morgen Is Full of 'BRAVADO' in Her Sophomore EP
Energetic, vibrant and spirited, 18 year old indie pop artist morgen is a force to be reckoned with in her latest EP BRAVADO. The EP is a celebration of teenage hood, queer identity and finding the humor in the serious things in life.
The Los Angeles based singer-songwriter truly embraces the technicolor chaos of life, musically, visually and spiritually. Before we began our conversation morgen covered a range of topics from tech decks to frog slippers to personal styling as she flitted around her room exhibiting her larger than life personality.
Creating bass heavy, trippy, bubblegum pop the singer-songwriter sat down with Unpublished to discuss identity in music, personas and queer anthems.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Hello, morgen! How would you describe your music to somebody who is unfamiliar with your music?
[MORGEN]: It’s a mixture of a lot of different things. It’s funny, weird and creative. Is she the moment? We don't know. It's whatever you want it to be.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Have you always kind of worked that way creatively, it's like it is what others interpret it to be.
[MORGEN]: That’s kind of what art is. Art is to be interpreted by the listener, or the viewer or whatever the fuck else you want to be. I've always just done what came naturally. I second guess myself pretty much all the time, but not with art. Because it's something that comes out of me and not really through another person's perspective. I used to not really tell people what the songs were about when I was younger, because I was like “I don't want people to have a concept of what it's about so they can make their own opinions about it.” I write very unapologetically and straight to the point. So it's a lot easier to hear what the song is about initially. So this is the song, this is what it means but I don't give a fuck you can choose what it means to you.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I think that's a really fun outlook, you’re creating for the world. You’ve achieved a lot at such a young age, what has your experience been having your teenagehood linked to your music?
[MORGEN]: I tie it together because I have to. My teenage experience just overlaps with music. There's not one without the other. I exist with music. [...] I can't not do it. I fall asleep thinking about music. I wake up thinking about music. Pretty much my entire life is music. So of course my teenage years are just music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Artists talk about a moment where music called to them, did you experience that?
[MORGEN]: From the day I was born, pretty much. It's something that I've always done. My dad was a musician before I was born. [...] So I grew up around music and it was always something that was just in my life. I think it was just a given. [...] I went through a phase of intensely writing music every single night, we had a keyboard in the garage and I would stay up every night and start writing. That was the beginning of my career.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Music seems to be so intrinsically a part of who you are. You did an interview and you had this awesome quote “That's what BRAVADO is about for me, it's this weird in between place where you're trying to be cool, you're like, ‘I know who I am,’ when really you don’t.”— is there an element of music that helps you explore self identity?
[MORGEN]: I go in and out of phases, where I'm like, “I know who I am.” And then phases where I'm like, “I fucking cannot with this bitch. Who is she?” But I feel like music has made me really self aware. And so everything I do is over-thought. I’m hyper aware of who I am.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you ever go back and revisit your old music and don't identify with it?
[MORGEN]: Oh, my God all the time. Literally, every single day. I don't even revisit my old music, because who is she? Even on BRAVADO, I don't identify with them anymore because I wrote them two years ago! Now I'm in a completely different place in my life. There are some songs like “Lilee” that I really identify with, and will probably keep identifying with, because I just keep falling in love with my friends. So that's just a consistent failure. But a lot of the songs were like “Sick of Me,” which was such an in the moment situation. Thank God for that moment because it really helped me get through that phase of my life. But looking back on it, I'm like, “Wow, I could not even identify at all with that.” [...] Especially with my older stuff, my first EP Unaccompanied Minor, which I wrote when I was 14 and 15. Like who is that? She is not present anymore. [...] It's great to have those time capsules, because I get to go back and be like, “Wow that was how I looked at the world.” [...] It makes me grateful for the fact that I'm here now. And that's nice.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is it ever strange to play your older songs and just feel so distant from that person?
[MORGEN]: Yes, absolutely. I forget that I wrote those songs sometimes. Or I forget that they're also out in public, like people can see those things. *laughs* [...] This girl posted the song “Sweet 16” song recently like “I’ve been waiting to post this song for so long” because it was her birthday. I was like “Oh my fucking God that is something in the world!?”
