Q&A: With Impact Over Intent, babyghost Talks Activism, LA, New Music & More

Q&AMusic

Aug 17

☆ BY KATE CHASE ☆

“FUCK A MOMENT OF SILENCE, I’M GONNA MAKE TWO MINUTES OF RAGE” — babyghost sings, the self-declared “genderless and genreless” queer artist and activist reimanging the structure of LA’s music scene. They strive to break convention in every aspect of their life, from their music to their fashion (at the time of our interview, they were rocking a neon green mullet) as well as the inequalities in their industry.

Babyghost is a 24-year-old from Santa Rosa, CA, a queer musician and preformer, and an all-around badass human. In a sweaty crowded venue full of loud twenty-somethings in which I first saw them in 2019, they made the room go silent the minute they started singing. Their music was all beautiful haunting melodies and vocals, cyclical and organic and ethereal in a way I’d never heard anywhere else. Every time I’ve heard them perform since, I’ve felt the same sort of quiet awe, in the way that you might while watching a sunset or going on a long drive.

Since then, babyghost has only been evolving, exploring music and activism and identity as they navigate the world as a young queer artist. We delved into a raw, meaningful conversation about everything from gender indenity to abortion rights to breaking down patriarchal structures and heriearches within the music industry, and one thing is clear: with an EP out August 25 and more projects on the way, babyghost is about to make some huge waves.

Read below to learn more about babyghost’s background, their experience in the LA music scene, and what goes into creating their songs.

LUNA: Tell me a little bit about your musical background. What drew you to music?

BABYGHOST: Well, I've never done anything else. Which is amazing because I've always known what I need to do with my life, but [it] also sucks because everyone's always been telling me not to do that, that I’m gonna drown. I will tell people all the time, if music isn't the one thing that you're going to do and be able to survive, don't do it. And don't make it your main thing because it sucks. You’ve got to be a somewhat emotional person to do it. I feel like I've always just been this sensitive person.

I was doing my first choir when I was six and I was writing music by eight. I did drama and choir and stuff like that and got more serious, and around age 11 or 12 I started taking voice lessons and doing competitions for opera and classical type stuff. Then I graduated high school and decided, I'm just going to do my own songs. I started going to University of Redlands as a classical voice major, but then I took a year off to make my music. I was like, “I'm not going to school, I don't need to do that.” That year off was definitely a turning point because I realized that I didn't want to focus on opera in 2020. I joined the Johnston program, where I could make my own major and realized that I could just do what I was already doing and get a degree in it. I wanted to do my own music and make songs that people resonated with, like I resonated with when I was a child and when I was growing and learning and unlearning about the world around me. So that's the brief overview. But music has definitely always been a constant for sure.

LUNA: How have you been liking the music scene in LA? Have you found a community in the industry?

BABYGHOST: I love the accessibility. I feel like I can always go to a show. When I first got here, I pretty much lost my whole musical circle on some drama shit, which was a good intro to LA because LA is full of drama. So I was well prepared. But since then I started forcing myself to go to shows on my own and go to, like, poetry nights… You know, just whatever is my passion. And I've been able to meet like-minded people; it’s been really cool. My favorite event is called Bananas — it happens every month and it's a cypher open mic hip-hop kind of event. It’s in Lamar Park at night so it's all dark and everyone's on the street just jammin out. Doja Cat actually used to perform there. So finding stuff like that has felt like little gems for sure.

LUNA: So you said the industry is kind of gatekept — tell me more about that.

BABYGHOST: I think the industry is gatekept but in terms of finding music, everyone's here to be a creative. So you just have to tap into that. I think people are very much… I want to say almost selfish in the music industry, especially when it comes to LA because it's so dog eat dog. But it's only that way because people are hesitant to work together and to be inspired by each other, I think. And [in] so many things that I've done or places that I've been, people expect you to act a certain way. Like, you have to be this kind of professional. And I'm like, bro, people are so individual, that’s not ideal to have. People think that there's a way to do things based on Hollywood hierarchy, which is so obviously just patriarchal and bullshit. And then it's like, who are you gonna sign your rights away to, how do we take advantage of you as a new artist in the industry? People are slithery, for sure.

