Q&A: Defiant and Dazzling: Kitty Coen Releases Spellbinding Record ‘HELLCAT’
THE EVOLUTION OF A WOMAN TRANSMUTING ANGER INTO POWER – Kitty Coen's long-awaited debut album, HELLCAT, is a triumph of raw emotion and unapologetic expression where Coen asserts herself as a force to be reckoned with as she shines a light on the female experience. Coen emerges as a fierce energy, blending alternative pop and rock with poignant lyricism to craft an album that demands attention and refuses to be confined.
At the heart of HELLCAT lies a narrative of reclaiming power and embracing authenticity in the face of societal expectations and historical oppression. Drawing inspiration from the word's origins, Coen sheds light on the historical persecution of women labeled as "witches," highlighting the arbitrary nature of societal judgment and the enduring resilience of those who refuse to be confined by narrow definitions.
Coen explains, "At one time the word 'witch' was not negative but was applied to women who worked in holistic medicine to heal people with illnesses. Through time, the church detested these women because it argued with divine greatness and ultimately went against the church. They began hunting and killing any woman that fit this description consisting of any woman who appeared educated, attractive, tempting or dominant in any way."
For Coen, HELLCAT is not merely an album but a manifesto — a declaration of independence and self-discovery. Through eleven tracks brimming with passion and purpose, she invites listeners on a journey of introspection and empowerment.
"I believe that this album shows the progression of a woman harnessing her anger and frustrations with the world and utilizing them to create magic, love and light,” Coen says.
The stormy, swelling "center of the sun" opens the album with captivating layered vocals and a hypnotizing, simple electric guitar riff. It is ultimately a dark pop anthem about following your intuition and heart no matter what trials and tribulations come your way.
In February, Coen released "yellow light," a hazy, nostalgia-soaked recollection of a first queer love throughout balmy summer nights filled with fireflies and mosquitoes. The airy, acoustic track reflects Coen's newfound romance that brings her ease and comfort like never before.
Earlier this year, Coen released a pair of cinematic tracks that channel what Coen calls "Western witch rock" – "cadillac" and "el paso.” The single, "el paso," swiftly picks up where "cadillac" left off, evoking a Southern Gothic aura that envelops the listener. An autobiographical plunge into heartbreak, "el paso" sheds light on the pain that addiction can inflict on users and their loved ones.
In crafting HELLCAT, Coen fearlessly confronts the complexities of the female experience, challenging stereotypes and amplifying voices long silenced by patriarchal norms. With lyrics that cut deep and melodies that soar, Coen captures the essence of resilience and the beauty of embracing one's own power.
LUNA: Thank you for sitting down and talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar yet, what inspires your artistic style and creative persona?
KITTY: My creative style and artistic persona are inspired by these old cartoons called Tex Avery cartoons. There's like this hot little redhead girl in them. I remember watching them as a kid because we were a heavy cartoon household. I remember being obsessed with that girl in that cartoon as a kid. I think that that kind of lends itself to Kitty Coen as a brand when you see the sexy cowgirl energy. I think if I were a drag queen, that would be my default look with the assless chaps – but make it gothic. Stevie Nicks has taught me so much and so has Lana Del Rey and Miley Cyrus. I was always in touch with celebrities and singers growing up, mainly just front women of bands. I think the only time it wasn't a woman was Kurt Cobain. I was obsessed with him. I think that was one of my big realizations of I want to do music when she came out with Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz and that record was so fucking weird and everyone was talking shit about it and that album was so good to me.
LUNA: Last time I talked to you was during your Disco Lemonade era and you were often referenced as a disco cowgirl and had a different visual approach and aesthetic. How do you think you’ve matured or evolved in the last two years in terms of your visual storytelling?
