Poppy : Keep Them Guessing
Jon D’Auria
Attempting to classify the sound of Poppy is a futile task, if not entirely an impossible one. The trouble with pinning her down is that she never sticks to one particular style or genre for very long, as her focus frequently shifts to what is exciting her in the moment. Since her 2017 debut, Poppy.Computer, she has kept her fans and critics guessing by releasing a prolific flow of albums and EPs that range stylistically all over the map while thriving on polarity and the unexpected. As a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, she avoids subtlety when it comes to her musical mood swings, and you’d be hard pressed to find a contemporary whose genre classifications include both “bubblegum pop” and “death metal” within the same sentence. And if you’re curious how that could even be possible, just check out “X” from her 2018 album Am I A Girl? and you’ll find the answer in a single song.
Little was known about Poppy when she first took the internet by storm in 2014 with her viral YouTube channel where she portrayed herself as an android attempting to understand society and technology. But as her talents as a singer were unveiled around that same time, a subsequent record deal with Island Records gave her a platform to shift from avant garde performance art to serious artist. Her beautiful vocals and guttural growl made fans take notice, along with her evocative lyrics that illustrate her emotional depth and insatiable curiosity. After picking up the guitar at the age of 10, she added bass and keyboard to her repertoire in order to be able to take full control of her musical ideas and compositions, which is something she takes very seriously. Somewhat reclusive and immensely private by nature, she still prefers to conduct her songwriting in her bedroom at her Los Angeles home, where she can remain unbothered by outside pressures and influences.
Her freshly minted fifth album, Zig, is another product of this process and another fearless stride in her constant evolution as an artist. Departing from the pop and nu-metal style of her earliest albums and the experimental alternative tone of her recent work, Poppy sounds at home amid electronic industrial dance beats, melodic samples, and effect-laden guitars. This is a fitting arrival for someone who started out as a dancer long before her internet fame and music career. On this album the songstress, born Moriah Rose Pereira, took on guitar and bass duties along with a new arsenal of pedals that inspired her writing from the start. Heavy doses of EarthQuaker Devices’ Hummingbird, Spatial Delivery, and Data Corrupter effects propelled wild soundscapes for her to sing over that paved the way for anthemic singles like “Church Outfit” and “Knockoff.”
After meticulously working and reworking the album, Poppy at last landed on the final version of Zig, which is now waiting for its October 27th release as she hits the road for her North American headlining tour. Waiting isn’t a strong suit for Poppy, though she understands the need for space and patience in the creative process. The tour will satisfy her in the meantime, as her high energy and highly emotional performances convey her powerful vocals and prowess on guitar and bass. We caught up with Poppy during a rehearsal as she prepared to take off for the first date of her tour in Seattle. She happily reflected on her love for distortion and effects, the long album process behind her, and the exciting road ahead of performing and unveiling these songs to her fans, who as always, have no idea what to expect.
Congrats on your new album Zig. How does it feel waiting for the world to hear it?
The process of making this album required me to hold for a second and wait, and I hate waiting. I actually have songs about how much I hate waiting. But I'm just excited now that there's a release date and it will finally be heard. I thought it was done a couple of times, so there have been a few different iterations of Zig. Finally, I switched up some songs and came to the version it is now, which I’m very happy with. Now I’m just very excited to get it out there.
The sound of this album has touches of industrial, electronic, pop, metal, and rock. What was inspiring you musically going into this?
At the beginning of this process, when it was just a tiny spark of an idea, I started making playlists of music and putting together images that represented what I thought it was going to be. I do that for each album and usually it's far from that in the end. But stuff that I was listening to at the time was actually a lot more of electronic music. The producer of this album, Ali Payami (Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Katy Perry), comes from a very dance-centric background. When we were coming together in the room and talking about artists we love, he actually knew a lot of the things that I was talking about and could hop off of that and be like, if you like that, check this out. And then he'd dial up something on the computer for us to work with. When you have that instant play and connection with somebody creatively, good things come from it
You played both guitar and bass on Zig. How important was that to this process?
I’ve always loved guitar music and that's never something that I would abandon. Playing instruments is the genesis of my songwriting process. It's always centered around an instrument because I think you should be able to play the song from front to back and have it read as an equally interesting and appealing piece in an acoustic setting. I kept that in mind when I was writing all of these songs.
Do lyrics or riffs usually inspire song ideas first?
I don't have one strict method, but there are certain things that I do that seem to work better than others. I’m always journaling and writing lyrics and melodies all the time. Sometimes I'll mess with a riff on guitar, record it, and start adding something to it, like a lyric or a melody and then I'll take it into the studio. In working with Ali, he'll build a whole track around that. There have been times I've played him an acoustic song and then he made the track while I was just playing guitar and I'm like, wow, this is better. It’s always somewhat of a puzzle in figuring out where all of the pieces go and what will sound best.
You’ve constantly changed your musical style in the span of your five albums. What do you attribute your constant evolution to?
I've said it before and I just keep on saying it because I like to remind myself, but I lead with interest first. And when you build it, if you build it the right way, they will come. It's not to cater to any specific audience or type of person. It's just what I myself am interested in at my core. That's what I'm always trying to keep tabs on and keep a pulse on and check in with. Does this make me excited? Am I excited to perform these songs live or make music videos for them? I’m just competing with myself and pushing myself, not looking too far outside of myself for anything. Maybe at times it's a little bit isolating, but I think it goes back to decisions that you can sleep with at night and what's exciting for you to get your hands dirty with.
Each album sounds like a snapshot of where you are in that moment and what you’re going through and observing. What drove the emotion behind Zig?
