Q&A: Babygirl Shares Deep Dive on Latest Stellar Rock-Pop EP ‘Be Still My Heart’
NOT EXACTLY EMO OR ROCK-POP — Babygirl is a masterful secret third thing.
The Toronto-based duo clearly knows how to compose complex lyrics and arrangements into simple, dreamy pop jams. While every Babygirl project thus far delivers a slight variation of sugary ballads — a whole spectrum of songs perfectly crafted for all loving emotions — each song from Kiki Frances and Cameron Bright’s latest EP contains its own sonic universe. From rhythm-driven track, “Always,” reminiscent of the early 2000s, to the folk- and country- inspired closer, “Born With A Broken Heart,” Babygirl proves that there will never be enough songs about the mysteries and iterations of love.
While chatting with Luna regarding the latest EP, we got a glimpse of the vast references and careful curation that go into every Babygirl song. With the two songwriters’ influence, spanning from Sade to Missy Elliot, Radiohead to Hilary Duff, it comes as no surprise that Babygirl aims and succeeds in creating their own very blend of pop, rock, shoegaze, folk, and much more.
In celebration of the release of Be Still My Heart, nerd out about bands and music from a wide array of eras and catch up with the latest updates of Babygirl by reading our interview with the duo below.
LUNA: How are you doing? What is one song you're currently obsessed with?
KIKI FRANCES: Nice to meet you! It's funny because we finished this EP last year and are now starting to put it out there, but we're already working on the next songs. So it feels really good to be celebrating these songs while also working on a bunch of new ones. But a song I’m obsessed with right now…
CAMERON BRIGHT: I mean, I know mine. It's got to be “Somebody Already Broke My Heart” by Sade. It's generally been a Sade bender. But that song especially — it's just such a masterclass with restraint. She just has the richest, most soothing voice in the world. I cannot stop listening to that song.
KIKI FRANCES: That's a really good one.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Yeah. What have you been listening to?
KIKI FRANCES: Well, I don't have a specific song. But recently we were talking about Missy Elliott. We had this weird thing happen where we were driving somewhere across town and randomly Missy Elliott came up. We were just talking to each other about how Missy Elliott is so cool. And then as we were driving, the radio station we were listening to started playing a Missy Elliott hour — CBC is the radio station here that was doing it. They were playing deep cuts. It was just a half hour after we had this conversation. Yeah, Missy Elliott would have to be my answer — that was just like a weird universe thing.
LUNA: I've also been listening to a lot of Sade, back in December when it was really cold here.
KIKI FRANCES: Maybe Sade is a winter moment.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Her voice feels so warm. It's like the sonic equivalent of a hot cup of tea.
LUNA: Even Babygirl feels very wintry to me sometimes. I listened to the band more and more as it got colder and colder. Your iteration of pop is quite unique and different. I can only pinpoint it as “babygirl pop.” It's the perfect name for it. Is there any other similar names or a phrase, like “(blank) pop,” that you can describe your music as?
CAMERON BRIGHT: We definitely identify with emo music in terms of the way our guitar arrangements are put together, and some of the tone and verbiage that goes into the lyric writing. But I feel like emo pop already has a connotation where you might think of bands that sound nothing like us.
KIKI FRANCES: We’ve made up a lot of phrases along the way. There's never going to be that one phrase that summarizes it perfectly. There are times where we've referred to it as bubblegum emo because there's so much pop influence in our music. But then, like you said, in the guitars and a lot of the lyrics we try to incorporate a lot of other influences. Also pop-rock… I don't know, I don't really hear a lot of people refer to it as pop rock anymore.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Or if you hear pop-rock, you might think more in the direction of 5 Seconds of Summer, more overtly commercial things. But fundamentally we're writing pop-structured songs, and we're using rock instrumentation to express those songs. So I don't know a better way to put it than just straight-up pop-rock.
KIKI FRANCES: But then there are electronic elements going on in some of our songs. It's a case-by-case basis, but I think ultimately, when something feels like it's Babygirl, we just kind of know it when we feel it.
CAMERON BRIGHT: And we try to reflect what we genuinely listen to in the music without seeming like we're being eclectic for eclectic sakes. We have “Born With A Broken Heart” on this EP … a ’60s country–style song, but that's just because we listened to a lot of ’60s country and really appreciate the songwriting from that period. So we wanted to reflect that in a way that still felt theoretically and sonically honest to the band.
