Grammy museum interview and performance
Grace was interviewed by Thomas Mier, a reporter for Rolling Stone. She talked about how the album had helped her break with her old "identity" About what inspired the lyrics and sound of the new album, and how she envisioned the album performed on tour. After the interview, she played a set of four songs from the upcoming album, two of which she had never performed before.
About her ‘liberation’ as an artist
"I feel like so much of my identity has circulated around performance, which is very lonely, and your personal life gets really, really lonely. So I am really trying to unlearn all of those traits, that I feel were instilled in me, and also knowing my power and what I deserve, and willing to fight for myself.
I have been trying to unlearn parts of myself that was trained up to perform. A lot of people expect that I am like [very energetic], and then I end up not being able to reveal myself in the way that I want, so I am actively trying to [be more calm], and some of the songs that I am singing really deserves that, I get to say what I really want to say so that I don’t get in front of people an like blank, which I often do.
[Breaking with her old “identity”] was a large identity loss for me. As a little girl, I was given sort of the ‘crown of purity’, and that was what I based my identity on because I was just a little girl, and I felt a positive reinforcement around that, that’s what people like about me. And then to have that ripped, and just feel this wave of hatred. It’s like people purge their hatred of women because you are no longer a person; you are a woman. And I felt that– now I am a woman, now I am sexual, now I am wrong, something people don’t like.
There was so much hiding during that time [before, with Columbia].
With my career and growing up as a kid in the limelight, you do a lot of subliminal learning, and there were a lot of things that I never even knew were instilled in me until it started giving me blockages in adulthood. Then, the first step you need to do is to locate why you emotionally feel the need to do that, before you start taking steps of not doing that.
When you grow up in a really chaotic home, where no one is heard, you end up being a person who feels they need to get in their word, and as an adult, I hate that I talk so fast and so loudly, and I feel that was because I was such an unheard kid. I have a brother and sister, and we were all in our own isolated way, feeling the exact same “golden child” syndrome of feeling that we needed to upkeep whatever façade felt appropriate, and hold it down and be whatever you defined as “good”, this unobtainable “good” that you are always chasing. Me and my sister we can and do often and for years now, talk about this for hooours!"
The new album and its inspirations
"My next album has emotionally helped me so much. It was so painful to make. I felt so intimidated by what I had cemented down for so many years that I almost felt I would be better off leaving it untouched. The fact that I am afraid to touch it almost makes me like performance art in itself, to crack it open and almost sacrifice myself for that artistic value. But it was actually really healing for me in retrospect. It was really painful writing it, but now I feel really empowered.
I really feel that the stars aligned with this album. There were just so many things that were so perfect. And in a way, I had lost everything. I let go of everyone. Even in my personal life, it was like a death of so many things. I felt like I had nothing to lose. I felt I started writing just for myself, not to present to Columbia, not to get an audio. I felt like this is something I want to do. And then Pulse Records – shout out to them for signing me! Because I think I said to them – I don’t care if this does well. Which is probably something you don’t want to hear an artist say."
[About the “scaring a lot of grown men” comment made in a previous interview] "I think there is a lot of pain and vulnerability that people are really terrified of because it makes it really real. And … I feel like people who immediately get offended by something, it’s like they are projecting something.
A big part of the album is my experience of becoming a young woman and the absolutely exaggerated experience I had through that process while being in the limelight. Because I was able to see thousands and thousands of thoughts and voices (scrolling on her leg with her fingers). That gave me a really disturbing look into mankind. It was incredibly painful to be that observer. A lot of the songs are about that, and that grief and that death of sorts. [Interviewer: would you say that this upcoming album is like a rebirth for you?] It’s a death. It slowly became that way, and it started to make a lot of sense because we started having all this imagery of Victorian death and angels and a lot of religious symbols because of the purity thing. It is finally putting that child to rest, that has been so disturbed and not been given the peace that she deserves for so long, so it’s kind of cathartic.
The album slowly started revealing itself to me. I remember the night when it all clicked, and I just heard the voices from above – YES, this is what it is, and the title and everything came to me. And then, all of a sudden, it was easier to write the songs because I knew the world that I wanted to do. From then on, I came up with this interpretive dance, and the last song with these strings-outro. And I was telling Pulse – ‘ I want all this to be interpretive dancing, like midsummer, like breathing together, and then at the very end I am going to be laid to rest and I will be slowly picked up…”
I sometimes feel really detached from myself, and I discover things about myself when I am writing, so I’ll write things, and I’ll think: ‘fuck! I did not know that I felt that way’. I felt very stolen. and the album gifted me the power of my truth and my story. It gave me something back from the world, where I had previously felt like I was giving and giving and the world was taking and taking. It was like getting a piece of my power back, and this is MINE, noone can ever touch this.
Eric Canata [the producer and keyboard-player on the album] was one of the earliest people who understood where I was getting at. When I started tapping in to things that you wouldn’t normally say out loud. Eric was one of the first people to relly get that and go with that. And then wen ended doing every important song on the album together.
It probably took 8 months to write the album.Which is good by the way, for people who don’t know. And this kept the inspiration going and it didn’t go stale."
What inspired the sound of the album
"I had been writing poetry about most of the subjects for many, many months prior, that we would often revert back to. I really was focused on the writing in the early stages. The sounds – that’s probably a lot of Erin (?). But I really just wanted the words to shine. And I am always sitting there, and we make it together. And I will be like – ‘Oh, on this word, it should feel like bubbles or popping, and then he will somehow pull up the exact sound. So, I guess it’s just my mind – the sound is my mind.
The sound [on the album] is very cathedral, like a sacrifice. In the early, early stages – I watched [?] this thing called melodrama – and by the way, that is a masterpiece album [Lordes “Melodrama”] – and I guess there is some of that. There is this fusion of really big swirling, panning electronic sounds. I didn’t want a lot of super drum moments. I felt that would add a layer of armor to the song, it would take away the nakedness that I was describing. To work around that – because it still needs rhythm – there are a lot of piano sounds and things to get it moving.
Frank Ocean inspired me heavily chromatically (don’t ask me to define that word). The notes that he chose, I liked, because it is refreshing to my ears. I find there is a cry and wailing to his songs because he allows his voice to flow, and you can hear the dynamics of his emotion. So that was a big inspiration. And Big Thief. I broke down a lot of her writing. Her writing inspired my writing a lot".
The break with Columbia
[Unlike some of the previous interviews, Grace was now reluctant to talk too much aboit the break with Columbia] "A lot of those things [the songs she lost to Columbia] didn’t even have a direction. And I felt this really strong gut voice: ‘You need to sever everything’. And I feel I have reached the potential that I always wanted, but I felt I didn’t have the right system, motivation, and support around me."
About the tour/performance of the album
"I wanted the album to feel like a performance art piece, and I want that to bleed into the shows. Even in the beginning, I imagined it like an exhibit. I imagined how I would walk in, and each song of the album was an exhibit. There was a performance art piece, I think it was in France, and she says: ‘You can do anything to me’ and she lays out like a feather, a sharpie, a safetypin, a knife, and scissors, and as the time went on, she slowly got mutilated. The rawness of that is what I want."