I’m definitely somebody who views albums as snapshots. A lot of my favorite artists have lengthy discographies, and I love when I find out later what they were going through when a particular album was conceived. You feel closer to them, but also you hear them learning through the process. For me, with each album, I’m learning more about myself in real time and maybe that's just what music is. Just an effort to better understand myself and then people listen to it and hopefully get something out of it for themselves. That's what the magic of art as a whole is. We're all just trying to have our own relationship with life and trying to better understand ourselves while we're here. That’s a lot of what this album is about.
Nowadays people typically don’t have to wait to learn what artists are going through, thanks to the internet. Does it feel vulnerable as an artist to have so much about your life out there?
With social media, the instant gratification of people jumping to a conclusion is even more instantaneous than ever before. I do think that's a little bit odd and I haven't entirely made sense of it or my relationship to it yet. I try to not look at any of that stuff or anyone's opinion because I feel like it just muddies the waters and I'm thankful that people enjoy what I create and come to my shows. I'll always be appreciative. But what I dislike is the desire for instant satisfaction, like to scratch the itch. There's no waiting, no build-up. I think people need to just maybe just take a deep breath and know that if an artist is taking more time to create a record, it's probably because they're trying to have more of a human experience. Good things take time.
Regardless of what style or genre you write in, you always include heavy elements in it. What attracts you to screaming and metal music?
I’ve always had quite the affinity for it. I started going to shows when I was small and it always made me feel, in simple terms, understood. When I started performing with a band, because of the intensity of what I was creating, it made me need to perform in a certain way. And performing in that way, there's no room for hesitancy. You can't be unsure. You have to just go for it. It's also really freeing in that sense as well. If you're going to write a song that's really angsty with a large message, you better mean it every time you say it. And if you're going to scream, you better mean it every time you open your mouth. That pushes me to be in the moment every time I get on stage.
You’re heavy into the use of pedals. How do effects inspire your songwriting?
They inspire me so much. I love playing with pedals and Ali makes fun of me because I like to put distortion on everything. It’s fun because I have so many distortion pedals and I’m always searching to figure out which is the best one for the part I’m focused on. They’re all slightly different, so I like to be discerning with what I choose to match what I hear in my head. I really like overdrive and fuzz when I'm starting out. I need the guitar to have a tone from the beginning that's inspiring to me. I can't really handle clean guitars; they irk me quite a bit. But even when I'm writing in my room and I’m playing through my little mini Vox amp I have quite a few pedals going. One non-distortion pedal that I love to write with is the EQD Hummingbird.
Poppy’s Pedalboard
Which other EarthQuaker Devices are you currently using?
I own a ton of effects, but a lot of the main pedals that I end up using are EarthQuaker. Right now on my pedalboard for this tour I’m using the Spatial Delivery, the Night Wire, the Data Corrupter, and I also own the Afterneath Eurotrack Module that I always use. The Eurorack Modules I use for my vocals, separate from my pedalboard. I really want to get that Sunn O))) Life Pedal. I’ve been a big fan of Sunn O))) for a while. The first time I heard about them was their collab that they did with the Japanese band Boris and I was just hooked. That’ll definitely be the next addition to my pedalboard.
When did you first start playing guitar & bass?
I taught myself how to play guitar when I was about 10 or 11. This guy that my sister was dating at the time was in a hardcore band, and he inspired me to pick up a guitar. He let me borrow his acoustic and I broke one of the strings. I was really nervous to tell him, but he showed me how to fix it and I kept going. Then bass, about five or six years after that, but mainly for the writing process.
What is a concert like from your perspective?
I’m just giving everything I have to the moment. I'm happy to be up there with my friends in the band and everybody in the crew becomes really close like family. I think that's something I always wanted since I was small. I thought I was going to join the circus when I was little, so this is kind of like my circus.
You recently collaborated with bassist and fellow EQD user Stu Brooks with Danny Elfman on his new single “They’ll Just Love You”. What was that like?
I met Stu from bassist Matt McJunkins, who I’ve worked with a lot, and he told me he thought I might be great for this song idea that he started with Danny. At that point it just existed as an idea for a chorus and then I came in and wrote the verses and we finished the song off. I went to the studio and we recorded it and it was really fun how it all came together.
You’ve been a dancer your whole life. How does dancing inform and inspire your songwriting and vice versa?
For Zig specifically, I went into it knowing that I wanted to write songs that I could dance to and make dance music videos for. That informed the whole picture immensely. When you're listening to the record, you can tell it's more rhythmic than my previous work and I feel really fortunate to collaborate with choreographer Zoi Tatopoulos for the videos. I was really excited to make dancing a part of the Poppy project as a whole because I was a dancer first. To bring that into the new music and the Poppy-sphere is really exciting. Making it a centerpiece is uncharted territory, though familiar to me.
What can us musicians learn from dancers?
There's a flow to dancing that can be brought into the performance equation with smoothness and grace, which is helpful for anyone. Now that I say that out loud, I realize how important smoothness and grace is to every element of music, no matter what style it may be. Also, when my guitar player and I are doing key and tempo changes while using a bunch of pedals, I call it the pedal dance. So there’s that too [laughs].
For more on Poppy visit: https://www.impoppy.com
Follow Poppy: @impoppy
Poppy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Poppy
Jon D'Auria has been in music journalism for over 16 years as an editor, columnist, staff writer, photographer, web editor, and gear editor. He has conducted over 400 interviews and has been lucky enough to connect with most of his bass heroes. When he's not writing, he keeps busy gigging, running, reading, hanging out with his two huskies, and attempting to teach his toddler slap bass.