[UNPUBLISHED]: I hope you can also find comfort in the fact that there are 16-year-olds going through exactly what you went through. And they get to identify with that version of morgen.
[MORGEN]: It's really cool that people can identify with those songs. It's really humbling and cool that people can see the person that I have become now and still listen to the songs that I was when I was younger. I feel like I've grown a lot as an artist over the past few years and I'm still very much growing. It’s just very cool that someone can like my current stuff and the stuff that I released when I was younger.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Moving into this new era of morgen, you just released your sophomore EP BRAVADO. Congratulations! How would you describe it in three words?
[MORGEN]: False. Confidence. Yeah.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is that kind of how you see the theme of the EP?
[MORGEN]: Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I chose [the word] bravado. The Merriam Webster definition is false confidence and putting on a show, which is exactly what I was doing. It's not necessarily false, it's just faking it ‘till you make it. Being a young adult you're expected to be very old, or like, at least have your shit together. or not have your shit together. I have to act like I have my shit together. [...] That's the theme of Bravado, putting this identity forward. It’s who I want to be. It’s this super confident person, which I am but not all the time. I'm really striving to have that self acceptance and be like, “Hey this is who I am. Here you go. If you don't like it, you can leave.”
[UNPUBLISHED]:I love that you look at it as a persona because I saw it as such too. The visuals of the EP are very vivid and boisterous. What is the inspiration behind that technicolor persona that you have?
[MORGEN]: It's like Hollywood glam. It’s pretty little princess, fucking bombshell, bimbo. It's camp. It's drama. She's the moment. It's just like a lot of sparkle. It's a lot of glam. It's very musical theater. [...] That’s the cover art, all of the art was by me. I’m not a graphic designer but I was really into collaging. I got this free sketch app and made it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you create all the art yourself?
[MORGEN]: *nods* Except for “Make U Mine” [Laurel Grisham] made that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you have a favorite memory while creating the album? Whether that's in visual or musical elements?
[MORGEN]: My favorite video of mine is the “Lilee” music video. Shooting that was so fun. I loved a lot of the creative parts. I really loved spending time graphic designing because I love art. It's so fun and so super exciting. I don't really spend a lot of time painting or drawing or doing anything like that so it’s how I get physical creations out. Writing “Lilee” was also like my favorite thing ever. I was sitting with my friend, Zoe, and the producer, Scotty. And then my manager actually ended up finishing it with me in his bedroom, which was really funny. I did part of it at home and part of it in the studio with them. It was the first song that I really felt like I wrote everything down that I felt. It is one of my favorite songs I wrote. I remember listening to it in the session with Zoe and Scotty for the first time, and I loved it. It was like one of the first songs that I really genuinely liked. I was like “I love the song and I want to play it on repeat.” And I still like it! [Which is] very rare for me to like a song after I've listened to it a fucking gazillion times. It’s funny because I found out the girl that I wrote it about, knows that I wrote it about her. And that was honestly horrifying.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Have you spoken to her since finding out?
[MORGEN]: God, no! She came to one of my shows and my friend came up to me afterwards, who had talked to her. And she was like, “Oh, yeah, dude when you played Lilee… They definitely know” I was like *groan* Super cool. Super sick. We live, we laugh, we love and we cry when we find out people know about the song so we write about that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When you were making the album was there a certain song that you were really excited about like to release?
[MORGEN]: “Lilee.” I had to fight for that song to come out. I was like “I'm not gonna release the EP if this is not one of the songs like, this is my favorite song that I've ever written.” [...] I feel like fighting for something makes you love it even more. I'm a very, very indecisive, non confrontational bitch. But I had to fight for that song!
[UNPUBLISHED]: And it totally paid off.
[MORGEN]: It’s my favorite song that I have written thus far.
[UNPUBLISHED]: My personal favorite was “Mom Jeans” which dealt a lot with gender identity and self expression but it feels so tongue and cheek. The EP, generally, takes a very humorous take on these heavier topics. Is that something that comes naturally or is that part of the ‘morgen’ persona?
