0:00
It definitely just felt like a statement that I had to make to go forward really.
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0:04
Like everything on Virgin felt like if I don't make this group of statements, my throat's going to stay locked up.
0:09
You know, each of them kind of had to come out come what may. Come what may.
0:13
Cuz I'm so aware of no one wants to impinge on the space of kids who are like on the front lines cuz it truly is like a battle being fought. Yeah.
0:28
In this country, that's right. It is so major.
0:30
But at the same time, I was like, it's Yeah, this is it is my experience and I believe that it's valid.
0:38
Even if it is harder to box up, even if it doesn't maybe feel like an arrival, it's not an arrival.
0:44
That's why I've got duct tape on my chest.
0:46
There's an impermanence to it.
0:48
There's a short-term fix to it.
0:50
We have to keep asking ourselves and others questions and we get very attached to the idea of arrival.
0:58
All of us do for some kind of answer that's going to give us purpose or clarity, right? But we don't get them. It's life, baby.
1:09
[Music] It's so good to see you.
1:16
Don't you love that we do this? I do.
1:19
I look forward to it every time, but never more than I have this time.
1:23
um which I hope is every time, but it definitely makes sense for me because this album Virgin that you've created, um I just hear everything that you've at least through the music that you've been through to to tell this truth.
1:36
And truth is the order of the day, full transparency, full transparency.
1:41
And we talk a lot about that in life, even away from the arts, we talk about this idea of like, I just want to be fully transparent, but it's conditional, right, most of the time.
1:50
And this is an unconditional listen.
1:53
It's so rare to be to be thrust into an experience and I'm trying to do this in a way that doesn't dominate because I can be elaborate when I love something.
2:02
But uh but I really do love this album.
2:05
And um and now I know when you said to me in April at a social event, people aren't ready, Zane. They're not ready. And I wasn't.
2:14
It really profoundly moved me.
2:16
And so I want to start there.
2:16
Uh Ella, I want to talk to you.
2:19
I want to ask you what you were thinking about when you said to me, I don't people aren't they don't know what they don't know what's coming.
2:26
And I remember you saying that.
2:27
I got very excited and you were so dedicated when you made that statement.
2:30
What was going through your mind when you said that?
2:32
What did you know you had that we didn't know yet?
2:35
Honestly, I you know, I still don't know what happens when you put a record out that is like this.
2:42
It was really important to me with this album to document um a femininity that is the way I'm a woman in the world. There's edges to that. There's no apologies.
2:57
Um, the body that made this album bleeds and aches and, you know, I don't know, sheds and um, and I really tried as hard as I could to make this without shame, to get out of my own way when I felt self-preservation come up or some sort of shame to really protect the expression even from myself.
3:27
But that means that you make something like kind of raw.
3:29
And I don't know where the edges of that are for people.
3:34
I don't know, you know, where this sits in 2025. Yeah.
3:38
But everything we've put out so far, I just am so grateful that people get it and they're there for it.
3:48
And it's giving me a lot of faith about like what kind of woman you're allowed to be in 2025.
3:54
That's a powerful statement. We'll see. We'll see. Yeah.
4:00
Look, if they tell you to stay present and be in the moment, then that's a good that's a good presence to be in, right?
4:05
A sense that the risks that you took and they are risk.
4:08
It takes courage to silence the voice that tells you protect yourself. Oh yeah.
4:19
in every I was scared this whole album was scary. Yeah. Yeah.
4:22
And I can feel the fear on the record but but at the end of it I it's a deeply emotional release for all of us to hear you push through the other side.
4:32
And it's more than just music and it's more than just your story.
4:34
It does have a profound effect on how you're going to live your your life that day. I feel Oh, that's cool.
4:41
You know, in a really real way. Thank you. New York man.
4:43
Roughed you up a bit, huh? In a good way.
4:45
you know, I left New Zealand.
4:47
I got uh got thrown around. But it's cool.
4:50
You know, I really feel like this album is um Yeah.
4:55
And trying to make this portrait of me as I am, not how I want to be, not how I wish I was.
5:00
How we see you, how you think we see you as well, right? Which is another one. Totally.
5:04
I was like, "No, just try and make an accurate portrait."
5:08
Kind of like a photo of yourself that you don't love, but you know, captures something true about you.
5:15
Um, I kept saying the whole time uh to Jimmy, you know, as a way of explaining my production choices, the microplastics are in the bloodstream.
5:23
I was like, yes, this is a document that talks a lot about purity, but purity in 2025 means something completely different. Yeah.
5:33
So, so can we be a bit more like granular about what that what that statement meant to you because it's a fascinating sentence.
5:37
The microlastics are in the bloodstream.
5:40
Well, just that like I really think this is like a time that um needs capturing.
5:49
I think we're on the precipice of major change in all these different directions.
