Switched on Pop - Can't Help Falling in Lauv (the interview)

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

This week, Charlie talks to Lauv, the singer, songwriter and producer behind unfailingly catchy tracks such as “Mean It” and “I Like Me Better.” Lauv’s a master at making the sad feel fun—masking themes of anxiety and betrayal with upbeat, percussive production. He even does a bit of the opposite, too, by infusing his joyful songs with vulnerability and emotional complexity. You’ll soon be able to hear all of that and more on his debut studio album, ~how I’m feeling~, out later this week. Our conversation explores Lauv’s song-making process and touches on everything from T Swift (Lauv counts himself a fan), “mind” rhymes, and the particular nuances of loneliness in the internet age. Today’s episode also features the voices of some of our wonderful listeners--special thanks to Katy, Sadie, Robert, Genevieve, Keen and everyone else who wrote in with questions for Lauv. Songs Discussed: Lauv with Anne-Marie - fuck, i'm lonely Lauv & LANY - Mean It Lauv - I Like Me Better Lauv & Troye Sivan - i’m so tired... Lauv - Changes Lauv - Modern Loneliness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Nate is out for two weeks, and so I'm going to be bringing you interviews with two of my favorite new artists while he's away. This week, I speak with Lave, a multi-talented songwriter, producer, and artist

who has a unique capacity to dress up a sad song and happy clothing. Lov is debuting his first full-length studio album, how I'm feeling. The singles on here all have me bopping my head while simultaneously crying my eyes out, a twisted duality that is a staple of Lauve's music. I think you're going to really enjoy hearing how he makes his work. In fact, he can be so passionate that there will be some exuberant,

but totally harmless cursing in this episode. All right, here's Laos. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding, and today I am joined by... Hey, what's up? My name is Laos. I'm an artist, singer, songwriter, producer. So I want to jump right in and start with a song.

Yeah, so your song, Fuck I'm Lonely, dresses up a sad song in happy clothing. Yes. Why do you set up this contrast? I feel like it's actually a subconscious thing I do. People say that a lot, that like if you look at my lyrics, there's a lot of songs that sound or that read as if they're sad. But I feel like somehow they end up feeling uplifting, which I don't really know how it happens. It just kind of is a subconscious thing for me. Yeah.

So I find in this song your lyrics are extremely vulnerable. Do you feel that putting words to music gives you more safety to say things you might not otherwise say out loud? Yes, absolutely. Actually, something I've been doing a lot recently that is a great example of that is this year I've started freestyling. And I found that like if I just pick up a mic and without any thought, just like put words to melody or even without melody, just kind of like freestyle.

rap, I find myself saying things that are way more direct and honest and they weren't put together in my head, they just kind of come out, which is honestly my new favorite way to write. And has that made it into your songwriting on things we'll hear on this album? Yeah, actually it's going to be stuff, I mean a little bit into the current stuff. Like I feel like I've had moments like that when I write, but now a lot of like the newer stuff I'm working on that's actually going to be beyond this album is like heavily freestyled, like almost 100% freestiled.

It's interesting. this idea of the sort of the intentionality of varying some more challenging words in sweeter upbeat music, this is happening, as you said, maybe unintentionally. Yeah. For me, as a listener, it does actually, I think, give me more access into some more challenging, sad feelings. Okay. That's actually a cool perspective.

Right. Yeah. But what's interesting is I find in your production of this song, that there might be clues that maybe things aren't as bright and surey as they seem. How would you describe the sounds in this intro? I don't know. Kind of crunchy and weird. I made this beat in an airport.

Well, half on an airplane, half in an airport when I was on tour. And it was actually my first time using, not to nerd out, but using Ableton Live. It was the first beat I ever made. Yeah. And it was very much just like a random process. Like I kind of just like, I think my process is a producer. And that's usually the same thing as a songwriter. I really can't think.

I just have to like find a sound and be like, cool. then accidentally find another sound and be like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then for this one, I like sampled one of my old vocals and pitched it up and reversed it. Oh, fun. It's all just like, honestly, a bunch of string of accidents is that I look at it.

Yeah. It's weird. I like, though, that even if it is coming potentially accidentally, I feel like the production matches the lyric here because you have this sort of like tropical upbeat sounding Kalimba-ish sort of sound. and yet the whole thing has been distorted and bit crunched and sort of disassociated. Yeah.

