INTERVIEW: Upsahl on her music career as she returns with new single 'Summer so hot': "I feel like you should make art that maybe scares you a little."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 28 June 2024
Arizona-born singer and songwriter Upsahl (full name Taylor Upsahl) is one of the most intriguing voices in the “tell it like it is” pop space. When her song ‘Drugs’ blew up on TikTok a few years ago, this honest, articulate and creatively electrifying artist finally got the recognition she deserved, and now she is committed to making music that pushes her to her limits.
‘Drugs’ went on to achieve 140 million streams on Spotify alone, and in 2021 Upsahl released her debut album Lady Jesus. A creatively exciting artist, she can hit you with a burst of punk-rock energy and then with her next track just as easily spin you around the dancefloor with an electronic pop banger. Through it all, her music is underpinned by powerful messages that reflect both her truth and her interactions with society with no filter. No topic is off limits, and while she is certainly not the only artist in music today to share her stories rawly and honestly, Upsahl does it in a particularly special way that has you irreversibly drawn to both her and her music.
This month, Upsahl launched a new era in her music with the release of the single ‘Summer so hot’. A breezy, summery, almost lazy beat forms the backdrop to Upsahl’s half-spoken, half sung vocals as she sings of summer getting hot in more ways than just the weather: ‘Yeah, the summer's so hot / So we take our clothes off / And the water's so cold / But the party don't stop…you kiss who you want / When the summer's so hot.’
“I wrote ‘Summer So Hot’ in the middle of winter in London,” Upsahl says. “I was feeling nostalgic for that perfect summer day where all fucks fly out the window, you’re just being present with friends, and escaping to wherever the day takes you.”
Despite only being 25, Upsahl has been creating music for 10 years and is almost a industry veteran, but is continuing to grow and explore and is simply getting better and better, and more intriguing, with each new release. ‘Summer so hot’ bodes well for her upcoming releases and we recently caught up with Upsahl to chat all about her music and her journey to where she is today. Read the full interview in Women In Pop magazine issue 16 out now.
Hi Taylor, thanks so much for chatting with me today, and also thank you for making very exciting, moving and anthemic pop music.
Thank you for doing this, seriously.
Obviously, we're in this time where genres don't define who we are. There's just so much more of a blend and because you just can stream whatever you want, there's accessibility to everything. And I think with your music, you have really defined that notion - you grew up listening to punk music, but you’ve also been like “I now want to make pop.’
I actually have never thought about it in that way. Streaming has made our lives as artists so much easier to genre bend and do whatever we want. One song of ours might be for someone and another might not and they can just fucking skip it and go to the next one, which is cool. You really can't do that when you're buying a physical record. But I think for me, just in general, there's so many people in the pop scene, so many women, who have paved the way for artists like me to exist now where I don't have to like fit into this box of ‘she's alt-pop’ or ‘she's electric’, whatever it is. I feel very grateful that I get to exist in such a free creative space. I can go into a session and be like ‘I was listening to Nelly Furtado the other day, let's do a song like that’. And then the next I could be like, ‘Let's make a song that sounds like Radiohead’. You get to do all of it, which I feel very grateful to be in this era of music for sure.
I feel like your music shouts out your truth, and your take on the world, without any restraint, but it doesn't feel forced. It's almost sounds like every day you wake up and you go, ‘you know what's been pissing me off? This.’ Or ‘do know what's making me really happy? This is what I want to sing about.’ Do you still second guess yourself though, the more successful you get?
Definitely, I think all of the songs that people have loved the most that I've put out I've actually been like so terrified to put out and definitely had moments of second guessing them. When I go into the studio, I always feel like I'm in such a safe space around the writers and the producers I'm with so I can just say whatever the fuck I want and be as unhinged as I want to be. That's one thing, but then it’s another the day before you're putting out a song and you're like, ‘oh my god, everyone's gonna hear that this is how I feel’ or ‘I said this, did I take it too far? Is this embarrassing?’ There's always thoughts like that, but that's what makes music so exciting. When I'm not a little scared to put a song out, I'm like, well, then what's the point? I feel like you should make art that maybe scares you a little because even if there’s one person that really relates to that emotion you're feeling, that's sort of the point of what I do. There's definitely moments of doubt but I think that's fuels the art for sure.
On that, the song that is still talked about and resonated with everyone was 'Drugs'. I can you just hitting the button and going 'well....'
That was I think the first time I've actually had that feeling of ‘should I put this out, people might hate this, my family is gonna be like, 'Taylor, what the fuck is this?' That was the first time where I even considered changing the main lyric to something different, that wasn't as aggressive. It was also my first moment as an artist of ‘if you're not doing shit that maybe scares you a little or maybe a little bit out of your comfort zone, then what are we doing this for?’ I had to have that moment with myself. I was 19 and I always think back to that moment whenever I put out music now. I should feel like that when I put out every song because. Even putting that song out, it did nothing for two years but I still was like, ‘there's something special about this’ and then TikTok somehow picked it up years later. That was cool for me because it made me trust that inner voice, when we feel a certain type of way about a song trust that it'll find the right audience at some point, even if it is years down the line.
