If there’s one trend revival that has come to define 2024, it’s gotta be indie sleaze. We’ve seen everyday teens and celebrities alike co-opting the style in their fashion and in photoshoots like no other this year, but for some, the early 2000’s energy runs deeper than that.
Take, for example, Kim Petras. The pop star’s brand new collaboration with Ed Hardy is a manifestation of decades of early aughts lore that has infiltrated the singer’s aesthetic since she first came onto the scene more than six years ago. Even in those early days (think hits like “I Don’t Want It At All” or “Heart to Break”), you could totally envision the singer wearing an Ed Hardy trucker hat and mini skirt in the recording studio.
“I remember super vividly in high school stealing my sister’s Ed Hardy black long sleeve that she would wear as a dress all the time,” Petras tells PAPER. “My sister was really cool in school and I was not, so I thought it was the coolest thing. [Ed Hardy] is forever burned into my brain.”
The new collection, which marks Petras’ second collaboration with the brand this year, mixes her hardcore Slut Pop aesthetic with the signature Ed Hardy look. It features 12 items, including 10 apparel styles and two trucker hats, which she was heavily involved in designing and pulls from her distinct obsession with Y2K reality TV like The Simple Life and Rock of Love.
But where do the Ed Hardy and Kim Petras multiverses meet? “Well, they meet at a skunk that smokes weed and says ‘famous’ under it,” she says, referencing the brand’s iconic character. “I really relate to that skunk.” In addition to the signature skunk symbol, the pieces include a black zip-up hoodie, denim mini skirt, low waist lounge pants and embroidered leather jacket. Rather than pulling from pop culture, Petras’ moodboard for this collection was more so inspired by everyday people from the early 2000’s who would post pictures in their bedrooms wearing Ed Hardy.
“The inspo is a little more autobiographical than usual,” she says. “Usually, I would just slap Goldie Hawn on any inspiration board and call it a day, but this time around I went a little off the rails and was inspired by a lot of personal imagery from this time from me in Germany coming up, having one Ed Hardy item and feeling cool in it.”
Shot by legendary nightlife photographer The Cobra Snake, who was actually on the ground during the indie sleaze era, the collection is made for the modern day rebel who wants to take slutty selfies in the bedroom. but also rock the apparel on a night out or at a Kim Petras concert. “This collection is something fun I wanted to do for the fans, because they deserve for something to be happening, and I’m so anxious to be getting back to them with music.”
It’s been a busy year for Petras, who finished up touring the world in support of last year’s Feed the Beast and Problematique, and was recently featured on Katy Perry’s “Gorgeous” as well as “Reason Why” by SOPHIE. New music is being worked on, though, she tells PAPER.
“The number one thing I can say confidently is that I’ve been making more songs than ever and I’m really trying to make something that I’ve never done,” she says. “It’s definitely going to be really different for me.”
Ed Hardy x Kim Petras is now available exclusively on Ed Hardy’s online store with brick-and-mortar retailers to follow.
Much like whoever tweeted the viral, “I was a Julian Casablancas fan before the Brat remix,” t-shirt design, I too have always been a massive Strokes fan. So the magnitude of sitting across from Casablancas, upstairs at a Lower East Side hotel in September, was significant. We were there to talk about The Voidz — the Casablancas-led band with Jeff Kite (keys) Alex Carapetis (drums), Amir Yaghmai (guitar), Jake Bercovici (bass) and Jeramy “Beardo” Gritter (guitar) — and their album Like All Before You. A brisk 10-track jaunt between genres and immersive sound, the band’s third studio album could only have been created with an imaginative lyricist and ocular polymath like Casablancas slouched in-studio.
The Voidz debut Tyranny was released a decade ago to mixed reviews and cult success, with many critics comparing it to The Strokes discography (its sonic rebellion and melodic chaos made it hard to reference anything else). Watching it live, however, first in 2018 at a tiny Atlanta festival called Shaky Knees and then last Halloween during the band’s Murmrr residency, it became easier to feel in on a stellar secret. Tracks such as “Human Sadness” stimulate the senses like a slow building high. It may be difficult to articulate what you’re experiencing, but it’s a positive one, nonetheless.
The New York band’s second album, 2018’s Virtue, was just as astounding as their first, with sharp lyrics: like “Just because something’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s good” in “Permanent High School” or “I want out of this world” in “Pink Ocean”— and a more symphonic bend. So where The Voidz would head for their third album was anybody’s guess. However, from the album’s instrumental opener “Overture,” which dramatically plays as if suggesting a ceremony is about to begin, you can hear they’ve landed in the right place.
At the time of our interview, it was unknown that Casablancas’ vocals would be featured on the Charli XCX Brat remix album. “Mean girls featuring julian casablancas” has since stirred up online discourse, from fans of the New York rocker who are thrilled about his contribution to listeners dissecting the meaning of his line, “Fucked in a fun way we get/ Kept it vague so you could guess.” Four years have also passed since The Strokes released their album, The New Abnormal, with plenty of press and fanfare in the time between, so we kept our focus to Like All Before You, out everywhere now.
Ahead of the band’s two sold-out shows at Los Angeles’ The Orpheum and New York City’s Apollo, PAPER spoke to Julian Casablancas about The Voidz, AI and working hard to make it all seem effortless.
Thanks for taking the time to chat.
No problem.
I’m really excited about the album.
Thank you.
Typically, I listen to an album once before an interview, but this is definitely a playlist-worthy album. It’s been a while since Tyranny was released in 2014, a decade. So for The Voidz, how has the approach to making music in general or putting together an album changed?
It was our first record, so we were figuring each other out and now we know each other really well. I think… [gets distracted by music playing in the background] Is it better to have quiet for an interview?
Honestly, I’m down for both. It was kind of nice.
I’ll just play it on my phone.
Love that you have your own bar up here. Also that we can see right into people’s windows.
That’s New York. Are you from here?
I’m from South Carolina. I moved here in 2018.
Charlottesville?
No that’s Virginia. Charlotte is in North Carolina though.
Oh wait. Myrtle Beach.
The fact that you know where that is… scary. What do you know about Myrtle Beach?
Biker week. Black Biker Week.
Yes, and weird amusement parks. We used to vacation there at these trashy resorts that I thought were really nice until I got older. We would try to get into the bars.
Sounds fun. I’ve never been, but I have a friend.
You’ve got to bring The Voidz tour to Myrtle Beach.
Sounds… cool?
So we were talking about 2014.
The process of recording is probably my least favorite topic. The process is good, but the topic… it’s like putting a puzzle together. “I put the corners first.” It’s just not fun to talk about making a puzzle. It’s like, “You put the greens there and the yellows there.” Is there one that you prefer? Sorry.
I get that. It’s hard for people who aren’t making albums to understand how you come up with a finished project without being like, “Okay, how exactly did it happen?” But I get what you’re saying.
Well, how do you write an article?
Oh God, that’s a hard one. I do the research, obviously. Sometimes, I start from the end or an excerpt I like and then write around it. But it’s different every time. Sometimes it just happens.
Okay, well, what is the question that you would like to be asked if you were interviewed?
If I was asked about my writing process–
It doesn’t have to be about your writing process. It can be about anything.
I guess what I enjoy about any certain topic? What’s the reason I keep doing it? Why do I keep writing? Or, why do I live in New York as opposed to somewhere else? The driving source of the decision to do something?
So, what’s the question exactly?
What’s the driving reason to create? What personally makes you want to make music?
What personally makes me want to make music? What makes you personally want to write?
Honestly, I love to do it. It feels good to do it. I’ve always done it. Even if no one read it, I would still be doing it like when I was a kid. I do enjoy putting it out there and having people interact with it. But even if people weren’t interacting with it, I would still be doing something with writing.
