I had a great time hanging out with the amazing Princess Chelsea and her band at Kalvingrad! Such a magical show. We did a little interview as well, I’ll publish it asap! Here are a few pictures taken with my Olympus Trip 35! Many thanks to Princess Chelsea, her band and the Kalvingrad team for their kindness!
Chelsea before going on stage at Kalvingrad, Geneva. Through my Olympus Trip 35.
A couple weeks ago Princess Chelsea was playing at Kalvingrad in Geneva. We met a few hours before her show (at 4:20!), and found a nice sunny spot along the Rhône river to chat a bit. I remember being so happy – and very nervous, as usual! – about being able to interview Chelsea. I had been following her since The Cigarette Duet back in 2011, so needless to say I was really looking forward to her concert as well. I remember her being cheerful and very friendly. Her band was very welcoming as well. Join us as Chelsea tells me about her life in New Zealand, her album The Loneliest Girl, Alphaville, her plans for the next album, her potential “heavy-nice” phase, and more.
Many thanks to Chelsea, her band, and the team at Kalvingrad for their kindness!
To get to know you a little bit better, I wanted to know what your life was like in New Zealand when you’re not touring.
Princess Chelsea: When I’m not touring I’m usually recording music most of the time. I live in West Auckland, which is a working class area of Auckland that’s really beautiful. There’s nice black sand beaches, and native bush all around. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie The Piano, that’s set in Karekare Beach ? So these black sand beaches and very dangerous, scary ocean waves. It feels like no one has even lived there before, they’re very wild. It looks a bit like Jurassic Park! But then it’s also a poorer area that has a lot of drug problems. A lot of dark stuff is going on, but it’s also a really nice family area. It’s a mixed area, that’s interesting. So I have a home studio there, and I work most days on music. So yeah, I pretty much stay at home a lot and work!
Do you also work at a record store, like in your song All I Need To Do?
Oh yeah! I work at this classical music shop two days a week, on the weekend. It’s really interesting, it’s the oldest record shop in New Zealand and it’s the only classical music shop. You meet a lot of crazy characters there. I think classical music fans are all interesting in that they’re all outsiders. They collect operas and things, and a lot of them are quite older than me.
Does classical music influence your work as well?
Well, I started playing classical piano when I was 5. So definitely, yeah!
That’s awesome! I play classical piano too!
So you could hear it! (laughs)
During the concert, again through my Olympus Trip.
Is it alright if we talk about the Loneliest Girl? First, the cover! I think it’s amazing. It’s very colorful, but at the same time your eyes are red, and you’re sitting in a bush… Was it your idea?
Yeah! I really liked the thought of sincere and happy album covers by people I’m a fan of like Jonathan Richman. I guess it’s reminiscent of old-timey - 40s and 50s - album covers, where people are just smiling on the cover in a pretty naïve way. So I wanted to do something like that, and I liked the floral theme- I love flowers and nature. We were up at this farm, homestead in New Zealand filming a video for Wasting Time, and it had this beautiful garden. So I just went and sat in the garden. Then we got the shot, and my friend took away all the color and re-colored it in, like an old postcard. At the last minute I changed the eyes to be red, because overall I thought it was just a little bit too traditional. It did look like the music sounds, but for it to reeeally look like the music sounds it needed to be a little bit creepier. So I just put the red eyes, which I think is cool because that confuses people- they are always asking about it! And some more judgmental types might be more inclined to take it more seriously with the red eyes on the cover than if it was blue eyes, which is silly.
And I think the cover is really you, kind of cheeky! I also really like how you juggle between different decades throughout the album. The Loneliest Girl is very 90s dance, and then it seems you go full Alphaville during I Miss My Man!
That’s totally Alphaville! The vocal on Forever Young was what I was going for in the chorus. I think that song is amazing, and I was listening to a lot of these big 80s songs, the big choruses. And I think that one in particular inspired the song! It’s really interesting that you mention it! (laughs)
Wow! I was hesitating to mention Alphaville at first because I thought “maybe this is just a coincidence.”
No, that’s a great song!
So my question is, when you write a song, at what point do you decide “I want this song to be in this music style.”