And so even underneath this happy production is like something's a little bit off. Yeah. And I think that resonates with what's going on in the lyric. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. I've actually, no one's ever said that to me. I really appreciate that. I want to call attention to one lyric in particular that a listener of Switched on Pop wanted to dig into.

Okay. I'm curious. This is Katie Meadows, assistant professor of philosophy. at Indiana University. Hi, Nate Charlie and Love. Hi. I'm calling him with a question about why one of your lines is so clever.

So you've got this line. It's been me, myself, and why did you go? I knew she was going to bring up that line. The fact that it sets you up to expect one word and you get another just completely tickled me. And I wanted to figure out whether there's a sort of category for this kind of line.

So one of my friends suggested it might be a mind rhyme, where what's going on is a line sets you up to hear a rhyme, to expect a rhyme, but the rhyme is sort of left unsaid. The basic question is just, is there a way of explaining why I'm so tickled by this, why I think this line is so clever? I would love any insight you have into that. Thanks. Bye.

Wow, okay. The funny thing about that line, I'll just be literally totally transparent. I write with a couple of my best friends very often, and we were writing the song, and we had a lot of it shaped. And I actually think it was one of my best friends. His name is Michael Matossack,

that he suggested that line. So that was actually a line that came from him. Yeah, which is very interesting. But I feel like a lot of music is playing with expectation, right? Like sometimes you satisfy an expectation, or sometimes you, like, slightly modify that expectation. And I think this is a case where it's slightly modified. So you're like, okay, you're hearing,

it's been me myself. and you're like, okay, you're finishing the line in your head, and then you hear why, and you're like, oh, now I'm interested again, and then you feel the rest of it. That's sort of the best way I think I would explain it. Katie called this a mind rhyme, which is something I had never heard of before. Right? I've never heard of that. Sometimes things that just are happening on the fly, there's something that explains it in the background. So here's, Wikipedia calls mind rhyme is the suggestion of a rhyme, which is left unsaid and must be inferred by the listener.

So I went on Twitter and asked for some examples from folks of great mind rhymes. curious. Sadie Dingfelder gave us the primordial example from the children's song, Miss Susie. Okay. So you can fill in the line. Miss Susie had a steamboat. The steamboat had a bell. Miss Susie went to heaven. And the steamboat went to... Hell. Low operator. Oh. Oh. Actually, right. So you actually, you get the rhyme, but it's a... Yeah. I guess you would call that maybe a slant rhyme. Yeah. That's interesting. I went a little bit deeper. And as it are listeners with mine rhymes. And it turns out that probably the most common version, of a mind rhyme. It's called a teasing rhyme.

Okay. So, teasing rhyme is, we hear them a lot. There's usually some kind of inferred rhyme that allows some innuendo to go unsaid, but predicted. So I thought this was a really fun one. This is from Robert Venable. The lyric that sticks out to me is the song Mr. Brightside by the killers. The lyric says, now they're going to bed and my stomach is sick. And it's all in my head, but she's touching his chest now.

I love that. And I'm pretty sure we could all predict where that was going. You know what? I actually never have thought that. For some reason, because I think the emotion of the melody and the way it continues into it, I never wanted to complete that lyric in my head. I never really got that inclination. The song shifts.

We can hear it. I think it's because the rhyme continues across into the next section. I think it's because his cadence changes. You know what I mean? If his cadence has stayed the same and he repeated the rhythm, then I think I would expect that word. Yeah. I'm talking about dick, I'm sure.

We're trying to keep this PG. I mean, we're talking about, I'm just joking. You know what I mean? Because this cadence changes, so you kind of get distracted. My focus reshifts as a listener, personally. Okay, so here's another example.

This is from Genevieve Koski. So one of my favorite lyrical flourishes is when a song seems like it's about to drop an F-bomb, but then drops a near rhyme instead. The most recent and fun example I can think of is the song Locomotive by Miranda Lambert, who is very adept at writing songs that say F you without using those exact words.

And this song feels like an explicit or not, as the case may be, nod to that fact. Interesting. I've been down on my luck and I ain't given up, got a heart like a truck. I'm a hummingbird ready to. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah, because I was sort of expecting that to come. And she says, I ain't given up.

