are you an emo kid I was actually at the most emo dinner party the other night cuz Brendon Urie and Sarah his amazing wife like had me over I show up and it's like Brendon and pete wentz sitting next to each other and i just got to ask them every single question Pete Wentz's
probably if I had to pick a favorite lyricist it would be a tie between him and Lana Del Rey blank space the song that's just zingers one after another after another which I definitely learned from listening to Fall Out Boy congratulations first and foremost on
the success of lover because there's no guarantees even for someone as successful in town as yourself every time you release music you open it up to the yet you know to the universe and you hope it's discovered yeah and actually an interesting dynamic happens between
you and your previous work and it it happens as soon as you put out your second record everything you do as a standing ovation on your first record if you're having that breakthrough record and then you put out your second body of work and then you realize that everything you're putting out now is
being compared to what they liked about your first record but then you put out the third one and then it's compared to the first two and you put out the fourth one then it's compared to the first three and it goes on and on and on by the time your album seven you are so you
have such a strange convoluted relationship with your previous work because you're like damn it all to all was a good song and I knew with this album it was it was it was like something that was almost a return to form like reputation was such an important record for me because I I
couldn't stop writing and I in like I needed to write that album and I needed to put out that album but I needed to not explain that album because another thing about that album was I knew if I did an interview about it none of it would be about music and this this entire like lover phase of my life
there's been no distraction from the music because you're in a place where you're actually telling a very personal story or telling something so personal to you that someone else's opinion be it brilliant or otherwise it could only cloud that really yeah and I thankfully
work with really wonderful collaborators who you know jack is amazing like when I bring in a song that I've written 100 some producers will not like nowadays some producers will not produce something that they didn't have a co-write on we really haven't figured
out a way to compensate the creators and that's something that I'm always gonna be very vocal about until I feel like it's fixed I definitely wanna when I write a song a hundred percent I want credit for that and I think that's fair but I also when when people have these
policies where they're like we won't do this without this I understand why but I love right now you know out there we have amazing creators like Halsey like Halsey is an amazing writer and she speaks up for what she cares about and she's very vocal about things and we
have these very fierce women out there it's amazing time it's so good we were just talking about the internet back there and some of our favorite moments you may walk away from that well but you're able to tap in and use it whenever you want you do it very effectively are you into it the internet
the only thing I really read every day is political news oddly there are actual inflections of how I feel politically on this record more so than ever before like you know you need to calm down is is man yeah the man there's a song called miss Americana and the heartbreak
Prince so yeah I didn't pick it up on that one it's it's definitely all about politics you've got these these songs that definitely welcome people into your world and yet you're able to keep yourself distant from that scrutiny how do you do that I think after a while you just realized that it's part of the job
you know there's a lot of things that I tell myself when I'm kind of panicking and one of the things that I tell myself is like this is part of it this is normal and that's something that I tell a lot of new artists and a lot of people who I end up talking to who are like hey
so you've been through a lot a little bubble ming's what I'm freaking out I'm getting my first wave of a bad press like what do I do and I'm like do not let anything stop you from making art just make things do not get so caught up in this that it stops you from making
art or if you need to make art about this but never stop making things when was the hottest when was the toughest for you this has happened several times so I can't like you know when I was like 23 and people were just like kind of reducing me to like kind of making
slideshows of like my dating life and putting people in there that I'd sat next to out of party wants and deciding that my songwriting was like a trick rather than a skill and a craft kind of its it's a way to take a woman who's doing her job and succeeding at doing
her job and making things and it's it's in a way it's it's figuring out how to completely minimize that skill by taking something that everyone you know in their darkest darkest moments loves to do which is to slut-shame and so now when I see this happening I can see a
headline about a young artist about a young female artist felt like another breakup and it makes it spin it sends me into a takes you back there to a degree it sends me into a real sad place because I don't want that to keep happening and I don't think people understand how easy it is to infer that
someone who's a female artist or a female in our industry is somehow doing something wrong by wanting love wanting money wanting success women are not allowed to want those things the way that men are allowed to want them do you still have blindsides do you still have
things that catch you off-guard things that kind of surprise you that you're not prepared for you know every step of my career there's been you know people questioning whether I deserve to be there so I feel like my whole career up until very recently was spent trying to
prove myself to those people I'm trying to prove that I that I belong here that I'm gonna work hard enough that I'm gonna I'm gonna make music that's good enough to belong here and you know I've had people standing up and saying you don't you don't deserve to be here
either very loudly or very loudly in headlines or you know comments or whatever but you know that's part of life new adventures cats yes I'm so happy I got to do this I really wanted to work with Tom Hooper I know that he records live and he films and records your vocals live it's it's such an
interesting thing to me and I wanted to see him work I had actually done screen tests for lame is and we had met him through that process like 2012 really yeah he went for it yeah I didn't get it no I mean I think so but it's it was such an amazing experience just
doing the screen test and I was I was obviously like I'm not gonna get this and so basically when I was approached this time it was a straight-up offer and then I started going in for rehearsals and they have this behavioral studies class called cat school that I was okay
and that's where we pose I need to just spend a little time in behavioral studies for cats so basically you go in you you watch these videos of cats you watch them walking you watch them sensing things you learn facts about them anatomically biologically how do they sense things how do they like
what's their gaze like what's their what's there like it's amazing have you ever written a song from someone's point of view and played it to them and it's been too close to the bone you know I remember I wrote a song called 15 for my friend Abigail who is still just my best
friend and you know she's been god she's gone through a lot of like changes in my life and changes in her life and we just still are like this and she she was my you know sitting next to me in freshman year and we became best friends and a few years later a song called 15 that
was about you know not just my life and journey at that age but also hers and I had to you know that was a situation where I played it for her and I was like this is just for you and it's never gonna see the light of day if you don't want it to and she was like no you need to put this out
what do you love most about your friends what is the one trait that you really look to you know I now like see resilience as like a major quality and friendship like when your stock is down if they're still wanting to hang out that's like and I know who those people
are now it's really fun to know that Celine is one of those people oh she is and by the time we started to put this out there'll be music it's just I'm so proud of her she's been through so much I've watched so much happen in her life I am 100% convinced this the best thing she's done so far you