point for people interested in Chinese film history.
As Rea articulates in his book, po gua (“split the melon”) is a Chinese metaphor for taking a woman’s virginity. So the filmmakers showing this lovesick man cutting a melon in half was a clever bit of sexual innuendo.
How did the book project lead to the YouTube channel? Also, some of the films you’ve subtitled have already been given subtitled DVD releases. Why did you choose to re-subtitle them?
I’d been teaching Chinese films for about a decade and had been constantly frustrated by the poor quality subtitles on the market. A couple of private companies distributed these films in North America, but the subtitles were uniformly bad—inaccurate or incomplete. They would translate dialogue but not text onscreen—so if there was a shop sign, you wouldn’t know what it says. I’d been waiting in vain since graduate school for someone to properly translate these films. Eventually, I decided just to do it myself.
I translated all the films discussed in the book (with the exception of New Women [1935], translated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow) and made them available on the channel, which I was able to do because the underlying rights for the films are out of copyright. (Some archives retain copyright over particular copies or restored versions, which I can only use with permission.) I had started the Modern Chinese Cultural Studies YouTube channel in 2017, mostly for uploading videos of UBC research on China. It wasn’t until around 2020 that I started updating it in earnest with full films, film clips, and video lectures.
Similar question: some of the silent films you’ve translated were originally released with bilingual intertitles—with Chinese on the top and English on the bottom. Why did you choose to re-translate films that were originally released with their own English translations?
What I discovered about the Chinese-English intertitles was that they are also inaccurate/incomplete, or they use archaic English. Also, there was no standardized rendering of Chinese names back then. Filmmakers weren’t using the Wade-Giles romanization system, and stars were often given different English names—so if you only read English, you don’t know who they’re talking about. Who is “Lily Yuen”? Oh, it’s famous actress Ruan Lingyu. Who is “C.Y. Sun”? Oh, it’s leading director Sun Yu. In translating the intertitles, I include pinyin [the current standard romanization system for Chinese characters] for names and point out differences between the Chinese and the English text. Representing such differences creates a unique copy of the film.
It’s fascinating to me that bilingual intertitling of Chinese silent films dies out after a certain point. Silent films of the mid-1930s tend to feature Chinese intertitles only, indicating they weren’t made for a bilingual market to the same degree.
Ruan Lingyu in Goddess (1934).
What are some of the difficulties of translating Chinese to English? Is translation a matter of simply matching words, or is it more complicated?
I think it would be interesting to cut loose Google Translate on one of these films and see what results. Language changes over time, spoken speech versus written speech changes. So, there’s rather archaic-sounding Chinese in the films that doesn’t sound like 21st century Chinese. You also have slang, instances of classical Chinese, instances of dialect that don’t make sense. It’s really quite a mix, and that’s part of the fun—and the challenge—in translating these films. You have to be familiar with the idiom of that time period.
For example, when a character in Long Live the Missus! (1947) says, “Such-and-such a film is playing at the Mei qi,” viewers will wonder: ‘What’s the Mei qi?’ If you translate it phonetically, viewers will have no clue. You have to know they’re referring to a certain Shanghai cinema of yesteryear—the Majestic. So, there’s historical research involved, and I spent a lot of time reading 1920s-40s Chinese magazines and newspaper advertisements.
Another challenge is that some of the films show signs of censorship. Sometimes the editing seems to have left something out. And this raises interesting questions about what was preserved and what wasn’t—and when. What was changed in the Republican era in the 1920s-40s [by government censors, or by filmmakers themselves], and what was changed by the China Film Archive when they released the films in the 1980s and ‘90s?
Since you mentioned dialect, did dialects make translating the sound films difficult in any way?
You did have regional language markets back then—Cantonese markets, for instance—but it wasn’t a huge factor with these Shanghai films. Some of the major studios, like United Photoplay Services (Lianhua), were closely tied to the Nationalist government and supported efforts to promote guoyu, a national spoken language. So they trained actors to speak a certain way—with mixed success. In certain instances, the dialogue is very slow and halting.
