Q&A: IN CONVERSATION WITH OLIVIA O ON ISOLATION AND AUTHENTICITY IN ‘No Bones, Sickly Sweet’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IZZY PETRAGLIA ☆
THROUGH THE CULMINATION OF EXISTENTIAL CRISES AND INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS COMES NO BONES, SICKLY SWEET – the second self-released album by Olivia O. The freshly turned 23-year-old has been a semi-public figure since she was 14 and started building a presence in the music industry at 18 with her band, Lowertown. Her second record comes from a place of reflection on the multitude of pressures young female stars face while breaking into music, as well as working through feelings of isolation by facing them head on. Rather than repressing or rejecting the “ugly” emotions we believe are meant to keep to ourselves, Olivia O shows us the beauty in releasing them through No Bones, Sickly Sweet.
She is the true definition of a multifaceted artist–constantly creating with both her solo music, collaborative projects, visual art, and poetry in a way that fulfills her. She finds the key to her personal success and true creative expression through rediscovering her approach to music with childlike wonder. We were lucky enough to chat with Olivia prior to the release of No Bones, Sickly Sweet all about how this has become some of her most personal and introspective work, and how creation was her greatest tool to combat feelings of isolation, pain, and boredom.
LUNA: How are you feeling? Album's out in a month. I'm so excited for you!
OLIVIA O: I know. I'm really excited. I've honestly been going nonstop, because I just finished this solo album before I went on tour, and I'm finishing up my band's album right now, Lowertown. It's just really fun. I think everything makes the most sense when I'm working on music, so it's nice to just have that steady flow. But I'm really excited. I think this is the best thing I've made for my solo project. I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of time in between me recording the last one and this one, and I think I'm a lot more pro with how I do things now.
I think I'm at a point in my life where I feel very focused on what I'm trying to say with my music, and I just feel like I’m at the point where my technical ability meets the ideas that I have, which is really nice. It's really cool to be able to convey what you're actually thinking in a medium and to actually be able to create the thing you're trying to make. I feel like I've always had a sound in my head of what I want my music to sound like, but I've never had the ability to do it up until now, which is really nice. It feels good to be able to do that.
LUNA: Since this is your second self-released solo album, what are some of the recurring themes that you've found have appeared on this album that differ from your first?
OLIVIA O: I feel like this album is a lot more removed. A lot of my music when I was younger was just sort of me in my feelings, just really emo and confused about the world. This album is a bit more detached when it's looking at the world and it's a lot more existential in a way. The last album, it did come out last year, but a lot of those songs were a lot older [than when they were released] and it was just a collection of things over the past three years. The time period that I created this one is a lot more condensed, but I feel like it's a lot more mature and a lot more understanding of, I don't know, of myself and of things.
A lot of this album is also me asking things that are exploring material that I wouldn't as much with Lowertown. This was sort of the culmination of a lot of just me spending excessive time by myself, especially around nature. Also, just after having spent a good bit of time in the music industry. I think a lot of these songs are me coming to a head with how the whole thing operates and realizing how disgusted I feel with certain aspects of that. It was sort of me reworking my process and rediscovering how I approach music in a healthy and more of a childlike way. I feel like the more time you spend in the very stereotypical music industry setting, honestly, the more unhealthily you approach creation.
You approach it within the context of making money and also just now these viral and social media aspects.These things that are honestly contradictory to making something different and pure and interesting. I think especially where our culture is right now, it's really hard to not be self-conscious and not disguise things you're doing with maybe even a layer of irony to protect from criticism because everyone is so mean and judgmental. It's very easy to hate these days.
It’s also very hard to be earnest sometimes because when you open yourself up to being vulnerable and earnest and sometimes “cringe” or whatever, people get uncomfortable with that in a big way. I feel like over time just existing on the internet for so long, you start to sort of build up walls and choose what to share of yourself because you know what will be received well and you know what will be seen as cool, which is a horrible way to approach anything because you're disguising that honestly people are looking for the most, which is connection to the parts of yourself that are embarrassing and vulnerable. I don't know, that was sort of a big thing for me going through a bit of an existential crisis with what the world of music is in terms of the business and success and all of that.
