Grimes: The Happy Reader (Winter 2015)
Grimes, the Canadian music maker known to her family and friends as Claire, began her recording career at 23 years old [actually, 21] with an album whose title, Geidi Primes, came from a planet in Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel, Dune. Now 27, the singer, producer and artist tells us she’s never stopped yearning for the pleasures of a good book. From Heidegger to Harry Potter, her literary intake is, it turns out, as unpredictable as the weird yet addictive pop songs that have made her famous, and the ideas and images she encounters between the pages still bleed directly into her work. Listening to her new album Art Angels, there is much fun to be had in deducing exactly how.
GRIMES
In conversation with Ann Friedman
Portraits by Milan Zrnic
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CLAIRE BOUCHER (17-03-88)
Born in: Vancouver, Canada. Schooling: Catholic. Studies include: ballet, Russian literature, neuroscience. Some influences: Mariah Carey, Outkast, Hildegard of Bingen, Marilyn Manson. Albums: Geidi Primes (2010), Halfaxa (2010), Visions (2012), Art Angels (2015). Diet: usually vegan. Likes: The Fifth Element, Frida Kahlo, The Legend of Zelda. Dislikes: SeaWorld. Middle name: Elise.
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Grimes was photographed at the Zorthian Ranch, a mysterious 48-acre property in Altadena, at the edge of California’s San Gabriel Mountains.
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LOS ANGELES, September 2015
I meet Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, in an Italian restaurant in downtown Pasadena. It’s a strangely suburban setting in which to find Grimes, who is as much known for her avant-garde videos and visual art as for her synth-laden songs [not always!] and otherworldly voice. We’re here thanks to the sprawling geography of Los Angeles: she’s off to a shoot later, and this commercial strip in Pasadena isn’t far from where she’s headed. Grimes is carrying a dry-cleaning bag that’s almost as big as she is. For now, she’s wearing an oversized T-shirt with a photo of mixed martial arts fighter Ronda Rousey on it, and her pink-streaked hair is wound up in a topknot. We’re sitting in a booth that’s long enough for each of us to lie down if we want to. (We don’t.)
Grimes, who speaks fast and with a light lisp that softens the ends of her sentences, was raised in Vancouver by bookish parents. Her dad read her The Lord of the Rings at an impressionable age. Fantasy infuses both her music and her visual art, not to mention her personal style. She is unabashedly literary, having recited Pushkin poems onstage over a throbbing beat and posted selfies with Margaret Atwood novels. And though her life has changed dramatically since she recorded her breakout album Visions in 2012, Grimes hasn’t strayed far from her DIY ethos. She produced her new album and played every single one of the instruments herself. She’s really happy with the results. This record, she tells me, is her biggest accomplishment to date.
Ann: What’s in the dry-cleaning bag?
Grimes: It’s wardrobe. I’ve been having shoots all day every day. I finished the album a couple weeks ago, but I realised that with all the promo we’re doing, there’s just a three-week space to produce, shoot, direct and edit video. It’s just a psychotically short amount of time. All my shooting will be done within a month, and I want a video online in a month so it’s going to be the death of me probably. The first two videos, they’re not going to be very good. There’s not enough time to make them good. They just need to exist.
A: So you’ve had no time to read lately.
G: That’s definitely true. I’ve been reading a lot of comics because it’s easier. You can read a comic in a couple of hours or twenty minutes or something. I find it’s easier to just put it down and pick it back up.
[We are served two salads with cheese on the top. I recall that Claire prefers to eat vegan.]
A: You can maybe push the cheese to the side.
G: Eh, it’s more like I don’t want to create the demand for it. But I also hate the hard-line vegan shit. If everyone only ate meat once a week, that would be better than twenty people being vegan, you know? That would save the world and carbon emissions, it would be amazing. It’s what needs to happen. But to make people feel like veganism is a niche thing that they can’t be included in, then no one’s ever going to do it.
A: It’s not all or nothing.