Now, there are dialect jokes. In Crows and Sparrows (1949), there’s a Shanghainese dialect joke about the pronunciation of the word pay-nee-shee-ling (“penicillin”). A character remarks that in Shanghainese, “penicillin” it sounds like“dead man coming up.” That’s a clear dialect joke.
The main difficulty is often the poor quality of the sound recording. Sometimes the dialogue is hard to comprehend and you can hear the whir of the camera in the background. We’re currently translating a film from the 1930s which has very poor sound. First you need a Chinese transcription of the dialogue, then you need to translate it, then double-check everything. In some cases, Chinese scholars have compiled the complete works of directors like Zheng Junli, including all of the screenplays. But the screenplay and the actual film do not always match. So you can’t rely solely on the screenplay for translating. All of my translations are based on the film itself.
The penicillin joke of Crows and Sparrows (1949).
When I watched your subtitled copy of Sports Queen (1934), I noticed that you rendered instances of scatological humor that were missing in the subtitles for Cinema Epoch’s DVD of the same film. Was preserving nuances such as these another intention in translating?
I’m very much about preserving the integrity of the text. So when the original Chinese says chu gong (“take a dump”), I’m going to translate that. As you mentioned, the subtitles on the Cinema Epoch Sports Queen DVD completely cut that out—I’m presuming for prudish reasons. I feel that if it’s there, we should translate it and then we can debate whether we like it or not. If you silently omit anything, I think you’re doing a disservice to the text and the viewer.
In Sports Queen, there are also instances where they try to represent funny sounds in the intertitles. There’s a scene where a westernized young man trying to woo the future sports queen, and he calls her mee-ssu (misi, in pinyin), which the intertitle shows using the characters for “secret shit,” because this is how another character mishears the phrase. But what the speaker means is its homophone, “miss.” So I came up with a way to render the character’s silly over-pronunciation of a western term and preserve the scatological joke.
What is the future of the YouTube channel? What do you hope to accomplish?
There are new films being translated now—some by me, some by other people. I’ve recruited translators from Cambridge, Harvard, universities in Australia, even a high school student on the east coast in the U.S., who is translating two silent martial arts films from the 1920s. I’ve also worked with a couple of my research assistants at UBC: PhD students like Liu Yuqing and Yao Jiaqi, who helped with creating subtitles based on my translations and who worked with me on multiple rounds of revisions for every film.
Translating these films has been labor-intensive. I’ve been doing this nights and weekends for quite a while, but the results have been gratifying. I’ve heard from colleagues across the world, from people who do scoring for silent films. I’ve been contacted by someone who said, “My grandfather was a producer for three of the films on your channel, and I’ve known very little about him. I don’t know Chinese, but now I can appreciate his work through watching these films.”
I’ve also gotten comments on the YouTube videos that have influenced my work. One director of a Chinese music ensemble in the U.S. Midwest pointed out that I was not often including credits for the composers in the YouTube video descriptions. I’d go back to the credits I translated and add those to the descriptions. He also did some research on his own and posted what he found in the YouTube comments. Beyond film history, I hope that this project inspires people to do other open access projects, in whatever field they’re in.
I also hope to enable more dialogue with people who don’t focus on Asian cinema but are experts in other world cinemas. Maybe they haven’t seen Chinese silent movies, but now they can compare and point out things to Asianists. “Hey, you should really check out that Fatty Arbuckle film or that Greta Garbo film, because there’s a resonance here.” This is really a project for educators, students, and the general public.
Lastly, any upcoming events tied to the book?
I will be doing public virtual events in the coming months, including an event on Laborer’s Love (1922) and two events at New York’s China Institute in July, which should be announced soon. I’ll be putting announcements on the YouTube channel, so people who are interested can check for news in the Community section.
Our Culture would like to thank Christopher Rea for this insightful and informative interview. We ask our readers to check out the work that Rea and his colleagues have so ardently pursued.
Lido Pimienta has shared a cover of Björk’s ‘Declare Independence’, from her 2007 album Volta. It’s part of the second annual Spotify Singles x Pride campaign, Pride 2021: Claim Your Space, which also comes with the release of an original song from Dua Saleh called ‘macrodosing’. Take a listen below.
