And then you had this huge success with “Call Me Maybe.” I think about this stuff all the time because when I’m on your side of interviews they’re always like, “Are you afraid you’re gonna, like, die young or go crazy?” I think young success is something you have to recover from in a way. You’ve said you were really glad that this didn’t happen till you were 26 and had an established core. You’re still young. How do you remain, I hate to use clichés, like, “grounded,” “down to earth”! But how do you maintain perspective through something like “Call Me Maybe,” or something like Emotion, which is a different kind of success but still incredibly positive.
You have to find a balance of it that works for you. There are many different levels of celebrity and success and all those weird things, and you don’t have to say yes to all of it. You say yes to what works and what can work for you. What keeps the most important thing, which is you: balanced and healthy and happy, like you have your feet on the ground. Then, what you can take on top of that becomes a bonus. It’s a gift, but you do have control over it. You can say no. You can say yes. I’m learning more and more.
And I can relate to what you’re saying. I can remember being little orphan Annie in a community school production, and at the end of the run of seven days, I was bawling. I remember my parents being like, “What’s wrong?” It was Mission, British Columbia, which does not have a lot of people, and I was like, “What if I’m just a child star?” And I’m like, Nobody knows who you are, but that’s cute. But I remember that feeling, what if that’s the best thing that happens to me? That’s a very real and scary pressure. You wonder how people get through that, but the truth of it is that you gotta have that inner little candle flicker that’s telling you, there’s more that you have to offer. And when you know that, other people start to realize it, too.
I’m just having a serendipitous moment that you said candle flicker because my friend and I talk about this all the time. We just keep saying, “Preserve your flame.” She’s a writer, and she’ll be like, “I don’t really wanna go to this book party, I feel like it’ll kill my soul.” Then I’m just like, “Preserve your flame.”
I love that, I love that! That’s actually really good. I started realizing a lot of the LA parties weren’t my scene pretty early on. I moved to Woodland Hills, two hours away in suburbia, and that’s how I handled the success of “Call Me Maybe.” I went to get sushi with my boyfriend and watched reruns of Seinfeld. It’s what I needed to do.
How did moving to New York and doing Cinderella offer a different perspective?
It was just, leaving one world, that felt like my whole wide world, and embracing another world that became my whole wide world. It was such a challenge and a thrilling one. It was funny to sign up for something and decide to have confidence in myself when I really actually didn’t know if I could do it or not. But I knew I wanted to and that was enough. People who were part of the production could see how willing I was to work my ass off until the show was not suffering—hopefully. I remember the musical theatre director, Andy Einhorn, who first auditioned me, saying “It’ll be the hardest and most gratifying thing you’ll ever do,” and it was exactly that. I loved it, and I’m glad I did it.
It was a nice break from my world, too, even for my album, to check out for a second. I was still writing and working on it but with a healthier perspective. Like, this isn’t the only thing I could do, this isn’t the whole [world], life will go on regardless, and If I want to, great, [but] I don’t have to. That was crucial for being able to write songs that were for me and not for sales, or other people, or the label, you know?
You said in an interview, “My desire now is to see how far I can stretch pop.” Are you already working on something new?
I don’t mean pop, I mean for me, for my comfort zone and for all the music that I’m making. Like trying a song with Rostam from Vampire Weekend, and trying a song where like he turns me into almost like this vampire halfway through it. I heard it and it was weird and I liked the sound of “Warm Blood” but there was something it triggered in me where I was more excited about that than some of the safer choices. I know that whatever I do next, it will be more along the lines of allowing myself to explore that, but yeah, I’ve weirdly been writing a lot. There’s always, strangely for me—in the three albums I’ve done—a prolific phase for two months [after the album comes out]. I write all the time and it’s awesome ’cause I have it for the next album, but also strangely inconvenient ’cause you’re like, Really? Why am I writing right now? But I’ve been experimenting with a really understated kind of disco-y sound, almost like Feist at the disco. That’ll probably take me a while, but I’m constantly on the search for what I’m going to do next.
What do you do with the songs or lyrics that you end up not using? I know some people don’t care, and some have a ritual for honoring the darlings they had to kill. Do you ship any of them around for the next album, or does it feel like it’s over?
There are some songs that I love that cohesively don’t match, and those ones I’m keeping for myself for a future project. I feel like some songs don’t make it because they had really good moments in them but they weren’t right yet, whether the production didn’t get there or the songwriting structure was off, there was a reason that didn’t work for me. Those are still in my shelf as works in progress. Then there are other songs I wrote in the moment and the feeling of the day that don’t even really feel like mine; they felt like an exploration of sorts. I’m happy to give those away. My publisher called me like, “You wrote over two hundred songs, you’ve handed in 17, so can I have the rest of them and sell them please?” Not all of them, but definitely the ones that I don’t think I’m gonna use, that I feel could be good for a different artist. But I also know coming from people who were pushing songs on me—I wanted to write, but even I imagine if I didn’t write, I would want to feel like the person had met me, and understood who I was and purposefully wrote something for me, before just like sending me something. I’d like to meet the artist if they wanted me to write for them, really figure out what they were into.
she FINALLY acknowledged Tug of War
Quote:
So between working with people like Dev Hynes and Ariel Rechtshaid, or asking to stop being sent songs, and then also getting more time to complete the album, how did you build up the confidence to feel like the authority?
I do remember going in to School Boy Records and sitting down with suits and being like, “I think we need a beat. I, personally, am sick of hearing myself on the radio. I also don’t know what I want to do for this next album and I know that whatever it is it’s gonna be different from what I’ve done, and I need time to figure that out.” [They were] very on board and got it immediately and was like, “Yeah.” I don’t think they thought I would take quite as long as I did. Cinderella was a little bit of a detour for all of us and they were like, “When are you coming back?” But I started to gain my confidence once I started to land in the direction where we were cooking with oil. We figured out the song “Emotion.” It started to be, like, songs that I knew I was going to fit the album around, versus songs like, we’ll see if they make the cut. It started to be like, “This is essential, this is essential.” Then I got it to my top 40 and I was teasing my label, being like, “Would it be weird if I released 40 songs, after being away for three years?” [Laughing] They’re like, “Yeah, that’s just not gonna happen.” I’m like, “Are you sure?” They’re like, “Yeah, we’re sure.” So, OK, I had to narrow it down. We had heated debates and passionate emails back like, “Don’t kill my babies!” ’cause I originally thought I got to have 21 songs and then I had to go down to 12. [We] somehow brought it up to 17 for the deluxe [edition] and it was a lot of arguing, but pleasant arguing; everyone was really understanding of where I was at. Through friends and family and [on] my own, just re-listening and re-listening, I narrowed down my favorites and…I don’t know if that answered your question, I went on a tangent.
Omi's Hula Hoop is smashing in Canada because it passes CANCON, so it counts as Canadian content What kind of mess is this when none of Carly's singles count as Canadian
She needs to release LA Hallucinations, Warm Blood, or I Didn't Just Come Here To Dance, and she can have a hit here
