you look great thank you there's light in your eyes thank you and you know you're carrying yourself you're light on your feet and for good reason you know you got a lot out of your system on this record sure did and more than that that would be personal and enough for you just to do it but we are getting a lot out of the result thank you amazing record thank you yeah no that that means a lot um
it was a it was a life-changing experience for me and this is actually also it's funny like the first time too i mean maybe i felt like this and my other albums i i don't remember but it's the first time i put out an album and been immediately like just ready to go back in and keep writing yeah it's interesting because it's like you made space for yourself that's why yeah and i think it's also my my brain
really associates it with fun and joy and so i'm like not you know like the sometimes i feel like it can feel like you worked so hard and now i get to kind of rest take some time off from the studio and i think because it felt not like that for me it just felt like fun and joyful and easy i'm just like i'm ready to go back and hang out with my friends and and write about you know some more feelings that i'm
having and you can yeah because you can ultimately put music out when you want right yeah totally i mean you've heard that right i wanted to talk to you a little bit just to start with about the idea of ambition and self-fulfillment and what we put into ourselves in terms of what we think is going to heal us and make us feel great in relation to the success that you had out the gate as a solo artist when you
emerged from that the grammys all those heady things that i saw you at it was like you're in a typhoon right when you came out the other end of that did you have to do some work on yourself and go you know it's not actually going to do it that's not going to achieve what i need to achieve personally absolutely i mean i think there's so many different layers to that like i think it's like
starting out when i was 15 and the toll that that kind of before you really know who you are that that kind of like external kind of pressure can take on your nervous system like it's kind of like you're always feeling like the most important thing is the next performance the most important thing is you know it kind of like what i what felt like to me before like getting through the the performance you
know and like killing the performance and i feel like that kind of leaves no space for you to be able to have feelings especially at that age when you feel like you don't even have enough space to have like to feel i don't know to have you know maybe anxiety about one thing or even know what to call it at that point yeah exactly you don't know what to call it um by the way i've been watching you would actually really love
this um atlas of the heart with renee brown oh i need to see this i like her a lot yes and her whole thing which is so has been so inspiring for me songwriting-wise too is the importance of language when it comes to the human experience and how important naming of feeling like how naming a feeling affects your experience like there's such a difference between being like i'm anxious or i'm excited like
between just saying that and naming it like really affects how you feel and she talks about how human beings we need more language yeah in order to connect with others connect with ourselves and so there's like she was talking about how there's three basic emotions that everybody talks about happy sad and pissed off but there's so many different layers different like kind of sub genres or whatever of those feelings
like she talks about the difference between stress and overwhelm the difference between uh you know anguish and grief like you know below the kind of broader sphere of sadness and i feel like that's something that really excited me songwriter songwriting-wise in this album i was reading a lot of like sally rooney novels and got into a lot of poetry and i feel like i just tapped it started to tap into it in this
album and i'm excited to keep kind of going into that further is like the details oh it's all about the detail i'm so glad you said that this album is so in the detail and there's a word that i keep that keep keeps coming up right now being aware that's the difference between transferring being the word overwhelmed into stress or vice versa you rounded them into each other but an awareness of
how you're truly feeling taking a second just a second to acknowledge what is actually going on allows you to put to actually identify what it is in more detail better understand it and for you who is a communicator in your passion you communicate that gives you a chance to better understand it and put into detail and that's what's on this album right you're diving into this in a really aware way yeah and i
think it's like for example like a song like psycho freak is i feel like where i really was like oh this is what's exciting to me about songwriting like before i feel like i maybe would have just been like you know had a line where the word anxiety was in it but in this one it's like you know i wish i could just yeah it's like what does it look like and what does it feel like in my body what kind of thoughts do
i have and so that was the first time i feel like i really was like kind of i think this album process made me so excited about like kind of re-enter re-inspired me in terms of lyrics because i was so like i started off like being really excited about the lyrics when i first started writing then i was like so into melodies and kind of was like not as inspired by the lyrics and then i rediscovered
like why i love lyrics which is just like the details of things and getting to really like put words around like to put in a song like you know i wish that i could just like chill and not have to like leave this restaurant and like describing what that felt like for me in terms of like everybody feels like they're like having such an easy time living life and like the simplest things for me like
going to dinner or being social feel really hard for me right now and yeah just like getting to talk about what that felt like in my body what that felt like what thoughts played out in my mind i was like that's so much more interesting than just being like i'm anxious psycho freak you did such a great job along with willow of helming this into something that had a structure to it because the beat just i felt like you
