CRINCESS DIARIES 001: XOXO
XOXO. How that title came about I am not entirely sure I remember but it honestly most likely was something as stupid as me haphazardly naming the ableton session with a keyboard smash and then liking it afterwards. Kiss Hug Kiss Hug! Used to mean a lot more in the world of written messages, now I just add an x after every single text, not so much o's.... o's don't really show up much these days.
Looking back at the very very first idea of it, dated to June last year I think, it was just called "skinny", probably because the only lyric I had at that point was "you're so skinny and you don't even have to try." It was a lot funkier sounding in the beat, very glad I didn't go for that vibe!!!!
It has been a while since I released but my approach is the same. Mess around on ableton, find a chord sequence and pedal effect I like, add a bassline I like and a drum pattern that sounds cool that will be heavily influenced by the music Im listening to at that period of time. Add lyrics. Sometimes lyrics come before. Sometime it's a mix. I was finally messing around a bit with my Sun Light Delay pedal's effects, one of the settings gives it this wobbly gliding weird delay which I found so fucking cool and I knew I wanted to use it in a song. It suited the chords a lot too. I used pre-programmed drums for this, again I wanted speed.
I wanted this to be in the world as soon as fucking possible, but I kept procrastinating until I met Alex to talk about working on it together. Its good to have someone to hold you accountable when you're someone who loves putting shit off.
I finally got my shit together and had some stems ready for him in November, then he did the mixing, and it was sounding really really sick. And then the master was ALSO sounding really really sick. It was complete! A finished track ready for release in over a year - j'etáis buzzin girls. Then decided the release date would be January 15, day before schedule for my Eurosonic show in the Netherlands.
We did two shoots for this era of CS, both with longtime collaborator and partner in crime Kathy Hayes. I had long ass hair in the first one, and then chopped it all for the second.
These two are the main press shots I use at the moment as a result
The vibe overall was just cunty as fuck. We were delighted with them, and I did this shoot with XOXO in mind MONTHS before it's release and even completion. But as it turned out I needed even more pictures, so we did a second shoot.
We felt the second one was lacking the ?? cuntiness or idk I just was not serving face as much in the second one hahah but we tried to work with it. But the images from the second shoot were more interesting composition wise. Kathy thought it would be cool to put a load of my manga sprawled out in front of me with (broken) bluetooth headphones, and my macbook, and it translated pretty good on camera. I never think to use props for shoots so she really saved the day with that I think.
This was the initial XOXO cover art >>>
This goes hard afffffff and it seemed to be the obvious choice. Pretty happy with the symbol/sigil I drew also, and so that became what was uploaded initially to the distributor.
I then was brainstorming with Ruth (manager) for what would be the single announcement post, and this image felt good for it (after deciding that looking like I was naked behind the bass was not embarrassing and in fact, cunty)
And I was like haha this should be the single art lowkey haha oh well! too late now.... BUT IT WASN'T
We realised this felt stronger and more striking than the previous one
And so it became the final final art !! With the symbol then added in a more subtle way.
I did worry that this image would seem a little misleading because I'm not a bassist at my own shows, but then I was like I LITERALLY played the bass (and everything else) on this track (technically Ableton played the drums) so it is in fact, not misleading, and actually an insight into how amazing, multitalented and sexy a musician I am. Probably. I hope.
Et voila - the single is out on all streaming services! Thanks to Alex, Joe, Ruth and Kathy.