LUNA: Pop-rock definitely reminds me of bands like 5 Seconds of Summer, but if you call it rock-pop, then you really can see how it fits Babygirl. But like you said, I think the project is very diverse. With artists like you, I always like to ask this question: Because of how many genres you're experimenting and how many elements you're incorporating, in a very idealistic sense, what would be the perfect song that’s like, “Oh my god, this is a once-in-the-artist’s-lifetime song,” for Babygirl?
KIKI FRANCES: Well, I imagine there will be guitars. I think [with] every single song we make we're aspiring to find that song, and that's what keeps you making songs. You just have this feeling [that] the next one is going to say and be everything that I want it to be. And you always make it, and you're like, “Yeah, this definitely is what I want it to be — but I still want to make another one.”
CAMERON BRIGHT: So much of what you're doing is like building a world. For a lot of my favorite bands, there isn't necessarily one song. Even if there's one song that may represent them in the public consciousness, like Radiohead’s “Creep.” But obviously, the world building that they've done and the range of material they have in their catalog is the sum of those parts. Radiohead means more than just any individual song. With that said, to me, it would be like if we could do something that's as catchy as “Teenage Dream,” but texturally as deep as something off Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Or off In Rainbows; OK Computer. That sort of really evocative textural depth of one of those alternative rock bands of the ’90s, but the song craft and public broader appeal of something like “Teenage Dream” or 1989, you know, Max Martin songbook smash — that's kind of the goal. Pop songs with sad guitars.
LUNA: I thought I couldn't get more excited about this project, but I think I just did. And in your own words, what is the theme of this EP?
KIKI FRANCES: We landed on the title Be Still My Heart because there are definitely some love songs on there. There are also some songs that are ultimately about heartbreak, which … I mean, they're tried and true things to write songs about. We don't get enough of them. I don't know if there's exactly a theme beyond that. “Be still my heart” is a lyric that we put into “Me, You and My Car,” a song on the EP, and we just felt like that phrase just rang true.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Be Still My Heart can be positively or negatively associated, if you're like, “Oh, this is such a romantic moment! Be still my heart!” Or you're sweating and it's like, “Oh, I literally want my heart to stop because I want to die.”
KIKI FRANCES: Definitely — it's a phrase that can go either way, which I think is really beautiful.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Emotionally androgynous.
KIKI FRANCES: It feels kind of simple to say that love is overall a theme, but I mean, they're love songs. Why fight it?
LUNA: Kind of a silly question, but what would this EP taste like if it’s edible?
CAMERON BRIGHT: I have one right away. Dark cherry ice cream. Richness and sweetness and little flecks of the bitter skin.
KIKI FRANCES: Maybe a dark chocolate–covered cherry.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Oh yeah, a chocolate-covered cherry. I would cosign that.
LUNA: On the topic of the EP, what would be your personal favorite song?
KIKI FRANCES: They are all my children!
CAMERON BRIGHT: What's your favorite? Just today. It doesn't have to be forever.
KIKI FRANCES: I'm torn between “Born With A Broken Heart” and “Starlight.”
CAMERON BRIGHT: I would say the exact same answers. Yeah. “Born With A Broken Heart” has that timelessness and maybe has my preferred lyrics.
KIKI FRANCES: I really love “Born With A Broken Heart.” It's a really special song. But I also think that “Starlight”... I don't know, [there’s] just something about the way that all of the elements came together.
CAMERON BRIGHT: It also feels like more of a singular statement of purpose of what the band is, whereas “Born With A Broken Heart” feels like more of an outlier on the catalog. Yeah, I would say “Starlight” today, “Born With A Broken Heart” on paper compositionally.
KIKI FRANCES: But if I'm driving down the highway and it's a beautiful day, I want to be blasting “Sore Eyes.”
LUNA: I notice when listening to the discography, composition is such an important part to you guys, and this conversation reiterated that. Do you typically write with a melody in mind first? Or do you start with the lyrics? Your lyrics are very complex. The rhythm is also something that stands out to me when I think of Babygirl. So what is the first building block for a song, typically?