Cool, I don’t know if I have that same passion.
Yeah?
Probably more for politics or for wrangling people with talents that I think can do cool things together.
Is that how you feel The Voidz were initiated? Just getting cool people together?
I was starting over in some ways, so it’s been a long process. But maybe.
People hone in on lines all the time and the ones that are special to me are usually not the ones people focus in on.
What was it that drew you all back into the studio to do Like All Before You? Why go ahead and release a body of work, as opposed to singles or as opposed to doing just shows?
The same question? Why do we do things that we do?
Specifically to release music, though.
Someone gave us a contract. [Laughs] If we didn’t have a contract, we’d probably just put the songs out anyway. Try to figure out how to not waste things you put out, in terms of what’s lucrative. If you can put out 10 songs and make $10, or put out 10 songs and get $0, you try to do it the $10 way. So it’s a mixture of just putting music out and trying to do it in a way that is popular or successful, so that you can eventually make money or tour.
Speaking of touring, I got to check out last year’s Halloween residency, which was very immersive. What was the ideation behind that? Why did you want to do something that felt more a party, as opposed to a typical show?
So why do we do things? [Laughs] I’m kidding. I guess we wanted to play a concert.
But I got a tarot reading, I went to an arcade.
It was a Halloween show I’ve always wanted to do. We did it for the video, like a ’80s Halloween costume party. The coolest haunted houses I’ve ever been to are the shittiest, so we didn’t do a haunted house vibe. I originally wanted to do that, a full labyrinth where people come out and scare you, but having old-time jazz afterward and that after party vibe was really my favorite part. But it happened to fall on Halloween, so we tried to make it special. This old synagogue had all these extra rooms. These arcade people offered us their arcade games. A lot of things fell into place and we tried to make it a fun evening.
You have a show coming up at the Orpheum in LA and at the Apollo in Harlem. Those are thoughtful choices. Why those venues?
They were kind of the perfect size for what we were looking for. It was actually hard to find a venue in New York because Radio City is almost too big, and then Irving Plaza is kind of too small. And I just want to make it special. The Knockdown Center was offered it to us. You have your dream places and then you have the reality of the situation you have to deal with. So sometimes you’re stuck with what you got. And if you have options or cool things come up, then that’s lucky and fun. If we could have an after party at the Cotton Club, that would be the cherry on top.
You worked with Ivan Wayman, Justin Raisen and SADPONY [Jeremiah Raisen] on the album, and it feels like The Voidz collaborate really well with each other. Is it hard to find producers that don’t conflict with the process you have as a band? How do you seek out people that you know will add to the sound, as opposed to fuck with it?
It’s trial and error, I guess. We were going for a bigger sound and maybe what they did was different, or what Justin did, I should say, was different. So we worked backwards from that a little bit, and Ivan is someone that we worked with for a long time and who we get in the trenches and do stuff with together, very collaboratively. So I would say the Raisen brothers were more of the big production stuff at a big studio, and we used a lot of that, but then afterward, with Ivan, we went through everything and made it all Voidzy.
How do you make it Voidzy?
It’s a new way of capturing all the lightning in bottles, but also capturing the effortlessness and spontaneity and first-take magic. It’s this constant exercise of working hard to make it seem effortless. I guess that’s what creates, hopefully, mind-blowing energy, which is like, “Wow, they just stumbled in.” I’ve been trying to do that since the beginning.
I have to ask about “Prophecy of the Dragon.” The thrashing guitar part is so great. I’m curious, lyrically, what were you trying–
Cool tattoo.
Thanks, which one? The Playboy one?
The Playboy one and the star.
Yeah, I have a lot of star situations. Stars orbiting people’s heads.
What’s that one?
A girl that’s a planet.
Cool, with a braid.
Yeah. Are the lyrics in “Prophecy of the Dragon” about interpersonal change? That line, “I used to be a lounge lizard/ Now look at me, I’m a wizard.” Am I being too deep about it?
Playing with lyrics… all art. I’m sure for your writing too, it’s pieces of things that you’ve read or liked, or trying to recreate the vibe of everything you’re putting out. I don’t know, why do I do the things I do? I’m just kidding.
I asked him the same question 15 times. That’s the subtitle.
That specific line, the “lounge lizard” thing and “now look at me, a wizard” is probably a later rhyming construction. It felt like a cheesy biographical rock song. Also, we played in a small venue when we were fucking around and working on the song. But that’s not how I have always thought of myself. I mean, it’s the truth, I guess. We used to play in small places, and now we do all kinds of videos and things that create these illusions that make us seem better than we are in some ways. I guess that’s all I meant. People hone in on lines all the time and the ones that are special to me are usually not the ones people focus in on. I was thinking of a random song the other day, and I was thinking of the line that I love about it and the lines that people always talk about.
What was the song?
Was it “When Will the Time of These Bastards End”? Was it that song? Shit, it’ll come later.
How do these lyrics come to you? Do they just pop in your head when you’re watching TV, or are you writing them down when you’re in the middle–
It was “7 Horses.” For me, it’s more about the chorus and the “save it for the battle” line. I like the song, but then I feel people might take the line [“But if I could beg you maybe stop punishing me”] the random emotional line that I think is filler. People might be like, “This is him being raw and sad,” and it’s like no.
That’s the scariest thing: someone reading their album review and being like, what is she talking about?
Oh I don’t, it’s fine.
Was there a moment in the studio when you felt like everything was coming together?
It’s a good question, actually, but I’m bad at summoning these things. The truth is, it comes together way after it’s done in my mind. I’m so in the trenches and I can barely understand what I’m working on by the end. It was really fucking powerful for me and cool to hear the record recently because every part, every chorus, you’re getting to the end of it and there’s a moment where you’re like, “That’s cool, that feels powerful.” And you keep it, and you move on. It’s like a mosaic of all these things. You listen to it a few days later, and you’re like, “Oh, this line sounded cheesy or weird,” but really you have no idea. So I listened to it the other day for the first time and it’s probably because it has personal meaning, not because it’s good or anything, but I definitely listened to the whole record and almost teared. Seeing it with a bird’s eye view, it’s like, “Oh my God. It’s all come together.” Even the album name and the song at the beginning, at the end.
Yeah, I like “Overture.” It feels like a ceremony starting.
It’s a concept you don’t think about, but when you hear it objectively that’s when it all comes together. There were moments where I was saying, “Yeah that’s cool,” but in terms of knowing it was working, probably three days ago.
I want people to be tearfully inspired to better themselves in the world in a positive, light-hearted, not too serious, happy way.
Is that common for you?
Very common. Sometimes I don’t even understand what lyrics mean until 10 years later. I’ll listen and be like, “Oh shit.” It’s like, “That’s what it means and it’s so much cooler than I consciously remembered.” But at the time you know something is good because you know it’s working on two or four levels.
The album doesn’t sound like anything else. It takes your brain in one direction and you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Have you always been able to do that as a band? Go in all of those different directions seamlessly?
We’ve naturally been able to, but to do it on a record is trickier because there’s the editing process. It’s like movie editing. That’s what really makes or breaks a movie, and there are a billion choices to be made or that could be made. From the beginning of The Voidz to now, there has been a little bit of an arch for me in terms of how I view albums.
And I think there are two ways: I don’t listen to albums, I just listen to different songs. I listen to a jazz song, an African song, a heavy metal song, an old-timey country song. I go all over the place. I wanted albums to sound like mixtapes a little bit. Virtues, specifically, almost felt like a mixtape. Tyranny, I wanted to do that, but Shawn Everett had his own Godspeed You! Black Emperor vision of aggressive dark distortion vibes that follows through the whole thing.
