INTERVIEW: dodie on her 'Hot Mess' EP and her upcoming Australian tour
Interview: Jett Tattersall
The UK’s dodie creates some of the most gentle, eclectic, emotive, heartwarming music you have likely heard in many years. A beguiling mix of pop, soul, jazz and folk, dodie sings about love, friendship, mental health and coming out as a member of the LGBTQI+ community.
First releasing music in 2016 after several years of uploading music videos to her hugely successful YouTube channels, her first 3 EPs all reached the UK top 40, with 2017’s You peaking at number 17 in Australia. She released her debut album Build a Problem in 2021, which climbed to number 3 in the UK and charted across multiple Billboard charts in the US.
In September last year she released her fourth studio EP Hot Mess, with it’s four tracks written and co-produced by dodie. It again is a masterpiece in merging pop with multiple other genres, with the lush title track moving through folk and a hint of jazz before building into an epic track worthy of a Broadway musical. ‘Got Weird’ is the ‘poppiest’ song on the EP, with a funky, hip hop influenced beat and down low, sultry vocal from dodie, while ‘Lonely Bones’ is almost the polar opposite, a delicate guitar ballad which develops into a gospel-folk song with an uplifting choral section. The EP ends on the gorgeous, moody, pared back ballad ‘No Big Deal (I Love You)’ which sees dodie give the most moving and touching vocal performance on the EP.
Next month dodie will be bringing the Hot Mess EP on tour to Australia with her headline show Hot Mess - An Intimate Tour Experience. With shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, all dates sold out in a matter of hours, proving just what a phenomenally popular artist dodie is becoming. The shows will deliver a series of special performances made uniquely for this Australian tour, with dodie choosing local support acts for all shows: Kat Edwards in Melbourne, andie in Sydney, and Medhanit in Brisbane.
With over 1 billion streams to her name and 7 million followers across all platforms, dodie is one of the UK’s hottest and most fascinating musicians on the scene right now. We recently caught up with her to chat more about her career and her upcoming Australian tour.
Hi dodie! So very delightful to chat to you today. How is the planet treating you so far in 2023?
Damn, good question. Okay. It's interesting. A lot of big changes happening in my personal life, which is always interesting. I always noticed whenever there's changes happening that I can't control I'm like, ‘well, it's time to change everything else then!’ I think because I'm trying to get on top of it. Maybe I need to just settle down and like about whether that's healthy or not.
I don't know if it's unhealthy. I think you have incredible insight to your own mind and process and emotions, a lot of us never ever try to investigate why we knee jerk the way we do. Clearly by what you're putting out there, it's the right way of processing.
That's such a nice thing to say, but I'm still just as mental as everyone else around here!
Your EP Hot Mess, first of all, it's one of my favourite turn of phrase, whether it's used as an insult or to yourself, it does what it says on the tin really! It's a really beautiful EP, it's beautiful in its disorder and chaos. Yeah, totally. It's meant to be a little messier, a little bit chaotic, and recognising that.
It's quite something. You’ve released a lot of music, but I guess there's still trepidation in releasing something that’s a little bit different, something chaotic. Were there any nerves in releasing this EP, because it is a little different?
Totally. I think I had to soothe [my fans] by knowing that I wholly loved it, you know? You know, it’s so dumb but the main thing that was so different about it was we had live drums. That was so surprising that I really enjoyed it. I really liked it. I'm so glad that we did because it just elevates it to something very new and fresh. There were definitely nerves, but I'm so pleased with it. I'm so glad that I pushed through those and let it out there.
It actually feels like I'm sitting in your bedroom when I listen to it. Most of your music is incredibly personal. There's whispers, there's your ukulele, there's a gentle kind of Joni Mitchell vibe on there as well. But at the same time, it's a little disjointed. What was your approach to making this EP?
