Fresh Air - Best Of: Sue Bird / Sleater-Kinney

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

NCAA/WNBA star Sue Bird spoke with Terry Gross about her career, coming out publicly, and fighting for equity in women's sports. A new documentary about her last season on the court is Sue Bird: In the Clutch.Also, we hear from Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, co-founders of the punk band Sleater-Kinney. While they were working on their latest album, Little Rope, Brownstein's mother died in an car accident. They'll talk about how the grief affected the album.Also, Ken Tucker reviews Beyonce's new album, Cowboy Carter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Sue Bird, the best point guard in women's basketball history. She led the Yukon Huskies to NCAA championships, the Seattle Storm to WNBA championships, and won five Olympic gold medals.

We'll talk about her career, playing in Russia during the off-seasons, the team's owner was murdered, and being engaged to retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe. Also, we hear from Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, co-founders of the band Slater Kinney. Rolling Stone called them the best American punk rock band ever. While they were working on their latest album, Little Rope, Brownstein's mother died in an auto accident. They'll talk about how the grief affected the album. And Ken Tucker will review Beyonce's new album, Cowboy Carter. Hello, girls. Hello, Beyonce. Hello, fellas.

You're pretty swell. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Sue Bird has to take some credit for boosting the popularity of women's basketball. She's considered the best point guard in women's basketball history. And she could shoot, too. In college, she led the UConn Huskies to become a two-time NCAA champion. With the Seattle Storm, she was a four-time WNBA champion. She was a WNBA champion. She was a WNBA All-Star 13 times and won five Olympic gold medals.

It's hard to give up such an impressive career doing what you love, but she made the decision to retire in 2022 after 21 years in the WNBA. She wondered who she would be without basketball, and now she has a partial answer. She's an activist fighting for gender equity in women's sports. I didn't realize that during most of her years on the WNBA, she was forced to supplement her WNBA salary by playing overseas. In her case, it was in Russia during the offseason. She played for a team owned by a mysterious, very wealthy, very connected man who was murdered. Bird is also an activist now for LGBTQ rights. She co-founded a media production company and another company advocating for equal rights, coverage, and investment in women's sports,

pushing brands, companies, and teams to give women equal representation. She's engaged to another icon of women's sports, retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe. A new documentary called Sue Bird in the Clutch is about her career and her decision to retire. It's available for rent or purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and Wolf on Demand. Sue Bird, welcome to Fresh Air, and congratulations on this documentary. As a point guard, a lot of the game was basically on your shoulders. You're deciding the plays. Can you describe how you saw your role?

Well, a lot of it was just that, making sure that our team was always on the same page, that we always understood what we were trying to accomplish. You know, to get a little granular, it's as specific as what play we're running, when we're running it, why we're running it, what we're looking for, both offensively, defensively. I think that became my identity, particularly later in my career, but it took probably all 20 years to really perfect it. But it was always a part of me, even when I think back to when I was a little kid. I always wanted to have my fingerprints on the game in that way. I want to ask you about an outstanding moment in your career as a shooter.

There was one game in particular where you saved the day twice. And this was in 2001. And it was a UConn versus Notre Dame. And it was the Big East title game. So you sunk the ball, breaking the tie at halftime. And then at the end of the game, after Notre Dame hit a free throw, tying the game, there were five seconds remaining and you drove the ball down the court and like, you know, shot it. It kind of bounced and then it went in. Meanwhile, as you, I think as you were in air, it's hard to tell whether you're already like down or still in air when, you know, a guard kind of like swiped at you, knocking you a little off balance. It looked like you stumbled backwards a little bit, turned around and then landed. By that time, the ball had gone in and you landed in the arms

of one of your team members and everybody came out and hugged you. And it was like the crowds are cheering, an incredible moment. And that shot won the game. So you saved the game twice with incredible shots. What do you remember about those moments? Everything. Every detail. The feeling of it. That was my junior year, and we had had a little bit of a tough season.

What you're describing happened in the Big East finals. So we were about to head into the NCAA tournament after that, and we were still favored. But for UConn standards, it was a little up and down. So I remember everything about those moments. I'd missed some time before that game with some back spasms. So the fact that I was even playing felt like a miracle for me personally. And then to hit a game-winning shot on your home court. That must feel so good.

