The Art of an Interview: Some of My Favorite Quotes This Year
Every artist is performing a version of themselves. In psychology, it’s called impression management. It’s sort of like a show: there’s who you are under the lights, and who you are once you walk off. In music that front stage used to be built for labels, radio, and press. Now it’s built for the feed, in front of an audience that hears the snippets, weighs in on the drafts, and feels like part of the process. The performance never really stops, because the crowd never really leaves.
That’s what makes a real conversation different. Not because an interview is automatically more authentic than social media (interviews are performances too) but because a good conversation creates room for a different kind of performance. People open up when they feel heard, and one genuine person across from you is a whole different pressure than thousands of people expecting something. A calculated social media rollout tells us what an artist wants us to know. A conversation shows us what they didn’t plan to say. There’s something about watching someone forget, even for a second, that they’re performing.
A peer of mine, Angela, and I were talking about what “underground” even means now, and she put it better than I could: “Maybe that is the deeper meaning of the underground becoming a social position. It is no longer defined only by a particular sound, location or distance from the traditional industry. It’s defined by who can claim proximity, who gets to shape momentum and who has enough autonomy to disappoint the audience, change direction, withhold the song or finish it differently. Sound may be the evidence, but power is the subject.”
That idea has stayed with me because so much about the craft of creating music now has been decided by everyone except the person who made it. To me, an interview hands the mic back. For a few minutes the artist gets to say what they meant and look back on how they got here, as a person who chose to make things for a living and everything that choice has cost and given them. For a moment the lights are off, and you’re looking at whoever walked off stage.
[INTERVIEW LINKS]
KTO x PROTECT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg3ixj57I7I
29:02-30:18
Elsie not Elise x Chenayder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgt6aidgWfw&list=WL&index=12&t=1628s
14:26-15:44
WELL WELL WELL x Tiffany Day
23:08-23:51
Call it a Day x Underscores
33:31-35:56
That Good Sh*t x MAVI
18:44-20:53
TASTEMAKERS x HADJI GAVIOTA
18:13-19:56
Overlooked x Ladé
29:07-31:38
So do we need more conversations in music? I believe we do, more than ever (I swear no bias). We have more access to artists than any generation before us, and somehow we know less about what any of it means to them. We know their numbers, their release dates, and what they posted an hour ago. What we don't know is where they're headed, unless somebody stops to ask.
So I’ll leave it with you. Think about the last time an artist said something that changed how you heard their music.
Where did you hear it?
What conversation in music has changed the way you listen?
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