5:55
I think um you know the experience of being in a human body is increasingly um kind of technologically uh intruded upon and and also paranoid. No, totally.
6:08
But also like I don't know, you know, I definitely have been thinking about this a lot in the last week.
6:16
Um, just being in LA and um like I went to the um to a protest on Saturday and feeling the music of protest like move through my body cuz someone was there with a drum and a megaphone and kind of charm was happening.
6:35
I was like, there just is something so undeniable about the fact that music can get at parts of us that nothing else can.
6:46
Like that was the only thing that had given me cathosis in the last couple of weeks.
6:51
You know, it was so it was literally moving like I felt this thing move through my body and some of this energy get released and it I want to talk a little bit about some of the imagery that that that moves around the selfreflection on this record i. e.
7:09
You know, every great story needs a set, needs an environment, and it really feels like Solar Power was you kind of coming to terms with nature and and what we're missing.
7:20
And then this new album, Virgin, is like, "Hang on, I'm going to throw myself into the concrete wasteland.
7:28
You know, I'm going to go and really put myself on the front lines of the human experience, which is what a city like, amongst others, New York really is.
7:35
We were just there on the weekend and it's nothing else like it.
7:39
Um, it seemed to really influence you.
7:40
It seemed to just use a lot of references to Canal Street, Prince Street, areas of New York.
7:43
You It's almost like watching the gangs in New York at times. God, you know. Um, yeah.
7:50
No, I uh I love New York. I love cities, you know.
7:54
I grew up in Oakuckland, um, which is, you know, a beautiful city, but a different kind.
8:00
And um I really feel feel like my uh artistry kind of clicked into place a little bit when I moved to New York in 2021.
8:11
I um I had this like feeling of kind of integration into like a more global experience for better and for worse.
8:21
you know, I I felt sick some days being so being like, if I don't take myself to Central Park, I won't touch a plant this week, you know?
8:33
But, um, I think it's good for the I think it's good for the art to sort of like be in the soup a bit more.
8:39
And, um, yeah, it definitely sort of like put me back in conversation with um, the forces that are like in our world as opposed to kind of something more distant.
8:50
Um, distance cannot be is is often challenging when you're going through something transformative.
8:56
something transformative. It's a you can it's good for you sometimes isolation, but a lot of times it's good to you just be in the rhythm of I needed to be back in the I cuz I yeah I I was in London as well um making this record and um for a lot of 2023 actually I just sort of like went there and um like
9:14
worked a little but um yeah kind of like went insane and was super isolated and um but you know it's this different isolation in the city you're um you're alone together so it's and I and I do think that my music has something kind of you know it's sort of built for the solitary listener I think in some ways but with the like kinesis of a bunch of other people around. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true.
9:40
Well, it's like you know it's you're dancing you're dancing on your own.
9:41
I mean that's the beautiful thing about that song.
9:44
It kind of is there this modernday kind of beautiful manuscript about how to sort of capture the emotion of being uh with people and yet not wanting to really break out of your own emotions for a minute.
9:54
And there's hints of that in the loveliest way where you've I mean it's a dance record.
9:57
It's a rave record, but yeah, it's it's for people to bounce around in their room on on their own if they so see fit. I mean, yeah, I know.
10:04
I'm like I don't think it's rave.
10:06
I think it's like some sort of party, but I don't know what it's it's it's very kinetic. It's very physical.
10:12
Very physical, but I don't know where the you play it.
10:14
So, the timeline is you you were making this in 2023 and here we are in 2025 and I'm sure you've been working on it pretty much non-stop trying to get it right.
10:22
Um, but that says to me that, you know, you've moved on a lot from what you were writing about on this record.
10:26
you're a different person than you were when you made this record.
10:29
So, we I want to I want to establish that before we go any further so that you know, as we discuss the subject matter, you know, uh you know, we give you the space to be able to reflect on what was, not what is.
10:41
Hopefully, we'll get to what is at the very end.
10:42
Um it starts with hammer.
10:45
Hugely powerful image at the very beginning, right?
10:46
Human, you know, uh there's anatomy, there's it's horny, you mean?
10:51
It's it is, but it's also but it's also anatomical, if that's a word.
10:53
You know, it's like uh you know, I don't know if it's love or or ovulation.
10:56
I don't know which one it is, but I'm feeling this rising pressure, this heat, this human experience is changing the way I look at things.
11:02
And I'm going to crush something. I love that.
11:06
Something's getting crushed today, right?
11:07
When did that show up in relation to the record?
11:10
Was it a Was it a mission statement?
11:12
Was it always song number one?
11:14
It was always song number one. Sounds like it. Yeah.
11:16
Um, yeah, it was actually late in 2023.
11:19
We wrote a version of it.
11:22
I had just come off my birth control and I could not believe how I was feeling.
11:28
There was just this everything was pure kind of possibility.
11:35
And um, yeah, I just felt like tapped into this kind of source of energy that was crazy.