KITTY: So when I started, I didn't want to be like a watered down version of what I really wanted. I almost amped it up, like 10 times that. It started off very colorful, very look at me energy, which I loved at that time. I was really into Gaga and I also was really into Kacey Musgraves, but I'm also one of those people that I'm always worried about copying like too much. I don't want people to be like ‘oh, you're a copy and paste this,’ which at the end of the day, you can copy things and it's not going to ever turn out the same. I think in the beginning I was really hell bent on not being too much like anyone else. When Kacey Musgrves came out with Golden Hour, I absolutely loved it but I couldn’t do that exact same thing like she did. I pivoted and once that record was out and I had some time to get better at my craft. For visuals, I learned that sometimes less is more and I don’t need all these locations and outfits in this entire storyline. You see amazing music videos from Billie Eilish and her videos are a perfect example of where it’s really simple and it gets the point across that’s also visceral. I wanted to start leaning into that. I also wanted to do things that represent how I think about music which is through synesthesia, where you connect certain songs or sounds to a color. Most of the music I make is blue, orange, red and sometimes yellow. When I was creating the record, I thought about how the album is going to be like and what energy it gave off, so I wanted to stick within those colors and have everything blend together.
LUNA: You just released your debut record HELLCAT and a huge congratulations is in order. I love how you blend genres and have such an eclectic, yet defined sound. I would love to know the inspiration behind the record?
KITTY: So the inspiration behind the record reflects the passport years of my life. But in a nutshell, I think just transitioning from being this bad girl with flip personalities, you know, I'm definitely like a shot of whiskey and not a cup of tea. Four years ago, I still had this strong resentment and anger towards the way I was treated as a woman in the music industry. The things I was told, just like the unfairness and it’s not even exclusive to just the music industry. I've been a dancer since I was 18 years old. I've been a bartender. I've been a server. I've worked at every bar from here to Timbuktu. As a woman, you just can't help but notice, like I have to work 10 times harder. I have to be nice, but I can't be too mouthy. So I think starting off that way, but then realizing through time that I don't need to be so angry because I'm not the only one that feels this way and there's a way to like go about it and start like a silent or out loud revolution amongst women without being so aggressive and frustrated. I learned how to harness that and use that anger and frustration towards positive energy. In the middle of the album, there's “watermoon,” and that song is literally the reason that me and my old label didn’t work out. They were like ‘we don't get this like what is this?’ I'm like, ‘what do you mean, it's my art’ and they were like, ‘well, it needs to mean something.’ Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean that it's not a genuine song and that song is so special to me because that song was at the pinnacle of my sobriety. I was in a car and I was horribly hungover and the radio was going back and forth and I was too hungover. I had to go do rehearsal and live my life feeling like a piece of shit. Then the radio started to do that weird thing that you hear in the beginning of the song. I took out my phone and just recorded it and then made that the opening and then I wrote that song at rehearsal. It was me being like, ‘you know, I act like I'm a badass and I act like I have it all figured out and I'm confident, but the truth is like I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.’ Every morning I woke up, I regretted it every morning in the sense of like a loss of a friend or a loss of a relationship because I can't be sober. That song was that shift of let's do some shadow work. Let's have some introspective moments which you see with “el paso,” “yellow light” and “rotten tomatoes.” I think it was just the growth of me as a human, just showing me how to go from a girl to a woman. I imagined it just like going down a highway and every song is like a different stop to solitude and happiness.
LUNA: I would love to know more about your creative process. How do you approach songwriting to convey such vulnerable emotions and storytelling and connect with your audience on a deeper level?
KITTY: I feel like for me, I've never been one of those songwriters yet to write fun pop hits. I love Chappell Roan and I remember following her when she was working at some donut shop and seeing her evolution now is so sick. I feel like the only way for me to do it is to just be 100% real. Not to say that some of the songs on HELLCAT aren't bangers, but I think the topics they touch on have a tinge of intensity to all of it. I'm just a little bit of an intense person. I think that it just comes down to like, what's the point if you're not saying exactly what you mean? Why am I writing music? Why am I releasing it? It's not for streams. It's not to be famous because if that were the case, I would have stopped fucking years ago. If anyone that does want to start songwriting, I would say sit in silence and just see what comes to you. That's one of the biggest ways to just be completely visceral with what you're writing about. And at first it might sound bad, but just keep going with it and eventually, you'll iron it out. You just have to be patient.
LUNA: What is your favorite song from HELLCAT and why do you love this song? Is there a certain lyric, message or element that stands out to you the most?