It does. It does. It's literally what you do when you're a little kid. I mean, every athlete could tell you. There's always a moment you're a little kid, whether you're in your backyard, at the park, whatever it is, doing a 3-2-1 moment where you kind of count it down in your head. So it's kind of a moment of desperation, right? Your team's about to lose, and you save it.

You need focus, you need confidence, and you need some guts to take the shot. So how do you achieve that kind of calm and focus in a moment of terrific anxiety and desperation? I mean, athletes, we're all a little crazy because we are literally groomed to control our emotions in these really hyper-emotional moments. So you prepare. You try to put yourself in those types of situations. Your coaches try to put your team in those types of situations so you can feel it. Nothing's like an actual game.

So you're trying to mimic it as much as you can. But the best way to tell this is in the actual moment, I would say every big shot that I've ever hit in those split second moments, I feel very calm. I don't have a lot of chatter in my head. I'm able to just feel the game. I'm not thinking a lot. But that's because of the preparation. That's because of the practice. And then, of course, as you get older especially, it's because of the experience. It just doesn't throw you off as much as when you're younger. Can you maintain that kind of calm at difficult moments off the court in the rest of your life?

I can. I can. Sometimes Megan hates it, but I can. Why does she hate it? She's had to do the same thing, right? Yeah, no, I'm joking. It's just there's some times where you might expect a bigger emotional response, and I'm able to just keep it even keel. But to be honest, it's something that, you know, it's interesting. I think athletes are rewarded a lot for characteristics or abilities that doesn't always serve them when they take their uniform off and they're in, whether it's an intimate relationship, friendships with your family, it doesn't always serve you certain things. So keeping my emotions in check isn't necessarily the key to success in some of my relationships. So it's definitely something I've been working on, to be honest.

Yeah, well, here's another thing. I mean, as an athlete, you and of course, Megan, too, like the point is to win, right? But you can't like win a relationship. No, you definitely can't. It doesn't work that way. Like, who's ahead? Right. We sometimes keep score. It never works. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's moments when you really have to compromise. So, like, how do you, especially with two athletes, like two star athletes, two winning Olympic gold medalists in one relationship, how do you not struggle to win? So, interestingly enough, we don't feel competitive. We don't feel like a competitiveness within our relationship or with each other. But what does show up is, you know, my personality is very much like I'm not that different from who I was on the court as the point guard. And where I'm going with that is a lot of times I had to put other people's needs ahead of mine, right, for the betterment of the team, for the common goal.

And I think Megan and her style of play was, it's not a selfishness, by the way. It's actually a good selfishness. I always say this. If you had five of me on a basketball court, it would be a terrible team because you need different personalities. You need different types of players to make a good team. Megan is the type where her game has a little more selfishness in it. She's looking, she's, by the way, a great passer, but she's looking for those

moments. She's seeking them out. And so how does that show up in our relationship? At times, you know, she might take up a little more space. I might be willing to give that space up. So it's on both of us, myself first and foremost, to take space in our relationship and for Megan to kind of see when that's happening and then vice versa. So that's kind of one way in which it's impacted our relationship. But we're aware of it now. Shout out to couples therapy. And it's made the relationship even more fun to navigate. One of the things that shocked you when you joined the WNBA was that it had less press coverage and much smaller audiences than women's college basketball. Why do you think and what you were talking about when you entered the WNBA? Yeah, so women's college basketball is a huge entity.

The NCAA is a huge entity. So when you go to college, and especially at a college like UConn, where we have sold-out crowds every night, we're the hottest ticket in the state of Connecticut. There's no other professional team really around that area. So we had a ton, a ton of media coverage. And so at the time, 2002, when I got to the WNBA, this is a league that's only in its, gosh, maybe like sixth year at that point, if memory serves, fifth or sixth year. So it's still new. It's getting going. And it definitely had some ups and downs. It must have been so strange to go from college to pro basketball and feel like the game had been diminished in the pro version of it. It was weird. It was weird because it didn't add up. Like, all we talk about, especially in the U.S., is how we love to watch elite sports. We love to watch the greatest, right? And the WNBA, that's a huge jump. And I knew it. I could feel it right away. I had a great rookie season, but I knew I was on a different level.