“I chose this song mainly because of the lyrics: ‘Wave your flag, raise your flag, higher higher’ and ‘don’t let them do that to you’,” Pimienta explained in a press statement. “I heard this song live and I loved how all the immigrants in the audience were waving their flags. The sense of PRIDE we all felt then, I wanted to carry it through with this version, one that would honour my Caribbean roots and the camp of pride but most importantly, a message of love and revolution in togetherness and acceptance. Björk has been an inspiration to me, not only as a singer, but as a composer and producer, so this song is also a *thank you* to her for encouraging womxn like me to not be afraid to create my own sonic universe.”
Dua Saleh said of ‘macrodosing’: “This song is about my journey of overcoming challenges both as a trans person and as an independent artist. Lyrically, I claim that the world around me will mold itself to my expansive being. In return, I offer gratitude and pride for the blessings that come my way. When I first wrote it, I couldn’t stop singing it. I felt like I was in a trance. Something moved me to let it out and so it feels extremely nurturing.”
Lido Pimienta’s released her most recent album, Miss Colombia, last year. Dua Saleh’s most recent EP, Rosetta, also arrived last year.
Hand Habits have shared a pair of new tracks, ‘motherless’ and ‘no reply’, as part of Sub Pop’s Singles Club. Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 6 also includes ‘Cannis’ and ‘Mbukinya’ by Nairobi, Kenya’s Duma as well as ‘Furniture’ and ‘Half Twin’ by Canadian supergroup LIDS (featuring Alex Edkins of METZ, Brian Borcherdt of Holy Fuck/Dusted, and Doug MacGregor of Constantines). Check them all out below.
Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy recently launched a new collaborative project with producer Joel Ford called yes/and, whose self-titled LP is out September 23. A new Hand Habits album, produced by Sasami Ashworth, is due out later this year via Saddle Creek.
Chloe Foy’s debut album, Where Shall We Begin, has been ten years in the making. The Gloucestershire-via-Manchester songwriter released her debut single, ‘In The Middle of the Night’, all the way back in 2013, followed by a series of tracks that found success on Spotify, including ‘Flaws’ and ‘Asylum’, severalEPs, a tour with Jesca Hoop, and numerous festival appearances. But Foy’s first full-lengthsets out to present a fuller picture of her strengths as a musician and producer: influenced by her classical music education as well as songwriters like Gillian Welch and Edith Piaf and producers like Blake Mills and John Congleton, Foy worked on the record with her collaborator Harry Fausing Smith, who is also responsible for the beautiful and layered string arrangements that blossom throughout its 10 songs. Meditating on the loss of her father as well as her personal and creative journey over the past decade, Foy treats each song with tremendous care, infusing its sublime melodies and evocative lyrics with great warmth and intimacy. The mood ranges from quietly melancholic to empathetic, but as Foy coats each sentiment through her rich vocals and refined instrumentation, the result is both wonderfully cohesive and comforting.
We caught up with Chloe Foy for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her musical journey, the process of making Where Shall We Begin, and more.
This album closes out a formative ten-year period for you. What has your relationship with writing been like during that time?
I think, like anything over the course of 10 years, it’s developed quite a lot. 10 years is a formative time no matter where you place in somebody’s life – this for me was from my teenager years into my 20s, and that included the loss of my father, as well as moving out into a bigger city to university and meeting all the different people and musicians that I’ve met up in Manchester that created this melting pot of influences. Not just from new music that I was listening to, but from peers that I was going to see play or starting to play with. Plus, I was doing a classical music degree at university. I’d gone from writing songs in my bedroom as a teenager – I mean, I still very much write songs in my bedroom, but they were a lot simpler in tone. I suppose I was always trying to tackle difficult subjects in my own life, but I think as the 10 years have gone along, I have paid more attention to my lyrics and how I’m getting the subject across, and also have just been more ambitious, perhaps, in my arrangements of songs and the structure of songs.
What initially inspired you to start making music?
