Last October, she released a Notes App statement after people accused her of being lesbophobic following an out-of-context interview quote. The virality of the phrase led to more girl in red fans, and as a result, more social media scrutiny on Marie, who was active on Twitter. “You either know what it means or you don't, and if you know, you did something right, I guess,” she says. For Marie, it’s cool that something about her music broke through a crowded pop culture landscape, and that people can use the code as a way of staying safe. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.ĭuring the pandemic, girl in red became synonymous with a now-established internet phenomenon: “do you listen to girl in red?” Across TikToks and tweets, it became a coded way to ask if someone is queer, like Marie is - the phrase solidified in singer-songwriter Haley Margo’s song of the same name. She’s a fan of Olivia’s too (“' Deja vu', great song,” she says) and is interested in the way Taylor’s influence manifests in each artist’s work. She cites Taylor’s focus on the shape of words, and how they feed into her melodies, as inspirations in her work. On the day we chat, Taylor has just dropped Fearless (Taylor’s Version), which Marie is excited to delve into. She’s part of a growing contingent of songwriters - Olivia Rodrigo and Conan Gray, for example - whose primary influence is Taylor Swift, the natural end result of listening to her albums on a loop as a teenager. “I can't expose myself by saying, ‘Wow, I have intrusive thoughts.’ I just want to make something that matters, something that I gravitate towards, which is honesty and stuff that feels real.” That vulnerability feels obvious to her - why hide what we all feel? “I have this theory that you can't expose a human being emotionally because we have the same emotions,” Marie says. So she names them, taking away their power. The Finneas-produced “Serotonin” examines how terrified she is of her intrusive thoughts, the corners of her mind. In her, Marie found a kindred spirit of sorts, in the sense that they both have things they’re running from. “Rue,” a 2020 single that’s on the album, was inspired by Zendaya’s character in Euphoria. It’s this willingness to reckon with inexplicable sadness, heightened emotion, and the moving states of her mental health on a given day that make a signature girl in red song. “I've been through hell, but I’m on my way out.” “I could die here and nobody would know,” the lyrics go. The place where light can come in too, through the cracks in the wall. It’s the place where you lay on the floor and aren’t sure you can get up. “It’s been a place I've hated and it's been a place I've loved, and it's been a place where I've been able to reflect on everything that's been happening mentally and in my life,” she says. It’s why she’s concerned with creating safe feelings for herself, in the form of the instruments, books, and knick-knacks that decorate her space. The home is a center for her, a place where the best and worst moments of life are lived. It’s a gut-punch of a song, a complex world of experiences and emotions distilled down to her bedroom. The distance from both home and touring travel seems to have allowed her to capture feelings from both, whether it’s a lonely New York City hotel room or her Oslo apartment. She recorded the album in the picturesque city of Bergen with producer Matias Tellez, which is where she spent the majority of 2020.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |