Naomi Scott is Back

How are you? It's so nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I'm so excited to dive into all of this with you. Thank you so much.

Of course! So, I saw the photos from the shoot, and everything really looks amazing. What has it meant to you with the album coming out? How does it feel?

Oh, it's really beautiful. The photos are all basically a reflection of the show itself. The show is this really dreamy, ethereal production involving dance, multi-instrumentalists, and split into many acts. It's been incredible because it's a show that spans all of our albums. We tried to be pretty intentional about making sure it felt balanced between all the different albums, so it feels like a celebration of all four.

This album [Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain] is all about returning to softness, returning to ease. Especially with the dance elements of the show, I was trying to figure out what it would look like if I incorporated it because I didn't train in dance and I don't dance in a style that really works for a pop show. I was trying to incorporate dance in a high-energy show, but made it more ballet-inspired, contemporary-inspired, ballerina-inspired. So it's all those elements coming together.

That's amazing. What inspired you to separate it into acts?

The reason why we set it up into acts was because we just have so many different types of sounds. Especially amongst the three albums, there are so many different genres we explored.

There's music that's more melded with Indian music. There's also really soulful R&B stuff. There's rock-influenced stuff. There's super experimental music in there but it's tied together with this dreamy, cinematic, ethereal feeling that wraps it all together.

How did you organize them?

We needed the acts because it’s a lot to shift from sound to sound or from movement to then playing instruments.

Act 1 is a brighter side of our music and has a very energetic, sunny, and light energy. It's a lot of my more joyful songs like Pluto, Temptation, Smile For Me and Lose My Focus. And then, Act 2 is this voyage to an Indian space where it's all of the Indian-inspired music. (like Honey, Nectar, Secret, Junebug and all those kinds of songs). That's where all the dancing happens. Act 3 is, this very emotional, open road kind of feeling. It's all the more ballad type of songs like Headaches, Baby Mama, and If Only. The show really takes you on a whole journey.

It sounds like each part also explores different themes as well. This is your first time headlining a first tour in three years. Has the creative process been different this time?

Absolutely. It's been very, very different. It was a lot to incorporate dance and playing many more instruments. It took three years of study to get to that point. In the past two years, I was practicing both instruments and dance in a really intense way. I was really inspired by jazz and classical musicians and the way that practice is everything to them. They navigate their whole musicianship through constant practice.Like yes, as a songwriter and a pop indie musician, practice is inherent and comes with it. But it's not as intentional sometimes as jazz and classical spaces. It's not the focus.

I just wanted to lock in and get to a new level with all of my performance capabilities. Now, I feel a lot more energetic as a performer and I can do a lot more on stage now because of all that practice. Almost like an athlete trying to expand their endurance or expand their capability, you know?

Completely. I totally know what you mean. We have a classical guitarist in my family, so I know allll about the constant practice. It's cool that you kind of took that in your own way.

Yeah, it taught me so much. I feel like when you’ve been making music for so long, you sometimes feel like you already know your pocket and everything you’re good at. But there's always more. You can do music for 20, 30, 40 years, and there's always more. It's never ending.

That's what makes it so fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

I heard that there's four custom looks for the show. How involved were you in designing those and how do you feel like they shape the show?

You know, I can't take any credit for the beauty of these designs. That was all the designers but I definitely asked them to come into my world and take stock of the colors, schemes, and the overarching visual theme of an Indian fairy.

Oh, that's such a good phrase.

Yeah, it was really sweet. The brief we told a lot of our visual collaborators was Indian fairy so they just created with that in mind. It was incredible working with some South Asian designers too. This incredible designer, Rohit Mane, is really new and he's already working with SZA and on some huge looks. He's so sick. And then Kate Broadrick did some of my favorite designs like the pink corset look. It's really gorgeous. I really love it.

I also loved imagining within the confines of what we had to plan. Dancing is so specific and you need such specific things for the type of movement and type of show it is. We created around those needs and I think it flows really well, especially dancing with all that fabric.

During this process who's the first person you would go to with a new idea? Were there any particular people you collaborated with in this project that felt really instrumental?

I worked with two amazing creative directors. Bijan Berahimi, who did the bulk of the graphic design for this album, has been my longtime collaborator. He has a really incredible sense of how to take my Indian background and incorporate it into something experimental and fresh.

More recently, I worked with Tin Mai of this Earth-focused collective called Aerthship on a short film. We worked on a lot of the creative direction for the tour together. Both of those people are really integral. Also, I've really loved working with stylist Natalie Roar recently who's a London based stylist.

For the looks, where did you pull some inspiration from? I know you mentioned the Indian fairy idea, but do you remember when you first started coming up with the vision or moodboard?

Let me pull up that styling mood board because it was so comprehensive. It was literally a thousand pins.

Oh, my gosh. I love that.

This was so secret, but it's like my life is in there. Literally 834 pins. It was a lot of early 2000's couture when they were using a lot of Indian embroidery. Now they're kind of back on it with using a lot of Indian influence in fashion spaces which is really interesting and fun to see and sometimes funny also [laughs]… But anyways who else was I looking at?

It was all very intricate beading work and embroidery like Chanel Couture 97 was so beautiful. I was looking at a lot of early 2000’s eveningwear like Zuhair Murad (2004). Two years in the making [the 834 pin moodboard].

Well, it paid off you have such a distinct vision. Were there any colors and textures that you tried to bring in and did they have any bigger symbolic meaning at all?

No, absolutely. There was also a whole color board and it was all surrounding baby blues, baby pinks, light yellows, sea moss green, and a lot of iridescence. Iridescence was a huge theme. A lot of this album was referring to my earliest roots as a musician musically.

In collaborating with many talented artists to bring her vision of an Indian Fairy to life, Miss Aurora has been able to get involved all across the creative board. It was amazing to see how something as specific as the baby blues and baby pinks represents a larger full circle moment happening in her journey as an artist. It was a pleasure to learn more about her devotion to continuously improving her craft and we can’t wait to see what she does next.

Go stream Where the Butterflies Go in the Rain here.