Grappling with how to exist in that and also just asking bigger questions outside of “I'm sad and this person made me feel sad” or “I hate myself”--which was just a lot of teen angst and in a lot of music. I think that’s still super valid and awesome, but I think I'm just sort of growing up a bit, asking bigger questions and reconfiguring how I want to proceed in my life because I was just very unhappy about if this is what it means to be successful or if this is what I have to do to be successful in this field, I don't know if I particularly want it.
LUNA: Yeah, I totally get it.
OLIVIA O: I don't even know if it allows me to make the stuff I want to make. I think it just prioritizes the things that are honestly just gross and not artistic and meaningful to people genuinely. Not to say that music and art that is awesome and genuine/pure can't exist and be successful. I think that's very, very real.
LUNA: I just think It's rare, more so.
OLIVIA O: When you get so deep into the industry, the people that you're working around that are not the artists, obviously a lot of their job is around the infrastructure of money and shit. That's sort of the thing that becomes a lot more prioritized and thought about. They just want you to do what already works and they want you to sort of mold into something that you don't really see for yourself. Especially when, I don't know, it's you versus a whole team of people, you get sucked into it and it's very hard.
This album I think is different, because it's sort of asking questions from a bigger perspective. Not just within myself and my feelings, some of it is that, but a lot of it is asking bigger, more existential questions because that was a big thing I was doing at the time.
LUNA: Yeah totally. I feel like in our early to mid 20s, that's kind of the time when you do start to ask a lot more of those questions of where you want to be in the world. Asking yourself if your career is going the way you want it to or is this really the space you want to be in.
One thing you said that evoked a thought to me is when you said how easy it is to hate nowadays, especially when you show vulnerability. I feel like there was a jump, especially in 2020 when we were all locked up inside where it became a meme to be like “Yeah, I'm a hater.”
Everyone started running with it as a joke at first, but then it stopped becoming a joke. It was normalized to be bitter.
OLIVIA O: I literally tell all my friends that especially when you live in a city where a lot of people are trying to make something of themselves, there's just a lot of people that are better here. It's hard especially when you move here when you're young, and you come up with a lot of people and you're all at the same place and some people start to do very well and some people don’t. That's when I see a lot of people become bitter. I always say just take me—sorry, it’s dramatic, but take me out back and shoot me if I become a bitter, jealous person.
LUNA: I say the same thing, it's so easy to just–I can crack jokes about being a hater all I want, but when it comes down to it, I don't actually like joking about that stuff, because it can manifest into something that's not very nice. It also makes it easier for you to compare yourself to other people and for you to not be happier for other people when you see their successes. Whenever I do start feeling weirdly bitter towards someone, I need to take out my journal and sit down with why I feel that way.
OLIVIA O: It's such a natural human emotion, but it literally destroys your enjoyment of things. I feel like I know a lot of artists that are super grounded and able to enjoy the music that is of their contemporaries and then I know a lot of artists that are also taking their fellow band member or people around them and can't enjoy anything that is similar to them, because they just compare it to themselves–which is sad, because a lot of people that are making music that's similar to you exist in the same circles as you, and you probably could be close friends. If you’re humbled and sort of able to let go of your insecurities. Sometimes you just have to eat them, sometimes I just gotta tell myself ‘I aint shit’ in the best way.
We’re all just people, and a lot of success in the arts is just luck. There’s a million people I know, some of the most talented individuals, and they just didn’t get as lucky as some other people. Some people who are very talented become successful and some people just know how to play the game. It’s a mixed bag, and a lot of it is luck and it sucks realizing that. But yeah, I just think bitterness is one thing that makes me sad because people lose their own self and their hobbies because they’re so focused on other people.
I talk about that with my friends all the time because that’s such a big thing in New York. It’s so real because you can’t avoid seeing people, you’re inevitably comparing yourself since you’re just surrounded by people. You have no way of not comparing yourself, and there’s always gonna be someone that’s coming up. There’s always an opportunity to be like, ‘why isn’t it me?’
LUNA: When you’re comparing yourself to someone or when you’re building up confidence, I think there really is something about having an ‘I ain’t shit’ type moment, but not in a way where you’re beating yourself down.
