Switched on Pop - The soft sounds of Kali Uchis (live from Vulture Fest)

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Through crafting a unique, cross-cultural sound, Kali Uchis has emerged as one of indie music’s most promising talents. From playing in jazz band as a kid to collaborating with Bootsy Collins and Kaytranada, the Grammy Award-winning artist has managed to take her bilingual, one-of-a-kind music to the Billboard charts while still keeping her DIY ethos. At this year’s Vulture Fest live in Los Angeles, host Charlie Harding talked with Uchis about her career, her songcraft and her two upcoming albums: one in Spanish and one in English.  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. Today I'm featuring a live conversation from Vulture Fest 2022, where I spoke with Grammy Award-winning artist Kaliuchis. Calliuchis has crafted a one-of-a-kind sound influenced by growing up cross-culturally in both Colombia and Virginia, by playing piano and saxophone and jazz band as a kid, and by starting her career in a very kind of. and by starting her career in a very DIY model, making songs while living out of her car at the start of her music career. Now she's an in-demand collaborator with songs featuring Steve Lacey, Bootsie Collins,

Ketranata, Tyler the Creator, Siza, and countless others, and she's on the cusp of releasing two new albums, one in Spanish and another in English. Getting ready for those releases, Kaliuchi and I caught up about her career so far and how she crafted her unique, soothing sound. Here's my conversation with Caliuchis. Please join me in welcoming Caliuchis.

Thank you, everybody. Hi. Can we just start from the very beginning? You made a very successful mixtape that caught the attention of the internet, and were able to, on your first EP in 2015, the AP is called Porvita, you were able to collaborate with some really spectacular folks. You've got Diplo, Tyler, the creator, K Trinada,

bad bad not good i want to start by listening to the song loner together what's the story of loner and how does it what role does it play in developing your sound well basically at that point i didn't know really what comping vocals was or what comping vocals for us maybe not in oh yeah for anyone who doesn't know what comping vocals is basically when you're recording vocalists they will do as many takes as they want to do until they get the best takes of each part of the song. And so then they would just comp the best pieces to make the final song. So I didn't know what any of that was at that time.

And so I just basically did Loner on a one take, did the BVs, did the harmonies, wrote it probably within like 10 minutes. And so it almost feels more like a live session of a song, even though the instruments and stuff weren't live. It was like very much, it felt very just raw. And so that's why for me is one of the most special. songs on that project. It also begins to articulate

some lyrical themes that I feel like we hear in a lot of your other work. We're talking about being lonely here, right? We have the verse I want to play for just a second. I don't want to be a cigarette. I don't want to be a dormant. Don't want to be ignored.

All of a sudden, you're not intimate. Talk about this verse. I think Well, I think I've always really loved as a writer, I've always really loved poetry that's very colorful with this imagery. And so for me, that was really important was to start with these, you know, metaphors about kind of how it feels to feel used up or tossed to the side. And I think coming from the background that I come from, I always felt very, because I'm the

youngest of all of my siblings. And I always felt kind of like alone, essentially, like in my family and like growing up. And so I think that's why a lot of my songs ended up kind of going back to that topic of kind of just learning how to embrace that and learning how to be able to just stand on your own and not look at it as a weakness and more fine strength in it. When I first heard that line, I don't want to be a cigarette, really captured me. Oh, really? Yeah, I don't want to be something which is completely discarded and thrown out and, you know, thought about for one minute. It's very powerful line.

And behind it you have these, the sound that you start to develop here, I feel like we've got these very woozy kind of beats. Things are kind of coming in at a tune. Your vocal is always sort of hanging back. They're very confidently behind the beat, which is already very slow, and it begins to develop a sound. You said that your approach at this moment is very, you don't know what you're doing,

you're just kind of on your computer, figuring it all out. But this EP gets a lot of attention and gives you the opportunity to put together your first album called Isolation, continuing the themes of Loner. And in 2018, you put out isolation. Fulcher called it one of the best albums of the year. Oh, thank you.