G: The thing is, I never called it veganism. My stepdad is Hindu, and so he just doesn’t eat meat, and so growing up, it was just no meat, no cheese. He would make all this amazing Indian food, and that was what I ate. It didn’t really ever cross my mind that I was vegan or vegetarian. Then I grew up and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, veganism, that’s great,’ but then I didn’t understand all the terminology or hard-line rules.
A: I want to talk more about comics. Which ones are you into right now?
G: There’s this comic writer called Brian K. Vaughan. If you haven’t read any of his comics you should definitely read them all. They’re kind of left-of-centre superhero vibe-ish. One is called Y: The Last Man and it’s like all the men in the world suddenly die except for this one guy, and it’s about the women around him. Everyone wants to make a movie out of it, and I think he had a bad experience with that so he made a comic after that called Saga, which could never be turned into a movie because it would be the most expensive movie ever made. Every character would have to have tons of prosthetics. Everyone else prefers Saga; I prefer Y: The Last Man.
A: I’m not really a comics reader. Is there one you’d recommend I start with?
G: The Daniel Clowes graphic novels are where I started. He wrote Ghost World, but Ghost World is probably one of his worst comics. He’s an auteur– he writes and illustrates everything. I guess you could actually start with Akira. I think that might be the best graphic novel, period. It’s not only the best visual art but has the most compelling story.
A: Do you feel like reading comics uses a different part of your brain than reading books?
G: Yeah, because so much narrative is being created visually but it’s not a moving image. It’s kind of implied narrative. It’s in between watching TV and reading a book.
A: You illustrated a cover for a graphic novel, right?
G: They asked if I wanted to do it and I was like, ‘Sure, why not.’ It’s for The Wicked + The Divine. They’re on Image Comics, which is my favourite comic publisher right now. It’s an artist-run publishing company. I think Jamie McKelvie is a really great artist. His covers are definitely better than mine. It was sort of a vanity practice to do that, but it was fun.
A: Have you ever illustrated one all the way through?
G: Only bad ones, like when I was a teenager, that I hope never surface. I photocopied a bunch when I went to the Montreal comic fair, so they’re out there in the world. So horrifying. I think it’s some Joanna Newsom lyrics.
A: Joanna Newsom has done so much to expand vocabularies. The words that she uses!
G: Even now, in her new song, I don’t know what half these words mean. I met her a couple of months ago and made a fool of myself. I, like, wept. And now I can never talk to her again.
A: It must be hard to be on the receiving end of fan behaviour like that, too.
G: It’s very weird. It’s an implied social hierarchy in those situations. But then I do it, too. I get it, but I don’t know if I’d want anyone to feel that way about me.
A: But I’m sure they do.
G: Oh yeah, people do cry a lot. It’s pretty special I think. The weirdest thing is when people say 'I love you’, and you don’t know what to say back.
A: What do you wish people would say?
G: I like when they get cool references. I put out an EP with a friend once, and the name of the EP is Vladimir Nabokov’s alter ego. One person got it. I was like, 'Thank you!’ It’s called the Darkbloom EP, but it just sounds so witch house if you don’t know it’s Vladimir Nabokov’s alter ego.
A: Do you have a favourite Nabokov novel?
G: The Gogol one. It’s more of a biography. I really loved reading that. It’s really kind of body-horror. It’s so underrated. No one ever thinks about it. I really like Nabokov because I feel like Nabokov is the pop star of classic novelists. Everything he writes is so audacious and everything is so aestheticised. And I like that his symbol is the butterfly because that’s also Dolly Parton’s and Mariah Carey’s symbol. He’s in the trifecta of my idols.
A: What about his better-known novels?
G: People always talk about Lolita, which I didn’t really enjoy. I should probably reread it though. It just gave me a lot of anxiety, which is good I guess. And Lolita has had the most impact on pop, you know. There are constant references to it in pop culture.
A: Right. By people who haven’t read the book! Or who haven’t read it in years.
G: There are people who vastly misinterpret it, people who are like, 'Yeah, Lolita, cool.’ I think that’s interesting. It reminds me of that guy who loves Bruce Springsteen, but he’s a conservative politician and Springsteen hates him. All the greats, they’ve always been misunderstood and appropriated incorrectly.
A: To reach an audience that vast you almost have to be misinterpreted.