OLIVIA O: Yeah I always have to remind myself nothing is that serious. Especially in the music world, and especially in New York, it's different because in Atlanta, I don't think people take themselves as seriously in the indie music scene. It's different in the rap scene there, but the stuff I grew up in no one takes themselves that seriously because we're all like ‘we're not gonna be famous off of this’ in Atlanta–we're just making music because we love it. Here I feel like it's different because everyone does take themselves very seriously and they take their personas very seriously. It's music, it's art, it's supposed to be fun! It's all supposed to be meaningful but it's also not that serious!
I also forget that when you tie yourself up to the business of it everything feels so life or death. I've been to that point so many times. I don't think there's anything wrong in taking your art seriously and caring a lot about it, but taking yourself, your ego and your persona so seriously is honestly very insufferable to be around sometimes–just because you can never let go and take a joke and or laugh at yourself. You have to be able to laugh at yourself.
LUNA: Exactly, I always say too there's ways to be genuinely happy without feeling like you need to to be the best at what you’re doing. It’s that whole thing where you acknowledge there's always gonna be someone more attractive than you, there's gonna be someone who's better at this or that than you– it's just how it is. Everyone has different strengths but it doesn’t mean you lack–especially with art. You'll have strengths that maybe someone else doesn’t have. But acknowledging that is how you help keep yourself humble and how you continue to laugh at yourself. I love to write but I know I'm not writing because I'm trying to be the best–I'm just doing it because I enjoy it and it's an outlet for me to just be creative. I saw you like to do visual art as well and I feel like a big part of that is also acknowledging you don't need to be the best, it’s just doing something you enjoy, putting it out in the world, and if it sucks like who cares–if you like it that's what matters.
OLIVIA O: How does someone even say they're the best at something? Art is a subjective thing. I had a moment in my senior high school because I was in jazz band and my technical ability was not that great. I was a really good songwriter and singer at the time, but that's not what's being showcased in jazz band. All of my other friends that were seniors were so good, they dedicated their life to playing and I would just go into the bathroom and just cry after every class and tell myself I suck at music. I tied so much of my self-worth to being a musician and I would go into this class that just showed me that I wasn't shit especially in this one aspect of music. I would talk to Avsha,my bandmate, about it and he told me “Dude this is jazz band, you're an amazing amazing musician but your abilities are not attuned for a jazz band–you're learning a lot, I'm so happy you're here, you're learning about music theory and you're becoming a better player. You're an amazing musician outside of just playing jazz guitar, one of your biggest strengths is your lyricism and your singing. Those are two things that no one is doing in jazz band.” You're a culmination of all of these different aspects of yourself and to say one person is the best at something–what even does that mean? I think what is cool about art is you don't have to be the objective best. We all are such different beings and we all have a very unique thing that we can bring to the table, it's just a culmination of all these aspects of ourselves.
LUNA: 100% agree.
OLIVIA O: I'm also realizing living in New York is humbling as fuck. I've had so many moments where I realize I'm not shit in the best and the worst way, but you have to take it in a certain way.
LUNA: I've never lived in New York, I just visit a lot but my friends have all said you know you're truly living in New York when you cry in public at least once.
OLIVIA O: Oh yeah because there's nowhere else. During this whole album process I was in a dark place for some of these songs and the months I was working on it. It was right when I moved back to New York, it was winter time and I was just mad depressed–going through a breakup and an existential crisis about the music industry in general. I was just on crazy person shit. A lot of people have this negative voice in their heads where it's just hating on yourself and I've started trying to culminate this positive voice that's like “you need to have more self-love blah blah blah.” I thought that self-love voice would just be one voice inside my head but then when I start talking negatively it would just be the one voice that starts being positive and the other worrying. I’d just be walking up and down the street at three in the morning just being like “I hate you, just kidding no I don't everyone does these things you're normal.” Going back and forth.
LUNA: I'm really happy that you were able to use this album to help get through that…Aside from working on this album, what were some other outlets that were kind of helping you throughout the process of writing it?