I'm 21. I'm now playing against experienced 30-year-olds. It is different. And so the level of play and the product was great, and it was so much higher. But it was lacking in all these other ways in terms of the media coverage, like we said, the investment. So it was confusing. Do you blame that on marketing or lack of awareness of the WNBA? I mean, why would people lose interest in women's basketball just because they're professionals?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing because the same people, all of us that played in college, were the same people in the WNBA. So if you liked us in college, like, why didn't you follow us to the WNBA? And it is probably one of the more interesting and maybe more difficult questions to answer. I have my theories. I think it's wrapped up in something in the world of society loves to give young girls and young women opportunity and promote that and support it. But something about when they become women, it feels a little less supported. I also think that the WNBA, and this is probably more than anything, the reason the WNBA, the makeup of the WNBA is every marginalized group that exists today. We're black, we're women, we're gay, high percentages of all of those categories.

And those are the groups that are held back in our society. And so I don't think it's a coincidence that the WNBA has been held back in that way. So in terms of the differences between the WNBA and the NBA, those differences were vast. I think the gap is closing a little, thanks in part to your efforts in negotiating a new contract. But let's talk about some of the differences. Let's start with things like pay. Compare people in the WNBA with the NBA. And I don't know if you want to compare in terms of stars or people who aren't famous, but, you know, are still like good enough players to be there. Yeah. So I don't know exact NBA numbers. I want to say that if you are a super max player in the NBA, you're making upwards of $40-plus million a year, right? I think LeBron's contracts, Russell, Westbro're somewhere in the $250,000 range, I think it is nowadays, for your salary.

We do get an overall compensation package that's a little different. So we do have other opportunities. They pay for your housing, obviously benefits and things like that. But we also have opportunities to do marketing deals with the league. So there's team marketing deals with your team, then there's league marketing deals with the league. So that can get you in terms of overall compensation, close to actually probably nowadays, like more than half a million dollars. But still, half a million dollars is nothing compared to 40. And then when you look at minimum, I don't know what the NBA minimum is. The minimum in the WNBA is give or take $80,000.

And when you started, it was much less than that. Oh, yeah. When I got drafted, I was on a two-year deal when I got drafted at around $60,000, $65,000. I came off that deal, and I immediately made the max. And at the time, maybe $100,000. I came off that deal and I immediately made the max. And at the time, maybe 100,000. So from 2004 until we signed that new CBA in 2020, I was making 100,000. And that increased,

you know, because of like inflation increased, you know, X amount every year. And I think by the end I was at like 120. The percentages in which my contract increased was at a lower rate than inflation. So I can argue that I lost money playing in the WNBA. And that's obviously an issue. And that's an example of why you went to play in Russia in the offseason. Absolutely. And you're hardly the only one, because you can make more money in Russia during the off season and supplement your income. My guest is retired WNBA star Sue Bird.

A new documentary called Sue Bird in the Clutch is available for rent or purchase on several platforms. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. And Ken Tucker will review Beyonce's new album. This is Fresh Air Weekend. You didn't come out publicly until you were a couple with Megan Rapinoe, who's basically kind of your equivalent in the world of soccer, not the same kind of position, but just in terms of stature. And what did she say to convince you to come out

publicly? Yeah, so I was of the mind that I was out. I had told all my friends, all my family, all my teammates knew, my agents knew, the Seattle Storm organization knew. Everybody working at the WNBA knew. Like, it wasn't something I was hiding. Why did I would even say to her, like, I go out, we, doesn't matter, who are getting murdered, bullied, and everything else under the sun for being gay, people like us have to come out. Public figures have to come out because that's how you change the narrative. That's how you change the perception. It's essentially how you change culture and society. Were there things you were afraid of?