Ironically I’ve gotten into listening to albums from YouTube, because I used to not listen to albums. So I do like the cohesiveness of albums, but I also like the genre-bending thing. And we do naturally have that when we jam: we do a jazz thing, and then play a hip-hop thing, so the carousel within a cohesive, I guess, is the indirect goal, but both are in mind. I don’t know if I answered that?
You did, it’s the carousel and cohesion.
Carousel of cohesion. I should of just said that.
I also wanted to ask about “Square Wave.” It starts off the album right after “Overture” in a really strong way. You talked about not necessarily listening to full albums, but were you very specific about the track order?
Yes, we had different track orders that I thought were good, then I’d listen and there were always issues. It’s kind of hard to know what those issues are. Could be anything between similar or clashing vibes, or too many happy songs, too many dark songs, or too many slow songs. It’s spacing out the more aggressive songs for this one, making it feel new, because some people knew some of the songs. So you don’t want to make it front-heavy with the old songs. This one felt like it did everything and worked and moved powerfully and gave you what you were ready for at each turn.
The album doesn’t insult your ability to follow along. Speaking of people listening to the album or how they’ll hear it–
How will people dance to this? The most undanceable songs of all time.
People interpretive dancing to “Overture.”
Movies used to have these. I had just seen Gone With the Wind for the first time and it starts with an overture. Classical pieces or ballets or whatever the hell. It literally means, “Opening,” get to your seat. I think people are listening to it like a song. It was originally a guitar solo idea, anyway.
It gets you ready for what’s about to happen. How are people are receiving it, specifically fan comments around the AI cover art. You had this hilarious response, “The original art we wanted to use artists wanted to charge $150,000; what is this, 1988?” I wanted to get your thoughts on this in general. This idea that people seem to be really passionate about.
I really stepped into it. I had no idea I had been loving AI art. It just seemed cool, I was enjoying my little hobby and the irony was that it wasn’t even like, “Take that artists.” It wasn’t thought out in any way, shape or form. I had no idea that there was even a resistance to it, because I my feed is probably half real and half AI art. I really love what it’s done to design, because I feel like design was so stagnant. The deeper conversation of the integrity and all that, fine. It’s worthy of a deeper thing that I wasn’t trying to get into. I’m not making a statement. My first instinct is, always prioritize. There are so many basic things we need to be getting together first.
Speaking of AI, I asked ChatGPT what questions to ask Julian Casablancas and it said to ask you, “Why do people make things?” I’m kidding. But the question was, “When people hear your music, how do you want them to feel?”
That’s ironic that AI is asking about feelings. I want people to be tearfully inspired to better themselves in the world in a positive, light-hearted, not too serious, happy way.
Like many, I first heard Cassandra Jenkins while still in the dreary dregs of the pandemic. The world felt blurry and confusing, and little music resonated with me amidst the despair. But out of the daze came a song that felt suited for the moment, “Hard Drive” — a psychedelic blend of field recordings, spoken word and free-improv instrumentation. On it, Jenkins recounts the data she’s storing on her mind’s “Hard Drive” through a winding account of walking through a museum, learning how to drive and conversing about the cosmos.
The song was on Jenkins sophomore album, An Overview of Phenomenal Nature, which, like “Hard Drive,” served as a balm for many. Before its release, Jenkins was resigned to walking away from music. “[That] should never be confused with putting down music, because that is what I live and breathe,” shares Jenkins. “But like any human being, I don’t live and breathe the music industry.” To her own surprise, the world received it with rapturous gratitude and finally this thing — that is, having a (more sustainable) career in music — suddenly became possible. She signed a larger deal with indie label Dead Oceans. “Nobody’s ever given me money and said, ‘Make a thing,’” she shares. And though the increased attention and resources brought Jenkins a sense of “pressure” she had to “work through” she still had the same artist’s spirit that allowed her to produce Overview. Her follow-up, My Light, My Destroyer, continued to merge the metaphysical with the small details of daily life. And like Overview, it was received with gratitude by her growing fanbase.
Space — and what the universe can teach us about our own world — emerged as a guiding light on the new record. On “Aurora, IL,” Jenkins recounts a bout with Covid which left her stuck in the titular small Illinois city. In its second verse, though, she shifts her gaze from herself towards Star Trek actor William Shatner’s trip to space, which was funded by Jeff Bezos’s space venture, Blue Origin. Seeing Earth’s beauty and fragility from above led to Shatner experiencing the “Overview Effect,” which he recalls as, “a sense of the planet’s fragility tak[ing] hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner.” Jenkins was inspired by Shatner’s profound self-described “sadness” and paired her own momentary desolation with his spiritual contention. Reflecting on the “Overview Effect,” led to consider the nature of sanity and spiritual transcendence: “Nirvana and mental collapse look very similar,” she laughs.
In a chat with PAPER in the lead-up to her performance at Pop! Montreal, Jenkins is fittingly thoughtful and freewheeling. Reflecting on her winding career, the cosmos and living as an artist, she is ready to tackle the big and small of life and share the wisdom she’s storing on her hard drive.
You’re home in New York City in the Upper West Side, right? Have you always been in New York City? Did you ever move away, or are you very rooted here?
I’m deeply rooted here. I did go away for college. I was in Philly and Providence for college, and spent a little time abroad as well. But I came right back. New York does that to a lot of people who’ve grown up here. It’s hard to pull the talons off. I feel very drawn to this place.
Your mom factors in on the new record right with her love of space. Is that where that theme comes from in the record?
Yeah, her love of everything. And in that moment I caught her having a moment with the stars.
Was that a new thing for you?
It’s not really new, but I think there’s a real pleasure in rediscovering things that you think you know, and I think that was one of those moments for me where it’s suddenly the thing right under your nose that shows itself to you. I think it’s very similar to when I started birdwatching. Birds have always existed, but suddenly, now that I’m paying attention I can hear the orchestra around me that I was sound-blind to. It’s really fun to kind of pull the veil off of something that has just been there for you all along just by paying attention.
I know that the space stuff lends itself to philosophical terrain. I was really interested in hearing about the “Overview Effect,” and I was just curious where that landed for you as you were making the record.
I have a friend who is a writer, Gideon Jacobs. He was the one that told me about it because he was writing about it. He told me the story about Jeff Bezos sending [the actor] William Shatner to space. I thought he was making it up. But he was like, “No, no, no, that really happened.” He writes a lot about technology and spirituality, and the crossover just seemed too good to be true. When I learned about the overview effect, and I read a lot of astronauts’ accounts of it, it just became really fascinating to me as an idea.
It also was funny to me that my last album, [An Overview of Phenomenal Nature], had the word “overview” as part of the title. There’s a lot of humor embedded in that phrase when it’s used in a certain way. It sounds like it’s from a textbook, or fake academic, almost like Encyclopedia Britannica trying to explain something that is almost impossible to explain.
People that experienced the “Overview Effect” talk about it like they had an LSD trip. They’re coming back trying to explain it to you, and it’s really difficult to put into words. So they end up speaking in certain trappings of LSD speak. The words that come up again and again when you’re reading these accounts from astronauts are about the fragility of the planet, and about our place in the universe as being so fragile. That’s the note that really struck me and showed itself again and again.
Gideon and I have talked about it a lot. We’re working on a play. We’re exploring this question of whether or not everyone should experience the overview effect? Is that something everyone should experience or could experience? It’s kind of like those philosophies around giving all world leaders some kind of psychedelic experience because then maybe we’d find peace on Earth. I wonder if we all need a little bit of that humility and if it would solve some of the world’s problems to just give people that perspective on this place that we’re on. Maybe some things that are happening wouldn’t be so severe.
Did you land on an answer?
A slight spoiler alert, but I think that we realized we could not come up with a happy ending. We sort of landed on this idea that humanity is almost too far gone at this point to recover, but nonetheless, there is still a hopeful element to it. Hopefully, you can be imbued with a microdose of the Overview Effect if you’re exposed to some of the conditions, even though it’s technically impossible to recreate (they’ve tried with VR). But I do like to think of little moments of connecting with nature as like a microdose of the Overview Effect, whether it’s looking at a flower or looking up at the stars with your mom. I think we can all feel a little bit of it if we let ourselves go there.
Yes, it’s about maintaining that presence of mind to feel it.
It’s kind of impossible also to be in that headspace all the time. It’s unsustainable. It’s kind of like your neurons are firing on all cylinders. It also seems like the line between that state that we’re talking about and a mental breakdown is a very fine line. Nirvana and mental collapse look very similar.
I know that Overview was written after a moment of being ready to let music go, and that was one form of release and maybe exhaustion. And now this new record was written after all of this new input and energy from the last record’s success came to you. I was just curious how this new energy shaped your creativity?
I talked about wanting to put down this career path, which should never be confused with putting down music, because that is what I live and breathe. But like any human being, I don’t live and breathe the music industry.
[For this record,] it was an interesting mix of being totally depleted from touring and totally energized by the fact that this new path had been carved out for me. I had no idea what it was, so I really feel like I was blazing a new trail for myself. There was all of the energy that came with that and the discovery there, and making some missteps, and falling into patches that I didn’t know existed. I was encountering new things I was really interested in, and letting that process reveal itself as I went.
I never go into anything with a concept that I need to execute, because my brain gets very bored by that. The minute I’m just executing is the minute I like to abandon something. There has to be this sort of unknown that I’m chasing, and it just reveals itself as I go. This curiosity and the resources with which to explore them is something that I had for the first time ever, which also felt like a certain amount of pressure that I needed to acknowledge and work with and move past. I had never been given an advance. Nobody’s ever given me money, and said, “Make a thing.”
This new path that was laid out for you also seemed to become an opportunity to reflect on other paths from your life, like working at the flower shop, which you reference in “Delphinium Blue.” I’m curious how this new, very intense, exciting path in music made you reconsider those past paths you were on career-wise? I know you’ve had a number of interesting jobs.
I’m continuing to [have additional jobs], as I continue to need to support my art with other work, because it’s not financially rewarding. I think like a lot of artists, it’s very difficult for me to do anything halfway. Even if I’m bagging groceries, I’m putting my entire self into that job. So I have to be very careful about where I choose to put my energy, because I will put it all into that thing. When I’m sweeping my floor, it is my entire self sweeping the floor. That’s just how my brain works and I’ve come to accept that about myself. The idea of phoning in anything is deeply painful. It’s not a state that I feel good in.
I think I looked back on several years of my life because a lot of my life was put on hold, not only when experiencing some of the tragedies that I personally experienced in 2019, but also because of the global tragedies of 2020-2022. And then I was in survival mode when I was on tour. I finally was able to process 2018, a little bit in 2023. Sometimes it takes that long. Our healing trajectory has its own timeline, and it has nothing to do with world events. It has nothing to do with what is convenient for our life and optimizing ourselves. So. [“Delphinium Blue”] finally found its home at a time when I was ready to actually embody it and have some distance from it. I think some songs or some things we’re gonna be writing about our entire lives.
You worked at the New Yorker as well? It makes sense to me, because your writing is so detailed and diaristic; it’s maybe journalistic in that way.
I was actually in the visuals department. I was in the photo department. But of course I was interfacing with all of that incredible writing and the incredible writers. Meeting people like Alex Ross, for example, who is just such a hero in a lot of ways, and then was so nice to me as like a 23 year old, scared little assistant: those 2 years of my life were incredibly formative. That being my 1st job out of college was absolutely surreal, and I was absolutely underqualified. I continue the friendships that I made there still.
I wanted to work in publishing. I worked on the “Goings On About Town” when I was there, and like that was my dream, like I love knowing what was going on in New York, and getting to talk to the photographers who were going out there. But I kind of had this sense like, oh, no, I’m on the wrong side. I think I want to be out there being a mess in the world, and not in this high rise writing about it. I had a real reckoning, and it was hard, because I felt like I had found myself in the best place, and I wasn’t happy there, and I was just like, “Oh no! My plan. It’s not working, even though it should be.” I felt my hunger was elsewhere. And it really helped me along my path to be like this is really hard to give up, and I still want to give it up. So I must really want to do this other thing.
It’s impossible to be across all the new music out each Friday. Luckily, PAPER is here to help you out: each week, we round up 10 of our favorite new songs from artists — emerging and established — to soundtrack your life. From the surreal to the sublime, these songs cover every corner of the music world. The only criteria: they all have to absolutely rip.
Subscribe to our Sound Off Spotify playlist here and check out this week’s tracks, below.
Charli xcx, Shygirl – “365 featuring shygirl”
It’s finally out – the monumental Easyfun flip of “365,” the chaotic finale of Brat, that was first teased back during February’s Boiler Room. Clubrats rejoice!
JENNIE – “Mantra”
Blackpink’s Jennie shares a solo track that’s fizzy and confident, a bad-bitch anthem powered by her confident rapping and singing.
GloRilla, Sexxy Red – “Whatchu Kno About Me”
This highlight of GloRilla’s debut album Glorious is a brash link-up with Sexyy Red about being the best, basically. What else?
SUSSI – LIFE & LIMB”
Interesting industrial rap from SUSSI, the follow-up to his July single “Voices”.
Tucker Zimmerman, Big Thief – “Lorelei”
Legendary songwriter Tucker Zimmerman links with Big Thief on “Lorelei,” a meditative, warm folk song lifted by Adrienne Lenker’s delicate warble.
Clairo – “Love Songs”
Another great track from Like Someone I Know, Sub Pop’s new compilation of Margo Guryan covers. It could have fit easily on Clairo’s latest album Charm.
Maggie Rogers – “In The Living Room”
Some seriously 2000s pop-rock from Maggie Rogers, continuing to valiantly rescue and rehabilitate unfairly maligned AOR sounds.
Molina – “I am your house”
Anna Domino-style moody no wave from Danish-Chilean producer Molina, from her great new album When you wake up.
The Kid LAROI – “APEROL SPRITZ”
An unashamed pop moment from The Kid Laroi, following in the footsteps of his friend Justin Bieber.
Halsey – “I Never Loved You”
The latest single from Halsey’s forthcoming album is low-key but ingratiating, aided by some very Mk.Gee-style guitar.
The New York scene has seen the rise of the pop duo in recent years with MGNA Crrrta’s dizzying trance cuts, Club Eat’s slapstick electropop, and now, Somewhere Special. A project of producer Bruno Zero and writer/vocalist Simone Alysia, Somewhere Special’s music is fast, fuzzy and bright like a blinking neon sign.
Their often chaotic, ethereal sonics has garnered the duo a fanbase of neon-hued dancers and Bushwick pop savants. Equally as notable as their pedal-to-the-metal music is their visual language, which sits somewhere between a chic house party and a floating afterlife. Colorful, deconstructed and always surprising, the duo are two spotlit stars straight from the Ana Bolina-verse.