G: I feel like most good art works on two levels, like The Simpsons. There’s the slapstick level and then there’s a deeper level. So with Lolita, there are baseline aesthetics that everybody loves and then there’s this deep commentary below it, and that’s why it’s so good.
A: What other literary references have you made in lyrics or titles?
G: Everything is kind of an abstruse reference, in a way. I mean 'Oblivion’ is David Foster Wallace. No one ever got that. I think he had just committed suicide right when I was making the song.
A: Do you prefer his fiction or his non-fiction?
G: I’m not familiar with his non-fiction. Someone gave me a book of his short stories, and I was reading it at the time, and they were really stressing me out. What I’m reading at the time kind of informs the music. Lately I’m reading a lot of non-fiction, and it’s definitely the first time a lot of non-fiction is seeping into the art.
A: What sort of non-fiction?
G: I’m reading Jack Weatherford’s books about medieval Mongolia. They read like Game of Thrones. You should definitely read him.
A: How did you get into Mongol history?
G: Have you ever listened to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast? It’s really good. I listened to the Mongol episode. Game of Thrones had ended, and I was just like, 'I need more.’ I’ve been trying to figure out what everyone in Game of Thrones is based on historically. I don’t know if non-fiction counts as literary– I’m not an English lit person. I got really bad grades in English.
A: Non-fiction counts! But I get what you’re saying. G: I think all of academia is deeply competitive, and one of the main reasons I dropped out of school and didn’t pursue research is because I was like, 'Fuck this competitive, back-stabby, judgy culture.’ It’s almost as bad as music fandom. I can’t remember things, like individual things that happened in a book I read a couple years ago. I don’t catch every metaphor. I hated War and Peace. I just didn’t enjoy it. And I always get shit for it!
A: People get defensive when it comes to the classics.
G: Yeah, people are really weird about it. Especially books. Like Richard Price I never got. Like Woody Allen. I just don’t like his movies. I watched some of his movies, and I just wasn’t down. I feel stupid for not liking them.
A: I feel like he makes movies for a very specific set of people– tortured white New York dudes– and how much you like the movies depends on how closely you identify with him.
G: I guess a large portion of the people I know are tortured white New York dudes.
A: And they like Woody Allen?
G: Typically. I mean, it’s the tortured white-dude art that is often the bad art that is always revered.
A: I mean, who had the leisure time to make art for centuries?
G: Yeah, exactly. And it’s always like, 'I’m having an existential crisis because I’m rich and I don’t have a job!’
A: 'I’m too successful!’ What else do you feel like you’re supposed to like, but you don’t?
G: Oh, the beat poets. Although, since listening to Lana Del Rey’s stuff, I have a more open mind.
A: Lana has opened your mind to the beats?
G: Yeah. Jack Kerouac. I tried numerous books; I just found them boring and not that great. The only one I liked was Ginsberg. All my cool friends in high school were like, 'The beats, the beats, the beats!’ and I just couldn’t get it.
A: What’s the last book you gave to a friend?
G: I gave my manager Y: The Last Man and Saga because he really likes comics. And my friend Mira wrote a book– she’s a really good writer– and I gave it to one of my other friends. It’s basically stand-up comedy but in the form of tweets, in a book. They’re aphoristic jokes, it’s really hard to describe. Selected tweets from Mira Gonzalez. You can go look at her Twitter, it’s just, like, a level up. And I hate Twitter!
A: Do you read much on the internet?
G: I prefer to read a book. I don’t think I absorb information very well on the internet. I’ll find really good things on Longreads. But if it’s possible to get it on paper I prefer to read that. That’s probably worse for the environment.
A: They actually did a study of e-readers versus paper books. And e-readers, due to server storage and e-waste, are not better than books. So you’re okay.
G: Books are compostable. E-readers are probably burned in a trash pile in some African country and causing cancer.
A: Do you ever find the internet to be a distraction from reading?
G: When I’m reading, I’m not normally around my phone. I usually read in bed, which I actually hate because it really hurts my wrists. Especially when you get the big comic things, and they’re hardcover and massive. But that’s how it’s been my whole life, trying to read giant books while lying down. Like, does everyone else read sitting up? I feel like I have to lie down if I want to read.