Yeah, I think I had a little bit of like a PTSD happening around being judged, around not being able to be marketed. It was just kind of embedded in me at an early age. By early age, I mean probably going back to my college years and then in my early WNBA years. It was essentially, in so many words, told to me that I had a certain look, which is to say that I'm a cute little white girl, a girl next door, quote unquote, and that that's what's going to sell and that's what's going to help you get marketed and that's what's going to give you this prosperous career. And so there was some fear for sure around coming out for me that I think just, I never, I just had it somewhere stored inside of me. And until Megan and I started having those conversations, I never, I never circled back on it. And it happened in an interview just like this. Michael Voelbel was covering doing a profile piece on me for the All-Star game that year because it was being held in Seattle. And he clicked the recorder off and just was like,

hey, can I ask about your personal life? And I was just like, you want to know if I'm gay, huh? I was like, yeah, I am. Put the recorder back on. Let's do this. It happened like that quick, that easy. I didn't have to think about it. I already knew that I wanted to do it. It spared you having to issue a press release. Exactly. Exactly. Was it ever disorienting or did you have a feeling of dishonesty when you were being marketed as this, you know, kind of straight girl next door player when you knew that you were gay and that your real life, your real personality didn't fit the marketing image.

Absolutely. It was just a lot of feeling like, I wish you could see my face when I do this, but a lot of like, hi, everybody. Good to be here. This is me in a dress. I'm sure you like it. I'm miserable. Hi. A lot of that.

Both like literally and figuratively. But yeah, it obviously something wasn't fitting for me. And what's interesting, it actually kind of ties back to the documentary a little bit because I think when you watch the story of my career, it parallel paths the WNBA story in this interesting way, because I think what has allowed the WNBA to turn a corner in its ability to be marketed in the way the fan base is growing is that as players, as teams, and as a league, we finally start to lean into who we actually are and the authenticity piece. And that's actually exactly what happened for me when I came out. And now I could actually just be myself. Now that your public self could be more like your real self, what's changed in terms of how you present yourself to the public or even what you wear? Oh, yeah, I'm just wearing what I want. It's great. I don't want to wear anything that makes me uncomfortable ever again. So I'm very quick. I found my voice, if you will, when it comes to, you know, maybe you're on a commercial shoot or, you know, you're getting

ready for a photo shoot. I'm very quick to say what I like, what I don't like, what I'm comfortable in, what I'm not comfortable in. And what's interesting is when I'm dressed in what would be considered more traditionally like male boyish clothing, I actually feel more feminine. I don't know how to explain that, but because it's actually, I'm comfortable. So the true essence of who I am is able to come out in a different way. By the way, the best part about it is there are some days for events mostly where I'm like, yeah, put me in a dress. I'm feeling it today. And I get to make that choice. And that's just really powerful. Sue Bird, thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Sue Bird was a star player in the NCAA and WNBA. The new documentary about her is called

Sue Bird in the Clutch. It's available to rent or purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, and Wolf on Demand. Every Beyoncé album is a pop culture event, and her new album is no exception. It came as a surprise when she first let on that it would be her take on country music. That album, Cowboy Carter, features guest appearances by Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, as well as Miley Cyrus and Post Malone. Rock critic Ken Tucker says that while the album suggests the problematic history of black artists in the country music industry, the collection as a whole is as much a celebration as it is a critique.

Here's Ken's review of Cowboy Carter. This ain't Texas Ain't no hold'em So lay your cards down, down, down, down So park your Lexus And throw your keys up Stick around, round, round, round, round. Stick around. And I'll be damned if I can't...

Almost as soon as Beyoncé announced the country music concept behind her new album, she hedged by also saying, this ain't a country album, this is a Beyoncé album. The hedge was also the truth. The 27 cuts on Cowboy Carter vary widely enough to include hip-hop beats, a musical quotation from the Beach Boys, and a cover of the Beatles' Blackbird. But curious listeners are going to head first for the country material, where they'll be struck by the way its novelty plays with notions of authenticity. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene I'm warning you, don't come for my man Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Don't take the chance because you think you can You're beautiful beyond compare Because you think you can. You're beautiful beyond compare. Takes more than beauty and seductive stares to come between a family and a happy man. Jolene, I know I'm into the games you play and nothing new, so you don't want no heat with me. Jolene. That's Beyonce's take on Dolly Parton's Jolene. With its acoustic guitar and simple arrangement,

this Jolene has almost nothing to do with the sound that's pumped out by the current country music industry. At a time when contemporary country has thoroughly incorporated hip-hop rhythms and phrasing into many of its biggest hits, Beyoncé casts her gaze back to a pre-hip-hop pop music, classic country from the 60s and 70s. Those are the chronological reference points for her use of Dolly Parton and of Willie Nelson, who pops up as a country DJ in a couple of places here. Listen to the way the Houston-born Beyonce applies a high, lonesome croon to the country blues of a song called Protector. Yeah.