11:42
and I was like in New York walking around and I don't know tweaking out and like it was amazing. It was so cool.
11:46
Um it was spring it was spring 24 when we so we we made it. We sort of put it aside.
11:55
We didn't think it was going to be on the record. It was spring 24.
11:59
Jimmy linked up with Buddy Ross who sort of did a whole bunch of different stuff for it and Jimmy kind of wrangled this version together.
12:06
He played it to me on FaceTime and I was like hey Ham's back.
12:11
It's back on it's back on the album.
12:11
So, uh and and from there I feel like actually that was a really cool kind of um you know piece of the blueprint just sonically like I just tried to keep it as raw and pure as possible.
12:23
Buddy's sounds are so earthy and there's such a purity to them and they're unmistakably machine but there's also something you know that first sound in hammer could be a feels like it's coming from a very gushal place in a body.
12:37
My sister said, "This is sounds like it's coming from your worm."
12:41
I was like, "I'm trying to cuz I'm assuming, and maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds very much like a distorted human voice searching for for breath." Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
12:48
Um, and I really thought of all the kind of the pallet of the album is actually quite simple.
12:54
We used a lot of the same stuff over and over and he thought of all the sounds we chose, which we chose so carefully as my voices.
12:59
you know, the these machines are singing and crying and talking, you know, in the or laughing or whatever in the same way that we do.
13:08
So, you're you're duetting with them in in a lot of ways.
13:10
There are times, and this is one of the things I love about your performance across this record is the moment of absolute emotional kathis.
13:16
You deliver some of the sweetest tones I've ever heard you sing.
13:22
Oh, you know what I mean?
13:22
Toward the end of the album, when it should be like a full-blown fit, Yeah.
13:26
like a full-blown fit, Yeah. is when you actually it becomes something really intimate and I wondered it I mean everything is a deliberate decision on this record whether it's instinct turn diligence or the other way around so me recognizing
13:43
that and others recognizing that was by design the idea of like this contrast of like eruption of emotion let me just capture in the sweetest way well in my experience what happens when you um you know, slash all these parts of yourself away. Um, and it's such a painful process and
14:03
Um, and it's such a painful process and it's so gory and you know, it's it's not an easy journey through the tunnel.
14:12
What is there at the end is something very sweet and very pure.
14:14
And um, I often felt Yeah, you know, you're right.
14:20
We we sort of built these songs uh trying to push right to the edge.
14:26
You almost can't take it anymore.
14:29
And what else could go with that?
14:31
But something beautiful, you know? I don't know.
14:35
It was a funny They never drop. That's a compliment.
14:37
They build and build and build and build and there's always this beautiful calm.
14:40
I got to let people out easy.
14:43
I'm very like It's like you come conscious of never I'll never drop you off in a crazy way.
14:49
I got to put you down just right, you know, really.
14:52
Um, and again with Hammer, you know, it sets the tone and it sets the scene for a lot of selfwork that ultimately we can all absorb in our own life, right?
15:00
The idea of breaking away from people's ideas of who we are and what we become.
15:04
This idea of who Lord is versus the person that you actually find yourself turning into.
15:08
I feel like you set the you set the stall in that song of like, okay, you know. Yeah.
15:15
And it's like funny to me. It's fun.
15:17
like I'm sort of making myself laugh.
15:19
Jack Harow was uh working on Electric Lady when we were there towards the end of the record and kind of somehow ended up getting like most of the album played to him.
15:27
It was a very funny cool link.
15:28
Um he's such a sweetheart.
15:31
But he was like your bars are he was like these are bars.
15:34
I was like your words not mine.
15:36
But um you know there just is this sort of like rolling cadence and um yeah physicality and within that I'm you know I'm trying to make myself laugh.
15:45
I'm trying to make my eyebrow raise.
15:47
I'm trying to kind of I don't know just keep it feeling super alive and um cuz it's funny when you take a step back and look at it, isn't it?
15:55
Like in at the end of the day, even the most challenging traumatic things you have to put yourself through if you can't find with some distance the humor in that experience. Find it. We got to find it.
16:04
You know, you got to find it.
16:07
Um, and some of them are are very sort of uh there's a relationship between all artists and the and the art of performance which doesn't often get talked about.
16:20
It's really the sacred space of like I want you to understand and and preserve this moment forever.
16:27
What I love about Favorite Daughter is that you take it on.
16:29
You look at it from the point of view of like not only who am I to you, but what I selfishly get out of it as well.
16:39
Can we talk about that song? Totally. Yeah. Um, yeah. Favorite daughter.
16:45
You know, it's interesting.
16:47
I feel like almost all the songs on this record if they're um sort of aimed at a person, it's a composite of people um and moments that have kind of brought up a certain feeling for me.
17:00
So um that song is about my relationship with my mom who um you know is like just the reason that I do everything that I do.