A: Even on cars and airplanes?
G: I get really car sick, so usually no. Almost every time I start a book on tour, I lose it. There are so many books that I’ve gotten halfway through on tour and then lost.
A: Do you remember which ones?
G: I lost both The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Handmaid’s Tale.
A: Are you one of those people who can stop reading a book before you’ve finished it?
G: Sometimes, with biographies. I’m like, 'I’m halfway through. I got the gist.’
A: Some people feel really guilty about not finishing a book.
G: You either enjoy it or you don’t. If someone is enjoying reading something, it’s a really beautiful thing and people shouldn’t criticise it. I remember when I was reading the Dune prequels– which I know people think are trashy– and my English teacher was like, 'Really? The Dune prequels?’ And I was like, 'You’re my English teacher, and I’m reading!’
A: Right. 'Why are you judging me?’
G: I just don’t know if I believe in trashy. I think those books are great. The ones Frank Herbert wrote are artistically better achievements, but I don’t think the prequels are bad. They’re different from Dune, they’re much less dense. They’re more like Harry Potter– people say Harry Potter is trashy, too. Have you read Dune?
A: No.
G: You should read the prequels first. The prequels contextualise everything. There’s a lot of stuff in Dune that needs to be set up. Dune is my favourite book.
A: Where do you buy books?
G: Now, Amazon. Before, a lot of good local bookstores in Montreal. I love used bookstores a lot. I also destroy books when I read them, so better not to have a new one. I just rip them up and bend the pages and write in them. Then every time I move I just give all my books away.
A: Are there none that you hang on to?
G: I keep my original copy of The Mists of Avalon, Lord of the Rings, shit from my parents.
A: Are your parents big readers?
G: Yeah, my mom is the editor of a super-liberal newspaper and she used to work for the Vancouver Writers Festival for a really long time. It meant I got to meet J.K. Rowling before people liked Harry Potter. The first book was out and it wasn’t big yet. She was reading to a room of a couple of hundred people. I also got to meet Toni Morrison.
A: Were you a bookish kid?
G: Basically my dad is just really awesome, so when I was two or three he started reading me Lord of the Rings, and we finished by the time I was in kindergarten. In kindergarten, they had all these crap books like, 'The cat goes down stairs.’ And I was like, 'Are you fucking kidding me?’ I wouldn’t read– I was actually a late reader. They said, 'Claire’s not reading.’ And I was just used to Lord of the Rings. So my dad gave me a magnifying glass and Lord of the Rings, and I just read that. By six or seven, I had read through the book. And so my brain is kind of based on Lord of the Rings, because my formative years were spent reading it. It’s so deeply embedded into my psyche. Everything exists in relation to that book.
A: Have you re-read it throughout your life?
G: I’ve read it three or four times, but not since I was about eighteen. I’ll probably read it again soon. I like re-reading things. I especially like reading Lord of the Rings book one, because even though almost nothing happens it totally transforms me. It’s like therapy, like getting a massage. I don’t care if nothing is happening. I don’t care if it’s just Gandalf talking about some shit in a field. It’s just relaxing to be there.
A: Like literary comfort food.
G: Yeah, just getting to go to that universe. Same with Harry Potter. Maybe it’s not the most compelling writing in the world, but it’s such a world, it feels less like reading. That’s what I respect the most: to make something that someone can actually escape into, especially in the digital age. It’s so much harder to do that than to write Ulysses, in a way.
A: It’s almost a different skill.
G: I think it’s different to 'good writing’. I absorb beautiful sentences in a different way. I used to keep a Heidegger book by my bed, and when I had insomnia I was like, 'Fine, I’ll just read Heidegger.’ It’s so boring, even though when I’m actively reading it I can appreciate what it is. But you have to be pretty caffeinated.
A: Beyond Lord of the Rings, what are your other pleasure reads?
