Shygirl: A Siren and a Storyteller
Read our complete conversation with Shygirl below.
Welcome to Coachella! How has your time here been so far?
I’ve got to admit that I’m not totally a natural lover of festivals. I was a bit nervous, especially post-Covid, which has made me even more anti-crowd than I was before. But actually, I really am loving Coachella. I was really surprised. It's my first kind of big American party experience, right? And there's such a cultural difference between my partying in Europe and parting here. It’s been really fun to just be immersed in the scene and among people who genuinely loved music. And the way that Coachella is split into areas with drinking and without, it really lets people choose their path and allow people who are really there for the music to just get into it. It’s very refreshing.
It really is refreshing. So let's talk about Shy. Since the release of Alias, it seems that your career has been on a kind of unstoppable trajectory. Can you tell us about the experience of creating it?
With a lot of my music, especially with Alias, I had just started making it before Covid hit. I guess I didn’t have any direct intentions with it other than making music. It was a way to explore what was coming out of me naturally because making music was still a fairly new experience to me at that point. When Covid happened, I thought I may have been finished with it, and then I ended up adding two more tracks to it: Slime and Tasty. The whole thing was a very introspective process. I was asking myself, “what do I want from myself? What do I want from the outside world?” I realized I really just wanted to find joy and happiness through my music. The best way for me to do that was to enter into the world confidently with it. And that is really what Alias is. It’s assertive. It’s loud. It’s provocative.
Where do you see yourself going from here?
Well now that, with Alias, I have kind of shouted and asserted myself into this space, it feels natural to go the other way almost. Now, I can be a little bit more quietly confident, rather than so ostentatious. With my next record, my album, I go back to touching on some quieter things from my first EP, Cruel Practice. In a kind of gnarly, experimental way, there’s touches of bitterness, and you know, angst and dissatisfaction. But within that, there’s also confidence, softness, and femininity. I think all of these things run through me as a person. Channeling them is an ever fluid process. I wanted to reveal a bit more of myself. You know, I sometimes want to just say that I’m multifaceted, so that I have room to be one way one day, and another way another day. In the end, it’s all still me. I’m never acting out of character. In fact, it’s all just me still trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be. You can still be confident in who you are at any given day, but know what there’s room for growth and change.
How do you think your fans and listeners have been responding to that process?
It’s a bit difficult when you’re an artist because everyone has an opinion, and has a vested interest in who you are. It really is interesting because yesterday someone came up to me as I was having breakfast at my hotel, and they said that my music really brought them out of a depression and helped them to feel confident about themselves. That is something I really never expected to happen. I always find it so humbling when someone has that experience with my music because I guess it has a similar effect on me, if not so drastically. But it’s definitely a lifeline. For the future, I hope to just maintain that lifeline. I’ve made this career for myself out of nowhere, and so I always feel like I can decide what I want to do, despite what anyone says or thinks. I’m not ever prescribed to the path ahead of me. I’m continually building these roads.
Speaking of this career you’ve created for yourself, what role would you say that London scene you came up in has had in its development?
I’m one of those people that, growing up, felt like I was completely different from what was around me. As much as I tried to assimilate to make other people feel comfortable around me, I always felt like, “I’m not from here. I’m not of this place.” So it’s funny to now be claimed so much by London, and the London scene, when I always kind of had my eyes looking outwards. Even the kind of queer family I have is such an international community. It seems like we are all a traveling family. There are many people I feel deeply connected to from other places like in America, or in France, or wherever. As much as we pick apart different things from London and its scene, I was much more invested in looking beyond that. I think that when you’re queer, you’re automatically kind of not of where you are. You’re different, you think differently. It’s a natural thing. So I’ve always felt borderless in that sense.
So is London more of a host for that feeling?
I probably don’t even realize because London is so diverse, but I really do have so much privilege with being from there. I’m allowed to talk about how I identify because of where I’m from. There are so many people who aren’t able to do that.
As a lyricist, would you say you feel more like a creator, from the ground up, or a conduit?
Definitely a conduit. I always say that I feel like a sculptor of sorts. When someone is sculpting marble, they reveal what is already there. That is what I do with my lyrics. I am finding the words to articulate what already exists. I think that is what gives me the confidence to do what I do and say what I say. Because essentially, it all already exists. I am just giving it more clarity.
Where do you find the words to reveal these truths, in full clarity, as you say?
I’ve always enjoyed words as a concept. It’s an interest I had long before making music. Even when it comes to things like slang, or classical literature, I love how universal but unique they are at the same time. Even when I look at other languages and, you know, phrases that only exist in certain languages, and how beautiful the words can sound when I’m listening to their music and I don’t even understand anything. I can still understand the emotion because it’s still all in the words. I definitely think of myself more naturally as a poet.
As opposed to what other label? A musician?
I’m still finding out my relationship with music. Sonically, it’s still a journey for me. Before, I wouldn’t naturally be like, “I’m a musician,” but as I keep going with it and get more and more affirmation with what I’m creating, this point will come where I am like “No. I am a musician.” After some gigs that I have played here in America, and in Mexico recently, I have had these moments where I really felt like a musician onstage. I found myself really enjoying the performance itself and the relationship I have with my audience. I can feel the energy transference from them. Performing was not something that drew me to making music initially. So to have that experience now has been so special. It’s still something that I am experiencing. I haven’t been able to entirely contextualize it yet, because it’s still so current, I guess. Maybe in like 10 years when I look back I’ll have a better idea of how I feel about it. I’ll be writing my memoirs by then.
As someone relatively new to this field, how does it feel to already have the co-signs of legacy names like Basement Jaxx, Boys Noize, and even Lady Gaga?
At the end of the day, it’s all a sign that my faves have great taste. In a sense, I believe I don’t make bad music. And if your favorite also agrees with that, then they are your fave for a reason. Does that make sense?
Yes. (Laughter ensues).
It’s one of those things where people ask me, “well, who do you want to work with?” There are loads of people I’m a fan of, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to work with all of them just because I enjoy the music. In that vein, I don’t always insert myself into that collaboration process. I find it quite difficult actually to even think of going into collabs because, like I said, I’m still figuring out what I want to find in my music. I’m not always assertively like, “I want to work with this person, I want to do this.” So I’ll admit that it is really nice when someone does approach me and says that they are into my stuff and they have an idea of how we can collaborate.
How does that affirmation resonate with you?
Having someone say they believe in you is so important. I know that when I was younger, my parents told me I could do anything I wanted to do. That definitely instilled an entitlement in me to think that I can do whatever I want if I put my mind to it. Without that initial positivity and affirmation, would I have ever thought like that? I’m not so sure. So in the same way, having affirmation throughout my career can create the same kind of effect. That’s why I also reach out to people to let them know that I love their music and their work. It’s important to let people know that.