Yeah. Even though I know someday you're gonna shine on your own I will be your projector As part of this project, Beyonce is bringing attention to a forgotten black country artist, Linda Martel. Martel released only one album in 1970 called Color Me Country. A half century later, it holds up as first-rate pop country, but at the time, the country industry's racist treatment of Martel buried it. Now in her 80s, Martel introduces a couple of songs on Cowboy Carter, but let's really hear Martel, her singing voice and her yodel, on the 1970s song Bad Case of the Blues.

Living and working in the city, I thought I was a big girl. Oh, I felt so smart and my own life I could choose. So Miss Smartie found herself a city guy Who one night said he loves her And the next night he leaves her sitting With a bad case of the blue Your lady If I really was a smart girl I could turn him loose

With such a cornucopia of material, Cowboy Carter is almost inevitably an uneven album. A few songs go on too long, and its best stuff is quicker. One of the high points is a deceptively simple tune called Levi's Jeans with vocal backing by Post Malone. It sounds like a great lost hit single from the 60s. Boy, I let you be my Levi Jean So you can hug and thank all day long Come be a sexy little thing Snap a picture, bring it on Know you wish you were my Levi Jean When it's popping out your phone

Love you down to the bone There are also a few seconds at the start of a tune called Sweet Honey Buckin' when Beyonce murmurs the opening lines of the 1961 Patsy Cline hit, I Fall to Pieces. That far too brief moment is when you hear what a whole album of classic country covers, the Beyonce version of Ray Charles's modern sounds in country and western music, might have sounded like. I miss all our secrets. So tell me how you've been. It's obvious Beyoncé isn't settling into the country category for a prolonged stay. She's too omnivorous an artist. Cowboy Carter arrives already placed in a context, as Act II of what she's termed a three-part project

after the dance music explosion of her 2022 album, Renaissance. That provides her with an escape route in advance. I'm pretty sure that in her mind, she's already on to her next experiment in genre critique, while the rest of us are still back here squabbling about what's country and what's not. Less a cowboy than a gunslinger, Beyoncé is, as she puts it, saddling up, moseying on to the next town, looking for the next showdown. I'm going all out just for fun. I am the man, I know it. And everywhere I go, they know my name.

Ken Tucker reviewed Beyonce's new album, Cowboy Carter. Coming up, we hear from Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, co-founders of the band Slater-Kinney. They have a new album. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Our next guests, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, formed the band Slater-Kinney 30 years ago, during the height of the Riot Grrrl feminist punk scene in Olympia, Washington. In January, they released their 11th album called Little Rope. They spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. It's been almost 20 years since Rolling Stone

deemed Slater-Kenney the best American punk rock band ever. So we're lucky that the band, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, are still making music and performing live. Since they started playing together in the 90s, up until their latest album, Little Rope, their music continues to evolve, but still holds on to some signature tenets. The interplay of explosive guitars, Corin Tucker's distinctive wail, catharsis, vulnerability, guts, and feminism sour mixed with energetic joy. During an eight-year hiatus, they both worked on solo music projects,

while Carrie Brownstein also co-created the sketch comedy show Portlandia with comedian and SNL alum Fred Armisen. Sleater-Kinney reunited 10 years ago in 2014 and became a duo in 2019 after the departure of longtime drummer Janet Weiss. Little Rope is their 11th album. While they were working on it, Brownstein's mother tragically died in a car accident. We'll talk about how that altered the trajectory of the songs and what it's like to work together for decades. Sleater-Kinney is currently on tour in the U.S. and will play abroad later this year.