17:10
She is the blueprint for me.
17:13
Um and but it's also as much as it's about my mom you know when I'm saying uh all the medals I won for you breaking my back to be your favorite daughter.
17:25
back to be your favorite daughter. I have felt that I was also singing to um an audience you know this um there's been this dynamic for the last 10 12 years and then further back obviously um of yeah wanting so badly to be loved and
17:47
to kind of get this approval and to be the favorite you know um and it was really moving to me how you know even as I was sort singing through this um yeah this song about about my sort of like foremost idol and the person who I you know think is the most amazing in the world. I was
18:05
I was also singing about this kind of what a crazy thing it is to kind of have happen to you what I had happened to me at 16 and sort of just all of a sudden be another plane, another show, another plane, another show.
18:19
Well, they're connected, aren't they? Yeah.
18:20
And there's a great irony in the fact that, you know, the person that you ultimately are performing for, which is the person you're trying to probably appeal to the most, the one that means the most to you, that the success takes you the furthest away from the place.
18:33
It's just it's such a such a crazy paradox. Totally. Yeah.
18:39
No, it was that song came from very very deep in me and was definitely one that um took a lot for me to let come out.
18:49
Um it felt like there was a lot at stake in both directions.
18:54
Um and it's a it's a tight rope that one. Yeah.
18:57
And and honestly, it's been like really beautiful um for me and my mom like being able to make that expression and just the way that she received it and the conversations that it's like made us have and you know we've like never been closer.
19:10
I wondered about that and I'd love to explore that a little bit further as a parent, you know, because you're at a point now on album number four and as a grownup, as an adult making decisions in your life where abandonment turns to rejection.
19:21
You can no longer be abandoned when you're grown up. Right.
19:22
So, you just got to face these things down. Right. Right.
19:26
So, sort of how that process has been particular for you and your mom who's also been on this journey with you.
19:30
I mean, her role went from just being a mother to being a mother and a mother and a and a mama bear and a protector and all the things that you faced.
19:36
She was right there making sure that she did a good job on so many different levels and most mothers have to think about after a certain age.
19:45
She was with you when you were supposed to have left home. Oh my god.
19:48
Honestly, like this album um really has been one of um I feel this like channel open with my mom like cuz I mention her constantly on the album.
19:59
Um I I've never had more kind of empathy and understanding for um yeah for my mother and her mother and her mother.
20:09
The sort of lineage of women who have um yeah sort of made me what I am.
20:16
Um, I feel like I came into some real like understanding about yeah, femininity and womanhood generally that um, yeah, it really feels like a kind of love letter to my mom in a lot of ways.
20:28
Cuz I had this realization the other day, you know, I like got ready for something and I was in my kind of like black tank and my like low jeans, big belt and I was like, "Oh, this looks like my mom picking me up from school."
20:39
I was like, "That's my that's my blueprint of femininity."
20:41
this sort of, you know, there was an in the middleness to this like cool mom from West, you know. So, I don't know. It's awesome.
20:50
We were listening to Shape Shifter when we walked in and it's one of my favorites on the record.
20:56
Um, and you stretch out on that.
20:59
I feel like you really explore that song and that sentiment to its fullest.
21:03
Some some of the times I'm listening to the songs I'm like, you very consciously paused or stopped. Sure.
21:10
But on this song, I feel like you really saw it all the way through.
21:12
So therefore, it feels a little bit to me like a bit of a spiritual center to the record. That's awesome. Yeah, love that.
21:20
So, I'd love to talk a little bit about that again.
21:21
You know, what themes are running through that particular song because I can tell that you're in an honest place in your life through this music.
21:29
And so, I'm just fascinated to cuz I'm hanging on every word on this album, Mala.
21:33
So, I'm fascinated to know what drove that song.
21:35
Jimmy brought me those drums.
21:39
they immediately felt like something that wanted to be in my world.
21:42
I basically wrote the whole melody without lyrics.
21:46
Um, and then that sort of like showed me what the song was wanting to be about.
21:50
Like favorite Daughter was all melody for a good couple weeks.
21:52
Then I was like, wait, I think I can feel what this is like, what words are like trying to be said here.
21:58
So, Shape Shifter was like that.
22:00
And then, but I always knew it was going to be about, you know, this thing of kind of using sex for validation.
22:07
And it really felt like this story that was kind of it had always sort of gone to the like middle of the list, you know, it didn't feel like life or death that I had to tell this story, but once I got single, I was like, "No, this does want to be told." Um I Yeah.
22:25
had just been really like I remember I'd been looking at the Tracy Eman work everyone that I've ever slept with which is this incredible like tent and kind of all these um you know names of people that uh she slept with both sort of platonically and sexually and all this stuff.