Today, PAPER is proud to premiere the video for their new song, “Secret,” a steamy spiral into the center of Zero and Alysia’s minds. “Kiss me I’m your drug/ I’ve got a secret on the tip of your tongue,” Alysia begins, her voice breathy as she regards the camera in a full black leather number. The video features the duo’s close friends and collaborators as the camera jets between the rusty interior of a car mechanic shop and a dreary expanse of concrete and road. Filled with looks, choreo and cool glances, the video is another chapter in Somewhere Special’s ongoing storym which is long, suspenseful and full of secrets.
PAPER spoke with the duo in the lead-up to “Secret’s” premiere to chat about their inspirations, Lady Gaga and making art with friends.
Somewhere Special only came together last year. Since starting, you’ve really dived into the scene. What’s the last year of creating and performing been like for you both?
Simone Alysia: It’s been fun. We’ve made a lot of friends along the way.
How has your creative process changed since you started releasing music and building a community around your work?
Simone: In the beginning, we were making tracks super fast in Bruno’s room for fun and mixing it at our friend’s crib. We both made our own music, and this was a sort of passion project — and then it stuck.
Bruno Zero: I think the biggest change for me was transitioning from making trap music to making electro-pop. I used to make music in my house with rappers from my high school, and now I only really work with Simone.
The video for “Secret” brings together so many creatives from throughout NYC. Tell me about putting this group together and what shooting the video was like?
Simone: Putting this creative group together was easy because it’s all my friends and friends of friends. Everyone was down, which made directing this music video so fun. I’ve actually known a lot of the girls in the video since I was in high school, and I’ve known Ivy Vodka, who also edited the video since the womb. I met Mia Manning, our producer, a year or two ago at various parties, and she brought her friend Leander Capuozzo (who works with Anna Bolina) to DP. He really understood the world we were creating and his eye is so sick.
We worked with a gorgeous HMU and wardrobe team, with Murphy Penn, my friend of seven years, as head stylist. My friends Gabby, Tazha and Kayla worked with me on the choreography. We shot it all over the course of one long ass day, and It was definitely as fun as it looks. I have so much love and gratitude for all of these people. Big thanks to Alon, Shahnti, Henry, Robin Frank, Eric and Emcee Studios!
You have a strong style and visual language, which can be seen in the music videos for “Secret” and “Undercover Lover.” Who are some of your big influences in your visual world?
Bruno: I’m mainly inspired by things I see in my daily life that break my neck. I’m also a big fan of Todd Hido.
Simone: As a 2000s baby, I was inspired by Beyoncé and Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” Kelis’s “Milkshake” and Cassie’s “Me & U” for “Secret.” I’m also inspired by the culture that surrounds me. The visual language is just an extension of how our group of friends moves through the world and the evolution of our personal styles. We all feed off of and inspire each other creatively.
Jasmine Johnson directed the “Undercover Lover” music video in Los Angeles. Jasmine’s references were Jon Rafman’s “9 Eyes,” Tommy Malekoff’s “Night Suns / Desire Lines,” and early Sofia Coppola for the field portion of the video. The goal was to situate Somewhere Special within a new context that felt familiar yet somewhat intangible with a dreamlike quality.
Similarly, your sound is so distinct and weaves in both the past and future of pop, techno and electroclash. Who are the musicians and artists who inspire you?
Bruno: I take inspiration from several different artists that I’ve loved during different times in my life. Tristam and Braken, Gorillaz, MGMT, anything on Trap Nation, MexikoDro, M83 and Duwap Kaine are a few key inspirations that I can name off the top of my head.
Charli XCX looks right at me and waves as her mouth twists into a wry grin. I’d like to think it was my dancing, or my outfit, or my very good new haircut, but it’s probably the disposable camera in my hand. I’d just raised it above the crowd like a flare gun. One last shot in the roll, and it’s her, looking directly into the lens, looking directly at me.
I watch back my video of the moment. Ephemera I’ve managed to wrangle out of the cultural zeitgeist, manifest into this single, temporary moment with her — with everyone around us.
It is a chilly Thursday at Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. Late Wednesday, I’d randomly propositioned my editor with a wild pitch: drive the three hours to the semi-remote set of sculptural marvels the next day and figure out what, if anything, Charli XCX had planned. She’d announced the pop-up in the most casual way, like the Brat billboards back in June, during Pride, or the lackadaisical drop of the deluxe album soon after the original: “nyyyyyyy i want to play you my new album 🙂 shall we go upstate ?”
A press pass was soon secured, as was a rough travel plan. It was nearly midnight, and I ran by the 24/7 CVS to pick up more film, and a Celsius for the road, and eventually fell into a fitful four hours of sleep. The last thing I remember, before drifting off, was repeating a particular line from the “360” remix featuring Robyn and Yung Lean in my head: “I started so young we didn’t even have email/ Now my lyrics on your boobies.” So fucking true, and then the darkness.
Fall colors were underway as I hit the road, signaling the melancholy and transitory period of fall when, like spring, the world shifts ever so carelessly towards what’s next. Winter is most often accused of freezing things in time. But Brat Summer, for all the energy and momentum and travel and change it brought into my life, was similarly frozen. A single moment strung together by a strobe light. I think back to a particular Brat night I wrote about, earlier this summer. My clothes were plastered to my skin with sweat, and my friends felt both melded to me and a million miles away. Even the dance floor itself felt balanced on a razor’s edge, yet there we all were, pushing our hair back and bumpin’ that. It’s almost silly, to look back at now, seeing as that single night began a chain effect that propelled me to parties on both coasts — even internationally. 365 party girl: “I never go home, don’t sleep, don’t eat. Just do it on repeat, keep bumpin’ that.”
An hour or so out the scenery changed, and the incomplete Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat remix album looped back around on itself to the “360” remix. The complete tracklist had been public for a week at that point, and I laughed, thinking about the various wishlist collaborators people would chant for, or the scorn from younger fans when faces like Julian Casablancas or The Japanese House or even Bon Iver emerged on the tracklist. Why not so and so? Where’s this and that? From my estimation — later proven, by various monologues that accompany the listening party to come — Charli is broadly disinterested in what the album should have been. Or even what it must have been. Brat, by her own admissions both in the lyrics and offline, is an album about doing whatever she wants, with the people she feels like doing it with. Label expectations and chart performance and commercial viability be damned. Very Brat, after all.
A line has formed outside Storm King Art Center, and I’m interviewing dozens of fans who cheekily admit Brat was their first offering from the British pop savant. Inevitably, one youngster pipes up from the bunch to take charge of their friends, saying they’d been a believer since Pop 2, or theVroom Vroom EP, or Sucker, and most rarely, True Romance. I don’t wish to presume, or impose, but I’ve met plenty of gay people in my life, and I’ll leave the inference on the dynamics of these friend groups to interpretation. Closer to the entrance, beleaguered music journalists and TikTokers mill about as the guest list situation is sorted. I laugh as I watch a handful of notable TikTokers delicately broach if there’s a “special entrance” just for them. There is not, but they’re soon ushered in with the rest of us, and herded onto specially reserved trams.
I opt to walk, wanting to experience the moment on the ground and not from the comfort of a crowded bus of Internet personalities making content about fall leaf colors. A Vitamin Water pop-up is handing out Brat green flavors. I take one, and almost gag, the flavor being a mix of various synthetic substances that produce the distinct taste of a powder I once experienced, after it’s been dislodged from the nose. I finish it anyway, nearly choking from the laugh welling up inside me again. The scenery has opened up, sprawling fields filled with sculptural marvels dotted with various Brat signifiers. A green wig. A TikTok-ready outfit. An influencer with a selfie stick. Gaggles of girls and gays, arm in arm, stomping towards the unknown. I passively hit my vape and fall back in line with friends I’d run into on the way, filling them in on all they missed since Brat Summer caused me to fall off the earth.
