GAYLE on Working on the Barbie Movie, Touring With Taylor Swift, and New Music
[UNPUBLISHED]: So you’re currently on tour right now and you just played in LA last night! Can you tell me about how this show went and the friends you got to perform with last night?
[GAYLE]: I performed at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles yesterday and it was so much fun. It was actually my biggest headlining show in LA ever and I had my friends Em Beihold and Blu DeTiger hop on stage with me. It was a lot of fun having Blu play bass, and she sang “Z” with me, and then Em played, “Get this party started.” Last year, I truly just had no idea what I was doing when I went on my first headlining run, with this tour, I put out three EP’s like obviously, a study of the human experience volume one, a study of the human experience volume two, and then a study of the human experience two and a half is just a remix. I wanted to be able to honor the EPs and honor the touring that I've been doing in the past year. It's a lot of fun in my opinion and I hope that it's a fun show to watch.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You described touring as one of the most “exciting and terrifying moments of your life,” How does it feel to be fully jumping into things that you are sometimes scared to do, but end up being rewarding after? Your tour is titled “scared but trying,” what does this phrase mean to you?
[GAYLE]: I never want to act like things are positive all the time. People are always telling me how confident I am, but I am not; I'm really insecure, and I don't know what I'm doing. I would sometimes get frustrated because people thought I was so confident or self-assured. When I'm playing on stage, I want to give a lot of energy and hype people up, and that can sometimes come off as confidence. It's something I'm still working on, but I am really happy, and I feel so honored that I get to do music with my life. It’s kind of a combination of things because it's hard for me to be insecure doing things on a bigger scale, sometimes like playing stadiums because you're walking out being like, “well, 50,000 people are about to see me be average.” There's nothing anybody can really say to make me feel better but I always go back to it. I don't want to let my insecurities or my negativity get in the way of enjoying myself and the beautiful opportunities that I have in my life. I was going to say no to the Taylor tour just because I'm insecure so there are just moments like that in my life where all I can do is try my best. So, when I'm given such beautiful opportunities, even though I'm insecure, I'm not going to say no to them.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Touring has generally just been huge for you this year, what has it been like performing at stadiums, local venues, and iconic halls all across the world been like? What are some of your favorite things about touring?
[GAYLE]: Well, I love how Taylor's fan base is just such a supportive, welcoming, friendly, and lovely community. It's people who just really love music and love celebrating extremely talented people. I went on tour with Tate McRae last year, and that was the best place where I had so much fun. It was the first time people had ever sang back “abcdefu” to me, it was the first time I'd ever heard anybody sing along to any of my songs. Those venues were theaters and big clubs with 3,000 people. To be on the Taylor tour, play stadiums, and get all the friendship bracelets was my favorite part. I got to see the show so many times and I got to meet so many incredible people. It was just so exciting for me to be able to open up, not only for Taylor Swift but for beabadoobee, Paramore, Phoebe Bridgers, MUNA, Gracie Abrams, and girl in red. I love when I look at crowds, and when I look at people, I realize how everybody is a stranger and how nobody knows how much they disagree with each other because everybody's coming together and liking the same thing. Music really unifies people. When I'm on stage, I can just see how many strangers are choosing to experience something together. That's a bonding experience, and I think that's a beautiful part of live music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you still get nervous?
[GAYLE]: Oh yeah, last year, I opened up for My Chemical Romance in Dublin, Ireland, and I threw up before I walked on stage. It was the first time I'd ever thrown up before walking out on stage, but I truly had no idea if people were going to boo me off stage or not. I was truly terrified. I'd never been to Dublin. I had no clue if anybody liked my songs in Dublin.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You contributed to the Barbie soundtrack this past year too! Can you tell me about the songwriting process for “butterflies?” How did you get into the Barbie zone?
[GAYLE]: For Barbie, I connected with Mark Ronson, and he asked me to interpolate a song called “Butterfly” by Crazy Town. The Red Hot Chili Peppers made a little interlude, and then Crazy Town interpolated that, and so I interpolated their interpolation. I've never done that before; I've only interpolated one song in my life and put it out, and it's my song called “snow angels.” It's an interpolation of “Cool for the Summer,” and to be completely honest, the first time was more of an accident; I started listening to the song, and I was like, “oh, sick, this is “Cool for the Summer.” This time for Barbie, I was purposely trying to interpolate a song and find the really iconic parts of the song. Mark asked me to kind of make a bedroom pop punk version of the song. There were a million ways it could have done that, and this is not a song I would expect to have made for the Barbie album or for the Barbie movie. It really was not what I was expecting because they were really particular about how they wanted a pop-punk sound. In the song, perseverance was a really big theme. I knew I needed to write a song about hyping someone up. So I wrote this: “Let's climb a mountain; let's achieve; we are winners!” I kept this theme of somebody's been pushing you down, and now it's time to rise up and rise above. I took some of the Crazy Town lyrics and flipped them a little bit in the verses. There's one line, “Butterflies in her eyes and looks to kill,” and then it goes like, “Butterflies in my eyes. I got looks that could kill.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: You released your latest single “i don’t sleep as good as i used to” at the beginning of last month. You voice a lot of the anxieties that resonate across our current generation at the moment. What story were you trying to tell with this song?
[GAYLE]: “i don’t sleep as good as i used to,” for me, is my perspective on that song when you start to lose your childlike, magical thinking about the world. I think there's a point when you're younger, when you aren't particularly thinking about the way the world works and why everything works the way it does. Then there's a point in my life where I started to grow up and I started to realize more about how not everything is fair all the time and not everything works perfectly all the time. It was kind of about that moment, realizing how twisted the world can be, and then there's nothing you can do to change it, and you have to sit in this feeling of powerlessness, and it was really hard for me to personally cope with that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you define this era of music for you with these latest singles?
[GAYLE]: I would say this is my touring year. I was supposed to put out an album this year, but I've never made an album before, and I've never toured stadiums before. I felt like I couldn't do both for the first time. So I decided to really focus on my touring and put out songs that I felt passionate about. I'd say this is me experimenting with alternative and pop music because I really love both genres. I'm trying to find my respective place in both. I would say this is really me, finding my sound and trying to push myself and my lyricism, and being open to cutting songs and being open to jumping on my friend's songs, and some of my friends jumping on my songs. It's a very big year of exploring and finding myself, and with this next era of music, it's going to be trying to experiment in genres more and push myself and my lyricism. I'm constantly trying to evolve, and that's my biggest goal. It's moving forward, and I'm trying my best to keep doing that.
Photo by Acacia Evans