Let's start with a track from their new album, Little Rope. Here's Say It Like You Mean It with Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar and Carrie Brownstein on guitar. I'll take you with me Our clocks have stopped Our minds they can't reach Our counting of No bitter endings And no false starts

Just tell me what they Just say the words Say it like you mean it And even here and before me Say it like you mean it Say it like you mean it That's Say It Like You Mean It off the album Little Rope. Keri Brownstein, Corin Tucker, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Let's start off by talking about this song. Corin, this is you on vocals. How did this song come about? This song was something that I had an idea for. I had a really rough demo of it. And it was really just, I just had the chorus to begin with. And then I shared it with Carrie and she was like, it's great. I really like it. You need to finish it. And so Carrie worked on the music and I eventually came up with a vocal melody and lyrics for the verses.

And we went into the studio with it. But when we were recording it, the vocals weren't quite hitting where they needed to. And I went home. And I just ended up going to bed and waking up in the middle of the night being like, I have an idea. And I sang a different melody into my phone and just started the song in a different place that was kind of like a quieter, sweeter place to start the singing in so that it gave it kind of a bigger arc to go to in the chorus. Well, so starting at a different place than where you originally started it,

how did that sort of help what you wanted the song to be about? Yeah, I think that, you know, the song is about a relationship with, you know, your longtime person. And it's different when you write a song like that when you're older because you have this whole journey that you've taken with the person, and it goes through a lot of ups and downs. But I think one of the things about writing a love song when you're older is that you realize there is a goodbye coming at some point for all of us. And we don't know when exactly that's going to be. But we do know that that's kind of the price that you pay for being in love. So the song is kind of thinking about that concept and saying,

let's really say what we need to say today because we don't know what's going to happen in the future. But there's a lot of emotions, I think. There's like layers and layers and layers of emotions. And I think I needed to start the song in a different place in order to go through some of the different emotions that happen with that concept. You started writing the songs for this album a few years ago in 2022. And this album was written during a period of sudden tragedy. Would it be okay if I asked you to talk about what happened while you were working on the album? Sure. So we had written probably three quarters of the album, and we had gone into the first session of recording in the summer of 2022. We were slated to go back into the studio that my mother and stepfather you know really changed the direction of

this album because it changed the direction of my life did any part of you want to stop or take a break because that would have been totally understandable yeah i mean to be fair there wasn't any pressure to continue not from corin or our management or you know there are no outside um influencers that were you know saying that it was an imperative to finish the album and i don't even know whether i was thinking as clearly or cogently as let's finish the album. But what I did know was that I needed structure and walls and stability at a time where everything faded and seemed to dissipate and blur. And playing music and playing guitar, which is something that I started doing in my teens, that was a ritual and a choreography that I really understood. I knew what to do with my hands and fingers upon a fretboard or the neck of the guitar, but I didn't know what to do with the rest of my body. I didn't really even know how to walk through a room or

get out of bed as someone who was grieving. So I turned to something that I did know. And it was just the act of doing and making, I think, that gave the days shape and started to give my life a little bit of shape. Yeah, when I read that you sort of found comfort in going back to guitar and playing guitar like you did when you were younger, that made a lot of sense to me because it seems so physical. And I can understand that because I feel like grief affects your body, whether it saps you of energy or, I mean, even for me, I felt like I changed the way I was in my body. It's hard to describe, but it sort of sounds like what you're talking about. I don't even know what words to use, but you just sort of feel different. Yeah, I think especially with parents or family members, it's an architecture. It's like the scaffolding of your life and how you see yourself in relation to it is gone. It's sort of crumbling and you have to sort of write yourself in a new way and see yourself in relation to others in a different way. And I think, you know, it's like you're sort

of walking around without a skeleton for a while. Can I ask you, Carrie, was it even more difficult that the accident that happened with your stepdad and your mom happened far away? You know, your mother and stepdad were on vacation in Italy when the accident happened. Did that make it feel strange or not real? I mean, it's always kind of strange and not real, I think, when you hear that someone that close to you has passed away. But yeah, I just wonder if there was a difference. I have not been asked that question. But I will say that Italy is a wonderful place to visit and a terrible place to die. It just takes a long time. I'm not singling out Italy, but it's just, as anyone knows who has lost someone in a far-flung place, the logistics are agonizing.