What is it Yung Lean says on the remix? “Mansion, castle, pets, family, lights, camera, action?” That’s about the gist.
The giant vinyl installation comes into view, shaped like a classic gatefold LP In signature Brat green. Along the path are various vendors, free of charge, peddling drinks and food and limited t-shirts to commemorate the popup. We grab a giant pizza and head to the greens, slowly inching our way forward until I’m all but five feet from her DJ booth. Perfect. Over the next twenty or so minutes, the crowd spontaneously erupts into cheers as a random person with a shockingly similar haircut to Charli is spotted over and over again to the booth’s right. I spot her creative collaborator Terrence O’Connor, and elsewhere, O’Connor’s fiancé, TikToker Benito Skinner. Likely place for him to be. The crowd closest to the booth is a who’s who of press and New York socialites and the sort most likely to tweet that they should have been in the “360” video over so-and-so.
Understand I implicate myself, just for making note of the faces, or being there at all.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition in the world of Charli XCX, evidenced by the frequent discourse her parties create about access and internet celebrity. The tension between “real fans” — however recent — and the pop star’s extended celebrity network has never been more manifest than this year. And here they all are, upstate on a Thursday, jostling about each other and sharing weed and other substances, even across clout gaps. Beautiful, really, and I smile, squinting into the sun and feeling it all over my face. A cheer erupts again and I snap back, knowing this time it’s her.
She’s dressed in a penny lane coat and washed jeans, tight t-shirt highlighting her lack of a bra. Our shared signature. She jokes that this whole thing is nothing really, nor does she have much planned, half-expecting nobody to show up at all. Irony, of course, but she does proceed to play the first song on her phone and clamber up onto the booth. The rest of the experience proceeds at about the same pace, except when she pauses to talk, and then pauses again, to joke that she didn’t want to talk at all.
Standouts from the following tracklist include the brooding cover of “Everything is romantic,” on which Caroline Polachek pensively tells Charli: “It’s like you’re living the dream, but you’re not living your life.” Like the album itself, which tackles Charli’s often turbulent feelings about her career, the remix album often concerns itself with her turbulent feelings about Brat. A remix album responding to itself, tracing a line through time as her world changes quite rapidly — all of us in the audience included. The “Sympathy is a knife” remix with Ariana Grande drives the point in like the metaphorical knife: “When somebody says, ‘Charli, I think you’ve totally changed,; it’s a knife when somebody says they like the old me and not the new me, and I’m like, ‘Who the fuck is she?’”
Deep into the experience, one particular diatribe sticks with me. She’s talking about the infinite possibilities of dance music. “When the song comes out, when you make the song, there’s still so many different versions of that song that could be made.” She is interrupted by a drone flying by, and asks us to wave to Twitch, where the party is being live-streamed. “That was so cute,” she says, and then she continues with her aside: “Why not? Why be like, ‘It’s the album and it’s done?’”
A simple motto, but it undergirds the entire ethos of the Brat era. Really, Charli’s entire career. Collaboration is key to her cult iconography, projects like Pop 2 and Number One Angel serving mostly as vehicles to work with friends, or icons, or her favorite collaborators. The remix album is no different, and as she says, is about the idea that music is not fixed in stone. Songs do not remain frozen in amber, nor are they immutable. None less so than dance music, itself as fleeting as the wind whipping all around us.
So there I am again, at the beginning again. Frozen in a moment with Charli as she smiles right at me, through me. She ends on the “Girl, so confusing” remix, and we all scream “Girl, you walk like a bitch” at the art around us. A prayer maybe, to the unknowable Storm King. I watch the footage back again as I walk back to my car, remembering her smile is similarly preserved on a 35mm roll of film in my coat pocket. I pause as the melancholy of fall washes over me; it is all changing again, and there will never be another moment like this, not in her career or mine. The world is different all at once, changed like the songs on Brat, changed like the seasons. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing stays the same. Why not? I hear her again. “Why be like, ‘It’s the album, and it’s done?’”
Thank god, or the Storm King, for the changes then.
Last night, H&M turned Mercer Street, behind its SoHo location on in New York City, into a block party for its community, celebrating the brand’s connection to fashion and music. Hosted by Amelia Gray, the event featured DJ sets from KAYTRANADA, Channel Tres and KittyCa$h. Some familiar faces on the scene also came to vibe, like Emily Ratajkowski, Riley Keough, Lucky Blue Smith, Nara Smith, Evan Mock, Damson Idris and Mona Tougaard.
Earlier in the day, H&M started the day with “The Talks” – a conversation surrounding individuality, music and fashion moderated by Venus X and The Listening Room, an immersive music experience. Guests enjoyed DJ sets from Guillaume Berg, Dam Funk, Venus X and Heron Preston, whose “Preston’s H2” collection launches October 17th.
H&M& (note the extra ampersand) celebrations nod to the brand’s spirit of collaboration, so each H&M& initiative includes partnerships with both special global and local locations and talents from various creative industries, embracing the specific DNA of each city. The first stop was New York City.
Before the block party heated up, PAPER caught up with Channel Tres about how fashion influences his life, how fashion influences music and the importance of creating community.
How did you get involved with H&M’s block party, and what does it mean to you about collaborating with them?
H&M reached out with the request, and it felt good because I always go to H&M to get a piece. I remember when I lost my luggage one time and they had an H&M [nearby], and I was able to go and get a suit to get ready for my show. I looked expensive.
How did you approach making your set?
I’ve been in NY for a couple of days, and I’ve been listening to the vibe of the city so my set is that: tailored to the sound of the city.
Does fashion influence your identity both as a person and as an artist?
Fashion is just a way to convey what you’re feeling internally. So like, if I’m feeling good, I can put something on that makes me feel good. If I feel like I want to be on some business-type stuff, I can put something on that makes me feel that way. In regards to performing, if I’m feeling provocative I’ll wear something provocative. If I feel like I want to convey a message that I feel like this, or I’m funky, then I’ll wear something funky. Fashion is just always an expression.
What do you think is the relationship between personal style and the music people create or listen to?
I think it depends. Lately, I’ve been painting my nails black. That makes me feel closer to Iggy Pop or some punk-type stuff. Sometimes, I’m really into Lenny Kravitz’s style, so I’ll wear something to make me feel that way: some black or tight jeans with flares or heels. I’m also into Bootsy Collins, and I’ll do something to make me feel like funk music.
Even if I’m going to the studio, I’ll have a uniform because I know I’m working on something so I’ll put on my work clothes: some sweats and a cardigan with some running shoes. I won’t shave. I’m in the work mode.
What does community mean to you, and how do you foster that in your music?
Community is important. Community helps us lift each other up. When there’s a room full of people, it feels good. That’s why I try to build community in my shows by getting everybody involved in movement. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for community — the community I came from — so I think it’s very important to have really good-hearted and responsible individuals around. It helps keep you in check, you help keep them in check. If you have a common goal, it’s really good to get to that common goal within community.
MJ Lenderman calls in from an orange-hued hotel room in Durham, North Carolina. He’s enjoying a short break before he heads off to New York City to play The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The episode is set to feature Shaquille O’Neal and Chloë Sevigny. All of this, it occurs to me, sounds as if it was ripped right out of an MJ Lenderman song. “Shaq and fucking Gummo,” he says with a smirk.
Lenderman’s noted penchant for pop culture, basketball and desolation has lent his music a distinct moodboard. His tendency to imbue roadside detritus with a sense of revelation could, under less subtle hands, read as random. Take “Wristwatch,” which he performed on Fallon. The song is partially inspired by Brendan Schaub, a former MMA fighter and famously failed comedian who doubles as a member of Joe Rogan’s online universe. “Wristwatch” is a wry contemplation on flailing and modernity, as the desolate speaker relies on an Apple Watch for semi-solace. “And I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo-Dome/ And a wristwatch that tells me I’m on my own,” Lenderman sings in a voice that skirts between a sigh and a wail. Few could capture this character with such cutting precision and few could evoke a tear with a song that coins the term “Himbo-dome.”