LUNA: Your bio says that you're “genreless and genderless,” and you don’t really subscribe to a specific genre. Can you tell me more about that?

BABYGHOST: I think genre is becoming obsolete. I think genre is just some box that white people tried to come up with to claim ownership of certain types of music. Like, we didn't make any of it, I can't stake claim to a single genre of music. And I also can't not explore a single genre of music — it’s my duty as a musician. For so long, I was listening to so many different things. There would be genres that I avoided altogether because I felt like I didn't really vibe with them, but that's never going to be true. There's always something that comes out. Once I started listening to conscious hip-hop, that was kind of the shift, because I realized this is an established genre that opens up music as a vehicle for change in so many ways. I wanted to incorporate that and also incorporate the folk music I grew up on and the songwriting skills that I've gained from being a poet — all these different things that you can’t mix without shutting out genre completely in order to be willing to fuse everything together. Everything is interconnected. I also started to acknowledge that about my gender identity. And I think that that helps with the music too. Because it's like, if I don't have to be in a box here, what's stopping me from breaking out of it in this area of my life, you know? I think music connects to identity, and music is my identity. I'm a genderqueer, non-conforming, non-binary person, you know, but first and foremost my indentity is music, so they might as well be intertwined.

LUNA: Going off that, I wanted to talk about your song “Gender Envy.” I haven't really heard many songs about gender identity, especially in mainstream music. Do you think this is something that is going to start emerging more with more queer artists coming into themselves and into the music world?

BABYGHOST: I hope so. I really hope so because we have so many A-list musicians now who are coming out as non-binary and are coming out and saying like, “Yo, my pronouns are they/them, please respect that.” And it's so many people that we grew up with, that we've known and loved, and to see them at their age, even older than I am, coming out and realizing that definitely speaks to the accessibility of education on the topic and the fact that we have these resources now to put names to feelings and understand concepts that we were shielded from. So I really hope that that reflects in music. For “Gender Envy,” I was looking for a gender anthem on Spotify but I didn't find it, so I said, “Fuck it, I'm gonna write it.” And that's what happened with my new song, “My Body My Choice,” as well. If I don't find the exact song I'm looking for in the moment, I'll just make it, and hopefully people like it.

LUNA: That's so sick. I was gonna ask you about “My Body My Choice as well,” and about the influence of activism in your music.

BABYGHOST: Yeah, totally. Johnston definitely set me up for this one; my major was “Challenging Social Constructs through Music and Literary Arts.” I was driving to the protests last Friday and I thought, “What’s a better way to use my specific individualized voice in this situation than to write this song about it?” I was looking for a song on the way to the protest just to get my head right and I didn't find it. I was like, “Damn, actually let's turn the car around.” I drove straight back home, wrote the song, tracked the demo, and then went back to the protest. Then some people approached me about a Rock for Abortion Rights concert the next day and I was like, “Actually, I just wrote a song.” I was really honored. Then Momo, my producer, just recorded it and we're gonna release it now. It made me think, you don't have to make a perfect sounding song, you don't have to put it on playlists and do the whole proper release if it needs to be out in the world. I created this and performed it once already, so it doesn't belong to me anymore. I think it has a right to be out now before people unfortunately lose momentum again, which I think happens. Even in the timespan from writing it to recording it, so much happened. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I wrote the song, protested, got fuckin’ smacked by the cops, finished the song. Then the environment loses its protections, a black man gets shot 60 times and handcuffed after he's dead. And then protests are still continuing. It’s just so much to be living through all the time. Like, how do we center ourselves in a moment before we move on, scroll on to the next one? I'm just trying to do that in some way. Like, fuck a moment of silence, I'm gonna make two minutes of rage.

LUNA: I love that. Going off that, I was wondering if you have any sort of philosophies you try to live by or emulate through your music or activism, or just in life?