could have probably maybe you did listen to this this back track this track yeah like an hour it has this soothing incredible modern strangeness to it it's got all the right level of experimentation but it's it's very meditative i'm in some so much of a better i'm in a much better place right now in terms of anxiety and mental health like the best i've ever been like i'm great and we've had you know
off-record conversations about this too i'm so great now and i and i actually when i talk about this i don't want people to be like worried about me like is she okay but it's just what i was going through at the time of course and i remember that very thoughtful of you as well because fans we do get concerned about our artists it's a good part of the trade 100 it's nice that you reset that yeah totally um so i'm great now um
you know i still have my moments but not like this day and this day was just another day where i was kind of like having you know my kind of obsessional anxiety uh days and uh i didn't even start by talking about it that day in the studio he just played that dragon like that beginning synth sound like that like just like felt like ours how i feel like when i am experiencing uh those patterns in my
body and mind and i just kind of went in the studio and just like started talking about it when i met you for the first time i could never have known that you were going through that doubt about what people expect from me because you were so real out the gate it's like the person that i met yeah was waiting for the artist to catch up 100 that is so that is those are the perfect words for that i
think i went into the studio a lot wanting to prove myself as a songwriter and prove my prove myself as an artist and then also personality wise definitely feeling like and a therapist actually said that to me she was like going the studio can't has to stop feeling like a performance for you because it yeah yeah that is the realest thing that someone in your most private vulnerable place can say to you that
cuts to the core totally of where you see your value in that moment 100 wow and so it's funny knowing that and doing the inner work of of therapy i feel like my intentions for this album was i don't want to do that and so i ended up really attracting people that responded when i did expose myself and when i was vulnerable which is why i was so great with ricky and scott because i felt like and i think this is
something that happens to women in general women and pop as like a sub like whatever i keep saying sub genre whatever sub world of that where it's like you want to be seen as a full whole person you know and i think like with women this happens a lot and with women and i felt like this too it's like and maybe it was something that i was getting from the world and not necessarily from the people around me
but it felt like you can take me being sexy and confident and sassy but you can't take me feeling weird in my own skin like it just doesn't match up to the image that you have of me or what you want from me and i feel like i was working with people this time especially ricky and scott that really saw me as a as a whole person and therefore the music became like that when i pressed play on this album and
listened to it i knew from the beginning from familiar that it was going to be something that was um very deliberately created put together a very loving gift right like not just a collection of songs yeah definitely loving gift yes when i got to a song like boys don't cry i was like all right he's in a bag because when you're able to to make something that's so catchy and connected and modern
but such a tough subject across that is a tough subject to cross because what you're doing and from that song at least in my opinion is that you are selflessly acknowledging someone else's inability to share but it's ultimately going to be at the expense of yourself totally um and you know it and that's why that song is so brutal because you kind of know it and when you hear it it's just like wow man it's a powerful
one that one yeah and it's i remember at that time writing it for you know for the man in my life um and i remember having it in my i remember that being like something that was that we talked about a lot but it's also it's been really cool to see how other men in my life like my dad for example or uh he's one of my uh he's my choreographer but also one of my best friends calvit um
how it just sparks up a conversation that i think is really beautiful and i keep seeing it uh in the men in my life too where it's like that's something that they're like oh wow like i i didn't it almost like is like a breath of relief for them because it kind of opens the space for it to be talked about actually brene brown says um something like this in her atlas of the heart thing where it's like she
basically uses clips from movies to talk about different emotions and there's like this one scene where this it's uh the scene from this movie chef where john favreau is like screaming at the critic it's one of my favorite films ever yeah it's so good and she talks about how it's like shame or something is but it but she's like the acceptable way for men to express shame the only way for them to express shame is through
rage aggression yeah and um you see it all the time by the way because if someone does something wrong in particular i see this with i've seen this within my own behavior yeah i've seen this in other male friends in my life i see in i know in myself and i know and then they know immediately that they up yeah yeah yeah yeah but for at least a day you're just going to get this form of
sort of defensive i kind of up but i kind of didn't and it's like there are reasons for this and eventually it all just comes crashing down and it's funny it's the same thing that we were actually talking about before that happens to women in a different way you're just not seeing somebody as a full person yeah like you're just not seeing a man as a full human being so it's not you know it's like the aggression and
all that stuff is allowed but not the other stuff and listen i know how this works you know there are lots of people who are brilliant at what they do who are going to guide you into this room when the time is right but i just need you to know that friend of friend this door is always open if you ever want to come in and hang out thank you one reason or another and i i really do always want to come you