Lenderman’s latest album, Manning Fireworks, is filled with the same symbols and details. Heartbreak rubs up against the fleeting image of Lightning McQueen from Pixar’s Cars on “Rudolph,” a song named after the downtrodden reindeer. On “Joker Lips” there’s a line that has become a much-discussed micro-poem: “Kahlúa shooter/ DUI scooter.” And on “Rip Torn,” Lenderman sings a verse that sounds at once stunning and stupid: “You said, ‘Then there’s men and Men in Black’/ You said, ‘There’s milkshakes and there’s smoothies’/ You always lose me when you talk like that.” These lines — literal, referential, often logically circular — give Lenderman’s music a comedic slant. But hidden within that comedy is a subtle philosophy. See, “‘There’s milkshakes and there’s smoothies.” … “There’s men and Men in Black.”
Lenderman’s first name is Jake and he’s 25 years old. Still, his music is spiritually connected to bards of America’s past who could capture the essence of our heart-sunk nation with little more than a voice and a guitar. But having grown up in a generation fractured by stimuli — be it via the whirl of the smartphone or a childhood soundtracked by television — Lenderman suffuses this tradition with a very modern ennui. When asked if he always had a penchant for pop culture, he mumbles, “No more than anyone else my age,” before he notes that he has three sisters and grew up in a household buzzing with TV: “Bravo, E!, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon or Sports Center,” he remembers.
In conversation, Lenderman is quiet and prone to murmurs. It’s his natural personality but also born of habit. Thus far, he’s been best known as the guitarist in Wednesday, the Asheville band who broke out via 2023’s Rat Saw God. But when 2022’s Boat Songs created a steady hum around Lenderman’s solo work, a certain corner of the internet (“dudes rock” meets music critic Twitter) came to champion the quiet guitarist, turning him into something of a cult favorite.
Today, his cult status is bordering on something more glittering, which is new for the low-key writer. When he does finally perform on Fallon, many note his doe-eyed smirk up towards O’Neal. “I want someone to look at me the way MJ Lenderman looks at Shaq,” said one X user. “I want MJ Lenderman to look at me the way MJ Lenderman looks at Shaq,” said another. For a gangly guitarist with an affinity for American gothic novels, this attention and rapturous reception may feel new and “overwhelming.” But it seems the joy of the grind is enough to offset the jitters. “Luckily, it’s working out,” he smiles.
The conversation occurred before Hurricane Helene and subsequent flooding devastated parts of Asheville, North Carolina where Lenderman is from. PAPER encourages readers to refer to the resources he has shared to support local communities affected.
Hey!
Hello!
I’m excited to chat with you. Where are you?
In this hotel room [laughs]. I just checked in. I’m in Durham right now.
That’s not too far from home [in Asheville] right?
No, not really. Well, nowhere is. I don’t really live anywhere at the moment.
Are you in the midst of crazy tour prep?
It’s not quite a tour, but it is crazy right now. I was in Nashville last week for Americana Fest, and came here for a couple of days. We ended up getting an offer to play Fallon last minute, so I’m about to do that. And then after that we go on tour.
How do you feel about Fallon? I feel like pop culture is such a presence on the album.
I won’t say them out loud [laughs], but I’m excited to play. But yeah, historically I do love late night. I love watching old Letterman interviews.
I’m a huge fan and have been for a minute. The new record really astounded me, particularly the writing. It made me wonder if you grew up as a reader or if books and writing were always a part of your life?
My interest with books has had different seasons. Sometimes I’d be into reading and then I’d go a year without reading. I got really deep into reading right before COVID. And then during COVID I really did my best to be reading something at all times. Reading is really important to the writing process.
What were you reading during the time that you were writing this record?
Richard Brautigan, Harry Crews, Larry Brown and Barry Hannah.
The record is filled with the kind of person you see when on the road or at the supermarket. Did you remember seeing someone like the character on “Wristwatch” somewhere?
I saw that character on YouTube.
Are they a Joe Rogan kind of person?
Yeah, I keep bringing up Brendan Schaub who was part of that world.
I’m not familiar. Who is that?
He was a UFC fighter that Rogan made famous and encouraged to do comedy. He released one special that people consider the worst of all time, and he immediately retired from comedy. But he still has a podcast that people listen to, but it’s really bad.
You write about culture that people wouldn’t maybe take seriously or talk about. Were you always a pop culture aficionado?
I guess so, probably not more than most people my age, but I do love TV.
What kind of TV was important for you when you were getting into culture?
I have three sisters, so depending on who was in charge of the remote I could be watching Bravo or E! all day, or Disney Channel, Nickelodeon or Sports Center.
I know you grew up in Asheville. From what I know about Asheville, it has a hippie, bluegrassy ethos.Did you identify with the scene in high school? Or were you predisposed to reject what was immediately in front of you?
Yeah, I think I was rejecting the busking/bluegrass/jam band side of things. And then once I got to high school and started going out to smaller shows, I started learning about other types of music and people like Tashi Dorji. He lives in Asheville, and he’s a really great guitar player. So I got to see a lot of cool free improv music.
Did you have a sense that a career in music was possible? Did you see the path?
Yeah, I didn’t really consider doing anything else or give myself a plan B. Luckily it’s starting to work, but I didn’t really ever consider doing anything else.
Have you been enjoying the craziness of it? I can imagine it’s quite overwhelming. Are you able to feel gratified, or does it just feel hectic?
It’s definitely both. Everything is at 100% right now, so I’m very overwhelmed and anxious. But I also have good days where it’s really exciting.
Does your life still feel normal when you’re in North Carolina?
To a degree, but I haven’t lived anywhere for probably four months now, so that’s a base layer and that’s pretty weird.
Are you always writing music?
Yeah, I jot down things on my phone and then I play guitar pretty much every day.
What kind of things do you jot down on your phone? Would you jot down “Kahlua shooter/ DUI scooter”?
Exactly, stuff like that.
How does that stuff come to you? Does it come to you as images or just words?
It might even be smaller than that. Like the DUI scooter was an idea I had for a long time, just the idea of somebody on a moped on the highway. It’s something that tells you a lot about what’s going on in their life.
You were a huge Eminem fan when you were young, right?
5th and 6th grade.That was my guy.
That just reminded me of how Eminem speaks about waking up and rhymes just coming to him.
Yeah, I was interested in rhyming a lot more on this album.
Do you attribute that to anything?
It could be Eminem.
I also know that you grew up Catholic, right? In an interview, you said you once wanted to be a priest? I didn’t know how serious that was.
It’s as serious as an 8-year-old can be, right? At the time it just seemed like that would make sense.
I think of Catholicism, and I think of redemption. There are these characters in your songs that are flailing and redeeming themselves.
I don’t know if they’re redeeming themselves, but I think there’s maybe a certain level of empathy or mercy.
Yeah, you have mercy upon them.
Those are big ideas that stick. I don’t disagree with them at all.
Well, it’s mercy on one hand, but then sin and hellfire on the other hand, right?
Yeah, the other side is the idea that you’re gonna be in trouble if you do something.
Was that the kind of environment you grew up in? Was it a Catholic environment where trouble or fear loomed?
Yeah, definitely. I feel a certain level of shame that most Catholics do. I always have to remind myself, “I’m not in trouble. I’ve not done anything to get me in trouble.” That stuff lingers.