OLIVIA O: I was honestly very isolated at the time of writing this. I feel like there are ebbs and flows of the universe where everything feels very synchronous and all the relationships in my life feel like they're working out, everybody understands each other, the words I’m saying and their meanings are conveyed accurately. But it was one of those moments in life where everything that came out of my mouth was taken the wrong way and where everything is just not together and everyone is feeling that same way. All of my friends were going through it, and we were in a very isolating period of time. When I'm feeling very alone, I'm extremely rejection-sensitive. Any small bit of rejection, even just ordering wrong at a restaurant and they misunderstand, I feel so embarrassed and I think about it for like two days after. I definitely went into extreme creation mode because I don't know how else to process things in a healthy way. I live in a house with seven other people here, a lot of my friends were like “you're working all the time, you're very inspiring to me” and I was like–dude, it's me coping with my extreme depression so it's either gonna be this or something a lot worse. This is a really weird thing I'd do but because I felt so lonely instead of writing out all my stuff I would talk to my phone with voice memos for hours.
LUNA: I’ve heard of people doing this and it's a really great way to get things out. It’s one thing to journal but to actually just speak it into the world is great.
OLIVIA O: It felt like I would be talking to someone or like it had some meaning behind it instead of just talking to the void and it just being lost forever. I felt like I didn't have anyone to talk to at the time and rather than writing it down, I just needed to talk. I would talk into my phone or go into Photo Booth on my laptop and just film myself talking. I would take long walks and cry in the park across the street from me listening to Daniel Johnston, which really hit. I would play guitar for hours. I started making a ton of weird videos and channeling it into drawing, because before I even did music I would paint and draw–I thought that was what I was going to be doing with my life.
Art is just the best way for me to convey anything in a healthy way. I would talk to my bandmate and say the only silver lining about how I'm feeling right now is that I'm creating the most I've created ever and it's out of a genuine compulsion to. It was such a dark period where nothing was giving me joy, I couldn’t feel a connection to people when I’d hang out with them, I just felt super isolated and detached. I couldn't watch anything on TV, it was just not entertaining, so I just had to play music 24/7 and mix the album. But yeah just walking, crying, and listening to other people that I felt connected to–other loner musicians like Daniel Johnston. That was my best coping mechanism and just writing hella music that I don't know if it will ever see the light of day. It probably won't, but it was just really good for me at the time for sure.
LUNA: That's so good, we talked about how you have your art account and you mentioned that you like painting and drawing. Have you felt like you've seen an overlap between your creative expression through visual art and music?
OLIVIA O: Yeah and I didn't even realize it. Honestly, I think it's so cool when you create art you can look back over the years and the sort of general themes or what you're going through at the time. I did my first art exhibition recently and I was going through all these works I'd done over the past five years or something and each one was marked by such specific themes and such a specific aesthetic that I didn't even realize at the time. You don't even realize a lot until you have distance from the art you're making. I started hyper-fixating on the light inside of every person because I think a lot of my past work used to be a lot of me being like “I'm hurting and this person hurt me and the world is scary and everyone sucks” and then at this point in my life I was like “Damn there's actually a lot of goodness inside everybody.” People aren't inherently evil, it’s confusing because there's a lot of gray area, ambiguity and nuance to people and life in general.
When people do things that I consider really harmful to me, a lot of the time they are honestly in denial themselves that they're doing these harmful things because they've been hurt or they're just so detached from themselves and making excuses and running away. I started really grappling with the light inside of people and also this shadow. I started reading a lot about [Carl] Jung and a lot about the shadow self. I felt like I was really battling with my shadow self and with a lot of the things I've done in the past that I felt really guilty and embarrassed about.
There's just a lot of themes in the artwork between this really angelic self that exists inside of everyone, this idealized version that people attained, that people aspire to be or that could exist. Then there’s this monster/demon person inside of everybody that also exists and a lot of us are running, hiding or repressing. I kept looking at all of my artwork and there's a lot of self-portraits where I look like this angelic version of myself and then a lot of self-portraits where I look like a genuine monster. I think this is how I felt and saw myself at the time in different periods. That's still a big thing I'm thinking about now in a big way. It sort of started with Everyone is a Light, my album before this, where I started thinking about the light inside of everyone.
It was the first time I was being positive about the world. All my art is very emo and I'm trying to be a little bit more optimistic because I do think everyone has a lot of goodness inside of them that sometimes doesn't come out, and sometimes does.
LUNA: You also kind of brought this up earlier, just about growing up in Atlanta versus New York. You mentioned when you were in Atlanta the music scene there is very different from New York, how has that kind of influenced your upbringing in music? On the other side of the spectrum, how has moving to New York influenced it?
OLIVIA O: I'm so happy I grew up in Atlanta. I think it's one of the coolest cities to grow up in. You have such a mix of nature in space but then also you have this really interesting, culturally diverse city. I also really like the south–I think there's just a warmth to people there that you don't get in the north and I miss it when I'm here [in New York]. I think growing up in Atlanta was great because it was an introduction to so many bands and so many different kinds of music. I met so many different kinds of people from different backgrounds when I was a young teenager and like I was saying earlier, everyone's doing it for the sake of community and for the sake of music. There's not really much ulterior motive, maybe the social currency of being cool because you’re in a band, but it's not like “yeah we're gonna start this band in Atlanta and it's gonna blow up” because there's not really the resources or infrastructure for that for our kind of music. It's not a massive scene but it's big enough where there's a good amount of people coming and going and it's also very interconnected to other kinds of music. There's a really cool jazz scene in Atlanta and obviously hip-hop/rap scene. When I was growing up there, there were a lot of really cool venues that are now shutting down because it's being hella gentrified, as all great cities are sadly, but especially Atlanta now because of the film industry moving there. They're buying up all of the cool areas and destroying every culturally significant building, which sucks. I’m going on a small tangent but Atlanta does not have many historical buildings because all of them burned down during the Civil War. But I love Atlanta. I didn't even realize how lucky I was fully. You don't really realize how cool the city that you grew up in is until you get perspective.
LUNA: I need to do that with Toronto to actually appreciate it because I'm suffering here.
OLIVIA O: You should, even just leaving for a month you’ll realize all these things that are so unique to the city. I think I was also really blessed, there's obviously always people in every scene that are creepy to girls but I was really lucky to have a big community of guys that were very respectful and supportive, and also just able to be platonic friends. I don't know, as a woman now in New York I feel much more sexualized, but I was in a weird bubble in the scene where it was actually pretty safe. People can hide more in New York and they can hide more in LA, but in Atlanta for some reason there was no bullshit.
LUNA: I didn't really realize Atlanta and Toronto have a lot more similarities than I thought, I feel Toronto is also very good at picking out the bullshit in music here, especially in the local scene. When someone's a creep everyone's gonna know.
OLIVIA O: No it's straight up,I feel like it's almost because, at least in the Atlanta scene, the community is so important. I grew up in a community where I could be a young woman, a teenager and not even be that trusting but that trust wasn't betrayed too much by just existing and doing my thing. It's also way lower pressure. When my band started we didn't feel that much support at all from the community and one thing was there weren't many female fronted bands or many women playing music in the scene that I was in. That was sad because I think that's super important, and sometimes when it did come to other women in bands there was more competition than community. I think it sucks when that's the case instead of the opposite.
LUNA: There's enough room for everyone.
OLIVIA O: I also just think we should fucking overtake the scene, it’s better that way. Anyways, I think it was a very low pressure scenario to learn how to play shows and to just try things out. Moving to New York was one of the greatest decisions I’ve made, I'm still here but it was also very jarring. For the first time, I was very, very aware that I was a woman and there was a lot of blatant sexism and also just feeling like I’m being preyed on as a young woman because I moved here right when I turned 19. I wasn’t going to college, I was just chilling and it was a scene of a lot of people that were older. Me and Avsha were the youngest in the scene that we were in.
Everyone takes themselves a lot more seriously in good and bad ways. It's one of the coolest cities in the world, some of the coolest people I've ever met, and some of the strongest communities because it is so tough to live here. It's such bullshit, it's so expensive, everything's fighting against you that honestly all you have is people. They’re the glue to this city but also the most corrosive aspect to the city. I was very trusting when I moved because I thought I knew shit. I was in this world of people that were older than me, I was always the youngest in the room and I was just very shocked and confused because it was my first experience in the adult world but it was met with a lot of people not taking me seriously and being sexist towards me.
