INTERVIEW: merci, mercy releases second EP 'is it me, or is it you?': "It's much like myself, there's a lot of indecisiveness in it!"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Jess Gleeson
Australia’s merci, mercy first released music in the midst of the pandemic in 2020. She has since garnered over 15 million global streams as well as acclaim for her glistening pop music from influential global outlets including BBC Radio 1 and PAPER Magazine.
Today she releases her second EP is it me, or is it you? Working with producer Chris Collins (Azure Ryder, Middle Kids, Gang Of Youths) the six tracks are addictive electro-synth-pop songs with the track listing forming an intentional journey.
Lyrically, the songs explore merci, mercy’s struggles with mental health as well as introspectively examining her own self.
“is it me, or is it you? is all about the relationship I have with myself and how that affects others in my life,” she says. “The name ‘is it me, or is it you?’ is an evaluation of who really is the cause of the situation. Is someone else the reason for my struggles or is it just all on me. I’m hoping with this EP that the people around me will have more of an understanding of who I am without me having to explain/justify who I am at the moment and why. The themes are heavily revolved around my mental health and the impacts it has on me and others around me.”
Latest single ‘Into You’ starts the EP, with its perky beat and synths zinging in the background, alongside guitars which lend a hint of indiepop to the song. Lyrically it looks back on a past relationship. ‘Why did you have to drive so fast? / I thought that we were gonna last’ she sings. It leads into the EP’s first single ‘Winnie Crush’ which swings along with a touch of disco and funk mixed in with the electropop. It takes a wry look at over indulging in all the so called vices we shouldn’t indulge in but can’t resist ‘I need and I want what I’ve already got’.
‘Too Easy’ is dominated by a disparate beats, one fuzzy and lazy, the other sharp and staccato, periodically interrupted by acoustic guitar as merci, mercy sings about pushing people away in an act of self-sabotage.. ‘I’ll put myself down / So I don’t waste my life away loving someone who doesn’t care’. ‘Sick To The Stomach’ blends a myriad of sounds - punky electric guitar, gentle keyboards and classic 1980s synth claps and swirls - whilst still remaining cohesive.
The EP closes with the arguably the two strongest tracks, as merci, mercy’s journey becomes lighter and she begins to find strength again. Third single ‘Black Cloud’ remains as fresh and exciting as always with its gentle electropop vibes and multi-tracked backing vocals with merci, mercy committing to changing her mindset. ‘I’m too far into this / Don’t think I would forgive myself if I ended it…I can’t be scared of the unknown.’
Closer ‘Uneasy’ is sonically the outlier on the EP as merci, mercy adopts a raw, acoustic guitar sound with gorgeous strings before subtle synthpop beats drift in. The song explores self-doubt and anxiety, particularly in relationships: ‘I’ll make you cry because I’m uneasy me’. It is a gorgeous way to end the album
merci, mercy has created an incredible collection of music with is it me, or is it you? Heartfelt and vulnerable, but also a thing of immense joy and beauty thanks to the delicious synthpop soundscape, it is an EP to drown in. An artist who is really coming into her own, expect merci, mercy to only get bigger and brighter as her career progresses. We recently caught up with her to find out more.
Hi Mercedes, so lovely to meet you. You are such a refreshing pop music maker. Thank you for the tunes and your time today. How are things with you?
They're all right. I'm currently living in a very messy house because I have not cleaned it in weeks!
That's all right, things like that happen. We've had a couple of years where just getting dressed was a tricky thing, so don’t worry about the house yet! is it me, or is it you? you sophomore EP is delightful, there's like a kaleidoscope of sound that very much matches your aesthetic and everything that you've got going on visually. Talk me through the creation of this one.
I feel like it's much like myself, where there's a lot of indecisiveness in it. It's kind of all over the place. If you hear one song, you wouldn't really understand how it relates to the other song musically, but lyrically I feel like you can understand it. It starts off blaming everyone else for your mental health and how you treat them, even though you are the only reason of why you're treating them shitty.
‘Black Cloud’, which is such a night drive tune and a beautiful bop, but it's you coming to terms with the way you're treating your partner in a relationship. Like any great song on the dance floor, it's actually really heartbreaking. Can you talk me through a little bit about that song?
