Q&A: Maggie Lindemann’s ‘SUCKERPUNCH’ is an Ode to Pop Punk and Stepping Into Her Sound
“HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL” — This adage, so remarkably stated in singer-songwriter Maggie Lindemann’s favorite film, Jennifer’s Body, perhaps serves as the ultimate ethos of the bubblegum pop turned punk-pop artist.
As a teenager, Lindemann amassed millions of streams on her viral song “Pretty Girl,” but the blooming artist soon came to the realization that the music industry is precisely that: an industry. Disillusioned by the pressure to conform to the reductive, albeit tried and true, image that label heads molded for her, Lindemann pivoted toward releasing music as an independent artist. This newfound agency ultimately led to Lindemann’s debut album: the noisy, glitched-out SUCKERPUNCH and its sonic predecessor, PARANOIA.
The departure from label management is a sweet kind of liberation. It lies in Lindemann’s power to be grittier and more truthful than the sanitized, glossy internet sensations who have shifted to the punk genre in hoards. The music video for her song “cages” is all Modelo ’40s and kids at a skatepark; it doesn’t feel like the work of executives attempting to erect the lived experiences of a 24-year-old, but the work of a 24-year-old herself. At her core, under the sinister breakdowns and anthemic drums, Lindemann is just a young woman, and she writes like one. Songs detail pining after a girl who has a boyfriend, feeling alone while standing next to your partner — all those experiences of womanhood that feel so singular until you hear them sung back to you.
Citing Avril Lavigne and Effervescence’s Amy Lee as influences, SUCKERPUNCH is firmly cemented in the sonic landscape that female punk stars have paved before Lindemann. With gravelly guitar riffs and sneering vocals, she shifts effortlessly between more traditional pop-punk ballads while also underpinning her songs with techno production that feels special in its raucousness. SUCKERPUNCH is classic aughts pop punk dressed up in the clothes of a girl who’s lived through Charli XCX’s luminous influence on music production, who’s seen the advent of TikTok, whose writing material is more likely to stem from a virtual space than a suburban shopping mall.
1824 of Universal Music Group kindly included Luna in an online press conference to discuss SUCKERPUNCH. Read below to learn more about Maggie’s decision to shift genres, thoughts on being a woman in the rock community, and more.
1824: Hearing the transition you made from your single “Pretty Girl,” released in 2016, which is a pop song, to alternative rock with the release of your debut EP, PARANOIA, in 2021, what was the driving force that made you want to change your sound? Do you see yourself reinventing your sound again in your career?
LINDEMANN: The thing that kind of made me switch was that I always loved rock music. I grew up listening to pop-punk bands, and my family loves metal music, so I was really surrounded by that my whole life. But I think my turning point was when I had this experience in Asia, where I was going on this little tour and things didn’t go to plan. I kind of just realized that if I'm not doing exactly what I want to do, like, none of the things I'm doing are worth it. When bad things happen to you, it makes you realize that you need to change some things. I was like, “I don't want to be in these situations.” And I was like, I love music, I really want to make it. So, I said, “Fuck it, I'm just going to do it [create pop-punk music].” And soon after, it felt like the resurgence kind of came back. So I guess it was just divine timing, and it was crazy.
1824: If you could go back and talk with “Pretty Girl” era Maggie, what would you tell her? What advice would you give?
LINDEMANN: I would probably just tell her to, first off, focus more on music and stop focusing so much on everything else. I was really young when “Pretty Girl” happened, and it all just happened really fast. I cut myself a lot of slack on that because it was it was my first label release. I was young and so I was just living in the moment. Like, I was excited. I was traveling. I was doing all these things and I wasn't super focused on everything else. And don't be scared to say “no” to people. Don’t be scared to do the things you want to do and stop listening to what everyone else wants you to do.
1824: If you could set fans up in the perfect environment to listen to SUCKERPUNCH, what do you imagine it looking like?
LINDEMANN: I like listening to it in the car. I would say maybe go for a drive and listen to it in the car or just wherever you're comfortable … wherever it makes you feel the best. I think that's where you should listen to it. But when I listen to it, I see a lot of chaos. I always hear it in a movie or something. Obviously, people aren't in movies, but I see it in some crazy action movie. So maybe go do something crazy.
1824: How do you feel you've changed as an artist and songwriter since you released PARANOIA?
LINDEMANN: I think PARANOIA is connected [to the new album] because SUCKERPUNCH is just like the evolution of PARANOIA. I don't think that they're two completely different things. I just think one is maybe an elevated version. But as a songwriter, for PARANOIA I was just getting into it [songwriting] and I was seeing what I liked. Like working with wordplay and all that. I think, writing SUCKERPUNCH, I really tapped into that, and I let myself be freer to say the things I wanted to and freely create instead of trying to figure it out.
1824: What does female/femme identity mean to you, especially [as] someone in the rock alternative scene that is still heavily male-dominated?
LINDEMANN: I think being a woman in anything is cool, but I think being a woman in rock music is so cool. I mean, we have Gwen Stefani, Evanescence, Paramore.
1824: I’ve read that you listen to spoken word poetry. If you could add poetry to one track off the album, which would it be?
LINDEMANN: I would add it to “hear me out.” Because that one is the most emotional song, and that one has the most meaning to me.
1824: Your songs are pretty autobiographical. Do you ever let a storyline get altered from the exact details of what happened for the sake of the song? Or is it always important to you to keep the songs entirely true? How much creative liberty do you let yourself take?
LINDEMANN: No, I definitely exaggerate for sure. Like with the song “we never even dated.” There’s definitely some songs where, in my brain, maybe something felt way heavier than it was and I had to write it like that. So sometimes I'll purposely exaggerate, but sometimes it's really just my brain being insane and I already felt like that.
1824: Which song of the album do you feel like is most reflective of this next era of music for you?
LINDEMANN: Probably “self sabotage.” I really like “self sabotage” because it has that breakdown with all the glitches and stuff. I’m obsessed with that kind of stuff — I want to do more of it. I’m really proud of that song, the lyrics and the production part and everything. So maybe “self-sabotage.”
1824: What does success in music look like to you?
LINDEMANN: I try not to pay too much attention to views or streams because I don't want to compare my career to anyone else’s, and everyone moves at a different rate. But to me, success feels like when I feel proud of myself. For this album, I want people to like it obviously, but I think success is when I feel proud of myself. To the world, a song could be terrible or a flop, but if I feel proud of it then I'm able to move forward and keep making music.
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