Yeah. I expect it there. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think because also the attitude is so strong that it would make sense. But at the same time, I feel like if she did say it, it would actually make it kind of corny. Oh, totally. It would be too in character or something. Yeah, and your song, you're not afraid of the innuendo.

Fuck is the first word of the song. Yeah. And your use of this idea of mine rhyme isn't to avoid saying something. It's accomplishing something else, I think. Let's just hear it again, actually. For me, this is doing something very different than avoiding a word. Yeah, no, I agree. It's almost as if the internal narrator in your head is like trying to sing this song

but is being interrupted by the next line. In the same way that you can't get this person out of your head, you can't even finish the words that you want to sing. No, totally. It's like, it's been me and myself and why did you go? You know what I mean? It's interrupting this thought with another one. I think absolutely.

And it wouldn't even be appropriate to say I because this song is all about we or a broken we. I want to move on to another song from your album that I really enjoy. I want to talk about Mean It with Laney. Yes. So in contrast to fuck, lonely. The song, Mean It, is about asserting strength in a bad relationship. Let's hear it right now. Don't kiss me right now. Neat me don't show a feeling is on us to let me down. Just to let me down.

So this is interesting because I feel like you've kind of reversed script a little bit. Tell me what's going on in this track. Basically, it's saying, like, if you don't really love me, then stop pretending because you're just like messing with me. It's basically what the song is saying. Yeah, and this is a track where you're standing up for yourself. Yeah. And a relationship is gone bad. So to be totally honest, I wrote this song from a perspective. I don't do this very often.

I usually write from literally like how I feel. Yeah. I imagined how somebody else would feel about me. And it was actually a therapeutic process because it was me admitting to myself that there was something wrong in this relationship I was in where I wasn't as invested as this other person. And I was kind of imagining how they might respond to me, which makes me out to be kind of a bad person. But it's just the honest truth about that one. Yeah, and I know Paul from Lainey related to it in a different way. I think he related to it from more of a direct.

Like, I think he was experiencing the whatever, that other side of it. Yeah. This is a different sort of perspective to write a song from. Yeah, I mean, because most of my songs are just straight up, like, me expressing how I feel. But for some reason, that particular day, it was in, like, New York City when I started the song. And I, yeah, I was, like, you know, seeing somebody at the time. And I was kind of like, a lot of my songs were, like, really my way of figuring out how I feel. And I think this song was sort of like me admitting to myself like that something wasn't right, you know, but sort of from my side, like what I feel like if I was criticizing myself, what I would say, you know?

I want to talk about how you deliver that line in the chorus. Let's listen to it one more time. Hey. There's a lot that I like about this vocal delivery. Okay. So the thing that I think really works here is that basically standing up, or I should say, the name. is standing up for themselves. And they're doing so by singing the same note repeatedly. And I think that there's sort of a strength in that.

As all of these minor chords, which sound somewhat tumultuous, are moving underneath them. Doesn't matter what's shifting. That person is saying, hey, I'm here. And I don't need you. It's totally chill. And then there's a nice little moment of what we call text painting at the end, where he's like, down, down, right?

That vibe was inspired by a little like 1989 Taylor Swift. I'm hearing that on the track. Okay, cool. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I mean, that's one of my favorite pop albums of all time. Maybe perhaps my favorite. There's just so many songs that are just, I don't know, they're like the perfect blend of like extreme catchy poppiness,

but then there's something about the lyric that just feels so authentic that it doesn't bother me. Because sometimes when songs sound too directly, like, I don't know how to explain it a certain way. it just feels like there's not really a soul in them but I feel like that every song has even though it's very very easily consumed there's something like deeper going on there

and that's kind of like when I was writing the song how I felt yeah she's also one to play a lot with melody in which you know she's going to write melodies that are going to soar and move all over the place and at the right time she's just going to hit one note when something important needs to be said yeah you know that I'm also inspired

by like an artist like Drake, like who will keep a flow going for, I don't know, like an entire verse or like 30 seconds a minute like in some of his songs. And it's literally because you just get so locked into the melody, if the lyrics weren't important and weren't saying something, you kind of would tune out or you would get bored. But if every lyric is like really telling a story and like pushing you forward, I think like the continuous repetition of the melody is like really nice. Yeah, he is sort of a king of doing. He's so good at that. They become these infinite hooks. The melody just gets lodged. your mind, we wrote about in our book about the song God's Plan in which everything is just this,

it's the same little melody repeated throughout. Post Malone does this a lot as well. And it allows you, I think, to provide a song, yeah, more narrative progression. Yeah. But you never get lost. Like you're always stuck in that hook and you're going to hum that hook. 100%. Because sometimes when you have too, too dense of a lyric and the melody's changing too much, it's like overwhelming and you don't really have grounding, you know? So I think it's cool when you, when if the lyric is really important, just kind of keeping the melody in a, in a similar place. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with

trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No.