G: Have you ever read The Mists of Avalon? That is one of my ultimate favourites. When I was probably seven or eight, I was obsessed with the painting on the cover. My whole fashion sense is based on the Mists of Avalon cover. It’s this sick babe in a purple, medieval, Sansa kind of gown, holding a big sword on a white steed. And there’s all this mist, and there are all these white birds. It’s so creepy and gorgeous. She’s got this long black hair that goes down to her butt. I just literally judged the book by its cover. But the book is definitely as good as the cover. It’s a feminist retelling of Arthurian legends from the point of view of Morgan le Fay. And it’s amazing. Then last year I was like, 'I’m going to re-read it,’ and then I found out the author is a paedophile who raped her daughter.
A: Oh, I did not know that.
G: Like to me, that’s my Woody Allen. One of the biggest influences on my life was created by a terrible, terrible person. I guess it’s one of the reasons why the book isn’t considered more of a classic. When it came out it was a bestseller with lots of accolades, but it’s kind of been shamed out of the culture.
A: Wow, so does that colour how you feel about the book?
G: I think not? I think it’s one of the best books ever written, that it’s a masterpiece and everyone should read it. It’s also just really informative. You learn all about Arthurian legends. It’s a couple of thousand pages at least– it’s really heavy and hard to read in bed.
A: What have you read as an adult that has had a big impact on you?
G: Mostly history books. I have more difficulty with fiction as an adult for some reason. Biographies are the closest I’ve been reading to fiction the last few years. I really like them but I think you should have grey hair before you start writing one. I started a Ronda Rousey autobiography and it’s really good so far.
A: Clearly you’re a fan.
G: Oh yeah. I started it yesterday and got really far. Becoming a female professional athlete is already difficult enough, but to be in fighting… She’s like, no make-up, in a fight, ponytail. She’s scary and sweaty, and it’s really cool what she’s accomplished. It says something good about the culture. Even a couple years ago, you’d see an unflattering picture of someone and it’d be like, 'She’s not hot, look at how gross she looks in that picture.’ Whereas with Rousey, you always see pictures of her super-sweaty. You know there’s that scandal because of the unflattering photos they took of Beyoncé at the Super Bowl [in 2013]. She’s doing really difficult athletic shit. You’re actually going to make fun of her for looking like she’s doing work? No one is ever like, 'Man, Dave Grohl looks like shit.’ For men with a job in music or athletics, being hot isn’t something they’re judged for.
A: There’s an assumption that you can be hot just by doing your job if you’re a man.
G: Like the cred from the job is hot. Whereas with women I feel like you get the job if you’re hot. There have been good fighters before Rousey. I think she’s definitely one of the best fighters, but it’s convenient that she looks great in a bikini and has long flowing blonde hair. I often wonder, if I wasn’t skinny, would I have this job? Would I be where I am? It’s gross to think about.
A: It must be tempting to try to control that image a little.
G: It is, but I’ve kind of given up on it. When people say, 'Ohhh, Grimes is so cute and girly,’ I’m just like, 'Whatever. That’s what you want. I’ll just be that if that’s what you want me to be in your mind. I’m not going to fight that.’ It’s like the most first-world problem ever.
A: Those people would probably be surprised to learn that you’re obsessed with the Mongols. What draws you to that period in history?
G: There were just so many great political firsts. Like animal rights– they didn’t hunt during mating season– and freedom of speech, press, religion. Which was incredibly radical– it was actually one of the reasons they had such power. People were drawn to them because they realised, 'Well, I’m not going to be killed for doing my thing.’ Genghis Khan had all these advisers. I’ve really taken to having advisers. I don’t do anything without bouncing stuff off my friends. If you’re in any public position, you should have advisers. That’s been a huge influence on me.
A: Everyone needs a few trusted advisers.
G: And the fashion is amazing. I mean, in Star Wars, Natalie Portman’s character Amidala is a complete rip-off of full Mongolian. I’m really interested in reading about military leaders in general. If you can convince people to die for you, how do you do that? That’s really interesting to me. When you end up being in a position like I am, where suddenly you have the ability to manipulate large groups of people at once, it’s very stressful, so I’ve spent a lot of time researching other people in this position.
A: And what have you figured out?