The death certificates, just all, I mean, honestly, it's just through everyone in my family and Eric's family. Eric was my stepfather. Like it just, you know, we were just mired in all of these details. And that I think, so it felt both far away, but what we were forced to focus on was just this minutiae that was sometimes so absurd as to just be funny, sort of that laugh-cry kind of combination. And yeah, it was aggravating and very protracted. It actually really prolonged a lot of things, including the memorial service and just our ability to find closure. There was just a lot of paperwork and legalities to sort through when, you know, an accident happens on foreign soil. So yeah, it was just an added, I think, surrealism to the entire thing.

Yeah, it even took them a couple days to find you, and they called you, Corinne, because that was a number that they had on file for Carrie's passport. Yes. Yeah, I've had the same phone number since the 90s, so it was the one— Good for you. You may be, like, the only person— I know. I know. I know. It was the one working phone number. And, you know, it just it was the strangest phone call I've ever had. And I didn't I couldn't process it at the time I was driving my daughter to school and it came over, you know, the car and and I was like, I'm not going to give you Carrie's number. You can text me your details.

It just seemed unreal. They weren't saying, they didn't say what was going on. They just said, we need to talk to Carrie Brownstein. I was like, I'm sure you do. It just seemed unreal. And I had a bad feeling once the text came through and it seemed like a legitimate, uh, member of the, uh, the U.S. Embassy in Italy. You know, it just, then it, then it was like, well, this seems, I didn't even really know, but I had a bad feeling when I saw that text. Yeah.

I want to ask you about another song off the new album, Little Rope. It's the song Dress Yourself, which has that great line, get up, girl, and dress yourself in clothes you love for a world you hate, which I feel like many people can relate to. Can you talk about writing this song? Yeah, there was a line that I read. It started out like, get up girl, and something about meeting the day. I think it was that author, Jean Reese. And so I was thinking of, okay, the sort of modern conundrum of, I guess, just the kind of cognitive dissonance that we all have to live with in order to both be cognizant of the woes of the world and our own pain. And yet we still sort of have to conform to just the task of being human and presentable. Sometimes that is a really difficult task. And so, yeah, I started out, you know, thinking about, yeah, putting on your sort of your favorite clothes to put yourself into a world that you either momentarily or maybe loathe, I guess, weekly, loathe on a weekly or yearly basis. We somehow do it. I mean, I feel like that's just, you can't think about it for too long.

It's so mind boggling what we're able to juggle and what we're sort of forced to tune out. You can't engage with it all 24 seven. But then you're sort of, there's a kind of a self loathing and knowing that you can't and a desperation and a feeling of inadequacy that that you can't so you know it's it's a conundrum that we all live with I think. Now you worked on this song before your mother passed away but then you say it sort of took on a different meaning afterwards when you recorded it. Yeah, I mean, mostly the chorus. I mean, it really is a song about depression

and sort of deep perennial sadness, I think, very entrenched. And the part in the chorus, you know, give me a reason, give me a remedy, give me a new word for the old pain inside of me, was really about my family and, you know, just sort of the longstanding, I guess, yeah, sadness around some of those relationships. And it was strange to me that after my mom died, it was like I had gifted myself the song to help me deal with it. Well, let's listen to the song. Here's Dress Yourself from the new Slater-Kenney album, Little Rope. Get up, girl, and dress yourself Inclose your love for a world you hate Stand up straight And comb your hair

A style you told us Half deranged Give me a reason Give me a remedy Give me a new word For the old pain inside of me Give me the madness Give me the memory

Give me a new word For the old pain inside of me That's Carrie Brownstein on vocals and guitar, Corin Tucker on guitar, on the song Dress Yourself from the album Little Rope. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, thank you so much for coming back to Fresh Air. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of the band Slater Kinney

spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Boldenado Slater Kinney has a new album called Little Rope They're currently touring the U.S. and will play abroad later this year Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salat, Phyllis Myers, Roberta

Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivinesper. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. This message comes from Grammarly. Back-and-forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people

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