INTERVIEW: Cxloe releases her debut album 'Shiny New Thing': "I can't turn a blind eye to just how difficult the infrastructure is. It's broken and a lot of artists are suffering."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: May 17 2024
Australia’s Cxloe (full name Chloe Papandrea) has been redefining pop music since she first released music in 2017. Initially dubbed ‘the princess of dark pop’, her music is a moody mix of electronica, indie and pop and is always sonically captivating in ways you can’t always put your finger on, which makes it even more compelling.
Today she releases her eagerly anticipated debut album Shiny New Thing, thirteen tracks of electronic pop which sees Cxloe showcase the full genius of her creativity with songs that connect deeply, whilst also being gloriously constructed pop songs full of addictive melodies and musical hooks.
The album also has a strong message lyrically, as it explores Cxloe’s fractious relationship with the music industry, that for all its beauty is an industry that consistently disadvantages female artists, commodifies art and the creators, and that can erase your identify and the mental health issues that arise from that.
The album opens with ‘Half Of Me’, its almost orchestral opener merges into a rhythmic electronic track with a frenzied beat with pared back verses and a fuller chorus. ‘Can’t give you half of me’ Cxloe sings, which could be a statement to a lover, or her stance on her music and creativity. It leads into the title track ‘Shiny New Thing’, which explicitly states her frustration with the music industry and questions what depths artists need to sink to in order to be heard by those in power: ‘I can let you own me, your favourite trophy / If your ego’s broken baby I’ll stroke it’.
The single ‘Shapeshifter’, first released in April, is an album highlight. An electronic dance-pop song with a driving, clicky beat and a swirling soundscape that swoops and distorts to keep you hooked until the very end, it leans into the concept that female artists need to constantly reinvent themselves just to stay relevant and keep people interested - a concept of course no male artists are forced to adhere to.
‘Bad Taste’ brings an R&B, mixed with electronica, sound to the album, while ‘Wrong About You’ has elements of funk with one of the most pure pop choruses you will hear on the album. The uplifting pop of ‘Cheating on Myself’ has the kind of polish and cinematic quality you hear from music’s biggest global stars, and references to how giving up so much power to the music industry has led to a sense of self-betrayal: “How’d I go and turn into a yes-man? / Showing up for everybody else /… Oh my god, what have I done?”
‘You Must Be Crazy Too’ is arguably the most experimental track on the album, with a stop-start rhythm, distorted vocals, unearthly synths and an ever changing soundscape. It’s the kind of exciting song that on first listen you are absolutely entranced by as you wait to see what direction it will take next.
The album ends on another highlight, the single ‘Chloe Enough!’ If the album was inspired by Chloe’s frustration with the music industry, the final song explores how this ultimately affects her mentally and emotionally. The pain of anxiety, of being a perfectionist, the shame of feeling you can’t fight it and the disappointment when no-one else can help you. “Letting everybody down and it keeps me up /
I know it isn't real but it’s just how I feel…Im trying to tell you but you wont understand / Why I rip me to shreds / Thanks for trying I guess.” It is a raw and confronting, but brilliant, way to end the album, with gorgeous subtle beats and Cxloe’s most emotive and compelling vocal performance on the album.
Shiny New Thing has been well worth the wait. It is music that never fails to move you, either straight to a dancefloor or on a more emotional level, and Cxloe has proven yet again why she is one of the most exciting pop stars in Australia today. We recently sat down with her to chat all about the creation of the album.
Hi Cxloe, it’s so lovely to see you, and at such a monumental moment in your career. I have just consumed Shiny New Thing, and wow! What a piece.
Thank you, that really means a lot. It's big. Choosing the tracks for this was so hard. I really wanted it to be immersive from track one. I wanted it to be something that you can just throw yourself into. So I'm really happy that that's how you felt, that you enjoyed it.
The opening of the album is 'Half of Me', and you open it with like a siren call, and it turns out it's a siren call to the dance floor.