I’d always done music in one way or another. [My parents] both loved music, and they never had that opportunity, so they put any of their extra pennies into me going to have some lessons. So I’d always been doing classical music from about the age of eight. My influence from my dad was, although I was playing classical music as a kid, the music I was listening to either at home or with friends at school was all popular music, so really what I was going away consuming was anything from like Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, which was from my dad, to whatever was currently on trend. I was big into indie bands, and also certainly had a very pop group phase from about the age of eight to 12. So I think putting those all together and then finally picking up the guitar around 13 or 14 – my dad was delighted I picked up the guitar because he could kind of relate to that a little more, perhaps. And then I think it was just my guitar teacher that said, you know, I’d learned the basic chords, “Why don’t you write a song?” And so I went away and did that, and then it just kind of spiraled from there.
You mentioned some traditional singer-songwriters, but I read that you’ve also cited producers like Blake Mills as having an influence on you. Were you always interested in that side of music – how things are produced – or was that something that came later on?
That’s been something that’s come a little later for me. It’s only been in recent years that I’ve truly appreciated the kind of curatorial role that [a producer] can play in a body of work. I think it was just one particular year, in 2017, when I suddenly caught on to Blake Mills, because that was the year that both Laura Marling released Semper Femina and Jesca Hoop released Memories Are Now. And it was drawing the line between those and going, “Wow, the same guy produced these.” What I love about that is that you can hear that he’s produced them, but at the same time, they’re very individual to the artists still. And having since gone on to work with Jesca Hoop, you know, they have a longstanding relationship, and so hearing about that producer-artist relationship has been really interesting.
On that note, you co-produced your debut album with Harry Fausing Smith, who also did the string arrangements for the record. What do you like about working with him? What’s that relationship like?
I mean, we go back a long way, so we’re old friends. And it’s been a project for both of us in a lot of ways. Although my name is on it, it’s been an opportunity for him too, because he had not produced a full record before, so really it was a chance for him to put his name to something and show what he could do in that capacity. Because really, he can play pretty much every instrument going, he’s got an excellent ear for arrangement and string work. He knows a lot of reference points that I was after and the place that I come from, so in that way it’s very representative of me.
Why did this feel like the right moment to produce your first full body of work?
Good question. I’d released a lot of singles and EPs prior to that and I was pretty ready to be more of an album-releasing artist. Although I’d had success on Spotify with singles, you know, it’s not totally quantifiable and it’s not totally real in some ways. And I felt I’d never got the chance so far to put out something that felt truly representative of me, because I think you can say so much with a single, and that’s great, but with an album you can say a diverse range of things within one sort of sound well. You can show people the true colors of yourself a bit more when you’ve got 10 songs to your name instead of two. So I was really keen to do that.
I feel that relates to the title of the album, because in my head, Where Shall We Begin is like, “Where do I begin telling this story? How do I put myself out there, and which parts or colours of myself do I show?” Does that sound right?
I think you’ve pretty much got it, yeah. Obviously, it’s quite nice that it neatly fits into it being a debut record. But there’s sort of that tongue-in-cheek question to it that’s a bit like, “Where on earth do we begin when it’s your first record and it’s a piece of you that’s going out into the world?” And obviously, it comes from that first song, which is probably the most existential song on the record, and which is kind of saying, “Where do we begin when we’re trying to examine the meaning of existence?” Because there’s not really a good place to start, so let’s just start here.
‘Shining Star’ is one of the most personal songs on the album, and you’ve talked about how it reflects on your father’s decision to not follow his passion in life, and how that gave you an early life lesson to pursue your own. I’m not sure how far back the origins of this song go, but I’m curious if your perspective on the subject has changed at all.