22:38
Um, and yeah, just sort of tapping into this like yeah, lineage of female artists that um, yeah, just make this very kind of primal raw work and uh, I don't know, I was just like it's a very specific thing that uh, I think a lot of women understand.
22:56
I mean, not just women probably, but writing that chorus, I really felt something the roles you mean release in me. Yeah.
23:02
all the things that I've been to, you know, I don't know, try and get some sort of validation to try and kind of fit some sort of little put some something right in me.
23:13
And, you know, it's just I don't know.
23:16
I I didn't even arrive anywhere.
23:19
Uh I didn't get to any kind of resolution meaning wise.
23:21
I just wanted to take a moment and be like, But but but to say I'm not affected is to some degree a form of resolution, is it not?
23:29
that is there's some righteous reaction to the ultimate realization these roles did exist and yet I'm not affected. Right.
23:36
Well, I think that was a lie.
23:38
I think I think in the song I sang like yeah I'm totally fine.
23:39
You know, but I'm so affected.
23:42
I think the core of it is the big the big sad thing.
23:48
You know, when did the spell get broken?
23:51
So, let you know this starts when you're a teenager and we all fall in love with your music and we all start to put pile way too much pressure on you and say dumb dumb things like I would say all the time like there's prop before and after Lord but I'd stand by it but it's a lot for any kid to hear that um from any any fans.
24:07
Um and then you know we get great music from you and you you honor your your art as a as a performer and as an artist and you give fans what we want and you show up for work but this is a different you.
24:19
Now, this album is a complete break from, I think, the last three albums to me in terms of the human what I'm hearing.
24:24
So, that mean that would suggest that a spell got broken.
24:28
Something happened and you decided, you know what, that's I'm getting off that particular race. What happened? Totally. Oh my god. Well, um, Let's go.
24:35
Uh I I think it was sometime around the end of 2022, the start of 2023, and all these different things converge, these things that had been building it felt like my whole life, definitely my whole adult life.
24:56
I had been um I had this deep moment of kind of existential reassessment of my role.
25:04
I was like, why am I in this role?
25:06
what would what is the what is the way that I want to be in it that feels right to me and healthy to me because I tried this kind of refusal on solar power and there was something missing.
25:19
I didn't I felt those songs touch my skin and not hook my guts.
25:22
I was like this isn't the best use of the this kind of prime of your life that you're in.
25:30
Um I had had a sort of ripping problem with eating with food and book my body um right through 2022 and a lot of solar power actually.
25:42
I was so hungry um and you know I'm lucky that I sort of was able to move through that.
25:48
But it just felt like a breaking point.
25:51
I remember waking up one day and being like I cannot do this anymore.
25:53
I cannot go to bed thinking about everything I ate that day and waking up worrying about all the I'm going to eat. It's a mental prison.
26:03
That's just a heist of torture.
26:04
Completely robbed me of all of my life force and creativity.
26:09
Was the most boring time of my life.
26:09
Um, and then, you know, I also like really felt um I felt this thing that I was 25 and I was like, hang on, there's always been someone who was God.
26:28
There's always been I've always chosen someone, you know, it was my parents as it is for a lot of people.
26:32
And then I would sort of put one person in, another person, another person in usually men, but not always.
26:41
And I it was this thing that I would do to protect myself from having to be the one who had the answers about what my life was meant to be.
26:50
And I really had the sense at the start of 2023 that I had to cut a whole lot of cords, be alone, see what power grew in me to be able to be in my life the way I need to be in my life.
27:09
Um, and it was rugged and I got out of my relationship and I made, you know, kind of big changes across the board.
27:19
But I started um I went to London to try and kind of meet people to work with.
27:24
I started working with Fabiana um working with a woman and that space felt like really incredible and um restorative and uh yeah so I sort of had this yeah real year of trying to find a more sustainable connection to this power that is in me with this album.
27:48
whole time I kept saying bigger toe box, bigger toe box.
27:50
You know when you buy a pair of shoes and your toes right there and you're like well I'm right at the end already. It's not too far to go.
27:58
I was like make it real big cuz you're going to grow.
28:00
And honestly like a lot of the time making this I felt quite fragile.
28:04
Um but the music is very robust in a lot of ways.
28:08
There's real heft to it, you know. Yeah.
28:10
It's not uh it's not it's marching music, man. It's marching music.
28:16
Um, and that was in part because I, you know, I knew in making it that big, I would be forced to, um, acknowledge that I have power to step up.
28:29
You know, I can see how easy it is as a woman to to never quite grab it all, you know, cuz it's so scary and so much of society is telling you not to not to grab it all, you know, there's real risks.
28:41
Um, but I just sort of like worked away kind of in secret, me and Jimmy, and I just tried to build a world that felt like one I wanted to live in.
28:54
What was the breakthrough?
28:56
Actually, I remember writing If She Could See Me Now. I love that song. In London. Oh, I love that song. And sitting alone.
