Q&A: Rosie Tucker Welcomes A New, Reflective Era With 'Supreme Sucker'
Photo By May Daniels
A COMING OF AGE ALBUM WITH THE ROSIE TUCKER TOUCH - Supreme Sucker offers a refined, introspective chapter for the rising artist. Serving as the third album in Tucker’s growing discography, Supreme Sucker features the best of Tucker, from their heartfelt vocals to charming guitar while touching on themes of self-discovery, self-definition and self-redefinition.
The project is ambitious while finding a way to stick to Tucker’s roots in an honest, refreshing way. Tucker gives us something new to digest without leaving their signature elements behind. Supreme Sucker translates the feelings and thoughts many of us have had in quarantine into tangible lyrics, showcasing Tucker’s genuine talent as both a musician and lyricist.
Lead single “Haberno” gives a perfect taste of the self-exploration nature of the album, complete with an emotive and endearing sonic feel. Tucker shares, “The first two verses of ‘Habanero’ are about flirting, which is an important distraction from both the problems of the self and the issue of mortality. Desire is not the same thing as a sense of self, but it’ll work as an added sugar corn syrup kind of substitute. The third verse pulls from an early memory of a stream dense with tadpoles, watching them wriggle around my fingers in the water. I was obsessed – obsessed – with amphibians in general, and frogs in particular. I loved that they couldn’t be confined to one environment. I loved that they grow up by way of shape-shifting. I’ve spent a lot of time refusing to come to terms with the fact that I am stuck with myself, being the person I am all the time. I have gotten adequate at living while impatiently waiting for the smarter, kinder, better looking version of myself to come along, lead me out back, and put me out of my misery.”
Despite the personal and vulnerable nature to the album, as a listener, it’s easy to relate and find something to grab onto in each track. The universal themes explored in the project never seem to get old, especially when Rosie Tucker is on board. Read below to learn more about the making of the album, getting juiced (literally) and more.
LUNA: Congrats on the release of Supreme Sucker! How is this album any different from Never Not Never Not Never Not or Lowlight?
TUCKER: Lowlight was just sort of a self-archive I think— feeling like, well, I have enough songs to record, so I better record them. NNNNNN was my first record with a band, so the learning curve there was about fully arranging out a collection of songs. For Sucker Supreme, the goal was to take our tiny tiny crew and try to make something that sounds more creative and more ambitious and more professional without losing the soul of what has made recording these songs such a fun and special process.
LUNA: How do you feel about the reception your first single off the album, “Habanero” has gotten?
TUCKER: Now and always, it is wild when anyone enjoys something I’ve made. I feel grateful, and excited for the future.
LUNA: Which song off the album would you say was the most challenging to create?
TUCKER: There’s a song called Different Animals where I’m playing the verses in three, as in strum/strum/pause, but I am very much not singing in three. So the song has a heartbeat and the melody kind of skates around over it, until rhythm and melody find each other in four again in the B section. The verses are disorienting on purpose, and the band did an amazing job, but damn it was slippery to record.
LUNA: How was it to create this record with your touring band?
TUCKER: Wow, it was such a gift. Jessy and Jess and Wolfy are creative thoughtful people who I love, and I can’t believe I get to make art with them.
LUNA: Let's talk lyrics! What inspires you to write such vivid and detailed lyrics? Was it always an easy process for you, or a work in progress that you have been able to overcome?
TUCKER: A work in progress! Always! I feel like I’m the monkey at the typewriter looking for Hamlet. The act of writing is deliberate, in that if I don’t sit down to write then I don’t write anything. The quality of the writing that results is spotty to say the least. When I sit down with the guitar or the DAW I think is this going to be a coherent thought day? Or a diary day? Or a try to sing two words over a new riff in a stupid time signature day? It’s a crapshoot.
LUNA: Which song off the album would you say perfectly encapsulates who you are as an artist?
TUCKER: If I write a song that perfectly encapsulates me as an artist I think I’ll be done writing songs. That said, I like Creature of Slime. Sometimes you write four lines and look at them and think, “hey, this is a pretty good start to a song!” and then a year goes by and you finally admit that it’s the whole song.
LUNA: What do you hope people get out of this album? What contribution do you hope to bring to the music industry?
TUCKER: I hope people enjoy the album, selfishly. That’s mostly it. I don’t have too many expectations or desires about what my art might mean for other people. That anyone would listen at all is amazing, sick as hell, more than enough.
When it comes to the music industry, I want people to have good experiences working with me. I want to be a good workplace. I want people I work with to feel safe and respected and like their time is valued. Good workplaces are rare and important, and they are never accidental. I don’t know how to make the music industry better on a grand scale, though I think the turn to unions (like the newly formed Secretly Group Union) is encouraging.
Plenty of thoughtful, capable people find themselves turned off by what they encounter in the music business. I think in any industry venture there is the question of “how far can a project or platform expand before it betrays its core inspirational values?”. It’s a question worth asking at every single phase of a project wherever it intersects with industry, whether that relates to sponsorships, merchandise production, supporting tours, advertising on social media platforms, etc. It’s worth remembering that many musicians have been censored or blacklisted out of their careers as a result of some combination of their personal identities or public political advocacy (Paul Robeson, Dusty Springfield, Buffy Sainte-Marie, to name a few). Other people retreat from the music industry because in spite of the appearance of success they find the culture untenable (I’m thinking of Noname, and her pivot to founding a revolutionary book club).
I think my goal is sustainability on a personal scale. I will be making music and art for my whole time on this earth, I know that much is true. How or whether that art will be marketed or distributed is so much less interesting to me than questions like: what art will I be making in thirty years? Will I still be eating dinner with the band sometimes? Will Los Angeles even exist given the increasing intensity of the climate? How is my health? How are my family members doing? How did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s presidency go and what did we learn from it? You get the idea.
LUNA: Fun, but morbid question, if you were a fruit, would you rather be juiced or sliced?
TUCKER: I love this question. I’m going to be thinking about this all week. JUICED, obviously. Quick and intense, giving the whole self all at once. I juiced several limes earlier, and I felt grateful to them, thinking on this question. JUICED! Who chooses sliced? The slow painful piecemeal way? Send them to me. I’d like to talk.
CONNECT WITH ROSIE TUCKER
SPOTIFY
-
From Pavietra 🕊️ https://t.co/BXVgWlZud8 -
slowthai by Rosie Matheson 🤩 https://t.co/z7SDfFQ5iF
-
RT @i_D: Ian Kenneth Bird photographs young punks on Polaroid: https://t.co/MKT0tMUqO9 https://t.co/a0tTl12ML5
-
RT @AnOtherMagazine: #DreamHome – this isolated idyll in the mountains of Lanzarote 🌵 📸 via Nowness, photography by Clemence Blr 🔁 https://t.co/GUusdxD0cg