The single After the Storm features Tyler the Creator and Bootsie Collins, some personal favorites. It's a song that we discussed on our show switched on pop back in 2018, but I really want to hear about it from your words. Let's take a listen to After the Storm. I'd love to hear about how it came together. To begin, what's changed for you in the time period from your 2015 EP to your 2018 album? isolation. Yeah, well Por Vida was essentially like when I put it out I put it out

for free and I made pretty much all of it just completely on my own. A bunch of people had just sent me beats. So at that point people sent me beats. I was in Kedronata. I had never met him. He sent me beats. Baba not good sent me beats. Tyler sent me beats. People were just sending me stuff.

And with isolation this was my first time where I really got to actually have a budget and travel and get in a studio and that's why my first studio album, get in a studio and really actually record with people. I really felt like I had a lot to prove in the sense that I was like, okay, this is going to be my first studio album. I want to make sure that I can get as many versatile artists and, you know, get the legends, get the young people that are my peers

that are on the come-up that I know are going to be legends and mesh all these different worlds. I traveled to Canada at one point to work with Babai Not Good because they had been sending me beats forever so I was like, okay, I want to work with all these people who's been sending me stuff. That's not good are producers on this record. Yeah, they're a band.

They're really talented, and I went to Canada to just make a bunch of music with them. After the storm essentially happened pretty much the way the Lona did. It was like they started playing. I picked up the mic, started singing, and the song just happened super naturally. So I always felt like it was going to be one of the strongest songs on the album.

So knowing that, I was like, okay, I really want to include someone that I've worked with already. At this point, I had worked with Tyler, but I had never gotten a feature from him on any of my work. I had just done features for him. So I was like, okay, I want to include Tyler because he's more like my peer, younger. But we've got to slow down about that. Okay. First of all, let's slow it down and listen to Tyler's verse first. second. I love particularly for everybody, paying attention to how we come into this verse because

it is wild. So you've worked with Tyler. Yeah. So it wasn't hard to call him up. Yeah, no. I had done an interview. I think it was for Billboard and on the way to Billboard. I was actually listening to Bootsie Collins. And so when they asked me, like people always ask like, oh, who do you want to work with? Who would you love to collaborate with? And I just said, oh, Bootsie Collins because the last person that was listening to. And after the, the interview came out. He DMs me on Twitter and he was like, I heard you want to work with me. And I'm like, I had no idea that he even used Twitter or that he was really like, you know,

I was like very shocked. And so I was like, yeah, let's do it. So I went to Ohio and hung out with him and his family. They live on a ranch in Ohio. We just made a bunch of music. They're like the sweetest people ever. They made me like a cake. It was like, we love you, Callie. When I was leaving, it was like the most wholesome, just like family experience. Yeah, we had a really great time. And then basically he did the intro already. And then I think he like played some things on the bass too. Should we listen to it for a second? Yeah, yeah, his intro, yeah.

He'll all storm. It's a powerful artist to open the line. I mean, I was so excited when I heard Bootsie. Yeah, I mean, he's a legend. He's a legend. So we had to include him. And I was loved to include elements of nature also in the song. I felt like that was going to be kind of like I was telling you about like imagery.

it really set the tone of like, you know, being in the storm. And so I felt like I had to start it with that. Then I had to start it with Bootsie. And that was, you know, we were already leading into something that felt like great, you know. So once I did all of that, I came back to LA. I brought it to Taylor. I showed it to him. He did it immediately.

He cut his verse super quick. And that was how a song came into fruition. One of the things I noticed while I was chopping up all of your songs in preparation for our conversation is that they all have their own way of defying convention, especially song form. One of my favorite things about this record is that, kind of matching the theme of the song, the song goes into a whole new place at the very end.

It kind of ends in like a bridge. But it does something really wonderful. We have a song which starts, we'll just play it again for a second, with a storm and an A minor. And then by the time we get to the end, we are in this territory. The sun has come out.