Yeah, I love it because it kind of draws you in and then the beat comes in and it goes way harder. It feels super gritty, but it gets you listening and then just like slaps you in the face. I’m like, listen!
I feel like your music does that. It calls you in for a proper rug cut, but then you're like, ‘and by the way, look alive because we got some shit to sort out while we're here.’
Keep people on their toes. I've got shit to talk about.
It's a therapy session. And then you have bangers like 'Till The Wheels Fall Off'. That tune has an engine.
Oh thank you. I love that one, that one pushes super hard. Obviously it's my first album, so I've never had to do tracklisting before. And I was like, where can I put this where it's not going to feel too much, and where we can have ebbs and flows of emotion. Because a lot of them go quite hard and I wanted people to be able to breathe.
You have released EPs before, you released Heavy, Pt. 1 in 2020 and you've obviously been releasing music for so long and I imagine you have so much more music stashed away, and I love this idea that you had so much you were like ‘okay, what goes on the album?’
Yeah, there's a lot! There's a Dropbox that I'm dusting off. I guess it comes down to what feels like it's going to work conceptually, whether an album has a strong concept behind it or whether it's just your favourite songs that you love that you've worked on. Conceptually Shiny New Thing explores my complex relationship with identity and the tracks are literally and figuratively my attempt to be seen and to be heard and to stay in focus. I think that made it easier when tracklisting because it was the ones that felt quite desperate to be heard and to be listened to [that made it].
You’ve said the album was inspired by this idea of identity, but also this incessant need particularly for women within the industry to reinvent - but don't get any older.
Oh my god it's such a tightrope. This is the thing, I have such a complex relationship with the duality of that and wanting to be like ‘you know what, no, fuck you’. I am getting older and I'm embracing that, but then also being like, ‘maybe I do need to reinvent myself to be shiny and new again’. It's so interesting. I love exploring my identity, and I like the idea that we can be more than one thing by our own choice. I love exploring with looks and styling and wigs and all of that. Especially in the music as well, I love exploring different sounds. And that's okay, when it's on your terms, and you don't feel as if there is a pressure to reinvent yourself just to get in front of eyeballs.
Those genre bubbles, particularly around your early releases, in a way that assisted the audience finding you, because they would chase a certain song, a certain sound and find you. But then as you grow as a woman, as an artist, anything that you're known for stops being an assistance because you surpass your own benchmark, but at the same time you can't shake it.
Yeah, it's interesting because you want to evolve and you want to experiment, but you also want to make sure that you stay true to your fans and you don't lead them astray and then they're like ‘hang on we've stuck by you through this whole thing and you're just flipping the script on us and we don't enjoy this.’ I've been treading a fine line of experimenting and I've concluded my voice is the through line and that's made me okay with experimenting because my voice is the through line so everything else I can play with, because it'll always have that foundation and people will always be able to go ‘okay, this is a Cxloe song.’ That's how I've justified the sonics behind a lot of the songs. My voice is my voice, and then I can explore the world around it.
I want to talk about the title track because my favourite line is in this song: ‘I can let you hold me your favourite trophy, if your egos broken, baby I'll stroke it.’
I love that you love that line! That's one of my favourites because it's just so desperate. And true.
It's such a great song. It's such a throat scratch of a song in the best possible way. Talk to me about this, because obviously being the title track, it kind of encapsulates the album.
Oh, that makes me so happy that that line jumped out to you. I was like, ‘am I gonna say it? Yeah, I'm gonna say it.' It's tongue in cheek and it just shows how far in times of desperation, in these times that we're in right now of being an artist, to doing anything to be to be seen. It's like, what do I need to do? If this is about you, if I need to stroke your ego, I'll do it. I'll do it. I mean, I won't actually but it's the idea of I've been pushed so far, that I'm willing to do things that aren't me in order to be seen and to be heard. The song first came to me when I read this article that Billboard had posted, and it was these music execs saying that there was no new talent, they couldn't find any new talent. I was just like, ‘what is happening?’ It's everywhere. We're doing everything, we get on the apps and we go on the platforms and we create content and now there's no new talent? Like, it's here! And it because it's not shiny and new. People have been working for so long to build a foundation, but that takes a long time and they see that as old news. They just want what's just popped up, the virality of it all.
