Everything Is Going To Be Alright: Dreamy Alt-Pop Artist Princess Chelsea Talks New Album and Dream Collaborations
Her single release “The Forest” is a 2000s tinged alt-pop dream that opens with the throbbing, nostalgic crunch of an electric guitar. There is something delightfully reminiscent in the track’s simple, consistent production. Chelsea’s voice is a gauzy, tentative wail that will work its way under your skin as it blends perfectly with her band’s mesmerizing instrumental hum. Starting softly and then building to a resonant, undeniable peak “The Forest” is a powerful revelation about tenacity and resilience.
The music video honors the creative process and how raw it was for Chelsea to write. Throughout the process, the songstress shot the video on a vintage VHS camera to give her fans an insight into the cathartic process of performing in the studio.
During the production of “The Forest,” Chelsea ventured on a new creative path she never explored before pre-COVID lockdown. The artist credits the power of collaboration and the help of her band to help produce Everything is Going To Be Alright, that features jazzy vocals, stripped acoustic stylings and new channeled creativity from Chelsea. The songstress hints at a positive message at the album’s core as she explored a new direction – both lyrically and instrumentally – throughout Everything is Going To Be Alright. Princess Chelsea returns with a heartfelt narrative accompanied by nostalgic 80’s synth soundscapes that gave her inspiration to continue to write music with an empowering narrative. Magical yet menacing, we can expect a carefully crafted and honest work from Princess Chelsea that is thrilling and immersed in theatrical surprises for her listeners.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thanks again for sitting down and talking to Unpublished Magazine. For any Unpublished readers who aren't familiar with your music, can you give us a quick introduction to yourself and what type of music you create?
[CHELSEA]: My name is Princess Chelsea and I'm a musician from New Zealand, and I've made many albums since about 2011. My first album was released about 10 years ago, and my fifth album is coming out October 7. I am a multi-instrumentalist producer. My most popular song is “I Love My Boyfriend'' that more people are gradually discovering.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What artists inspire you either lyrically or instrumentally, whether that's just music you love to listen to or music that you pull inspiration from into yours?
[CHELSEA]: I have a big love for classical music, that's how I started playing when I was a kid. I started playing piano, and I think a lot of the early classical composers definitely influenced my writing style. Mozart, Bach and Haydn. As far as pop music, I just love so much stuff and it’s hard to pick one. I feel like everything that I've ever listened to and enjoyed has somehow influenced me. I listen to a song and just hear something on that song that I really like. Favorites of mine include Jonathan Richmond from The Modern Lovers. I remember seeing him live and he is very not afraid to be cheesy, which I really like. I remember seeing him live early on and seeing him twice, and just it really affected me, his performance as well because when he's on the stage, he stares at people in the eye and that look can be quite scary but amazing.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When you're not making music, what do you do to help feed into your creativity?
[CHELSEA]: I like to spend time in nature, which I think is important and I think that feeds into creativity. I live on an island so I often go for really long walks, or I'll go fishing off the rocks. I think we're just meant to be doing this, so I think it feeds into whatever you're meant to be doing, however you channel your creativity. I'm actually in Bali at the moment for a couple of months, and I noticed that a lot of the music that I've seen, some of the more traditional performances, seem to me to remind me of the sounds of nature that I hear. So I wonder if nature has a much bigger role than we realize, and the type of sounds that we are raised around in a big city. Here, there's millions of frogs and lizards, where they're hearing those sounds every day in the background somehow influencing this sort of music we make today.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell our readers what inspired your latest single “The Forest” off your upcoming album and how the creative process looks like for you?
[CHELSEA]: This creative process was actually the first time I've done 100% collaboration in the studio – because normally I recorded my own – but I have an amazing group of people who play live with me, and I decided that I wanted to involve them 100% of this track, because it's kind of rocky. It makes a lot of sense because live music is grounded in chemistry and the sort of energy that I want to achieve from my live performances. I wrote and recorded a demo, played it to them, then we rehearsed for about a week and we recorded it. I think collaboration in music is something that you can forget what it is sometimes when you're bored on your own or you're an at home producer. That was the process that the song was about, feeling terrible and getting to a point where you finally feel okay, so you're doing whatever you need to do to feel better. When I was writing, I was actually running through forests and that is how I felt better, but it can mean anything, like whatever you need to do. It's been a hard, terrible few years for most people in the world. I was hoping that it would maybe be something people could listen to and feel better or half better, or to think about how I'm gonna get better.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have any favorite lyrics that stuck out to you from “The Forest?”
[CHELSEA]: Just the speed part. It's very simple, but something about it is the way the lyrics and music is about to be looked at together, and how they complement each other. So I feel like when that part of the song hits, it's exactly what it needs to say to lift the song.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The music video for “The Forest” is very high energy and it looks really raw and unedited. How come you decided to produce it in this direction of a homemade video with your band?