We've modulated from the minor, key to the major key. Yeah, that's what I really wanted it to feel like. I wanted it to feel like the clouds were peeking out and the sun was coming through and really take the song to a different place. I love, in general, like I love playing with chords, changing the progressions, and I love just creating a bridge moment

that feels like the entire song has changed. I love that. And lyrically, I feel like we are still working out some of the themes from a loner. We have the line. It's just the same concepts. I know a lot of people. people thought that it was a romantic thing because I started talking about he in the beginning,

but actually I'm the youngest and I have three brothers. And so for me, it kind of played back on that like feeling like growing up, I grew up without a lot of people that were like, I felt like I needed them in my life and they couldn't be a part of my life because they were like in, you know, in Columbia or in Florida or in wherever. Like everybody was very much like a part. And so it essentially fell back on that. It actually was never a romantic song. It was always just about feeling like you have to just get by on your own. And yeah, it's going back to that.

And what's changed for you? So if we're maybe dealing with some similar themes, you were saying that for Porvita, you were just getting beats, basically doing stuff over the internet people. Here you're in the studio. The vocal is growing and developing. How are you approaching recording and songwriting? differently for isolation than from your first EP?

Yeah, well, by the time that I was making isolation, you know, by that point, I realized how to actually record my vocals. I had grown a little bit more as a vocalist. And I really taught myself to sing because I hadn't, prior to making Port Vila, I had never thought about being a singer. And so I really didn't know how to sing at all. So I was learning a lot more about that side of music. And yeah, just I guess the technicalities of everything that I wanted to do, growing and learning a lot more.

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You have a new record, you put out Semiado, and you decide to put out a record that's mostly in Spanish. There's a little bit of Spanish here and there, but you didn't have full support from your label. This was definitely a bit of a left turn, and yet it turned into a massive hit. We'll take a second to listen to the song, Telepatia off of Simeado.

Why did you want to make this, record and why did they not want to? So isolation, like we said, it was my first studio album. So I was like, okay, this is my second album. Thinking of just my career, I always wanted my second album to be in Spanish because I grew up speaking Spanish, I grew up bilingual. I learned to read and write in Spanish before English. I grew up in school in Columbia.

So I felt like it was important for me to also show that side of myself and to challenge myself to really, I guess, just actually do that. Because I feel like for a lot of people that were working with me, it didn't make, it was like, okay, you had this album that was, yes, I already critically acclaimed in majority English. I mean, there was one song in Spanish on it, but it wasn't successful. So they were just kind of like, why would you, why would you do that? So it's like this other side of my music. And I guess finding a way to meet in the middle of of not really, because I think when people think Latin music, they just think a certain type of music only. And so a lot of people were also like, well, this is not something, if you listen to Telepatia,

like, it's not something that would have been played on the radio or that somebody would have considered a single or to have, like, the mainstream success that it had. What was your expectation for that song going out? And then, yeah, what happened? Yeah, it was never a single. It was never, I mean, the album in general, because, like I said, isolation had, you know, was critically acclaimed and all of that, but it was never like, I've never been like a numbers kind of girl. I've never been like a pop star or anything like that. So I didn't, for me personally, I didn't put those type of pressures on myself of like, oh my gosh, what if I dropped this album in Spanish and it like doesn't sell well?

It's like I didn't really care about that. So I just figured no matter what, as long as I was staying true to what I wanted to do and pushing myself as an artist to project Spanish language music in different ways that felt good to me. That was really my goal of what I was trying to do with the album. So yeah, honestly, nobody, not even me, expected for anything on that album to become commercially successful. So what is the story of how this song explodes? If you haven't heard it on TikTok, it was like one of the biggest songs on TikTok last year. Yeah.

How did it all unravel? But I feel like it was around Valentine's Day when I started seeing the stream. like jump by a lot and at first I was I thought it was just you know going to go away like I was just like oh yeah it's having a little trendy moment cute but yeah what was the moment when you realized that it wasn't going to stop a few months had gone by and it was still basically growing every single day and it was still getting bigger and bigger by that point after like the first month I think we were like okay we need to give this song a music video and we need to let her have the moment she deserves you know so if you didn't have this a support

to make a Spanish language album, and all of a sudden this thing is just like growing and growing and growing. What conversations are all having behind the scenes about how to support it? I think sometimes when things are taking off on like an app like TikTok, there's the confusion of like, okay, but is this going to translate?