KIKI FRANCES: The truth is that it's different every time. There are definitely times where a lyric idea is what sets us off onto making a song. But there are also times where I can maybe write a guitar riff or write up a part that ends up being a melody, then lyrics after the fact. There have been times where a production has started first and then we write the song on top of it — although, that's maybe a rarer instance. Usually, it starts with a lyric and melody. And oftentimes that can come at the same time, where you think of a lyric idea and then right away the melody for it is just there, like “Sore Eyes.”
CAMERON BRIGHT: I feel like for you it was like that, right? You kind of thought, “Oh, it'd be cool to do a song called ‘Sore Eyes.’” And it could be like, “You're such a sight for sore eyes.” Yeah, that all comes in a single blip. And then you spend a couple of months filling in the blanks. “Homemade Holiday,” for example, was entirely melody before we had any lyrics. We often just start with a title because that feels like you have the bull’s eye you're trying to hit, and then you just have to draw rings around it to make it look like you've hit the target. If you stick the landing, if you get to that end of that chorus, you just have to figure out what the A to B is to get there. Then we also have songs like that start almost entirely with a rhythmic idea, like “Always.” We want to do a song that's in a swamp ’60s hip-hop group that a lot of the pop-rock girls did in the 2000s.
KIKI FRANCES: We pulled up “So Yesterday” by Hilary Duff and we were like, this drum groove!
CAMERON BRIGHT: We just [had] the drums, and [we] started writing to only drums. And then once there was a little bit of a song, we started putting guitars around it.
LUNA: I was literally going to bring that up because it just makes more sense that the riff for “Always” was built first. And obviously with it being a dual project, there's already collaborative effort in it. When you go out and collaborate with so many artists, do you balance your own sound and your own ideas while also working with another creative in the room?
KIKI FRANCES: Generally, we just try and have the attitude of whatever the best idea [is] should be what happens. If I see that you're leading this, I'm just going to slide into a support role. I think, ultimately, whatever the best idea is should be what happens. There have been times where you lean back a bit more.
CAMERON BRIGHT: If someone's in the zone and you're in the studio with them and someone is on a roll and doing a bunch of amazing stuff, sometimes the smartest thing you can do as a collaborator is just [say], “I'm just gonna let you.”
I think also, for us it's a different process. If we're working on music with collaborators for Babygirl, we're more clearly in a leadership role in the room. So if someone is pitching lyrics or melody to us and we would never say that as a band, that's a very instinctual process. Whereas if we're writing with other writers and it's either not clearly assigned as a Babygirl session, or we're writing with another artist for their project in the room, that totally changes the dynamic where it's a little bit more of a pure democracy.
LUNA: That's a very thoughtful answer. Thank you so much for that. Well, I don't have that many more questions, but to finish it up, beyond this EP what are some things you're excited about for the coming year?
KIKI FRANCES: We're gonna do a headline tour [with] some dates in Canada and in the US! We've never played outside of Toronto as the headliners.
CAMERON BRIGHT: We were very lucky to tour opening for Jeremy Zucker in the States — those were only US shows that we've ever gotten, so the headline shows can be really fun to go out.
KIKI FRANCES: We're really excited about that; just playing all these new songs as well. It's gonna be so rewarding to get to play all this music live and go visit some cities that we've never played in and meet some people there.
CAMERON BRIGHT: Just making the record is so insular — we're just locked in a cave, just chopping up editing and doing mix notes. It's all very nitpicky stuff. And then you get on stage, you just release that. It's just a mutual celebration of the work without you having to be so meticulous. You get a bird's eye view of the music and get to see what people respond to, which is really fun.
KIKI FRANCES: And we're always working on new music, so we're excited to just keep making new songs. And yeah, [excited to] put this EP out and see what people think.
CAMERON BRIGHT: We already have some stuff on the album that I'm like, “Oh, I want to release this.” For the audience … in a couple of months they'll hear what we were up to six months ago, or a year ago and a year and half ago; what we're working on now, they probably won't get to hear until a year from now. So it's always such a cool experience being like, “Oh, you don't even know what's coming.” So that's fun. I'm just looking forward to that.
LUNA: Well, best of luck with all your endeavors! I hope I get to see you guys in the US. Congrats on the new EP!
KIKI FRANCES: Thanks for the fun questions!
-
weekly tunes playlist has been updated! new tracks from @furtradeband, @pecqband, @garryfool & more! check it out! https://t.co/ToFU0R6YGo