KITTY: I feel like I should pick one from the front and then from the back. I can’t pick just one because it was written to be an A-side and B-side situation. From the front half, I really like “unfollow me” because nobody gave it much attention because it's a super pop-punk energy that I don't really do often. But that was literally exactly how I felt at the moment. I remember it was one of those days I was spending way too much time on Instagram, way too much time on TikTok comparing myself to other musicians, going back to Spotify looking at numbers, like driving myself fucking crazy. Something else that happened was the label at the time was basically trying to tell me to switch up my whole vibe. I wrote that song in two seconds. It was like the song “Disco Lemonade” and I wrote around that style. I had a beat that my producer at the time had let me write on. We ended up changing it completely, but I really like it. It feels like that t-shirt of Johnny Cash flipping people off, that’s how it feels. I love that. In the back half of the record, “everything’s a mess” is such a good song and wildly underrated.
Photography Credit: Kirt Barnett
LUNA: What was the hardest song for you to write, either lyrically, sonically or emotionally?
KITTY: “Everything's a mess” was the hardest to write because that song was written right before “watermoon,” so at that time, I had been in this downward spiral. The beginning of the song is why it starts off in that Nirvana, Mazzy Star-inspired guitar and carries a very self deprecating energy. By the end, it’s a fucking power ballad. I wrote the song two separate times. The beginning had been set in stone for a while and I wanted to end this on a bang. I was listening to “I Know the End” by Phoebe Bridgers, and that was a huge inspiration – obviously two very different songs – but I love how big band it got through all the horns and instrumentals. Obviously I don't have a Bridgers budget, but we did what we could and I think it sounds sick.
LUNA: Did you have any lessons or breakthroughs while bringing HELLCAT to fruition?
KITTY: Be yourself always. Don't water yourself down for other people because that shit is going to come back around and then you're going to look like you weren't being 100% the whole time, but the truth is you were just trying to be agreeable. At the end of the day, if you're working on something that it's clear that you care about it more than anyone, stand on business. Stand on making what you want to happen because it’s so easy to let things get interpreted. That was my biggest issue with Disco Lemonade, like I love Disco Lemonade and it was my first EP, but it wasn't going to be the best I've ever done. I was so quiet. There were so many times when I wouldn't speak out for things I wanted and I should have. Also on that note, there's a way to speak up for what you want and do it with grace and kindness and make things happen by not being too intense. On the other hand, though, if you need to get shit done, you need to get shit done. So, women are multifaceted. You can be everything all at once. I think that was my biggest takeaway from this record.
LUNA: Was there any intention in the way you structured the songs in the way you did with “center of the sun” being the opener and “yellow light” being the closing track?
KITTY: Yes 100%. I think albums are meant to be strategic like that. I love a front-to-back album. I'm just now getting to listen to albums that I really love because I've wanted to this past year, but because I've been working on the record and trying hard to not listen to other people's albums, especially artists that I like. I was super strategic. “Center the sun” is first because that is the song where it feels like you I'm going to fly too close to the sun. I'm going to girl boss a little too close to the sun because I'm tired of you motherfuckers telling me no and you can't do that. Shut up, yes I can. Are you kidding? I've done it this whole time. That's the oldest song I've ever written. Ending on “yellow light,” it arguably doesn’t fit the record and I see it as a chiller cousin of the rest of the songs. “Yellow light” is similar to my next album. I wanted it to end on a glittery note because the next record is going to have a lot of string arrangements. It’s going to be very ethereal. That was one of the songs where my producer at the time, really let me get my hands on it more and do what I wanted to do and try something different.
LUNA: What are you most excited for listeners to experience when they hear HELLCAT in its entirety?
KITTY: I'm excited for them to experience the intro to “center of the sun.” I think it’s so cool that we got to play around with a vocoder. I’m really interested to see the middle of going from “watermoon” into “el paso.” I love that part. I love it going into “el paso” and they almost go together and then into “cadillac.” I really like the back half of the album I won't lie, so I'm excited for people to get through the hits part and get to the more emotional songs. I think the range really shows how I've grown as an artist.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the upcoming year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
KITTY: I'm feeling very happy and very content. I am realizing I have a problem with not working, so I'm already thinking about the next record. We're going on tour in July and it's going to be a blast. When I get home I'm probably going to take a little bit of a break from everything and then work on the record, and it should be coming out sometime this year or next and it's going to be amazing. We also have two visualizers, one for “el paso” and one for “cadillac” that are going to come out this month. I haven't announced them or anything, but I'm going to be putting them out there which feels so amazing.