It's really funny, because I wrote a different song, which will probably never come out. We ended up breaking up, and then we got back together, and then I wrote ‘Black Cloud’, because I was being an arsehole to my partner, and I realised I couldn't blame my mental health anymore, because that wasn't a valid excuse for being an arsehole - I'm just being an arsehole and I need to step up, or else I'm gonna lose the person that I love. It would be a tragedy if I lost the person I love just because I'm being not a nice person and not getting my shit together.
That's a really great perception to have, because it takes a lot of us a very long time to get to that place, and some of us never get there. The EP opens with what I can only describe as jangly surf rock guitars and kick drums with ‘Into You’, it's such a good track. Can you break this one down for me?
I wrote this over two years ago, I was 18 when I wrote the lyrics, and then I took it into Chris Collins, the producer and that was before COVID started happening. I take a long time to open myself sexually to people and to kiss them and stuff, it takes me a long time. Everyone would always make me feel incredibly terrible about it, or they would say ‘you don't really like me because you're not kissing me or you're not holding my hand’, when in fact, I did really like them but they just didn't understand that I needed more time than your average person to connect that kind of way. That's basically what the whole song is about, I am into you, but I just don't want to have sex with you right now.
This is why your lyrics end up on T shirts and all kind of merch because that advice everyone needs in their life! ‘Uneasy’, the last song on the EP, the lyrics are just something else but then the way your voice slides up and down the scale on ‘uneasy me’, have you always known that you could do that with your voice? It's incredible. Have you always sung?
I've always sung but I wasn't always good! I was terrible for most of my life and then something just switched when I was like 16, 17 when I started writing my own songs, and then I could finally sing. I was like, ‘what just happened? I can sing now!’
That's absolutely incredible. The way you arrange that song, even in terms of melody and your voice, it's so so beautiful. Could you talk me through that track and its placement on the EP?
I put it at the end because I feel like at that moment in time, when I wrote this song, I had hurt a lot of people that I loved and I was finally coming to terms with the fact that I did that. It's hard to realise that you've hurt people you love because then you just start to hate yourself and go on a downward spiral. My sister and I would get into fights all the time and it definitely hit me when she was like, ‘Why are you acting like this? You're always so angry at the world’. When people victimise themselves, there's only so much you can be the victim before it gets a bit tiring for everyone else.
I thought I did a really good job lyrically on the song and I feel like I've never written a song so incredible like that. So ending the whole chaos of the EP of ‘what's going on?’ to ending it on ‘this is all on me, I have to take responsibility now for my actions’ it's sweet and kind of hopeful, but also just not hopeful at the same!
Has music always been a way of arranging your thoughts?
100% I'm not very good at getting out what's in my brain through my mouth most of the time, and it makes conversations really hard trying to explain to people how I feel. When I found that I could write a song instead of trying to tell someone some shit story about how I felt it definitely made me feel like I was finally smart and intelligent. I have never felt smart my whole life because I could never do public speaking, but then I could sing in front of a bunch of people a song that I wrote, which just gave me so much confidence
You became a pop star instead which shits all over public speaking! Let's talk about your launch into the stratosphere of music. You uploaded a little song called ‘Be’ to Triple J Unearthed High and then just signed a record deal. Talk me through that snowball effect of your career.
It happened so quickly. I literally showed my brother this song on a yacht for my mum's 60th birthday, and then next minute he's like ‘you have to upload your song to Unearthed High. I was in Year 12, it was cut off time and we only had a week to upload it. We uploaded it on the last day and he got me to record it with his best friend who I love to this day. Then everyone just reacted so amazingly to it and I was like ‘that wasn't even my best song, it’s just the one that I liked at the time!’ From there, I had emails from labels and I didn't even get in the top five! I still got all this attention, which is just insane and then it just blew out of proportion. I was like ‘I actually get to be a singer and not be homeless, thank God!’
You have been playing some beautiful live shows and I just wanted to know with such personal music, that must be a bit of a ride for you having your musical journals being shouted back at you from the crowd. What's that like?
It's actually a really cute feeling, I find it really hard not to cry, because I'm a very emotional person. So when someone I see someone singing back to me, I'm like, ‘Oh, my God, you feel the same’ and then I want to cry. It's beautiful, but also heartbreaking at the same time.
Oh, that's gorgeous. Your beautiful EP out now, what else is coming up for you?
I'm going actually going to have two shows in Berlin and hopefully be on a radio station, so that will be exciting. More music, hopefully, fingers crossed. Heaps more music.
is it me, or is it you? is out now via Liberation Records. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things merci, mercy you can follow her on Instagram and TikTok.