29:02
I actually have an amazing story.
29:03
We like wrote that song and I was sitting alone on the like steps of my Airbnb and I was kind of stoned and um it was like late at night and I was sitting listening to it on my phone and uh some kids rode past on the line and tried to steal my phone out in London. Yeah.
29:18
And we and we touched hands around the phone and I was like it was a cool moment like kind of early demo you know they didn't get the phone but I didn't get the phone. Kind of cool. Kids are amazing.
29:32
I'm like, "Wow, that's really brave hard, you know." Yeah.
29:35
Know they're in different pass on a scooter.
29:37
They know what they're doing. Yeah.
29:38
But, you know, that's us Kiwis, man.
29:40
We're cut from a from a different cloth.
29:41
Derek, I'm trying to think of the other like big kind of moments.
29:47
I feel like man of the year was a big one just in terms of being like this is the kind of world that I want to live in as a woman.
29:55
This is what this is a big corner of what femininity is to me is this is acknowledging this massive kind of throbbing masculinity that I have.
30:05
And the key words there are to me because what's interesting is and perhaps you knew this, you put a song like that out with a title as provocative as that. It's beautiful. It's art in itself.
30:12
It's a it's a framable piece of art, right?
30:16
And um you know that it's immediately going to draw people who feel very passionate about this conversation and live in this community ve much closer to you because they're going to feel as some of my friends have said like okay does she speak with us now does she
30:33
speak for us and and by by saying this is what it means to me I think you opened up and I saw a really interesting article and I really want to try to remember who did it because it was really well written where they they exp- explain maybe you've read it as well. They explained that the emotions that
30:47
They explained that the emotions that they went through from mistrust through to a much better realization.
30:51
They had a moment on the bus where they saw themselves or listening to the song for the upenth time and realized that actually they had been judging it because they were scared to acknowledge what you were acknowledging that it's complicated. It's a beautiful piece. Whoa. I want to read that.
31:05
Yeah, I'll send it to you.
31:07
And um and I I guess that that you need the stones to put that song out, right?
31:12
and and make it yours and know that it's it's for you no matter how people feel about it.
31:17
Am I wording that correct?
31:19
It definitely just felt like a statement that I had to make um to go forward really.
31:27
Like everything on Virgin felt like uh if I don't make this group of statements, my throat's going to stay locked up.
31:35
You know, each of them kind of had to come out come what may. Come what?
31:39
cuz I'm so aware of no one wants to impinge on the space of kids who are like on the front lines cuz it truly is like a battle being fought in this country. It is so major.
32:00
um no part of me wants to take that oxygen but at the same time I was like it's yeah this is it is my experience and I believe that it's valid even if it is harder to box up even if it doesn't maybe feel like an arrival it's not an arrival that's why I've got duct tape on my chest there's an impermanence to it there's a short-term fix to it you know and I think that my journey with the stuff is going to be a spiral.
32:32
You know, it's just going to keep kind of winding around and showing me more stuff and um I'm so grateful that people have had grace about this and that there's you know there's like discomfort too and that's part of there's discourse and it's a good thing, right? Yeah.
32:48
And that's part of um also that's part of why I make a statement. It's a big question.
32:52
I'm asking a big question when I put a song like that out.
32:56
I'm not saying this is this is how it is.
32:59
I'm saying is this how it is?
33:01
What like what more information can I get here?
33:02
And I've been given so much more information. More questions.
33:04
We have to keep asking ourselves and others questions and we get very attached to the idea of arrival.
33:11
All of us do for some kind of answer that's going to give us purpose or clarity, right? But we don't get them. It's life, baby. It's like how it is.
33:24
You just got to keep pushing forward.
33:26
And that's what I love about this album is that there isn't a permanence to this. Yeah.
33:30
It's very much like, you know, this is like a little construction site to me, like this weird little zone of scaffolding and Yeah.
33:40
couple synths and kind of this feels like this very temporary, you know, I don't know, something.
33:44
We barely put the walls up.
33:46
I kept saying loadbearing pillars only as it pertained to the production. Nothing. Nothing.
33:50
No adornment, no nice finish on the wall, you know?
33:56
Only what we need to be here.
34:00
I just I'm like even like the album's like 36 minutes or something.
34:02
I was like, I don't 36 that's so much of someone's time.
34:09
I'm not going to take more of your time.
34:11
I know what it's like to be in this world. Do you know what I mean?
34:15
I was like, it's a huge privilege to get 36 minutes of someone's time on a day.
34:19
I'm going to juice that lemon to the nth degree.
34:25
There's there's no time to waste on a macro level or a micro level.
34:31
There's no time to waste. There's no time. There's so much stuff. Economy.
34:37
I really went for economy.
34:37
And even like Yeah, it's really baked into the ethos of the album.
34:42
I I took so much away from Jimmy.
34:46
I I was like, "No, if there's no random snare that comes in just for that part.
