INTERVIEW: Paige releases new track 'California': "Don't be afraid to be embarrassed by things because you can only do your best. It's not going to kill you if you screw up"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
New Zealand’s Paige is slowly but surely becoming one of her country’s most promising new talents, with her deliciously warm and intimate indie pop with the occasional sidestep into more electronic inspired pop. First releasing music in 2017, she had a breakthrough moment in 2020 when her EP Always Growing dominated the New Zealand airwaves, with the single ‘Waves’ hitting the top 10 of the NZ Airplay charts and attracting over 6 million streams. Two nominations at the Aotearoa Music Awards followed, and in 2021 she won Best Māori Female Solo Artist (Te Tohu Manu Tioriori Wahine Autaia) at the Waiata Māori Music Awards. Along the way, she has found fans in some of the music world’s biggest names, with Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Ruby Rose amongst others singing her praises.
Today she returns with her first new music of 2023, the single ‘California’. The first taste of a larger project to come later in the year, ‘California’ is a beautiful, low key track with gentle guitar indiepop vibes, with a subtle electronic beat appearing in the chorus. There is a touching yearning, melancholy to Paige’s voice as she sings about a sense of feeling unfulfilled and lost. ‘I’d thought I’d be there by now / I’m 24 still in my parent’s house…I want to make it in LA.”
Paige’s music is the audio version of a comforting hug. It is warm and tender, intimate and relatable yet isn’t afraid to be open and vulnerable about her life. Based on ‘California’, her upcoming project promises to be just as special as everything she has released so far and we recently sat down with her to chat more.
Hi Paige! Your songs are so beautiful. It doesn't feel like a chore or a stress or a breakdown listening to it, and I'm sure it doesn't feel like that writing it either. There's just something so exhaling about your music. Oh, thank you. That's so nice.
Let's talk about ‘California’. I love this song, and I love how you wholeheartedly slam the truth of that LA dream, but you do it to almost a summer drive melody. Talk to me about this track.
Honestly, it was one of those things that I wrote that wasn't really planned out. I was just in a desperate space of wanting to break it in music and stuff. And I thought ‘I'm just gonna lay it all out on the table and write how I feel’. It was in the middle of lockdown when I wrote the song and I was just feeling really tragic about my career and my dreams and stuff. I feel like the universe sent me the song in a way, because it just came so naturally. I channelled it really easy.
Making it in LA, we've been hearing it for a long time, especially from the southern hemisphere. Artists, particularly young female artists, almost have to make it in LA because on this side of the world there just doesn't seem to be as much room for them to make it. So it's not just ‘I'm gonna live the dream’, there's also quite a lot of pressure. What was that dream for you? Because you open the song with like ‘I'm 24 and I'm still living at my parents house and haven’t made it yet. Was that always your goal, to go out and do it internationally and before you're 25?
Yeah, my dream has always been to be an international musician. I was in a band when I was like 10 and I used to have these visualisations of myself going on a plane to LA because the sentiment of going to LA to me is making it in music. I always see artists that are on the come up flying to LA, which means that they've done something great, I guess. I've always wanted to go there to do music, it seems like a real happening place. I have put a lot of pressure on myself to make it before turning 25. I put a lot of pressure on myself to make it before I was 16, because I loved those Disney Channel artists. I think there's a lot of people as well out there that want to make it before they turn 30. There's always a lot of pressure on your age, and I guess I'm really feeling it now that I've turned 25.
I remember last time we spoke, and you said that you were always singing and you were singing covers, but it wasn't until the ripe old age of 12 that you really started to write. I mean, really, you are late to the game with that Paige!
Yeah. By the time I was eight, I should have made it by then!
So maybe that all feeds into the fact that you've got to have this done by the time you turn 25.
Yeah, it's really funny because I've watched so many music documentaries growing up and I always saw this regular pattern of people pushing from the age of 16. And then four years after they turn 16, they've made it in every documentary that I watched - except for Katy Perry, who is still an icon. The likes of Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus was real early. I always was like, ‘Okay, after 16 I'm gonna have to push for four years and get signed to a music label and make it’. And it's unrealistic, because you see so many people succeed and you think that that's just the way. It's been a real wake up call to find that that's not true for everybody.