[CHELSEA]: For me, that just complements the creative process. It's just a band playing live on the recording. There's not really any tricks. I've been making a lot of video stuff myself just for fun lately, I'm getting into video editing. I got my friend Bridget to come to the studio with just one single VHS camera that I bought off a guy for $80. Something about the VHS tape, the movement of how it works is really nice because we've gotten so used to like 4k, super digital stuff, which looks really cool too. She recorded us as we recorded and then I just pieced it together later.
[UNPUBLISHED]: It definitely honors the creative process and how raw it is. To talk about your upcoming album that releases in October, Everything is Going To Be Alright, how and why did you decide on that album title?
[CHELSEA]: It wasn't a very hard choice because I wrote the first track, which is the title track, three years ago. I knew that my whole album was when I wrote that song. The first song – which has been released already – it's not sarcastic, but it's kind of like I'm not really sure if everything's gonna be right. It's really obvious, it's delivered in a minor key. It's settling to listen to, but quite unsettling.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the inspiration behind the record Everything is Going To Be Alright?
[CHELSEA]: The last couple of years I took some time out for music and needed to rest, so I wasn't feeling particularly alright.That was sort of chronicling that period of feeling terrible and some of the experiences that I went through. A lot of people that write music or listen to it, use it as a cathartic thing to help feel better, so the process of that album was just me trying to be positive and feel better by the time I finished making it. It's kind of the album when people listen to it, they'll feel it too.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The last album you released was The Loneliest Girl in 2018. How has your artistic approach differed this time around, and how do you think you've grown as an artist since your last album release?
[CHELSEA]: I think in my artistic approach, I’ve involved others more in this album. I had more of my band members come into the studio and work with me in a very unplanned kind of way, and I think it's gonna continue down that path. For me, I've done three albums of very much me in the studio by myself, so this album I actually wanted to bring people in for the very beginning, but it was COVID locked down so I ended being stuck by myself for most of the time we’re locked down. I did some stuff over email with getting people to record parts and send them back, but it's not quite the same as going into the studio. By the time the lockdown had lifted, “The Forest” was the only track that I hadn't really worked on and we went straight into the studio and collaborated. There’s a lot more guitar stuff going on than my previous albums. I've refined the arrangements to be simple for me, which is like three or four additional instruments, but those parts are very refined. Some of my earliest stuff is less refined in a good way. It's like kind of making it up as you go along to stick to shit together and it sounds cool. It's growth in a way of trying new things, but I've never said one thing is better than the other because it depends on what serves the song better.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's your favorite track off the album and why?
[CHELSEA]: I like the last song which is “Everything is Going To Be Alright” part 2. It's quite common that artists will like the last song they wrote, but that one is very new territory for me, and it's the structure of it and the way it sounds as I don't think it's something I've done before. I did it with my bandmate Josh and he liked the bass guitar. It's almost an old country sound, which is not something I've done before and it's weird, like it's very original. I can't explain why it’s good, it just is.
[UNPUBLISHED]: what was the hardest track for you to write for this album? Either lyrically or emotionally for you.
[CHELSEA]: I think that one as well, because it's lots of parts that come together and it took me four months to figure out how to say what I was trying to say. It’s kind of a jazzy vocal style, which is not something I know at all how to do. Once I started collabing after the lockdown, then it came together very quickly. The power of collaboration sometimes allows you to do things that you might find hard on my own.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You mentioned the power of collaboration. If you could feature any of your dream artists on this album, who would they be in which song would you feature them on?
[CHELSEA]: Bruce Springsteen just comes to mind, like Bruce Springsteen is like a total pipe dream. I could imagine him helping me do something like a stripped back acoustic song. Maybe an acoustic version of “The Forest,” where he can sing it and I can play tambourine.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the biggest lesson you've learned or something you've experienced that impacted you during creating this record?
[CHELSEA]: I couldn't record music for a couple of years, I just couldn't do it, but then I started and kept going and kept going. I found that if you're feeling shit, and then you don't want to do stuff that makes you happy, if that ever happens to you, I think that your brain is playing tricks on you and should just get up and do it anyway. Just even if you feel like you can't go through the motions, then eventually you'll be like, ‘I’m so glad I did that.’ It’s what I had to do and I’m gonna get up and do it and drag myself to the studio. I realized my brain was playing tricks on me. I mastered how to collaborate with other people, and then it kind of involves collaboration.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your wildest dream as an artist? If you can have one thing happen to you, like a milestone or collaboration you want to accomplish in your career, what would that look like for you?
[CHELSEA]: To write a classical piece of music, let's say a symphony, and then conduct it for an orchestra. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