Like are people actually going back and listening to the music? Because a lot of songs can blow up on TikTok, but people, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually going to char or you're actually going to get any type of sales or streams out of that. But for this song in particular, people were actually going back and listening to the song and, you know, listening to it a lot of times enough that we were able to chart.

I think that was when probably the label started taking more seriously. You all end up making a video for it. Yeah, yeah. We ended up making a music video. I put it together, but I was just like, I want this to be really real. I want it to be in Colombia because I feel like the other video that I did for the album, which was La Luce, was very conceptual and it was all, you know, green screen. I was like, this one, I want to be in the streets. I want to be, you know, in my neighborhood and I want to put real people in it. And so that was what we did. What do you think people were reacting to with this song? Do you have a sense of why this one was the one that took off? Yeah, I think there's a few things. I think that the fact that I actually

dropped this album during the early days of the pandemic. And that was again because we didn't expect for it to have commercial success. We didn't really mind that we were putting it out at a time that like I couldn't actually promote it the way that normally you would be able to promote an album. I couldn't tour. I had a Latin tour that I was supposed to go on. It was canceled. It was like the week that we ended up in lockdown. Yeah. So it feels like a whole other, it feels like a whole nightmare. So essentially it was like really the worst time ever to drop an album. But I was like yeah, fuck it. So we just dropped it.

And the topic and the song is like talking about being able to make love telepathically with someone and like being basically like lovers at a distance. And so I think that resonated with people, the topic being that we were in lockdown, being that a lot of people couldn't physically touch or see or link up as usual as they would. So I think that was one thing that resonated. And then, I mean, the rest of it, I don't know. I think that it was just a friend. and different sound that people hadn't really heard in Latin music.

But there's a little bit of a continuation from after the storm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, most definitely. I think that initially when I started writing to it, I was thinking it kind of still had some of that essence of isolation, but with like a little bit more of a pop to it. And I love, like, growing up, I always loved, like, Latin pop and so many different types of Latin music. So I don't really like pop in English, but for some reason, like, I'm cool.

music in Spanish. So yeah, and it's like it's different than just like a traditional pop song too for me. I love to choose melodies that are that are kind of weird like and um and unique to my voice. And so I don't know, I think all of that played a part in the song standing out in general. But my understanding is that when you wanted to make a Spanish language album there was the concern that well that you have a lot of audience in the United States, why don't you just sort of serve that audience? What was the reaction to building an audience elsewhere, you're home of Columbia and elsewhere. I think that it's important when you're making a body of work to understand your purpose

and your intention behind it and everything serves a different purpose. And this album really for me, it was just about pushing Latin music in different ways that I wasn't hearing it being pushed in, you know, the mainstream. You are in this sort of in between because we're going to hear two new albums coming very soon. We have a Spanish language album. We have an English language album. I want to get as much little what we can learn about them in advance. But before that, you do have a really fun new single out.

It's called No I Lay. It begins in a way that for me, I'm like, I know that sound. This is familiar. It's Caliucci's those soothing sounds that I really love. Building. And then it drops. And we have gone from these sort of woozy synthesizer sounds that are very familiar from maybe after the storm and some on telepatia.

And then we are now in the world of like 90s, housemen. music, which is one of my personal favorite genres, what made you want to go into that sound? I really just never want to limit myself when it comes to how I'm going to express myself musically, creatively, with fashion, with anything. So when it came to that song in particular, I was really just, like I was saying, how I loved Latin pop music and stuff when I was little. I always loved Latin house music as well. It was always something that I wanted to do. But I know I didn't want to make a whole Latin house album or anything, but I just wanted to a song. So it's just something fun for the girls. Just like something just a little amuse

boosh before we go into this new world. You have two things coming out. What can you tell us about you have an English language album, Spanish language album. What can you say about them before you get to hear them? They're both really different from each other. I would say the English album is a bit more mature than the Spanish language one in the sense that in the sense of the topics. I would say the English language album is following more in the footsteps of for Vida, isolation, but more evolved, better, a lot better. And the Spanish language album is following more in the footsteps of Sineo, more evolved.