Do you have a relationship with those ideas now in your music?
The ones that I do are just big words like “love” and “empathy.” I try to keep that in me.
I was reading another interview and you were going back and forth about if you’re an optimist or a pessimist. The music often depicts people who are flailing, but it’s so empathetic that it feels quite optimistic.
I would agree with that. There’s usually a path out for people who are doing bad things. I’d like to believe that at least.
Maybe every person is redeemable, but society isn’t necessarily redeemable?
Yeah, I feel less optimistic about the structures we have in place in America. I’m worried and feel a lot of dread as time goes on about the way the country is built. But I believe people are born good and their circumstances shape who they are in a big way.
What about basketball in particular inspires you?
It’s something that has been with me my whole life, and it’s pretty musical, too. There’s a lot of improv and quick thinking and stuff that really blows my mind. There’s all the motions and shooting. There’s a lot of rhythm and fluidity required to make it work.
You’re going on tour as MJ Lenderman and not as part of Wednesday. Does that feel like a really different experience?
Yeah, to a degree. Being the face of the band and singing requires a different level of energy. Still, I’m part of a group of people that are traveling together, and we’re going through all these things together. This late night experience is a first for us. I did Colbert with Waxahachie, but this will be my first time doing it as my band. It’s cool we get to experience those kinds of things together.
On Ev Christensen’s “Loose,” she tells the story of a woman wanting more for her life, as she builds resentment towards a man she’s bound to. “I’m playing with the trope of a woman being ‘wild’ and running off,” the rising New York-based artist tells PAPER. “And it’s tempting to set yourself free. It’s a stack of cash — or the old-world coin equivalent — right in front of you when you’re dead broke.”
This sense of yearning pulls from Christensen’s quiet upbringing on a North Dakota farm. “It’s a very beautiful place because it’s so, so plain,” she says, remembering how she could see neighbors’ homes miles away from the flat terrain. “It’s boring to a lot of people and, of course, I was bored at times too, but you have so much time and space to think. It’s no wonder I have fantasies of wanting to up and leave my fur-trading husband and rob a bank.”
The “Loose” video, premiering today, shows Christensen dancing solo in the woods and on rocks, singing longingly against an old wooden carriage. There’s one man, perhaps the one she sings about, fly fishing in the background. Despite her loneliness, though, Christensen still manages to capture her “lively imagination,” she notes. “By the end of the video, I’m in this gorgeous mine dancing and getting mud on my skirt train, but I’m still alone.”
Much like her previous release, “Spectacularity,” Christensen’s new single brings together an eclectic array of sounds. For this, she wanted to make a song using only strings and folk instruments that are synthesized. “Instruments that wouldn’t typically be put together from multiple continents,” she says, adding that the only real instrument featured is a pedal steel guitar played by Lea Jaffe.
Other collaborators on “Loose” include Christensen’s close friends Frankie Lipstick and Graham Tyler, who were both very involved in the project. “It took multiple nights at different diners to get it fully fleshed out,” she says. “I had a rough concept and I knew the locations, but they were so crucial to the final form.” Tyler made the saloon skirt featured in the video, while Lipstick styled her. This look was significant because “it portrayed the song and feelings I was trying to elicit so well,” Christensen says.
Fans of Ethel Cain or Lana Del Rey will comfortably find a home in the artist’s growing world, which often looks to the past and glamorizes a simpler way of living that no longer exists — especially in NYC. But striking the balance between old and new is a nuanced task, as Christensen explains. “I think it’s really important to dissect the eras that you take interest in and think about why it feels relevant to you now.”
I was surprised by Shaboozey — first in a theater tucked away in Nashville’s Soho House as his answers to my questions weren’t what I expected, and then later, as he took the stage to perform multiple hits on the Ascend Amphitheater stage as part of Music City’s inaugural Red Bull Jukebox, and his cool demeanor from earlier peeled back to reveal a superstar. A few weeks prior, he’d taken the stage for a two-night stand in Brooklyn, New York. Word on the street was that he’d put on a stellar performance in a city known more for it’s hip-hop roots and tough critique of sound more than its love for country music.
“Oh, it was amazing,” Shaboozey tells PAPER, leaning back into a velvet green lounge chair, signature ombré locks framing his face. “It was super cool doing two sold-out nights in New York, a place I feel like traditionally doesn’t have too much of a country scene that I know about. A lot of people connect country music with the South so to go the big city, and people are in their hats and boots and listening and feeling the music, it’s cool to see how far, like, the reach is. “
Speaking of reach, Shaboozey’s has been meteoric as of late. Yesterday, it was announced that his track “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — which interpolates the track “Tipsy” by J-Kwon and has a chorus so contagious you’re probably accidentally humming it right now — had officially made it to 13 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 song chart, making it the longest-running No. 1 single of the year. He’s also the first Black male No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Hot Country charts. But “Tipsy,” as I learn over my time in Nashville was no flash in the pan. Shaboozey came up in the ranks for country authentically, playing shows in dives and mainstays and getting attention from agents and labels the way you only can in Nashville.
The work has paid off. The city embraces him tightly and country music culture has shown their admiration by handing him a People’s Choice Country Award for being 2024’s Artist of the Year — and he also received a nod from the year’s CMA’s for Best New Artist. Still, he’s pretty humble about the whole thing. When I asked how he felt about the uproar around the track and his new title as a “breakout” star, his answer wasn’t what I expected.
“It was a gradual thing,” he says when ask when he realized that “Tipsy” was going to not just be a hit, but a historic feat. “I don’t think it was that moment. I think it was just seeing how all these moments were connecting. From our first single we put out, ‘Let It Burn,’ and seeing how that was connecting to people to then finally getting a release cadence, and seeing the response to everything. I think ‘Let It Burn,’ then ‘Colors,’ and even ‘Annabelle,’ those singles we were releasing that were all cohesive. [We had a] good team, direction, consistency, authenticity. Getting out there doing shows, doing all the work is what’s going to get you that moment. It’s not just a lucky thing where you just wake up… No, we, we were working.”
I nod before bringing up how it sounds like dominoes, how one thing led to the next and the next. “Exactly. When we made the song, it was definitely like our team and people who were like, “I think you’ve done it. I think you’ve done something special with this song. But yeah, it’s never really a moment. If anything, all of it was just a blessing. I don’t think you plan for like that as an artist.”
His words rang true later that night as fans lined up to dance, tapped their heels, and sang along to every word long before his biggest hit played over the loudspeakers. It’s a juxtaposition to what so many outlets and Tweets and naysayers have said about the genre, who belongs there and how they’re received. But watching it play out in real-time, Nashville, Country, and Shaboozey sound like a perfect fit.
Later, as we talk about the “moment” Country is having right now, with big names like Beyoncé throwing their name in the cowboy hat for the Southern-bred sound, and his own hit sitting pretty on the charts, I get curious about what he sees next for the genre. “I think a reason why it’s such a big genre right now is because the moment is right now,” he says. “You know what I mean? I don’t think it’s a coming or a future thing. I think what I’d like to see is what’s happening currently. You have artists at every level embracing the genre of music. And then the people in Country there are so many different styles. There’s people that are keeping it super traditional, the old western sort of sound. There are people that are doing, you know, like Zach Top, who’s bringing in the ’90s kind of vibe. Everyone’s doing their own thing. It’s like there are subgenres in it now. I’m seeing a lot of people exploring the genre and that’s the thing about country music. It’s about honoring the past. I think a lot of other genres are about ‘How do we move forward’ and they forget the roots of it.”
He adds with a knowing grin: “It’s kind of punk, country. Country needs punk too, but their punk is trying to keep a tradition.”