G: You can’t use complex arguments. The face-value level has to be there, even in terms of how you hold yourself. I always watch videos of politicians giving speeches. They make eye contact. If you do that kind of thing, that’s the best way to grab an audience. It’s drastically changed my show. It’s made it a lot better. Feigning confidence is the number one important thing. Never express weakness. It goes badly every time. And every time I do, it’s a headline: 'Grimes Says She’s Not Good at This Thing.’ If I do a self-deprecating joke, that just translates to huge drama on the internet. There’s no way to translate that. You have to do it in the most dumbed-down possible way.
A: Which is unfortunate because I feel like people need examples of doubt and failure.
G: It sucks that you can’t present a complex argument right now– not because the people won’t understand it, but because there are very few mediums. You can’t trust that Spin isn’t going to turn it into a bunch of bullshit. We’re going into an election, and I can’t talk to the youth about politics because I don’t trust the first press that will be on it, which is definitely going to be Spin. I don’t like to name names, but I don’t trust them to not turn it into something incredibly reductive and stupid. Which is bad for the culture.
A: Is it tempting to try to speak directly to your fans about politics at a show, or write something on your blog?
G: Even that gets taken out of context. The times that I have done that, it’s the same thing. It’s almost worse when you do it on Twitter or something, because it becomes a free-for-all. I’ve basically stopped using social media for anything like that.
A: That must feel awful.
G: Instead of being like, 'Pandas are endangered!’ you have to be like, 'It’s World Panda Day! Let’s celebrate. There are only four hundred left.’ You have to spin everything into something that feels positive. Semiotics are really important. Visuals are really important. Instagram is so much more effective. Words can be taken out of context, but a picture is a picture. Think about a lot of the great leaders– or not necessarily great, but powerful. They always had really extreme aesthetics. Genghis Khan. Mussolini. I’m not pro-fascist, but people really respond to aesthetics. I’ve done these sociological tests where I try different hair colours. Blue and purple hair gets the most likes on Instagram. It’s almost double the likes that it is for blonde, brown or pink. I find it very interesting that you can directly measure what kind of visuals people respond to.
A: I wonder what that means. Is it that people just like blue hair better?
G: I’ve noticed that people often gravitate toward things that are less flattering. Candid pictures often get more likes than if I did a photo shoot in a magazine. That’s not always the case, but often less sexy, less pretty things do better. I think people respond better to things that walk that middle ground. Every time I dress like a guy or anything androgynous, people love that. I don’t know, the bro-ier I present myself, the better the response.
A: As you notice what people respond to, are you also thinking about how to communicate most effectively through all these channels?
G: That’s something I keep trying to work on. Instead of just trying to shove my possibly extreme or caustic ideas down people’s throats, maybe there’s a way to manipulate them through these things that people seem to like or respond to the most.
A: Has thinking about all this stuff made you see the artists you admire in a new light?
G: So many of the artists I admire reference the aesthetics of power… The idea of a pop star is kind of replacing the idea of the religious icon or the political figure… And most of the biggest pop stars use a lot of the same tactics. It’s weird, because most of the best aesthetics are liberal.
A: Do you think there’s a correlation between forward-looking politics and boundary-pushing creativity?
G: You can make something that’s really aesthetically avant-garde and still be super-populist. 'Cause that’s what Genghis Khan was. That’s why I’m really interested in all these books. He had all these really complicated ideas and really over-the-top aesthetics. I mean, he also forcibly murdered hordes of combat fighters. But I think when things look powerful, it manifests. It’s often a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A: How much does the way you’re perceived affect your creative process?
G: It affects me more when I go to push it into the world, because I can’t make art with ulterior motives. The videos and stuff more, but the actual music is so ephemeral, either I get it or I don’t. When I try to manipulate it, I feel like I’m punished by the music gods. It has to be honest or I can’t do it. Or maybe I just know it feels dishonest and so I like it less. But with music, it’s either there or it’s not. It doesn’t matter what the aesthetics are. There’s a certain way that vocals can interact with melody and if you can get a certain feeling from that, there’s no way to control that. Maybe if you’re one of the great pop writers, like Max Martin– maybe that’s what Max Martin figured out and that’s why he’s so great. For me at least, I have no control over it.