No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite. favorite podcast app.

Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about, deportation and border security, period. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've

seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. So that we're talking about sort of this idea of what brings a listener into a song.

I want to actually bring a question from one of our listeners who had something they wanted to ask you. To me, you're one of the most present and defining pop stars of today, capitalizing on all of the intricacies in the way people interact with music in the same vein as does Charlie XX. You consistently make extremely catchy bops, release songs on your own schedule, collaborate with a myriad of pop artists, and are extremely vulnerable in your music. Just how conscious are these decisions, and do you have a sense of how you're shaped by, slash, how you've been impacted by the way music is currently being consumed? Wow, that's, but first of all, I'm gushing, second of all. It's just amazing. There's a lot to impact there. I feel like it's actually not conscious for me.

Like, it's kind of just the way I am. Like, I get asked a lot about, like, the vulnerability aspect. And, like, for me, I think the best way I would explain it is, like, I just feel more comfortable when I open up to everybody that I meet. Because I think it's some type of defense mechanism where I'm always imagining, what do they think about me, who do they think I am? Do I come off a certain way? And my way of kind of, like, giving people, like, a full scope

and killing all questionable expectations is just saying, here's everything. So that's sort of, like, what I subconsciously do in my music. But it's not really the thing. thought-out thing to do that. And then the collabs also, they've always been very like, just kind of natural. Like with Troy, we just got into the studio after we met a few times. And we didn't even talk about doing a collab. I was working on my album and he was interested in writing on some outside projects. And we were like, cool, let's write together. And then, you know, about halfway through, I'm so tired. Like, I was like, yo, do you want to sing on this? And,

and, you know, obviously he did. Let's take a listen to the Troy Savon collaboration. I'm so tired. A. What's your beef with love songs? Oh, I love love songs. That's the things. I do. But I feel like when you're in that place that you're like really miss somebody

and you're just sick of it and everything reminds you of them, you're just like, I'm fucking done. I'm just tired of hearing this. Yeah. So that's kind of where that one came from. Yeah, I feel like it comes along in a line in the verse quite effectively.

Oh, yeah. Party. Try my best to me some. That's the worst. Someone stealing your song. Yeah. The funny thing about that is that wasn't even like literal. Like sometimes I feel like I like deliver. Like sometimes my lyrics are actually super literal. Like exact experiences that I like just, you know, can remember. And sometimes it's like almost like I know the feeling I want to deliver. And then like somehow the words come out to deliver that feeling. And I feel like that one is very like I have this like one image of you're drunk and you have like a very, I don't know, like dissatisfying kiss or somebody. and just like, what am I even doing? And then there's people around you who are actually enjoying themselves.

And I was like, this is just stupid. I don't know. And you just feel like ashamed and just bummed. Yeah, so that kind of came at a time of my life when I was trying to get over somebody. I feel like a lot of silly love songs can be about trivial relationships. But this is interesting. You're kind of upset at those songs because in that experience, you're wanting something real. Yeah, exactly.

I want something real. but you're not getting it and you're just like, stop reminding me that I don't have this right now. You know what I mean? Yeah. Those songs are like,

what you listen to when you're falling in love or whatever. Maybe you listen to it when you miss somebody and you're trying to reminisce when you fall in love, which is actually how I wrote

I like me better, for example. That was actually a reminiscent song. I wrote it after a four-year relationship I was in. It's about when we first fell in love, but I wrote it four years later, you know?

So sometimes I like listening to a song that kind of is like a reminiscent vibe as opposed to like an in the moment vibe. Interesting. So the song takes you back to a different experience. Yeah, yeah, it took me back to how I felt, especially at the beginning of the relationship. I just remembered, I was like a, you know, beginning of college is such a transformative time. And I just remember meeting this person. And she was, you know, in a lot of ways so different than me.

