Flower Face Releases Dream-Pop Romance Single “Cornflower Blue”
23-year-old songwriter Ruby McKinnon—better known as Flower Face—shows listeners an audio version of her personal journal where she captures dark lyrical subjects. Her newest release “Cornflower Blue” is a powerful exploration of showing the artist’s physical and mental wounds.
Flower Face creates music for those who know the single to be true—introverts, wallflowers, and hopeless romantics. People who spend enough time lost in their own minds to understand that melancholy is often mistaken for agony and heartache. She has built a devoted following through DIY releases on Bandcamp and YouTube with over 22k subscribers all through organic fan support.
Flower Face has been creating music under the name since the age of 14. She has been writing and producing straight from her bedroom. Her recent album releases, Baby Teeth and Fever Dreams, were produced with the help of outside production.
“Cornflower Blue” is a dream-pop-esque reflection on “loving to the point of exhaustion.” The artist is moving on from writing from surviving stage three cancer in high school, and romantic relationships—both healthy and obsessive—to exploring the damaged parts of oneself. In this Unpublished Exclusive, we had the opportunity to discuss “Cornflower Blue” and Flower Face’s excitement for her album release.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you give me a general artist statement or background about your music?
[FLOWER FACE]: I've been playing classical piano my whole life since I was a little kid, and I started writing and releasing music in high school at 14. That's when I started putting out records on Bandcamp. My audience grew in really organic ways, which is awesome. I think in terms of an artistic statement, what's most important to me and what I'm trying to do through my work is sort of exploring the absolute depths and intensity of feeling that we can have as humans. I think it's not always easy to unlock or access that, but when you do it's really beautiful and that's where the art comes from. That's also where the connection comes, which is the most important thing for me—especially my background—starting out in such a small way and having this audience grow and be with me through all these years and grow up alongside me, is this connection that I have to the people who listen to my music, that's the most important thing, the thing that I want to always be.
[UNPUBLISHED]: And when did you first become interested in creating your own?
[FLOWER FACE]: I started out with classical pianos when I was a little kid. My parents put me in lessons when I was five years old, and obviously back then when I was a kid, it wasn't easy to stay focused and interested, but I think musical education is really important for anyone who has access to it. I believe that because that really built a foundation obviously for what I do now and so once I became a teenager and found my own bands and musicians that I like and going through my angsty sad music phase, I was like ‘oh I could do this and I want to do this.’ I've always wanted to be a writer in whatever way and so. Back then I was writing a lot of stories and I shifted that into songwriting around 14.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who are your biggest musical influences, because I hear a lot of Mazzy Star in your work?
[FLOWER FACE]: I've gotten that one a lot and I love Mazzy Star. I have a range of things that I listened to that inspire my work. I try not to listen to things that are too close to what I do, at least when I'm writing, because then I find that I'm trying to kind of replicate other artists. Bright Eyes and Conor Oberst were my first influences and the first band that I got into on my own and started branching out which led me to all this other indie rock cultural music. But my biggest ones now I would say are The Nationals, Radiohead and Leonard Cohen—big favorites of my parents. And Perfume Genius and Interpol. Kind of a variety of things I would say, I try to keep my influences sort of eclectic so that I'm not feeding too much from one source.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does the songwriting process usually look like for you? Does it change depending on the song or the emotions you evoke?
[FLOWER FACE]: I don't have any consistent processes that I can count on really. If I sit down and try to write a song, it doesn't usually happen. I kind of just have to wait for something to happen. But generally, the process involves writing down bits and pieces whenever they come to me and at some point, things will come together all at once, and I have to grab onto it when it's there or else I kind of lose it. But generally, I'm a much more lyric focused person. So most of my songs start out as a couple of lines of lyrics and the music sort of comes later.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you find that certain feelings or experiences are easier to write about than others?
[FLOWER FACE]: I draw from a lot of different things. I'm usually not writing one song about one specific person or one specific event. Usually, this kind of mixing goals, all these different things that I've experienced or that I witness to or what people I know have gone through, just feeling experiences from all around my life.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You touched on this earlier, but I saw that you built a loyal following through your DIY releases on Bandcamp and YouTube, and it's accumulated over 22,000 followers through organic support like you said. Did you expect such a huge response and rise to your popularity?
[FLOWER FACE]: Not at all, I really just thought ‘I'm gonna post these songs online and maybe some of my friends who listen to them, maybe not.’ But the internet is a crazy thing and from the beginning, my audience has been very international. I live in Canada and I don't think there's even a Canadian city in my top 10 on Spotify listeners. It's always been all over the world and when I mailed them [fans] CDs or shirts, I was mailing them to all different countries, it's so cool… I wasn't going around and touring in Canada or playing shows when I was a teenager. I was pretty much just writing and releasing music online, which led me to have a more diverse fan base. I didn't expect it at all. It definitely grew exponentially in the last few years once I decided that I was going to do this [music] as a serious thing. Up until this point, it's all been organic which is really cool.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I am so excited for the single that you're releasing on October 29! Can you talk to me about your upcoming release, “Cornflower Blue?”
