Q&A: Abby Kenna On Finding Her Voice and Unfiltered Honesty in ‘Spit!’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY DANY MIRELES ☆
“I WANT PEOPLE TO BELIEVE THAT THIS IS WHO I AM” — For rising artist Abby Kenna, music has always been about raw expression. saying the things that feel too messy, too angry or too vulnerable. With the release of her debut EP Spit!, she embraces those feelings, crafting a collection of songs that are nostalgic and deeply personal.
In an interview with Luna Collective, Abby Kenna opens up about the pivotal moment she discovered Fiona Apple, the creative process behind her debut EP and how imperfection helped her shape her sound. From early 2000s rock music influences, to lyrics that cut straight to the core, Abby Kenna is proving that sometimes it’s just best to spit it all out.
LUNA: You found a Fiona Apple CD at a young age—what about her music resonated with you so deeply?
KENNA: I started on piano in music, and I went through a little Sara Bareilles phase of life. I love her. I loved the pop girl on the piano business. But when I found Fiona Apple, I saw there was an alternative way to do this thing. And there's a sort of an ugliness to Fiona Apple's music, where she just doesn't care, and she chooses the vocal takes that aren't necessarily perfect or pretty, it's just so raw. She opened my eyes to the fact that, you can be an angry woman or kind of a gross woman, and still deserve space and respect. You don't have to be pretty and perfect.
LUNA: I agree! Her rawness is definitely what stands out about her the most, and you can hear her influence in your music. Speaking of your music, congratulations on your debut EP! Can you share the creative process like for Spit!? Any standout moments in the studio?
KENNA: So this first EP was songs that sort of found each other over a year of me finding my voice in music. I wrote “Soft” and I kind of was unsure if I was going to pursue a career as an artist. I thought maybe, like I'll just be in the music business or something to stay close to it. But I wrote “Soft and I made the demo all at the same time, and the demo is pretty much what the song sounds like now. And I was like, hold on. I can say things like, “You say you love how my hands are so soft / they feel so good when they’re getting you off” in a song and that's fine. It makes me feel good to say it out loud, and that was the catalyst for writing the rest of the EP. They were all written in the few months following soft. Once I realized that I could just put things that I was afraid to say into a song, it made me like it. I just kept going one step up until I got to “The Closer,” and I was like, We've established the raunchiness and the provocativeness. I think it was the debut I needed to then feel like people knew who I was and I wasn't hiding anything.
LUNA: I am so happy you got to talk about “Soft,” it’s my favorite song on your EP. Which song on Spit! represents you the most as an artist?
KENNA: That's such an interesting question. I think my next project is very different. So I think right now “The Closer” is the one that represents me the best, it gets my roots of the early 2000s pop rock well. This whole EP honors the music that made me want to pursue music The Click Five and All Time Low, and the bands that I would sing in the car with my mom. So, this is the era of music that started it all for me. And “The Closer” honors that.
LUNA: I love it! I see the 2000s influence in this record so much. That's what makes the record so good. It's kind of nostalgic in a way, my next question is what's one thing you learned about yourself while making Spit?
KENNA: I think I learned that I have a crazy little shame complex going on where I'm questioning myself “Why would anybody want to hear that in a song, and especially, why would they want to hear it from me?” But then the second I said those things, people started saying,” Thank you for saying that. I was too afraid to.” I learned that I'm afraid to do that, but also that everyone else has the same fear. So we should all probably get out of our way a little bit. It's been very cathartic to kind of exposure therapy myself into being a little bit more blunt and unafraid.
LUNA: I agree with everyone having that fear, it’s very common; everyone is truly afraid to speak their mind most of the time. Listening to the EP, I thought of it as a journey through a relationship how did you decide the tracklist order? Is there a specific feeling you wanted listeners to go through?
KENNA: Honestly, I didn't realize that I did this, but they're tracklisted in the order that I wrote them. I didn't do it on purpose. I honestly, tracklisted it in what I thought was the most listenable order. And then I did realize that they got more and more vulnerable and expository about my personality as they went on. “Soft” hits you in the face, very hard, and then “Be Cool” we kind of take it down a notch, and with “I Can Be Your Girl” we learn that I’m a person with feelings. “The Closer” spits it all out. But yeah, it was the order that I wrote them, which I realized earlier this week. So it's kind of funny.
LUNA: That’s brilliant, you answered my next question, but how do you think the last song on this EP completed the project?
KENNA: When I was writing this EP I spent a lot of time not necessarily believing in myself. I think that's the best way to put it. Now I do believe in what I have to say. But “The Closer” I wrote because I needed to get out of a writer's block, and I said to myself, “I'm gonna write something, even if it's the stupidest sh*t I've ever said.” And it is some of the stupidest sh*t I've ever said, but I stand by it. And I think giving in to that and letting it become something…I needed to do that. I needed it to be ridiculous and to believe in it wholeheartedly; I'm with myself. I get it.
LUNA: If you could pick any lyric from the EP to be your life motto, which one would it be and why?
KENNA: To represent this EP and this era I have to go with the chorus of “The Closer,” the second half of it is, “Don't need you spitting in my mouth / You taste just fine from here with your foot on my face.”Honestly, it was written about a hypothetical romantic situation, but it represents the sort of battle I was dealing with myself. You don't have to keep f*cking stomping on yourself, we get it, it's fine, you're afraid, just spit it out which is, what I ended up accomplishing eventually.
LUNA: I am so excited to hear that next project, I can’t wait! What's one song that meant something to you but that now means something completely different to you than when you first wrote it?
KENNA: When I wrote “Soft,” I thought it was really funny what was happening in my life And I do think that was a coping mechanism, because it is a little bit of a traumatic setback to be used for someone else's experimentation. And so I made this sort of angry-fun anthem. Just last night, I had a show, and I played the song on acoustic guitar. And whenever I play it like that, I remember that it was kind of a sad thing that happened to me, and a sad realization that I was on the other side of this internalized homophobia that you just hear about , but you don't always have to experience. People have sent me stories and stuff of just the same kind of thing they had to go through. And I realize now how much it is like a community building song, even though it's a kind of funny song. So yeah, “Soft” means a lot to me.
LUNA: How does “Spit!” reflect you as an artist?
KENNA: That's a really good question. I think my whole life I've led with a very sarcastic and cynical point of view. I've kind of been a little bit of a class clown to mask a deeper insecurity that I've dealt with. So I think that this EP is a little bit of that mask, and I want people to believe that is who I am. I think I've almost tricked myself into being who I am; I am that person now, and as we're going into the next project, which is a lot more raw and stripped back, I want people to remember both sides of me.