It was an overarching theme of something that I want to explore and something that I struggle with. I feel like I've had the privilege of being a musician and being in this industry for so long, and I wanted to touch on that because there have been so many of my friends who haven't had the privilege to stay in the game. Whether it's because of money of support or network or whether they've had a bad deal, there's so many variables. I feel so lucky that I am still able to be putting music out and I just wanted to explore the headspace of being ‘Okay, I'm still in it,' but I feel this crushing necessity to reinvent myself in order to still be seen, and to be heard and to get people's attention. So ‘Shiny New Thing’ explores the desperation and the lengths that you'll go to, not literally, of ‘what do I have to do?’ I just feel hopeless, because I think a lot of artists and a lot of my friends that I speak to daily and are also in an industry are like, ‘what do I need to do?’ You're banking on something so out of your control on all these different platforms in order to be seen and heard. That was the foundation of the song and then the album, as a cry of ‘listen to me.’
I think your music plays into that fear, or desperation, melodically as well as the delivery of your lyrics, with this kind of waking from a cold sweated nightmare feel to it. There's a real whispered journal entry, confessional feel to your music.
Thank you. A stream of consciousness, it's like a journal entry, very introspective. That's the only way I really know how to write. It's funny, I was with my dad yesterday and we were having a deep chat. He's like ‘your songs are all very deep’. He's always worrying about me, and then I release these songs like 'Chloe Enough!' and he's like, are you okay? I see as a parent that would be really hard to digest, having all these songs come out that are so introspective, and I really felt for him in that moment. But I love I only know how to write music that about things in my life that are weighing on me. I love that stream of consciousness, thoughts that just spiral and it's just immersive.
Can I ask on that, what came first? Was it the poetry and you going ‘oh listen to this, I can do this.’ Or was it the beautiful melody that came from your throat?
What came from me first personally is the melodies. The melodies always jump out first, and then I pair the lyrics with the melodies. Lyrically I owe a lot to my collaborators. One in particular, his name is Eric Leva, we'll just sit there and we'll chat and he's so great at interpreting what I'm saying. He's a poet. One of my favourite songs on the album 'Flight Risk', the lyrics on that song, it was like a religious experience watching him take what I was saying and helping me put it into words and in flight.
The whole concept of this album is amazing and it needs to be heard properly. Your theme needs to be heard about, this machine that people have put through in order to succeed as artists, which is very weird, and it's very conflicting. It’s not the first time that you've written about the industry, I'm thinking about 'Lowbrow'. How important is it within your trajectory to call out and and lift up other artists that are still not finding their feet, that are not finding their listeners, but are working so hard.
It's tricky because I don't want to be that artist harping on again about the industry, blah, blah, blah. But it's what I'm going through every single day, you have these people who are dictating your career, how can it not be what I write about? I hope that I can uplift or help guide [artists] in any way. I'm always very responsive to any DMs and stuff like that from other musicians who might be going through something that I did earlier. I feel like the only way I can give back is through telling my experiences, things that I've learned and things that I've done wrong. I wish I had someone to tell me ‘wait a little longer, hold off on that, don't sign just yet, read through this.’ I don't want to be this negative Nancy over here being like 'the industry's fucked' because sure it is, but we love it. And I'm still here and I'm still in it and I do love it. I want to be here and I want to release music, but I can't turn a blind eye to just how difficult the infrastructure is. The infrastructure just isn't right. It's broken and a lot of artists are suffering. So I’ve got to write about it.
Shiny New Thing is out now. You can buy and stream here.
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