34:51
We're using something we've already got."
34:53
You know, even better if it's already on another song.
34:56
It's a lot of I'm just using the same parts.
35:00
I I'm so unconcerned with futurism.
35:02
I'm like, we've had so many awesome projections of the future. I'm drowning in them. What about right now? We need help now.
35:11
We need tools now and we've probably already made it the thing that's going to help us. I don't know.
35:20
I'm kind of antique and the future is I'm like let's let's focus on right now. Yeah. Let's leave it there.
35:26
How did you feel when it was like I got nothing left? Relief, I think. Um I felt quite proud.
35:39
um just of that thing of sort of that I was able to get out of the way just enough to make the expression like even right to the end.
35:48
The last song that we finished for the album was Broken Glass.
35:53
I could not finish that song. Why? What was in the way?
35:57
I was so scared to be like my eating disorder.
36:00
Like like so every part of me was like keep yourself safe.
36:06
Don't share this part of you.
36:08
Don't don't put yourself in a situation. Don't break the mirror.
36:10
Don't break the mirror, You know, so um ah it was just exhausting.
36:14
And so to like finally kind of have made all the statements that I felt like needed to be on Virgin Clear Blue was another really important one.
36:22
I was like and that came kind of um towards the end too.
36:24
I was like this needs to be here.
36:27
This two of the most confessional songs on the record.
36:31
And for me, going back to Broken Glass, the line that just crushed me is uh I think that it's love. Yeah, dude. I know.
36:42
Yeah, dude. I know. I mean to come to the to the earth to the sense of of realization that for all of the casting of judgment that ultimately it had been a self-imposed affair and more of that thing or am going to be God like trying to is this force going to be God for me if this is
37:02
you know who am I when I'm not telling myself you have to not do this you have to do that with the dark side of love we talk about love all the time what a glorious thing or when we lose it how much we want it back but we forget that actually it can a destructive experience too if you're not careful. Right. Sure. Right. Sure. Yeah, man.
37:17
Um, how did you get past it?
37:19
How did you finish that song? Just bashed it out. I don't know. Bash it out.
37:25
Jimmy was like, "Do not leave." That's true.
37:27
Um, I feel like we ate treats.
37:31
I was like, you gave yourself something to look forward to. It me up.
37:34
Like being back in this um zone about, you know, Yeah.
37:36
sort of denial of self and trying to stay as small as possible.
37:42
Like it just made me feel sick, you know?
37:44
I was like, I need a cookie. I Yeah. Um we got there. We got there. Give me some sugar. Yeah.
37:50
The last song was immensely emotional and will be for everyone hearing it.
37:58
It just for the very fact that you know it's coming, right?
38:01
You can't listen to the album start to finish and think that that the last song is going to be some kind of deep moment of resolution.
38:06
And I'm going to I'm going to not try to do this the splaining thing as much as I can cuz I'm so in love with this album.
38:15
I just want to open it up for you to talk about that experience of recording that song.
38:18
David, there's a lot of strength to this album and I always felt that the end needed to be a real breakdown of that.
38:28
I feel completely vulnerable on that song.
38:35
Uh, and even how we treat the vocal, it's so human.
38:42
I felt this journey happening through the song.
38:44
It sort of comes to this big um quite, you know, machine-made climax.
38:56
There's something very um almost immortal about it.
38:59
Well, you just you're breaking up. Yeah.
39:02
You're literally breaking up.
39:04
the Adams are falling and then I'm back to being really mortal again at the end and um yeah, I don't know.
39:13
It was a a lot of the songs on this album were I just sort of followed them.
39:18
I didn't really understand the song when it was coming out.
39:22
Um, and I kept feeling this composite of memories, but it feels undeniable to me and inevitable in this album that that's the biggest I've ever been.
39:34
The climax of that song, you know.
39:37
What's the last line of the song?
39:39
Am I ever going to love again?
39:41
And then you say something at the very I say, uh, tell it to him.
39:49
So, I'm not going to be that specific, but I want to It's such a powerful ending to the album because it um I mean, is that the mantra, right?
39:59
It's the mantra of the whole experience, isn't it? I guess it is.
40:02
Where did it come from that line? Was it a Was it a live? It was. Yeah. I just kind of Yeah.
40:10
put this put this bit on the end.
40:10
it felt like it wanted to circle back to the to the fountain to the park, you know, where the album starts.
40:16
Um, but in this much more sort of contemplative moment.
40:21
Um, and just yeah, I mean, I feel like I just keep returning to this in my work that there's no there's no choice for me but to tell the truth, even if I don't want to be.
40:34
And and by truth, I mean like an emotional truth.
40:35
You know, often with the songs on this album and other albums, I will be like, "Wait, wait, this person said this and it's making you feel like this. What is that?"
40:49
You know, and I know now not to try and understand.