While I will say it was a little bit different, I think my approach has always been so similar throughout releasing music. I very naturally write songs, like I don't think I've ever planned a theme of an EP or an album. My life sort of decides that for me, and I write alongside it and something like a theme or a message or whatever I want to say will just appear. I'm not sure if the process [for Hot Mess] was entirely different. There was one song that I put on YouTube first as a demo that was then very quickly brought into the studio because I was working on other songs, and I managed to whip it up and give it a new life and release it that very same year. Which is nice, because it doesn't usually work out when I put my age in songs because I release it like two years later! But this time, I managed to get 27 in there, and so I was and I still am. [Hot Mess] was very, very similar in that I didn't really plan it, I just found a collection of songs that I'd written over this time period. All had something to do with relationships or dating - classic! - and I guess your mental state alongside that. Hot Mess has angles of all kinds, there’s a loving relationship in there, there's an awkward date, there's being completely alone, and there’s the chaotic side as well.
The EP highlight for me is ‘No Big Deal (I Love You). It's such a beautiful, beautiful track. Can you break down that song, because I'm obsessed with it?
Thank you so much for saying that. I love it too. I haven't really thought about it for a while. If I'm completely honest, all of my songs are a big indirect to my own feelings to other people. I clearly want to give something a voice and it be heard by someone or something, you know. It's quite ironic that in the song, I'm like, ‘I won't say I love you first, but like, it's all good’. And yet, here I am writing a fucking song about it, on the boy’s piano. I kind of like it when songs are mental like that. You could read it either way, either it's very healthy and loving and accepting and patient, or it's kind of suppressing and convincing yourself that you're okay, and you don't need it. It reads both ways, because my brain flips both ways, you know?
You've got this incredible way in your songwriting to be equally broken hearted and also always see the funny side of it. Is that just how you live life? It's got to be funny, otherwise I’ll cry on the floor.
I grew up in a world, and it wasn't their fault, but my parents were both very depressed people, and everything felt extremely weighty. Just because that's your natural tendency when you're depressed, or at least for my family and for me. When I'm depressed, it's not funny, everything serious. Everything's so much more bigger and complex, and intricate, and heavy. It just sucks. So finding the lightness was an antidote to depression and to falling into those same habits. It’s just gratitude really. It’s gratitude for everything, all feelings, and I really want to keep that because it is funny. It's fucking funny. Even when you're crying on the floor like a fucking primal animal, you just have to zoom out and be like ‘huh! God, this is mad. I'm feeling it all, I really am’. Also, I really like flipping tone and subject matter and the song surrounding it as well. I love playing with all of those things. So you can get a song that's like, ‘oh well, I don't care’, but really it's so heavy or a song that's really sweet sounding but desperately sad, like ‘No Big Deal (I Love You)’. Using every element as a tool to create a feeling that you feel in your subconscious is so fun to me. So fun.
Is that what drew you to music, because you're adding another element to music by flipping the switch with melody and instrumentals? Some of the greatest dance songs are just so sad. Is that what is that? Do you think what got you into creating your own music to begin with was it was another tool to be able to toy with the meaning of words?
I love that, that's so sounds so delicious and you're so right. I leave diary entries in various ways. I have a fucking voice diary app, I have notebooks, I draw pictures. I write shit. And I write poems, I write songs. It's just like another element in some way which is far more floaty and ambiguous. It's kind of like a dream. I guess dreams and songs are very similar, there is such an obvious underlining that your subconscious is not subtle about but clearly wants to be heard. I think I always kind of needed some sort of poetic, dramatic outlet, just as another way to process things.
I love that the poet poetic dramatic outlet, because as young women, we go through that poetic dramatic outlet and we chase it. But we're told from the very beginning that it's embarrassing, and we should hide it, and we shouldn't tell anyone about it. But your music just champions that and I think it's wonderful. You've got such a strong online presence, you're an author, you're on YouTube, your emotions are not just worn on your sleeve, they kind of dress you head to toe. Do you think, from growing up in the household that you mentioned, with depression, that your way to never be there? Because by bottling up emotions, you can see what that can do to someone?