A: What’s the most exciting thing about this new album?
G: I think it’s so much better than Visions. Most of my friends, when I showed it to them, were like, 'You didn’t produce it,’ and I was like, 'Yeah I did!’ I just feel really good about my skills. And some of the songs that I’ve heard a million times still give me the shiver feeling. Even if everyone hates it, I feel so good about it. With Visions, it wasn’t really done. I hear it now, and I hear all the technical issues. I think creatively it’s not what I want it to be, technically it’s not what I want it to be. For this album, I killed a lot of songs trying to get them technically to where I wanted to be. I think that’s why it took so long.
A: Are there skills you learned so you could make certain songs come out right?
G: Yeah, playing guitar, singing. A lot of stuff that I wanted to accomplish before was vocally too ambitious. I took one singing lesson, and it was actually pretty productive. She taught me where my vocal range is. It’s like Justin Bieber’s. Once I started playing guitar and got an amp, I started making rock songs. The joy of making rock songs is very distinct. As an electronic musician, I had not been previously exposed to the joys of jamming. It sounds so ridiculous, but I get now why so many people are so into jamming.
A: Do you find inspiration in other mediums, too?
G: Painting makes music come. So do other creative things, even videos. For so much of this album, after 'Go’ and after 'REALIiTi’, I had huge spurts after I finished editing those videos. Doing visual art, especially videos, really makes your brain start going.
A: So you coax it out.
G: Books and movies are a huge part of it. I got really into De Niro and Pacino. I’m really into bro art right now. Springsteen and Queen. The kind of stuff that my dad and my brother would like. Stuff that college dorm guys like. I think even the beat poets count in that. Some stuff in that category is very, very good. Like Springsteen and the Godfather movies. Old mob gangster movies. I’ve always just been like, 'Nope.’ Now I’m like, 'I love this!’ And that’s the kind of shit everyone on Tumblr says is so problematic! Maybe, but some of it is really good.
A: How many things, if you really pick them apart, aren’t problematic in some way?
G: Pretty much everything is problematic. The world is problematic. The world is not nice. The world is chaotic. I think we’re getting to the point, especially in liberal culture right now, where everyone is saying, 'It must be absolutely unproblematic in every way!’ As much as I wish that were true, it’s probably never going to happen.
A: So how do you make choices in the meantime?
G: I feel like I have a really interesting viewpoint because I’m a producer. So much of the art that goes out is filtered through men. Even in comics. I love Brian K. Vaughan, and all the books with female protagonists, but he’s a man and it’s filtered through him. He’s a white guy. Not criticizing at all, I’m just saying: everything, even other viewpoints, is often created by men. That’s why I think Rousey is interesting. Even women getting hit is radical in our culture. Not a lot of people are comfortable with that. She would probably never fight a man, because a man probably wouldn’t hit her just on principle. If a guy did want to fight her, is that ethical? I dunno. MMA and fighting have been going on since Roman times, and you put women into it, and it suddenly blows up. Everyone is interested in this new viewpoint.
A: As a producer, do you feel as disruptive as Rousey?
G: Production is the most bro-y field that I’ve ever tried to work in. It’s terribly, terribly inhospitable to women. It feels like the 1920s. I studied science in school. I have four brothers. My whole life I’ve been in bro-y situations. But female music production is something we hear so little of– female producers that are not collaborating with male producers. There’s Kate Bush. And Sinéad O'Connor produced her own first album. I cannot think of a lot of other examples. Take co-producers out of the equation. To actually just have a solo female voice, no male engineers in the room, no male co-producers, I can count the examples on one hand. Why is that the case? Why is this specific medium so inhospitable to women? There’s very little music that doesn’t involve men at some point in the chain. Meanwhile, my album is being mixed and probably mastered by a guy. Even playing shows, all sound guys are men. There are so many barriers for women to do anything besides singing in this medium, and music is such a big part of the culture.
A: Are people just afraid to trust women with creative control?