So you've proved yourself in both languages, finding audiences all over the world. It's been so much fun following your career because I think, you know, sometimes in the world of pop, especially now in the era of TikTok, finding an audience can happen overnight, and people will get at this one big peak and then hope to build a career. And your career just keeps on building and building and building with each new release.

So I'm very excited about these new albums, since we don't get to hear them today. What I do want to do is open up the conversation to anyone else in the audience who might have some questions for you. So I believe we should have some, it should be a runner somewhere with some microphones. Hi, I'm Sam.

Hi, Sam. Who do you most want to collaborate with right now and what kind of track would you make with them? Honestly, right now, I don't, I'm just not interested in collaborating in general. Yeah, I just feel like I collaborated for so long with so many people, and now I'm just trying to mostly just focus on spending on my own as much as I can, yeah. Hi there. Hi there.

Hi. I'm curious how, as a woman in music, you've maintained your autonomy by starting from, you know, doing it, from learning it yourself and growing into a major, label and having to adjust to what people are telling you to do, how have you maintained being yourself? It's a good question. I think that the most important thing, because especially like for me, coming to L.A., I came completely alone when I was still essentially a teenager. And so a lot of times it can be difficult, like as a young artist to get pulled in different directions or most artists were exploited. So I think that the most important thing to always remember is, and the best advice

I would give to young artists is to try to, as much as you can, keep a strong support system around you of people who actually care about you. And I think if you're able to ground yourself in as much of just your self-knowledge and knowing yourself and knowing what you came to do and always remember that, then you won't get lost because it's very easy to get lost in this industry. Hello. Hi. I want to know what has been...

Oh, did you travel a long ways to come here. I came all the way here like Mary Poppins. I want to know what has been your favorite moment of your career so far. No, I will have to say that when Telepatia was like having as biggest moments, I was feeling like a queen. I'm not going to lie. I was just like, oh my gosh, you know, being able to break records for Latinas in general and being able to see us make a path for different types of music and women was really amazing. Yeah.

Hi, my name is Olga and I wanted to know who are your Latino idols and who would you recommend to listen to for like your voice. And also your writing process, like how do you write a song? How do you, like, is it like a structure or does it just come to you? Yeah, for writing, I find more than ever nowadays, songs come to me in the shower, like majority of the time. I don't know if it's just maybe just the, my mind being most empty than ever when I'm in the shower, but I always get different ideas and I have to hop out the shower and grab my phone and do a voice note. But that's just these days. I feel like when I started writing, that was when I would actually really sit down and I would.

come up with different little metaphors or different little phrases and I would know like, oh, later when I make a song, I want to incorporate these lines or whatever in it. And with Latina singers or icons, I think I've always really, I know Salma Hayek is not a singer, but I've always really looked up to her, like, her imagery of how, you know, the strong woman that she portrays in cinema. And I love, obviously, Selena icon. And when it comes to a vote, I never really felt like I learned how to sing from other singers, if that makes any sense. If anything, because I was in jazz band and stuff, I feel like I get a lot of jazzy inflections in my voice because of that.

And I think that was the main thing that shaped my singing voice. Yeah, another question. Hey, my name's Gina. What do you listen to when you're driving alone in the car? And what do you dance to with your best friends? When I'm dancing, I love to dance. to like bachata, merengue, salsa is always fun, or house music, or perreo. When I'm in the car, I mostly listen to emo music.

When I'm by myself, I mostly listen to emo music. I'm a very sensitive soul, so, yeah. Just on that note, Callie, I just wanted to say you're one of my favorite cancer representations out there in the media. We're in L.A., so just giving a shout out to that. We get a bad rope. You're the best. Oh, thank you.

We all join me in thanking Kaliuchi. It's just so wonderful. Thank you, everybody. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineer by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Ira Scott Leib, community management by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Hannah Rosen and Ashok Karwa, and a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can catch Switchdown Pop anywhere to get podcast.

or on our website Switchedonpop.com. We're on social media at Switchedon Pop on both Twitter and Instagram. We'd love to hear about your favorite Calliuchi's tracks. And we're going to be back next Tuesday with a discussion about why Bad Bunny won 2022. It's going to be really fun. Until then, thanks for listening. Attention Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera,

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