Well, when I’m writing a song I usually come up with the instrumental palette first. It’s all pretty experimental. Except for Loneliest Girl, it was like “I wanna try and write a 90s kind of song.” So it was always there from the get-go. But generally speaking, it’s just experimentation and it ends up what it’s like. So a lot of the songs might sound more 60s like Wasting Time, but there’s actually 80s sounds in there as well. There’s a whole lot of things going on this song, but overall it sounds more 60s than any other genre I think, and it’s just a happy accident. I don’t really plan it too much. But Loneliest Girl is an example of one that was done differently. It was definitely always going to be that 90s sound.
I wanted to talk about the song Good Enough as well, where you’re singing with Jonathan Bree. You have collaborated with him often throughout your career, and I wanted to know if you functioned differently when you worked with him, versus when you are writing on your own.
We have never actually written together until this album! So we wrote Loneliest Girl and Respect The Labourers together. But I have worked with him with mixing and some of the production stuff. He’s really good to work with, because he understands what I want. But sometimes, he also has very strong opinions and mine are different, so it can get quite tense in the studio! (laughs) For me, it’s pretty important to- I’m quite stubborn with maintaining control of my musical direction, so I generally go into the studio with him somewhat defensive! (laughs) But also, I have this stuff that he can do that I can’t do, and sometimes I have to respect the point of view of someone that’s like, “ well you can’t have that without sacrificing this”. That’s a lot to learn, so it’s quite tense to be honest! But actually, the songwriting with him is really fun, and really good! The two songs we wrote together are awesome. That’s more the technical engineering stuff that’s more stressful! (laughs) Overall, he understands what I’m going for and he’s always been a good person to work with.
I noticed a little interlude in the album called Cigarette. Is this song a little wink to your younger self?
Kinda, yeah! It’s like the lonely remix of The Cigarette Duet! I switched the G major to a G minor chord, and I just recorded it in half an hour on this really cool Casio from the late 70s. I just did it for fun, and then I liked the end result so I just put it on the album. I thought it was funny to have this interlude, or like a reprise to a song three albums back! And it’s obviously and iconic song that’s associated with me too. So there’s a duet without a duet partner and it’s switched to a minor chord! It’s a little in-joke.
You have been making music for about eleven years now. In All I Need To Do and Growing Older, you reflect on some aspects of your life. If you could meet the young Chelsea from eleven years ago, what would you tell her?
Hmm… Well, I mean- think I’ve done pretty well all over the last eleven years. There’s certainly things that I had to learn, and I had to make mistakes to be able to learn. But I don’t think I’d want to change anything- I think that’s important to just accept everything that ever went wrong. It’s part of what makes you your current person. I’d probably say, “try not to stress too much about things, and be careful who you let in your life. Because who you surround yourself with and the people you’re spending time with have a huge impact on you. And you only have so much energy and time, so choose carefully.”
I also have a broader question- we were talking about it in the beginning of the interview, you like surprising people with this image of an innocent-looking girl with nice pop music, but with very down-to-earth, sometimes harsh lyrics. So my question is, have you ever thought, just for fun, about doing the opposite? A punk, rough girl screaming innocent lyrics?
That’s a good idea, I love this! “I love you so much, you make my heart melt every single day till I die!” in heavy metal? That would be cool! That’s actually a very good idea, maybe I should try this! (laughs) I have never thought of that! Heavy and beautiful. I think Growing Older is a little bit like that at the end of the song, how the noise guitar comes in and it’s quite abrasive, but that’s to a lesser degree. Because it’s pretty nice sentiments. And same with When The World Turns Grey, from the second album. I think the reviews called it “doom ballad”, which is quite interesting! So that’s kind of hitting in that direction, but I could go heavier, it could be interesting! Thanks for this idea! (laughs)
The view from the balcony. Chelsea and her band playing Too Many People, one of my favorite songs from The Great Cybernetic Depression.
You’re very welcome, I’m looking forward to hearing that! Finally, what can we expect from Princess Chelsea in the future?
I’m gonna go back to New Zealand and keep recording, and I’m probably gonna do an album… I haven’t really thought about it, but I’m thinking of doing something really, really stripped back and simple for a change. We’ll see how it goes, it might probably sound completely different. But it will still be the same songwriting and ideas. Or maybe I could do my “heavy-nice”…
Yeah, your heavy metal phase! (laughs) So what do you mean by “simple”?
It would probably be piano with a few extra things, but I can layer and layer and add instruments, I find it really fun. I’ve always don’t that. It could be a challenge to have way less going on.
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