G: With Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling sent it out and forty people turned it down. I just watched this Tina Turner documentary, and she was like, 'Yeah, I was in my late thirties or forties when I started doing my solo career, and it took me a really long time to get someone who would take a chance on me.’ Older women can sell. Madonna can sell out any venue. The weird gatekeepers keep this idea that youth and beauty are the most important things, when they’re clearly not. When Joan Didion did the Céline ad, everyone freaked out. It was news everywhere. People actively want this. Why is it still such an anomaly? Maybe the gatekeepers are dudes who want the thing they spend most of their day on to be something they find sexually appealing. Why are all these songs, every single song on the radio, about sex? Maybe because everything is by guys.
A: There are all these different layers to think about in terms of how women are filtered.
G: When my music first started coming out, I never ever wore make-up. I felt so bad about all the negative comments. Every time there would be a picture of me, everyone would be like, 'She’s so gross.’ And I started wearing make-up in my shows, which I wouldn’t have done before. You have to be typically beautiful in some way to be in the media, I think, even for your own sanity. I read this interview with Lauryn Hill a while back, and she was like, 'One of the reasons I dropped out is because I was so tired of wearing make-up when I went to the store, because otherwise I’d see a picture of me in People magazine and I’d feel really bad.’ Why should she have to think about that?
A: Women are told they won’t reach a bigger audience if they don’t look and sound a certain way.
G: One of the things that’s fucked about indie music right now is everyone comes to you and says, 'You could be a pop star.’ It’s suggested on a daily basis: Why don’t you work with producers? And you’re getting emails being like, 'I’ll produce your album.’ You’re like, 'Am I insane? Am I doing something wrong? If I was a good producer, why would I be constantly solicited by people wanting to produce my album?’ It makes you question yourself. I think a lot of women who are perfectly capable of producing feel like they just have to have a co-producer because maybe they can’t do it right. People act like you can’t. They’re like, 'You should really get in the room with a real producer.’ It’s just emotionally exhausting, especially when the offer’s from someone huge, like massive producers who are number one on the radio. It’s a hard decision. To turn that down is really emotionally stressful. If you don’t, then it’s exactly the same single as someone else’s single, just with you on the vocals.
A: I guess that’s why you need the advisers.
G: If I didn’t have good people around me who are like, 'Remember that you don’t have to do that,’ I might’ve done it. It’s good to have people to remind you that some things are better if they haven’t been done before. My boyfriend will say, 'It’s better to be different than to be the same and maybe more commercially successful in a shorter period of time.’ I’m sure there were one-hit wonders that outsold Portishead or My Chemical Romance, but a career is based on doing something that people can’t get anywhere else.
A: And once you make a choice to do that popular route, it’s hard to make your way back to doing creatively fulfilling work.
G: I agree. McConaughey made it back somehow.
A: Are there women who’ve made it back?
G: Angelina Jolie kind of did. People kind of respect her. I feel like Winona Ryder had all that scandal and now she’s back.
A: I feel like the stakes are higher for women because you’re punished so much more for a misstep.
G: There’s real shaming. With men it’s more like, 'Ha, isn’t it funny.’ I think with women, it’s perceived as desperation and wanting money. It’s much harder to develop a woman anti-hero thing, whereas with a guy he’s kind of already automatically an anti-hero. I think Lana Del Rey is a really interesting example because she’s one of the great artists. In the public, every time I’m like, 'I love Lana, she’s so great,’ people are like, 'Ew, she’s so desperate.’ I think people thought she was on an indie label, and it turned out she was on a major label, and they felt tricked. It was the authenticity thing. Her music, more than other people’s music, has that two-tier thing going on. You can put it on and be like, 'Ooh, it’s a pop song about love,’ or you can put on headphones and deep-listen and it’s crazy. I’m just such a fan.
A: Lana is very LA. Do you like living here?
G: I don’t dislike it, but I’m not here to stay. I don’t like pollution. I don’t like driving. Everyone here is in the entertainment industry. In Toronto, I have more friends from before, and they’re like, 'Oh, you still doing music?’ And I’m like, 'Thank God for you.’ It’s easier to feel like a human being.