I 100% agree, it's not just the music industry or the entertainment industry, it's in the sport industry and everywhere really. It’s a myth, and it's a really dangerous myth as well, for kids to come up thinking that if they can't be Ronaldo, or Miley Cyrus or Beyoncé by the age of 25, then they failed the next 75 years they have on the planet.
Yeah, and that's how I feel sometimes. Admittedly, I'm terrified that I'm 25 and I haven't done everything I want to do yet. And it's awful. But that's just how it is being an artist, to be honest. Everybody expects you to make it when you're 19, and all the really exciting artists that are out there that are upcomers are 19 to 22 and when you've gone past that age, it's kind of like, ‘oh, no am I not going to do it? Am I going to fail?’
Do you think that pressure will change the integrity of your songs?
I don't think so. When it comes to writing on my life, I can't do anything that is, like. manipulative. I can't manipulate my songwriting. I have to just do it.
There’s this gorgeous line in one of your early songs ‘Sunflower’ ‘and now my hand just can't stop strumming’. I feel like, that's your music. It’s like it is trains of thought transformed into a song. Is that how you write?
Totally. The way that I write is that I find chords that I feel in my soul, and then those inspire the words. And then if the words feel right, then I'll keep them. I can't really be one of those people that just write on a piece of paper, and then it's funny when I go into sessions with people and they do that. And I’m like I don't know how to do that, you know? I wish I could, but I'm quite sensitive and quite emotional and I have to be on the vibes.
I couldn't do it! When I was even your age now, I just was full of self doubt, as well, but I wasn't making music. Although you've yet to make it in LA, you don't know what that actually is yet, you're still kicking a lot arse musically. How do you navigate those writing rooms? How do you navigate working with people that you look up to so much and going ‘well, I'm in this room for a reason. I'm just going to bring it the way I bring it.’
It’s really interesting, because when I started doing sessions with different people, I never really put my ideas forward. I thought, ‘oh, this isn't as good, I don't write the same way as other people, maybe they won't understand what I do’. It's kind of balancing your ego in a way because there's a healthy amount of ego and then there's an unhealthy amount of ego. I think that insecurity comes from having a big ego sometimes and feeling I've got too much pride to let myself be vulnerable, and I have too much pride to have an idea rejected. I have this this note that I've put as the wallpaper on my phone and it says, ‘Be sure of yourself, you know what you're doing, things in your life will move faster. Humility is healthy, bruising your ego will teach you how to be better.’ And that's kind of my mentality now going into everything. Don't be afraid to be embarrassed by things because you can only do your best. It's not going to kill you if you screw up.
Absolutely. And you know, embarrassing stories always give us something to laugh about later, once you’re over it!
Yeah, and grow as well. I think everything that's been embarrassing for me has changed me for the better. And helped me write good songs.
What’s really lovely about your music is we can hear your insecurities. Your listeners are just feeding off it because they're living it too, because quite often there is a sort of wall, or disassociation, from the person singing, but with you, you are really living your songs.
It's validating as well, when you see somebody struggling, because everybody's struggling in life but everybody's too afraid to. It's funny, because the album that I have coming out this year is all about showing the parts of myself that people would usually hide and be embarrassed by. I think it's going to help people, I get sick of seeing everybody trying to be perfect and be all clean cut and perfect. That's not the reality of humanity. People should be able to show their flaws and be okay with that.
It’s so exciting to hear you’ve got an album on the horizon. Can you tell me a little more about that?
My album is about being the in between of good and bad. I believe that everybody is not good, not bad, but both. It’s funny because I wanted to call my album ‘Antihero’ and then Taylor Swift put out ‘Anti-Hero’ and I was so angry at her. I was so mad at her, I'll never forgive her! Ha ha. So I had to change the title, but it is about being an antihero and having those heroic traits but also being a bit of a villain. And I communicate that in my album through personal experiences, where I haven't been the best, and then where I have been the best. I really enjoyed writing it, because I'm always pushing to be a better person all the time. And pressuring myself to be a good person, and with this I just let myself not be. It was really fun. I really like it to be honest. I’d listen to it!
Lastly, before I leave you, what else is coming up for you?
Just new music. I will be doing a tour. I just haven't planned it yet, and hopefully just some shows in Australia. That would be great.
‘California’ is out now via Sony Music Australia. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Paige you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