Totally. I think it was a mixture of things. Honestly, it's so funny, because the way in which I started sharing online, and writing songs, and being very honest and vulnerable, initially was celebrated as something so authentic and real and I loved hearing that. I felt so special when people were telling me, but if I'm honest, it was there because of a lack of boundaries in my house. I grew up not knowing how to not just blast everything that I'm feeling and it went the other way. I overshared and it got far too much and I had to learn how to reel them back. I'm still learning how to reel them back.
It takes most of us a lifetime to be able to draw that line, between not enough and too much, but at least you have beautiful music to do it to. You're coming to Australia and we're getting Hot Mess An Intimate Tour Experience. As we discussed, Hot Mess is already hella intimate with all of us laying on the same shag rug while you sing to us. How much more intimate are we gonna get here in Australia?
I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that it wasn't the guns out blazing kind of full set dressed show that I usually do with my tours. Just because like Australia is so big and vast and I haven't come there yet. I want to make sure that it's still just as powerful, but just different. It's going to be me, two string players and my friend Martin, who is a multi instrumentalist, and I'm sure will play lots of different things and trigger lots of different things. I actually have to figure out what I'm going to do here, how I'm going to bring the musicality but intimacy. To be honest, I think it will just be more casual, and friendly, and talkative, but full of music. Which might be really fun, I've always enjoyed more intimate shows from people. It might be just a little bit quieter, but nicer.
You have been performing for a very long time, what is your favourite song to perform and what is the one that always gets the crowd going?
It changes all the time. It kind of depends. There's a song I play called ‘Sorry’ on my big tour where confetti floats down in the climax and it's just the perfect like visuals and music connecting. It's just so fun and the crowd always gasps when they hear is and I just feel so powerful, but also so in my element. I love it so much. Then there's really old songs I know everyone has nostalgia for and so do I, like ‘Human’ or ‘She’ where there's such a feeling of togetherness and I feel so connected to everyone. Seeing everyone's faces and singing to everyone and them singing to me, it just feels so friendly. It's such a wonderful way to connect. Then there's the more boppy ones as well, where I just dance around the stage and I don't care and it's just so fun. For so long I was so self conscious holding a mic and singing on stage, but now I just fucking love it. My friend Tessa Violet, she’s an artist as well, told me that I owe it to my inner child to just completely enjoy it. So I really took that advice and every time I was on stage, I was like, ‘all right, let's go have a party!’ It's like the best feeling.
That’s such a good way to put it because we all grow up crying and leaning into the dramatic in our bedrooms, singing into hairbrushes and pretending we're on stage. So for the very few of us who get a chance to do it for real, it would be really rude to that person dancing around their bedroom to not have fine doing it.
And I was, I was rude to her for so long! I wasn't rude. I was just so afraid. I was afraid of it and so self deprecating, but now, God bless. I love it. I think it's so fun.
Who did you pretend to be in your bedroom singing when you were a kid?
Oh my god. Do you know what, I was obsessed with ABBA. I loved ABBA so much. There's one song, ‘Money, Money, Money’, and there’s a bit where she goes ‘I’d fool around and have a ball’. I thought that meant to like physically have a ball. I was like ‘if I had money, I too would buy a ball’. I loved it, I would act out the whole thing.
See, even when you're a kid you were flipping the switch on the lyrics! And I love the fact that you've got confetti on your stage and you've just proven the reason why singing old songs for fans is the greatest thing. It always bothers me when you get these artists that don't want to play their hits because they're like, ‘Oh, no I’m too cool for it now’, but I’m like ‘no, that is the connection!’
Oh, yeah it’s the best feeling in the world.
I'm am so looking forward to having you here in Australia on your tour.
I can't wait, I really can't wait. It's gonna be so fun.
Hot Mess is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all thing dodie you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
AUSTRALIAN HEADLINE TOUR: HOT MESS, AN INTIMATE TOUR EXPERIENCE
23 February 2023: Northcote Theatre, Melbourne. Support Act - Kat Edwards
24 February 2023: Metro Theatre, Sydney. Support Act - Andie
25 February 2023: The Triffid, Brisbane. Support Act - Medhanit