It’s something I’ve wrestled with over the last year, for sure, because COVID has come along and made it all the more challenging to continue to pursue a creative career. And I think a lot of creatives have felt hugely left out by society and by the government. So for me, I’ve wavered several times, having worked lots of different jobs whilst pursuing music for a long time, until the end of 2018 when I decided I would give it a go full time. And then 2019 I had this wonderful year that only seemed to get better, so I felt like I was just finding my place in the world. And then 2020 came along. I’ve had so many moments over the last year where I have wavered and thought, “Well, maybe I should do something else, because this is really, really hard.” Because I think all creatives enter into a creative pursuit knowing that it’s going to be hard in normal circumstances anyway, but then add a pandemic into the mix and that makes it a whole lot harder. So from that perspective, I have certainly thought about it a lot. And I understand the pressures that we have in society to conform to some sort of normality, primarily so that we get by financially. I understand how hard it is, but I think I’m still learning from my dad’s unhappiness. There’s still that root and fire in my belly that goes, “No, come on, keep trying.”
A song that resonated with me in a similar way is ‘And It Goes’, which is such a profoundly moving and empathetic track. Given its emotional weight, how much of a challenge was it to really get it right compared to the other songs?
Thank you, firstly. But it was really hard. I remember trying to sing that one and struggling quite a bit, because it’s a bit more choral as well so I think I was being overly self-critical about my vocal ability, especially towards the end. With that bit at the end of the layering of the vocals, that feels very much like a classically-inspired lullaby. But I think ultimately, you just put your heart and soul into it to try and get the emotional message across.
What did you want to channel with that kind of lullaby-like sound, and what was your headspace like when you were writing it?
I realized I had never really written a song about my mom – it had always been about the loss of my dad. And although this song is inspired by that, it has more of a positive background in that it’s sort of a dedication to my mom. And that ending with the “ohs”, it feels quite classical and choral to me, inspired by [how] classical composers go away and write a dedicated piece to someone, their beloved. I think that last bit came about towards the end of the process of writing, and in the first bit, I was just in the space of feeling a lot of love and feeling thankful for role that she has played in being there and being two parents. To me, it has always felt like a lullaby, because there’s parallels in there when I think about how she always makes me feel comforted, and always has done, and who was the person to sing lullabies to me as baby. So it’s trying to come full circle a bit.
There’s a certain vulnerability to these songs as well as compassion. There’s a line on ‘Work of Art’ specifically I wanted to mention, which is “made this for the weak of heart.” Do you have a certain audience in mind when you’re writing that will relate to that vulnerability?
When I write, I can say it’s not necessarily targeted at certain people, but I think by default it will end up in those who resonate with those lyrics. It’s funny because I struggle to be open about vulnerability in person and in speech, but when it comes to writing it down in song, I find it much more easy to be open about it. So I think hopefully the people that pay attention to those lyrics and find that something speaks to them there, they’ll probably find that they have something in common with the the next person who also feels the same about that. That’s why I like bringing lots of people together in a room, to find that commonality and vulnerability that we all have.
What do you hope those who listen to the album take away from it?
Just a sense of hope, ultimately. Because I think as I go through these songs and I pick things apart, there is that vulnerability there and there’s the loss that runs throughout, but there’s also, I would hope, this sense of possibility and resolve, despite these difficulties and these vulnerabilities, that ultimately we will survive, and that life is quite a wonderful thing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this segment.
We all knew that Lorde season was around the corner (the track is a grower), but who could’ve anticipated Clairo returning with a new album announcement and single that same day? And that it would also be co-produced by Jack Antonoff? And that it would be a gentle yet stirring acoustic ballad featuring backing vocals from, that’s right, Lorde? If you’re looking for something a little less low-key, though, Megan Thee Stallion is also back and in top form on the assertive ‘Thot Shit’, whose accompanying music video is a must-watch. Also on this week’s list, we have ‘Crying’, a dramatic highlight from Pom Pom Squad’s upcoming debut record, as well as a new one from that album’s co-producer, illuminati hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, the summery, infectious ‘Pool Hopping’ (taken from her the forthcoming LP Let Me Do One More, out October 1; we missed that announcement). W. H. Lung announced their sophomore album Vanities with the propulsive dance track ‘Pearl in the Palm’; Madi Diaz delivered the emotive and lyrically complex ‘Woman in My Heart’ from her upcoming album History of a Feeling; Laura Stevenson shared the simmering and dynamic ‘State’; and finally, The Goon Sax previewed their third album with the fittingly hypnotic yet emotionally gripping ‘Psychic’.