BABYGHOST: I think the thing that I've been saying most recently is impact over intent. I don't think I'm usually approaching something with bad intentions — it's a very rare thing for me. But have I impacted people and places and situations negatively? Yeah, all the time. Way more than I would like to be a thing. So I'm trying to really implement impact over intent. No matter what you are thinking about a certain moment or situation, if you fuck up you better own up to it and you better repair the harm that's been done. So that’s definitely something I live by. Also my best friend [who] I've known for 20 years, every few years he'll remind me and call me up and be like, “Yo, remember what we used to say in middle school? We used to say fuck it bro, like everything — just fuck it.” Make the song, wear the dress, shave your head. Fuck it dude, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters except that we tried to be good to each other you know? So the motto of my life is “Fuck it.”

LUNA: We both have a passion for the riot grrrl movement — are there any other musical influences that have been really impactful for you?

BABYGHOST: Yeah, dude. Really diving into riot grrrl intersected with my exploration of gender identity. I feel like the riot ghoul label definitely fits. Obviously, I have a deep appreciation for music, but it's also influenced my sound because my parents always listen to a lot of different shit. I'm talking like Blind Boys of Alabama to Phil Collins to Hawaiian music, like, every day. But also having that classic rock influence and that punk pop influence from school, all these very different vignettes of musical influences really helped me be able to fully shape my sound and give me lots of possibilities. And I was a theater kid, so for a while I just wanted to do Broadway.

LUNA: You did theater! Is performance a pretty important part of music for you too, like the performative aspect of putting on a show?

BABYGHOST: Totally. I grew up a hardcore Swifty. I would watch every single behind the scenes of music videos and all the concert footage and the fanfare of her concerts and stuff. You see it on every single production of her shows, and I still envision that sort of level of theatrics. You can tell that she was a theater kid, like there’s a whole set. There’s 50 costume changes and there’s a narrative to the show, it's more than just having good stage presence. Like when Miley Cyrus did the motorcycle over the whole audience as a tribute to Britney, like that kind of shit I have always loved — it's camp as fuck and I'm like, “This is so cool.” It's crafting a story for your audience. Because every musician is a storyteller, you know? I like to surprise people, and I want to get there.

LUNA: I love that. Do you have any significant muses, either people or experiences, that influence your work?

BABYGHOST: Yeah. I think my main muses in music are love and loss, who I think are twins. That comes out a lot in my music, and my mom comes out a lot in my music. I don't have a super great relationship with her. So I definitely reference that a lot as a common theme. I'm a sensitive person, you know, I'm always making stupid choices and thinking I'm falling in love and all this shit. And I try to be so cynical about it. But at the end of the day, that's the kind of stuff that comes out in my music; it's the part of my brain that wants to be in love and to know love and to love my friends. And there’s a part of my brain that has lost so much of that and has grieved so much of that and doesn't want to try anymore, you know? So it's like, how do you reconcile the two? That's been the main influence of everything I've written since May 2016.

LUNA: What outside of music brings you joy in your life?

BABYGHOST: The people in it. Everyone I have in my life that I speak to on a regular basis and consider a close friend is my family, and they influence me to do so many good things and they inspire my art every day and make me a better person. So they bring me joy. Weed also — I do find joy in cannabis and cannabis events and the community that I've found there that has also supported my music and given me a space to go out and perform.

LUNA: Do you have any projects you're working on right now? What’s coming up next for babyghost?

BABYGHOST: Yes, I have so many projects, dude. Oh my god, like, I'm working on an EP and an album at the same time right now. One of them I'm working on with someone in Santa Rosa, from my hometown, and the EP I'm working on down here with my friend Momo, who produced the “My Body My Choice” beat. So I'm thinking the EP is going to come out first. And for the album, I'm looking to get some backing behind it, whether that’s putting it out on a label or putting some serious money into promoting it and touring it or whatever. This one has a bunch of old songs on it too, and there's cyclical relevance in those songs for me. I'm dropping a bunch of songs right now that I wrote in 2017, 2018 because they weren't relevant for so long and now they are again. So I want to make sure I really feel like they're ready for the world finally.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