A Conversation With Cloe Wilder on Her Newest Single “House by the Water”
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ve said that you discovered your love of music at a young age. Can you walk us through what that looked like? Was there a certain moment or experience?
[CLOE WILDER]: Since I was about four, I took vocal and piano lessons and did recitals every week. I loved all of it, but I didn't realize how much I enjoyed writing until I went to my first writing camp when I was twelve. That blew my mind. That's when I realized that I had a genuine love for songwriting and the whole idea of being an artist.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you remember what you were writing about back then?
[CLOE WILDER]: My twelve-year-old songwriting wasn't as deep as it is now. But I was writing break-up songs at that point for sure. I've always had a connection to sad music and so I just went in on the breakup songs when I had no idea what I was talking about. And I still barely do!
[UNPUBLISHED]: At that age, who were the artists influencing you?
[CLOE WILDER]: I was entirely influenced by Lana Del Rey. She was my main influence, and I think it has a lot to do with my sister. She’s eleven years older than me, so I've been listening to all the music she listened to for a long time. She introduced me to Lana Del Rey when I was six years old, so you know, an alarmingly young age to get into all of that. But I absolutely loved her and her dark ethereal music, and I love all the topics that she wrote about. I think that's where I just became so obsessed with breakups and love songs. I love the way she presented all of it. She was absolutely my influence going into music. She made me want to write my own.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How has that evolved over time?
[CLOE WILDER]: I still reference Lana Del Rey but I tried to get into folk alternative music and the female folk world. I love Phoebe Bridgers, she’s been my main influence right now. I saw her in concert in October last year for the first time and I was absolutely blown away. And I’m going back to things that I listened to when I was younger and that I grew up on like The Lumineers and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, even going way back to Johnny Cash. A lot of it came together for this.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What attracts you to that genre of music?
[CLOE WILDER]: I love how honest it feels, and I love the style of writing itself. I love how bare it is. And once I started getting a little bit more alternative and acoustic, I really connected to myself as a songwriter. I feel like having those songs that just feel like the bare bones are almost more complete than anything else. Like it actually gives me a place for my writing to shine through. I love getting to explore this part of my voice too, the way it sounds to me. It's been like a super comfortable writing space, so raw and honest and emotional and folksy. It’s stripped back and I really connect to it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Would you say Taylor Swift’s folk era of folklore and evermore has influenced you?
[CLOE WILDER]: Oh my god, that's another one! My mom and I were just talking about this. We have home videos of me singing “Love Story” when I was three years old. That was my first favorite song. I've always been really connected to Taylor Swift. I absolutely love her. It just reminds me of being a little kid.
[UNPUBLISHED]: In 2019, you released “Overthinking,” your first single when you were 13. Can you walk us through what it was like to make and release a song at that age?
[CLOE WILDER]: I was so excited to be doing it for real. I had always been obsessed with music and then I had gotten into writing and I was thrilled to be putting something out there artistically. The whole process of it was really fun for me. It felt so real. You look up to artists your whole life and the act of putting out a song and a video, so making it yourself just feels so special. It still feels that way for me, but especially at that time, I was completely blown away by all of it and how it works, and I just really wanted to be an artist. It was very exciting for me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is it a song that you have good feelings about and nostalgia attached to?
[CLOE WILDER]: In a way I do. I’m proud of myself for being so honest. It was the very first one and I feel like I sound so different, but obviously what I was thinking about was very real to me then. As your sound evolves and you grow older, you sound different. You feel like you sound better and you can express yourself better. It is a little bit strange to listen back to but it’s all part of the journey. You can tell that I was growing and evolving. It was all part of my process and it's all healthy. It’s cool that it's all been documented artistically and musically for me because it is nice to look back at how I've grown. I've definitely come to terms with that. I’ve learned to appreciate it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Turning now to your latest song “House by the Water,” what excites you about it? What do you love about this song?
[CLOE WILDER]: I wrote “House by the Water” in early 2021 with Sam Nicolosi. It was my first little taste of this new genre for me but it came so naturally and I absolutely loved what we were doing. It’s a nod to my childhood because I literally grew up in a house by the water. It’s referencing a time in my life that I felt like was slipping away, to a time that I wanted to get back. I didn't really know what that was gonna look like, and at the time I really felt it all moving really fast. It was all about time and then “House by the Water” became the symbol for it. I love it because it ends on this unresolved note of, “Maybe one day, but you never really know what happened.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there a particular lyric or production element on it that you love?
[CLOE WILDER]: I love how stripped-back it is. You can hear every little breath perfectly. And I love the way we did the vocals. The harmonies in the chorus make me so happy, it's so soft but so full with these quiet little elements sprinkled throughout. And the line “maybe one day we can live in a house up by the water” had been with me for a minute at that point, so I loved getting to use it. And the whole chorus makes me really happy. How “You'll be nothing like your father,” is representing breaking away from where you’re from. I love the way it came together.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I loved the music video as well where you’re walking in nature with the trees and lakes. What was it like to film in such a unique location?
[CLOE WILDER]: It was really cool. I’ve never really done a video like that. Jesse DeFlorio directed it. He's directed my past few videos and he's great. I love working with him. We were in the Malibu mountains and it was funny because there wasn’t any water. There was actually a drought going on, so we had this manmade lake that we put that car in. It felt desolate and alone in that video but I was also one with nature and we got to build off of that. And I love the way the colors came out. Every color was so saturated. It had this dreamy quality to it that made it look a little unreal. Like my jeans were super blue and the sky was super blue and later on the sky was super yellow. It definitely has this far-away quality to it because the song is unresolved and the video is that way too. The whole place was beautiful and we had so much to work with. It was a really great day.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Following the release of this single, what can fans expect to hear from you next?
[CLOE WILDER]: This was my last one wrapping up this year, getting ready for the holidays and everything but I'm going to be putting out quite a few more singles early next year. Then I'm shooting for my EP to come out in the summertime. It's all a little bit of an extension of “House by the Water” for sure. Just getting a little deeper. I'm so excited, I can hardly wait!