[FLOWER FACE]: I'm so excited. I wanted this to be the lead single from the beginning, but I'm signed with a label now. So it's a totally different process from what I'm used to… now there's a whole album rollout and other stuff that goes into it. There’s a video that goes with the song that sets the visual tone for the whole record, and it’s solid right now so the song is very special to me. I wrote it after a period of having the worst writer’s block ever. I was living on my own at the time. I was grieving a couple of really serious losses and I just felt like I'm never going to create anything again. Every time I tried to write something it was bad. I was so depressed and I felt so lonely. Then I had the one line from the chorus, which is “you love me until you wear me out, then you'll love me more.” Then I sat down one night with my guitar and I wrote the whole song around that line in 10 minutes. I stayed up all night just making five different demo versions of different kinds of sounds. I was just going crazy, I was laughing maniacally like a cartoon villain being like ‘yes I finally wrote something good.’ That triggered this whole period of consistent writing where I wrote most of the rest of the album after that because I felt so inspired by being able to write this one song. It's really important to me. I think it's the best one or it's my favorite song on the album. It's the song that inspired my manager to work with me so I'm really really really excited to put it out there. It’s such a step forward in terms of production and sound, and I think songwriting in general for me because my last release was early 2018 so it's been a little while.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's one thing you want your listeners to take away from “Cornflower Blue?”
[FLOWER FACE]: I would say it's not a happy ending song… it's kind of a similar thread to a lot of music about the struggle and darkness that comes from being unable to be open with your feelings, closing that off, and being unable to hear or be heard by the people that you love. I guess the message is always don't give up, don't give yourself away, don't give up your pride and dignity. I always think you should be true to your heart and not be too proud to put your real feelings out there, and to express to someone what you really feel. It sounds so cliche. But the song is about loving someone, but you're just unable to reach this sort of true, comfortable, real love with them, because you're both so tangled up in all the other stuff that you can't see or be seen by them or hear or be heard by them.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I was reading a lot of press releases about your album Baby Teeth, and just the meaning behind it of how after you break up with someone after your first relationship, you compare it to losing your baby teeth for the first time. Is your upcoming album touching on the same emotions as that? Is it kind of like a follow up album to those feelings that you express in the first?
[FLOWER FACE]: I would say it follows a similar theme. I'm really bad at getting over things. I think I kind of carry the same feelings with me throughout my whole life and continue to write about them. There's definitely a similar theme. I feel like this one is just sort of more grown up. Like you've matured a bit, and so you're facing the same feelings but maybe from a slightly different angle, and you're understanding them in a different way.
[UNPUBLISHED]: So your upcoming album touches on the maturity of grieving like a loss or a relationship?
[FLOWER FACE]: It's more focused on understanding your internal self, rather than focusing on the external forces that are acting on you. I think that the whole young love, young breakup, first heartbreak aspect to Baby Teeth, a lot of it is like ‘you did this to me and I'm so hurt.’ This album is taking a look at your own darker side and coming to terms with that and your own faults and your own struggles that are a part of you. You have to understand and accept how that fits into your cells instead of just trying to push it away or not accept it as part of you.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are three words you would use to describe your upcoming album?
[FLOWER FACE]: I'm going to say shark, moon and teeth.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does the rest of the year look like to you?
[FLOWER FACE]: I've had a couple music video shoots recently, I have another one tomorrow. I've been working nonstop on various things for the album release. I do a lot of visual work myself and have an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts. I do a lot of video work, a lot of the graphic design stuff like our single art. I feel like I'll probably be continuing to do that for the rest of the year. Then I'm actually moving in a week and a half, nine hours away from where I live now up to Montreal. The recent video is two years in the making, and I made it in Detroit. I would just love to mention the director, Mathew Pimentel, because he's really great and we work together planning at long distance.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have any advice for any up-and-coming singer / songwriters that are trying to break into the scene?
[FLOWER FACE]: It's hard, and I won't lie about that. I think there is an element of luck to it, I feel really lucky. I have been working really hard for 10 years, but the internet is such a great thing because you can put yourself out there and it can be heard by the whole world but it also means that the market is very very saturated. I would say that the most important things are to figure out who you are and who you want to present to the world and be authentic to that and don't try to change it up if you feel like it's not working yet because you really have to give it time. Present yourself authentic, be real, and focus on connecting with people who listen to your music. That connection is really important. Don't be scared to put yourself out there, because I definitely was. Don't get caught up in trying to portray success, you should be focused on building real connections organically.
The meditative ballad is one of the lead singles of her forthcoming album that takes on the theme of “following a process of self-reflection, of recognizing the damaged parts of yourself and coming to terms with them. It is an exploration of the self and how that is impacted and transformed by trauma, grief, love, heartbreak and the struggle of identity—and the way those things color relationships of all kinds: romantic, friendship, family, etc. It is about seeing the raw, dark parts of yourself and not trying to bury them anymore,” said Flower Face.
The single borders between awareness and a fantasy that quietly threatens to tip over into a surrealistic nightmare. Though, it evokes musical touchstones like Mazzy Star’s, So Tonight That I Might See and hints of Cowboy Junkies and dream pop contemporaries, Cocteau Twins.
Heartfelt and experimental, Flower Face is a small shoegaze / indie-pop artist to keep an eye on. Flower Face is making waves in the music community with her unfeigned, compelling songs that navigate romance, hardships and overcoming traumas.