And she gave me so many new experiences. And I feel like built me up into a stronger man, you know, honestly, been to a more confident person. And I just remember, even though the relationship didn't end up being the right one for the rest of my life. At that time, I was like, I like myself better and I'm with you. What are some of the other ways that this comes across musically or in the lyric in this track? Wait, what do you mean exactly? Oh, that feeling of almost like saying thank you to this person who was extremely important. I think there's that ending part where it's like, look who you made me.

That like background vocal, that's like all falsetto. That one, I feel like for me, it's sort of like, thank you for making me into the person that I am today. Yeah. You recently announced that you'll be going on a world tour. Yes. And you're calling it. How I'm feeling. I feel like I'm just going to throw a prediction out there.

This is a great encore track. This is the like, everyone in good night. You've heard a bunch of love songs. Now we're done with the love songs. Yeah. Yeah, we actually always in the encore. We always do, I like me better. We do another, I do in one of my other songs, never not.

At least this is what we've done so far. Yeah. And then I like me better just because it's like that. Crosely, you got to change up the set list. What other themes do you explore in your album? Well, there's three songs with the word or some iteration of the word lonely in them. Two of them. Sorry to laugh.

Yeah. No, but it's real. It's funny, though. But there's also really fun songs. Like, I have a song about my favorite bar in North Hollywood, literally. The title of it is the name of the bar. I have a song with my dog's name, Billy. It's on the album that's sort of like, it uses this device of this dog growing up and making it very cute.

But it's actually somewhat autobiographical, but also somewhat fantasy. Which, until this album, like, I'd never really done that before. What else is there on the album? There's a lot of different, there's, you know, obviously. like I have my songs like drugs in the internet and sad forever that are sort of you know more so about like my mental health and kind of like how internet culture affects me and you speak openly about that. Yeah yeah definitely that one that's very important to me and yeah sad forever but yeah there's really a lot of different different vibe. I wish I can I wish I had a tracklist in front of me so I could recall every single vibe but there's so many different vibes on it. What about a production vibe? What are those kind of sounds that people are going to hear translating those feelings? To be out well part of why I want to So the whole creative behind how I'm feeling is I created these six different characters that are all different emotional atmospheres that are different parts of my personality. And I wanted to do that because the album sonically is people here are so diverse. Like there's songs that's a straight up sound like rock songs.

There's songs that are kind of like what people have heard from me so far a little bit. There's straight up acoustic songs. There's a song that has a little bit of Latin flavor. There's like so many different vibes. So I'm really excited about it. Because I've always felt like when I first started producing, and trying to be an artist and being a songwriter and producer, people will always be like, you have to be, like, limited to this one sound. But I feel like music is so much more free today where a lot of the artists that I respect the most that, I think, especially that contemporary artists, they're like, I don't care about genres.

Like, I just make whatever I feel like. And that's sort of because I moved around so much growing up and because I listened to so many different types, so many, so many different types of music. Is that the right way to say that works. I, that's kind of like the way I like to create is like to not really box myself in. think about how you, so if you're going to sort of disregard genre, do you think about how you pair the sort of sound of the song with a particular lyric? Are those, is that disregard for genre so that you can convey different emotions and feelings? Yeah, I think usually just kind of subconsciously happens. Like, or a lot of times what I'll do is I'll write a song without producing

it at all and then I figure out what's like the right kind of dressing for it. You know what I mean. Like, there's a few songs in the album that I wrote just on piano, and, but they ended up turning out very different from each other and the way they sonically are, depending on what, like, the lyric was saying. But sometimes it's just totally subconscious. Like, usually it's just kind of like, I feel like I'll start a track and, like, I won't really think about what it is that the vibe is, but I think naturally it kind of puts me in a world. And that's kind of why I write from. One example that I enjoyed was your song Changes. I love that song.

It's all going to fuck our song. It's a very simple. song in its production. It's primarily just piano. What I like here is that the chord changes, I think, are really sort of evoking the emotional experience of the song. And that just when you sort of expect the thing to resolve, it keeps on moving. Like it keeps stretching out and it's a slow build of a song. So I feel like the underlying harmony, even though it is a simple piano, does match what you're trying to say. I appreciate that. I've never really thought about that. Honestly, it's cool to hear that. Yeah, that was one of the ones that I just wrote straight up on piano. And then that production process was also just kind of accidental. Like, we recorded it with two iPhones, one take, the piano, so literally just voice memo. And then we pulled it into Logic. And then I was just kind of like, I used like a same 808 sound quite frequently. And I just like pulled that up.