[MORGEN]: Oh, no, it comes very naturally. Humor is something that I really use as a coping mechanism for pretty much everything in my life. [...] Usually when I talk about my feelings and stuff, lI can become serious. But when I put it into music, it's usually very silly and very funny. [...] But I think the hardest subject to write about is hating yourself, mental health and real shit like that. Love is something that you can easily write about without feeling like you need to make a joke about it. But when it comes to mental health, or body dysmorphia or societal imagery it's really hard to be serious about that stuff because it's just hard. [...] You have to laugh about these things because they're so ridiculous. The fact that I have to justify if I want to look like a dude some days and I want to look like a girl some days or whatever the fuck gender is! For me, I have to laugh about that stuff or else I'm gonna cry.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Having a humorous take on something that weighs so heavily on so many people is important in a sense too. Otherwise it becomes crushing.
[MORGEN]: Right. It’s this really stupid thing. The fact that we even need to have labels for our identities or anything at all. We're human beings. All of us are experiencing this life differently, so why the fuck do I need to justify being myself? And there are just more and more labels to identify with coming out, which is awesome. I think it's really cool that people have a ton of different identities! But the end goal for me, personally, would not identify as anything, and just live as people and exist. But unfortunately, we as humans are very boxed in, we love to put ourselves in niches.That's the culture, that's who we are. But it would be great if I could not identify as anything and just be myself.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Have you had any stand our reactions from fans to songs on the EP?
[MORGEN]: The two songs that fans connected with were “Mom Jeans” and “Lilee.” Which is really funny, because “Mom Jeans” was, to me, just a throwaway song. And then “Lilee” was my favorite song. So thank God, people actually connected with it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Why did you feel “Mom Jeans” was a throwaway?
[MORGEN]: Because I thought it was too funny. It’s funny because my friend Jack who I wrote this song with was like “it's actually hilarious that you released this because we both thought that this was like a dumb song.” People didn't think it was funny. And then I started promoting it on you know, Tik Tok, and it got shit going. [...] The fan interactions from “Mom Jeans” were huge. It was huge! I was getting DMS all the time being like, “this really helped with my gender identity.” “This really helped me feel comfortable with my body.” It was also body positivity, I don’t identify as being a body positive [figurehead,] I’m just a person, I just want to exist. [...] But this one message that I got was like, “Hey, I wore a two piece bathing suit for the first time ever. And the only reason I did was because I heard your song and it really inspired me.” The fact that a song could even have any impact on someone, let alone change what they were doing, that's huge! The fact that people even sit and listen to my songs, even if it's in passing, is a feat to me. How cool is it that people are taking time out of their day to consume my art. I just thought of this other interaction! This girl DM’s me saying she was going on a school camping trip and they saw the song their friend was listening to on their phone and they were like “Wow you listen to morgen?” and they’re like “Yeah I listen to morgen.” And then apparently, it started this spark between the two of them and they professed their love or something like that. I was like “Are you kidding?!” That’s awesome.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you ever think that your music would reach that far?
[MORGEN]: No, absolutely not. Well, I mean I always hoped. It’s like when you would say “I listen to girl in red” which means “Hi I’m gay, I’m queer.” It was such an identity thing. And now the fact that that happened with [my music], is so cool! That was the sweetest [message] ever. Because, being young and queer is one of the most terrifying things. It's so hard to be gay when you're young, because you're already trying to figure out who you are, let alone adding another thing onto it. So when I found my queer artists like girl in red, or Japanese House or Claud, [they] really helped me figure out my identity. The fact that I can do this for someone is insane.
[UNPUBLISHED]: So what’s next for morgen?
[MORGEN]: I really want to go on tour! I'm out of an EP deal with Sony so I'm moving on to being independent. It's very exciting. Definitely more live shows, definitely more collaborations with people. I'm really excited for this next chapter. I've been working a lot on this next EP, I already have three songs written for the next project. I'm really, really stoked for this next sort of chapter and identity of this morgen project.