As soon as you start chasing some other version of that or being led by the industry or whoever it is, that's that's not only when you lose yourself, but that's also when you lose your audience. You can't sustain that.
Yeah, I think it's so easy, especially in this age of music and TikTok and marketing our music. I even find myself in the studio sometimes being like, ‘that would totally be cool on TikTok’ and I'm like, ‘that's not the point, that's great and that's awesome that people might like it online, but that's not the point’. Rick Rubin did this interview where he was saying your music should feel like you're just writing in your diary, who gives a fuck id anyone's listening to it. It should just feel like you. And if you do that, other people will naturally gravitate towards it. So I try to always go back to that for sure.
Has there ever been a question that there would be anything else than music for you?
No, growing up my dad was a singer in a bunch of punk bands and stuff. And watching him I was like, ‘I want to be like that, that's some rockstar shit, I want to do that’. So for as long as I can remember, that's always what I wanted to do. I started going to this performing art school when I was really young, because my parents were just down to support my creativity. And I remember when I was at that school, I tried a bunch of other things, other hobbies, and I just hated everything else. I wasn't good at anything else. Music was the only option which is terrifying when you're graduating from school and trying to find a career and you're like, ‘this is literally the only thing I want to do, it's only thing I know how to do’. But I feel like that's what made it so exciting, that's what makes it so exciting for me still. There's no Plan B, this is what I'm supposed to do.
Did it make it even harder, because you went you know what? I'm gonna do this, but I want to be in pop, I want to be in the industry.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, I didn't grew up listening to a lot of pop music at all. It wasn't until I started going on trips to LA to do writing sessions and stuff that I even fell in love with pop music. I fell in love with pop by writing pop music and learning from a bunch of pop writers and producers and they introduced me to old pop artists that I love now. It's funny because we use that term pop or whatever, but I feel like all the shit I grew up listening to is pop song writing, even if it's like Weezer. They are a rock band, but all their melodies are like the Beatles, or early No Doubt when they were more ska and punk, all of it is anchored by pop music and I just didn't realise that until I got into the scene. It was definitely a learning curve moving to LA and starting to be in sessions every day, just being this kid who played guitar from Phoenix. I had a lot of learning to do for sure.
That’s a real testament as well to you just getting yourself out there. It’s not just you get that one song and upload it, you you have to connect with this person, then you have to get to that person. How do you keep going?
I think what actually keeps me going is the fact that the end goal is always changing. My publisher from when I was 19, he said ‘instead of comparing yourself to others, or other people in your lane, compare yourself to where you were five years ago’. Because for me five years ago, sitting here doing this interview with you, about to play a show that is was the end goal was. And then you get there and you're like, now the end goal is further along. You have to remind yourself that every day I get to do this is such a success for my younger self. She would be dying at this. I feel I have to constantly remind myself as I'm in this sort of hustle of ‘me two years ago would freak out over this’. It's very grounding, for sure.
I feel like your music covers some really, really hard subjects and you talk about some incredibly beautiful things, but there's always such joy and positivity in it. Has that always been hard to push forward?
No, I feel like the way I've always dealt with tough subjects or tough times is by joking about it. That's always been a coping mechanism. So even my super vulnerable songs, if you're like listening to lyrics, they're almost me making fun of myself. I have this song called 'Antsy', and it's basically just listing all the mental health issues I have, and the main line is like, 'No wonder I'm antsy'. It’s me being ‘well, no wonder I feel this way. I'm not taking care of myself, I'm not drinking enough water, I'm not all these things.’ The angle I try to take on my music when I get serious, or even just myself when shit gets serious is like, ‘it's not that deep’. I have an outlet, a creative outlet that I get to say whatever the fuck I want in. And I have people, even if it's one person, who want to listen to what I have to say and will relate to what I have to say. I feel like that's always been the way I have looked at songwriting, using it to say whatever I want, and sometimes adding a little positive twist to it.
You've got an amazing, amazing stage persona. And you seem to love it. Is that your favourite part about this whole industry?
Definitely, for sure. I always joke that if I could just tour literally 365 days a year I would. It's so fun. I love being in the studio, I love writing, but there’s something about the energy of being in a room of people who are just all having the exact same experience. That energy is so unmatched for me. It's so fun.
You play guitar, bass and piano and you were toying with the idea of maybe one day getting on the drums. Has that happened yet?
I tried it for like two shows! I tried to sing and play drums at the same time. And one of the shows was in Phoenix where I'm from, and my dad was there, and he's a musician. He came back after the show and was like, ‘that was a great show, maybe don't do the drum thing’. I was like, ‘got it, understood’. My drum career has lived and died. I have a lot of practice to do if I ever want to do that again, but can't say I didn't try you know?
‘Summer so hot’ is out now via Sony Music Australia. You can download and stream here.
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