“Loser”: CARR vs. Her Past Relationships
With an exotic new look on pop-punk music videos, CARR was first interested in filmmaking but is now making amazing music in Los Angeles while still mixing in her experience in film. She has released multiple singles and an EP that has led many people to listen and feel a wide range of emotions.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell us about yourself.
[CARR:] I'm CARR. My real name is Carly. I'm a songwriter and a singer. I've been in LA for four and a half years now. I'm originally from New Jersey and I went to film school out there. I actually moved out to LA to pursue film and acting. I had no dream of becoming a musician, which is really weird, but now I'm here.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you tell us about your new single Loser and what the inspiration was for it?
[CARR:] Loser is a song pretty much about the shitty people that we date. It's your realization that you've stooped so low for that person. I really wanted to make an anthem for people to blast in their cars. Also, I feel like it’s one of my favorite words in life. My friends always reach out to me about guys being shitty and I'm always saying ‘what a loser, he's such a loser.’ So when my two guy friends and I had a writing session we had that concept and we just destroyed men for hours, we had so much fun. We were laughing the whole time. That's how the song really kind of started out – it was a joke. Then we were ‘wait, this is kind of good!’
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you have a story about a specific person?
[CARR:] Yeah, there was one guy I was dating that wasted my time for a few months and he was such a liar and I’d always catch him in lies. It was so dumb and I didn't even really like him that much. I was thinking ‘why am I fucking wasting my time, you’re such a loser.’ So yeah... I got a lot of songs out of him at least.
[UNPUBLISHED:] That's the best part, using bad experiences for songs. Since you were interested in film, how much of your creativity did you put into your music videos? They have this same kind of feel.
[CARR:] I’d say all of it! I like the DIY aesthetic. I’m obviously starting out with not a lot of money and just kind of making videos casually with my friends. Even now that I'm signed to a label I feel nothing has truly changed, visually. I guess I would do a high-budget video if I had the opportunity to. Even if it was a high budget, it would still have that grungy DIY aesthetic.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Absolutely! When I was watching your music videos I found such a similarity to Wong Kar Wai films and was about to ask you about that!
[CARR:] Wong Kar Wai is one of my favorites. I love his visuals and my friend Graham Epstein, who did a lot of my older videos is a big fan of his. I made a mood board for this project and it was mostly Wong Kar Wai’s stuff because I really like his visual vibe. I'm also obsessed with horror movies. My room is filled with really dark emo shit, which is probably very unhealthy to wake up to. I'm just enjoying myself and fucking around in this video, but the visuals are very dark and scary. The whole project revolves around that in a way, the lyrics and the mood are very opposite. I wanted to make it cinematic which I feel not many people are doing right now. I eventually would love to have an album and make it sort of like a movie. You know, do something different in the sense where I could crossover my film and tell a full-fledged story.
[UNPUBLISHED:] How has growing up in New Jersey then moving to Los Angeles influenced your music?
[CARR:] Gosh, I had a really great childhood and upbringing. I went to film school and then moved to LA. It was hard because both my parents are graphic designers and I originally wanted to get into acting when I was 15. I wanted to move to LA first and not go to school, and my parents, which I understand now as an adult, didn't want me to do that. They really wanted me to have a stable career and have a normal life. They sat me down and said, “You should go to college and you should study this.” So I ended up going to school for nursing for two years, mainly because they convinced me to, and I hated it. I went back to them and said, “Look, I don't want to do this, this is what I want to do” and at that point, they were like “okay, this is what you want to do and we're gonna support you.”
[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you tell us about your journey of expressing yourself?
[CARR:] Growing up in Cherry Hill, I loved high school and I had a really great time, it played out how you see in the movies. Everyone was very cookie-cutter. It was strange for someone to express themselves and honestly, I didn't figure myself out until I moved out of that town. I remember everyone going off to really amazing schools and I wanted to go far away too mainly just because everyone else was. Looking back on it, I wish I listened to my parents and stayed at a smaller in-state school and saved money until I figured out what I wanted to do. I think I didn't really figure myself out until I moved to LA when I was on my own and meeting all different types of creative people.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Did that make you more interested in music?
[CARR:] Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in music. But I’d say I was a very strange kid. I was quiet and I was always writing stories. I was always playing outside and I was very much like my own person, as a child. When I first moved to LA I was still kind of in my own bubble molded from my town. I signed with an acting agent and I wanted to audition, but in order to audition in the acting world, you need to keep your days open. I needed to find a job at night to make money. I couldn't afford to just not work, you know, because no one was really supporting me. I got a job at this recording studio in Hollywood called Record Plant which is a top recording studio. I didn't really know anything about making music at the time. Obviously, I always loved listening to music. Anyway, I worked client service there during the nights. And my first friends that I met in LA were all from that studio so they're all like engineers, producers, runners, etc. They were all going after something within music. I was there for a few years but when I started there I was just getting out of a relationship. I was so sad and I wanted to get all my feelings out so I came up with all these song ideas that I thought were really cool. One day I went up to one of my friends who made my very first EP with me and I was like hey, I have all these song ideas, I don't know if you just want to fuck around and try making music, and he was like let's just try it and see what happens. So we had one session together, and we made a song and we both really liked it. I enjoyed it so much. Then we made a lot of songs together in his bedroom, which was my first EP and that was like the first project that I put out in 2019.
[UNPUBLISHED:] So your new single is coming out July 22. When people are listening to your music, what do you envision them doing or feeling?
[CARR:] This project is very different. I'm a little nervous because I don't know how this is gonna go, but I really just wanted this project to be really fun. [Since the pandemic] everyone was so delicate and sad, we were all locked inside for a year and now it's like everyone's free and people are going out. I want people to hear my songs and laugh and have fun. But there are some songs on the project that are more melancholic because I know people like my sad stuff too.
[UNPUBLISHED:] You always gonna have depressing songs. Can you tell us about a song you released earlier this year called “Poor Boy”?
[CARR:] I signed a publishing deal in January with Heavy Duty, and I feel like Poor Boy is when things kind of started moving forward for me because when I signed a publishing deal, I started meeting new producers and they started putting me in rooms with different people, which I've never done before it was just me and my friend always making music in his bedroom. I remember I went on a date with someone, and he was perfect. He was good looking and he had a great personality, he was like the perfect man, and I was like... why am I not into you? I don't know what's wrong with me but toxic men are more exciting sometimes. We were talking about how it's exciting to have someone that's imperfect and that's kind of where the rawness I feel comes out. When two people are perfect, it's just so boring. I feel when things are a little messy and imperfect, it makes for a more exciting love story. My friend Luke, who co-produced and wrote it with me, is the lifestyle of the Poor Boy, he's like my mattress is on the floor, and we were just kind of like writing about his life. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Who are some of your musical inspirations?
[CARR:] Oh gosh, it's really funny because everyone always fucks with me because I don't know. I don't know any new artists. I like listening to, like, a lot of 2000s music. I like old-school music and bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Neighborhood, The Killers, and The Kooks.
[UNPUBLISHED:] For the astrology people out there what's your zodiac chart?
[CARR:] Okay, so my chart is very chaotic. My sun is Virgo, my moon is Gemini, and my rising is Scorpio.