And then I recorded the hand claps. And that's, then there's a kick drum. And then there's a couple other percussion sounds. And that's it. Boom, done. Yeah. If things are happening so often intuitively, how do you know when you're done?

That's a hard one because like especially in the mix process, sometimes I'll go back and I'll go back and I'm like, no, no, it should be this way. And then I hear it and I'm like, no, I was wrong. I think I just get to a point where I'm like, does the song, especially if I tune out and I'm not listening actively, if I'm listening passively, does it deliver the feeling subconsciously the way I feel like it should? And I think that's when I know that it's done. I mean, some songs get closer to the perfect image in my head that I have. Some songs, they just never quite do. But I feel like once I'm ready to let it go, it's because I feel like it's delivering the feeling.

Before we wrap up, is there any other musical experience, moment, song that you would want to highlight? Ooh, Modern Loneliness. Yeah, I think it's probably my favorite song on the album. I have a tattoo with the title. Modern Loneliness. Modern Loneliness, which is one of the three songs with Lonely in the title. That one is really special to me in so many ways. I mean, one, just like the message behind it is sort of in the vein of drugs on the internet a little bit, but like way classier, I would say.

What is modern about loneliness? I got to a period of time of my life where I became so obsessed with the internet and like being an artist and, you know, Instagram and stuff. And I think a lot of people go through this where they, I realize that my actual friendships are suffering. And I'm like, why do I feel so alone? And there's a few lyrics in the song. Like there's one, I think my favorite lyric in the song is modern loneliness. We're never alone, but always depressed. Love my friends to death, but I never call and I never text.

I love love my friends to death, but I never call it, I never text. It's a weird dichotomy of like, I swear, I love the people around me. Like, I swear I do. But I don't take action to actually deepen our relationship. And it's like, why? Like, why do I do that? And it's sort of like you're the cause of your own loneliness in some ways. But I think we get so addicted to this experience, even of like social media that is very like triggers reward centers in your brain, but doesn't really do something for your soul.

And it's almost like this more convenient way to get satisfaction, you know, chemically, I think in your brain. than it is to sit down for hours and have a deep conversation with your friend and finally get to the place that feels like amazing and euphoric, you know? Yeah. And I feel like that's a lot of like my, the place I come from in terms of like loneliness is like, is that. I think that we'll speak to people beyond just from the experience of being an artist. Yeah. There was a book that talked about this issue called Alone Together. It's very much that kind of vibe.

Right. It's like everyone is at home in their bed scrolling through social media, wishing that they were with somebody else. And so you're all collectively doing this thing, which is not bringing greater joy or happiness. Very sad. But that song, Sonically, I would say it actually feels uplifting. Like, there's a lot of sad lyrics. So is there hope in it? Yeah, there is hope in it.

And I think the way we're going to shoot the music video is, well, not I think. The way we're going to shoot the music video brings a lot of hope to it. And like sonically, it becomes this like really big, massive chorus and massive post-chorus at the end. That's just like super triumphant, big gang vocals. and it feels like all, it feels like this alone together, but everybody's singing and kind of like experiencing the same experience of modern loneliness together. Oh, yeah.

So it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. Cool, sweet. My debut album, I've put out a lot of music thus far, but my debut album, How I'm Feeling, it's out on March 6th, 21 songs. I'm really excited, a lot of different vibes. Cool.

And after the album comes out, I'm going on tour for forever this year, world tour. And if you want to buy tickets, you can buy tickets on my website. So yeah, thank you. Cool. Thank you, love. This has been really fun.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I've never really dug into something like this, so I appreciate it. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding. We have an amazing team making the show. Our producers are Megan Lubin and Bridget Armstrong. Brandon McFarlane, Nix's edits, and Masters the show. Our executive producers are Bridget Nelson and Nishat Kerwap.

And we're a proud member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find us anywhere on social media at Switchdon Podcast. We love to chat with you. We've got back episodes at switchdownpop.com where you can also check out our book. If you love the show, we think you're going to love the book. And if it's a podcast that you're looking for, I'll be back again next week with an interview

with one of my favorite bands. They're called Overcoats. Come check it out. I'll see you then. Thanks for listening. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world.

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