In Conversation With Vivi Rincon
Photo by Lucy Ketchum
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who are artists you love to listen to, who inspire you and who you look up to?
[VIVI RINCON]: Phoebe Bridgers is definitely in there. I'm obsessed with all her work, her as a person. I love Julian Baker, Lord Huron, this Mexican rock band called Maná. I’m half Mexican so that was my childhood. Those are the main ones.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How has growing up in Houston, Texas influenced your sound, if at all?
[VIVI RINCON]: I love the diversity of Houston, being surrounded by so many different people and people who are also gay and Latino. Growing up here with my family, a lot of Latin music influenced me. Alsothe energy, the fact that it's this big city that’s so spread out. There's so much going on here all the time. Even the food influenced me, I love the food here.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As a songwriter, you’re largely inspired by your life, mental health, relationships, and sexuality. Can you talk a bit more about that and what you love about writing your own songs?
[VIVI RINCON]: To me, the best way to be authentic in my music is to pull from my actual experience. When I like tell someone, “Ih, this is how I'm feeling right now,” there's a big chance that they'll be like, “Oh my God, I felt that too.” I think that's the beauty of music. Because that's how “If I Lived On the Moon” came on. I had this really terrible, shameful feeling that I had to express and then I expressed it and everyone was like, “Oh my God, me too. I relate to this. Thank you for putting this into words.” Writing about my life is euphoric. It's cathartic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you always know that music was going to be your career?
[VIVI RINCON]: No, actually I was a dancer for the majority of my life. I wanted to be a Broadway dancer and I stopped doing that when I was about 14 because it became really unhealthy. And music was always a thing that I had. I liked singing and writing songs ever since I was young. So I picked that up again when I was 14 because I had a lot going on and it was a nice transition.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What inspired that shift to music?
[VIVI RINCON]: Honestly, it was mental health. Dancing can be really difficult because you're staring at yourself in the mirror. You're judging yourself, you have to be perfect. It's all about your body so I had a lot of body image issues. It just wasn't healthy. After I while, I decided to take a step away from it because I needed space to care for myself and music was a perfect outlet. I could write about these issues that I was having and people could relate to me and feel understood.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ve posted a lot of covers and many of your original songs on TikTok. What has been a cover you’re particularly proud of and why?
[VIVI RINCON]: “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. When I was younger and even today, I put this pressure on myself to belt really high and sing really loud, like these vocal acrobatics. But for that one, I took it down really low in my voice. It was very intimate and vulnerable and I was really proud of it because I wasn't trying too hard to be something else.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is an original song of yours that you love that hasn’t been officially released yet?
[VIVI RINCON]: There's this one song called “can’t breathe” that I posted on my TikTok a couple times. It hasn’t gone viral or anything but I love the song because of the lyrics. I think the lyrics are really clever and it perfectly describes a part of myself.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “If I Lived On the Moon” is your debut single, huge congratulations! Can you talk a bit about this journey—the initial inspiration, writing it, performing it on TikTok and having it go viral?
[VIVI RINCON]: That song started with two things. The first one being I was watching Queer Eye with my girlfriend when we lived in Spain for six months. In the episode, they went to Japan for a period of time and met a Japanese man who's gay. And he was saying, “Me and my partner, we're scared of holding hands in public here. We don't kiss, we don't show that we're dating.” And I remember looking at my girlfriend and being like, “We literally do that.” We don't show affection in public. When we hold hands, it’s for one second. We squeeze and then let go. I remember thinking it was really messed up and I hated that feeling. The second thing was, when we were in Spain, we went to a lot of churches. I had a lot of religious trauma with being gay because I grew up Catholic and it brought on a lot of my old feelings about people wh would tell me that I'm a sin. Every time I would step in these churches, I would feel conflicted because it's beautiful but also like I wasn't accepted there. It might not have been the case, it was my own trauma. It was that feeling of being ashamed of who I was, but also being proud. Like two things at the same time. That also inspired the song.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you love about this song? What excites you about it? Especially as a queer woman, why is this song important to you?
[VIVI RINCON]: My favorite part about it is my girlfriend Rachel. I don't know if you noticed, but she actually sings on it in the second chorus. It works perfectly because the line right before it is, “and we’ll never say we’re just friends / never say we’re just friends,” and then it goes to the chorus. You can barely hear her but she's singing the harmony. We were singing at the same time. And that was what I needed to hear when I was young.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As she was the producer, what was it like to work with her on the song? Can you walk us through that production process?
[VIVI RINCON]: It was really natural. Obviously, we’re very close. We've been dating for over two years now and we’ve worked together before. The funny thing is that every song we write together is awful. I don't know why it's so terrible. She's a wonder, she's a great songwriter. And I'm pretty confident in my songwriting but together, we get a little in our heads. But on this, it just worked. It was really easy, actually.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you talk me through the cover art and how you came up with the DIY, handmade feel?
[VIVI RINCON]: So my girlfriend and I went on a trip because when you're in Spain you can go on trips to different parts of Europe and it's pretty cheap. We went to this city in Spain and hiked up to the top of this hill looking over the entirety of the city, and she took that picture of me walking. Initially, it was me with this rock thing and the city in the background. And I remember being like, “What are we gonna choose for the cover art?” But then I saw this photo and I was like, “The ground kinda looks like the moon.” And my mom has this friend who edits a lot of photos so I sent it to her and the first thing she sent me, I was like, “That’s literally it.” She just edited it and made it seem like space!
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you hope listeners take away from your music?
[VIVI RINCON]: With this song, I hope I can be a safe space for people. Especially younger people and teens, I hope they feel like there's someone out there who feels the same way they do, or is going through something similar or went through something similar. When I was young, it would've helped me so much to have a singer that was singing about this topic. I want everyone who listens to my music to feel like they're not alone.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Following this single, what else is in the works for you? What can fans expect to hear from you?
[VIVI RINCON]: I am definitely working on more music and I'm really excited about it. “If I Lived On the Moon” is very simple and stripped back. But I feel like there is a rock side of me that hasn't been heard yet. So I think you can expect more rock elements and also more acoustic elements.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Outside of music, what other hobbies and passions do you pursue?
[VIVI RINCON]: This is really silly but I'm really passionate about Major League Baseball. Ever since I was young, I was obsessed with the Astros. I love going to the games, watching the games. Also, it's a huge family thing. It ties into the fact that I’m a huge family and friends person. Doing anything with people that I care about is fun. So baseball's what I always answer.