40:57
It's all just my job is to make the expression, you know, to the fullest without shame.
41:04
Let it be everything it needs to be.
41:04
and trust that that has value.
41:06
Um, it's a tricky one, but I don't know.
41:12
I think that's what you got to do.
41:14
The concept of love is complicated when you can when you put yourself in front of a lot of people and we tell you that we love you, but really what we love is what you've made and what it means to us and then we become obsessed with the person who made it, but we never truly get to know that person.
41:27
And so, it creates a complicated identity uh relationship.
41:34
I've experienced from talking to a lot of musicians and a lot of artists.
41:35
Um, and then there's this idea of kind of how that impacts your ability to process normal relationships or quote unquote normal relationships, you know, um, meaningful relationships, I should say.
41:49
Looking back on it, is this is this album been a part of trying to reclaim that experience for yourself and not get too caught up in the idea of sort of the complications of of what a of what love means?
41:59
And cuz that's that line at the end, will I ever fall in love again? Is very simple.
42:02
It's very simple question.
42:04
Very hard but simple question. Yeah. I you know I don't know.
42:07
I think um Am I down the rabbit hole on this now? Well, no. You know I don't know.
42:13
I do think I do think this album sort of um grapples with uh yeah what is public, what is private?
42:22
There is some of that happening.
42:24
I think I was sort of trying to work through that and I definitely, you know, there's a degree of sharing with this album that is um yeah, the lines blurry like what's private, you know?
42:38
You're like in bed with me.
42:44
But I think yeah, I don't know.
42:47
Oh, I guess that's just maybe that's just always been a a question in my work since I got famous. I don't know.
42:53
I But I like this thought about it. It's interesting.
42:56
I had thought about it myself.
42:58
This um idea of fame at a young age though is something that you and only a few people can come out the other side of and make great music and reflect on it. Right.
43:05
At times you don't get to album number four. Yeah.
43:09
So no one's asking you the question. Yeah. Or it's worse. Yeah.
43:12
And um so looking at back on it and there were reflections toward yourself there are moments when you say you know um the the innocence of a teen teenage innocence or I can't remember the exact phrasing of it and you refer to pure heroin at one point and it's there's moments where I can see you starting to identify and at least try to recognize that person again.
43:39
What has that experience been like looking back on it now?
43:43
And how have you kind of got it into a place of understanding what you went through?
43:48
I think for a long time I've tried to be very binary about it.
43:54
When I'm in the studio or when I'm in America, I'm an artist.
43:59
When I go home to New Zealand, I'm not an artist.
44:01
And I and I turn that part of myself off.
44:03
It's impossible obviously.
44:07
Um solar power I, you know, was trying to go all the way that way. I just want to be that. I don't want to be this. I just want to be that. Let me be that. Didn't feel great.
44:19
And I've sort of realized now like, and again, this speaks to the kind of trying to find this like purest version of yourself.
44:24
The purest version of me is famous out in the world.
44:27
It's just that she's maybe in a garden like experiencing ego death, the middle of the night on a heroic dose, you know. Mhm.
44:38
I I definitely had the sense with this cuz you know inextricable part of this album is that yeah I did a lot of kind of psychedelics and really tried to yeah break myself all the way down. Did they work? Yeah.
44:54
Sounds like it sounds like it.
44:54
I'm like do you think it worked?
44:58
Of course, but I also don't want to assume it was the psychedelics, right?
45:01
Cuz cuz it could also been the an enormous amount of the work that that that you do after you It's all of it, right? It's all of it, right? It's all of it.
45:09
But all the all have to be good for you to go forward.
45:12
You have to go and heal 5-year-old Ella.
45:14
You got to go and heal 15-year-old Ella.
45:16
You've got to go and heal 16-year-old Ella. Yeah. 25year-old Ella.
45:20
They've all got to be saying yes for you to go forward.
45:22
And I feel that so much in this music.
45:24
I'm like, "Oh my god, that I feel that." And what was that?
45:28
I'm like, "This sounds like me playing as a kid this drum beat.
45:30
I don't know how to explain it, but it does.
45:34
There are um yeah, favorite daughter.
45:36
You know, these things that have been there forever. Yeah.
45:38
Very young parts of me sing.
45:42
I think that's what you're saying when you the sweetness of some of these parts.
45:44
Sometimes I feel like it's like me as a child saying current affairs. Affairs. Well, true. Yeah. Yeah. True. Yeah. I think you're right.
45:53
There is some sort of reconciliation that had to happen.
45:54
I sort of see this album as kind of getting back to this baseline.
45:58
Um, I was, "Okay, just need to get everything where it needs to be."
46:05
And then something good's going to happen.
46:07
Feels like a real settling of a whole lot of scores or something.
46:12
Untying a whole lot of knots.
46:12
Sort of arriving at this piece. At what cost? But it's peace. [Music]