I felt a lot of my value came from the fact that I was a young cute girl instead of anything that I had to say or did. I think a lot of the insecurity comes from bitter, older guys that have been trying to make it for a long time. They see a young woman move to the city doing okay and they take any opportunity to put you down and make you feel like you’re nothing. It was the first time I was hyper aware that I was a woman and very aware of my age. I was also very inspired because I saw some of the coolest shows I've ever seen. I met some of the people that do take it very seriously where they try very hard and try to do something different, sometimes it's hyper performative but these people are so tapped in and doing something unique and ahead of the game. It really inspired me to be better and work harder. In that mentality, it can be very destroying at times and you feel guilt just over existing. Also the periods where you work on something and you don't have immediate things outwardly to show for it, like I've been working on a lot of music secretly and haven't put it out yet. It's almost like you don't feel the fruits of your labor.
It feels very hard to see all these people doing things and putting things out and you're just like damn like I feel like shit I'm doing nothing even though you're actually working very hard. Putting things out and making good art takes time. I think I honestly fell into a really bad crowd right when I moved here because I was very naive and I was going through a lot. I was an edgy kid and I am still edgy but I'm a lot more chill now, I just fell into people that were not settled into themselves like I was even though they were a lot older.
I also lived in a very shitty part of town and was scared/anxious all the time. I think that was something I had to go through to get to where I am now. I learned a lot but I had to go home [Atlanta] for a bit and work through that trauma I had. It sort of destroyed my self-worth for a bit because of the people I was around treating me like shit, but now I've lived here for about four years and I've met a lot of people. I can vibe check people immediately and I'm very open minded but I also can see red flags right off the bat and say “Okay I know exactly how much of myself to show to you.” It just saves you a lot of pain. I'm open-minded and sometimes people do give bad first impressions but I don't trust people anymore. I used to trust so easily and I don't trust people until they prove it. I fundamentally trust maybe three people.
LUNA: I totally get that. That's just another thing when you're in your early to mid-20s. It's a lot of realizing who is really there for you and who's not, who has your best interests at heart, who are the people you really want to keep in your inner circle.
OLIVIA O: Definitely, you only have so much time and energy. It's a blessing and a curse living here because I know so many amazing people but it's you only have so much time to give socially and so much time to give to yourself, especially when you're someone who's creating and pouring a lot of energy into that. Learning how to manage that is crazy. I think New York is such a grind where it pushes you to be your best but it can wear you down if you're not careful. I'm mad sensitive so I gotta take a lot of space from New York to be happy with it and love it still. When I'm here too long it poisons me and my brain. I get really sick here all the time.
LUNA: On the other hand, what does a perfect day in either Atlanta or New York look like for you?
OLIVIA O: Well there's a lot of different things. Right now I've been really hermiting. I think waking up, making some breakfast and working on something. Making music or painting but I also really like doing it collaboratively. Going to a show is fun sometimes, but honestly I really like just hanging out with a group of my friends at someone's house. Maybe watching a movie, painting or making music. I also love whenever me and my bandmate meet up and write music the whole day um yeah waking up making breakfast maybe chilling outside at a park or going to the water. I've never been a party animal, I've really been chilling here. I feel like the second I started touring, I completely stopped wanting to party because all of my energy goes into that. If I'm feeling energized, I go to the East Village or Lower East Side and chill for a bit.
Coming back home, either by myself painting or playing guitar for a while. Maybe meeting up with someone late to watch a movie or honestly work on more shit. I just like playing music with people. It’s awesome. I've been making just a ton of weird stop motion and long exposure movies. I also like going to local shows for my friends and hanging out at a bar after every now and then.
LUNA: Absolutely love all of that. The stop motion part especially is so cool. My last question for you is just what are you looking forward to for the remainder of the year?
OLIVIA O: I mean, honestly, a lot of things. I am about to go on tour in like a couple weeks.I'm excited. I think it's going to be epic. I've only played Canada one time on tour. I've done Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. I'm excited to be back. I'm also half Canadian.
I'm really excited to finish the Lowertown album. We're really close. We're probably finishing it this week. I'm also planning on dropping even more music. I'm really excited for my album obviously, but I'm planning on dropping more music in other projects. I have a separate band/side project called child star that we've been doing. I've been scheming. I've been scheming a lot. I have a secret project that is going to be hopefully out this winter or fall. I'm trying to find the right time to do it so it doesn't overlap on my album too much. But I'm really fucking pumped.
