Q&A: Figuring Out How to Be Happy, Royal & the Serpent Releases ‘happiness is an inside job’

Q&AMusic

Oct 28

☆ By GOMI ZHOU ☆

IN ALL OF ITS GLORY AND GORE – Royal & the Serpent has finally unveiled her newest five-part installment, happiness is an inside job.

Releasing one track a week between Sept. 23 and Oct. 28, each accompanied with an extensive cinematic universe and allegorical storyline, happiness is an inside job quite literally portrays a road to happiness through the lens of the artist. As one of the most prominent players collaborating with all the best names in the scene (GAYLE, Slush Puppy, Stand Atlantic, etc.), Royal & the Serpent uses this solo project to reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Experimental at its core, happiness is an inside job takes on sonic spins. There’s the hyperpop, highly energetic “Death of Me,” as well as ’90s rock–inspired “Love Abuser (Save Me).” Royal’s songwriting remains as a strength and piercing force throughout the tracks. It’s rare to find poetic yet simple metaphors in today’s alternative rock, but better yet, Royal’s ability to narrate and heal through her lyricism hits on a personal level every time. As always, happiness is an inside job counters depression and personal demons with grudge and vulnerability all at once.

Between wrapping her latest tour supporting Demi Lovato and preparing for the second weekend of When We Were Young Fest ahead, we caught up with Royal & the Serpent below.

LUNA: Hi Royal! How are you?

ROYAL: I'm good!

LUNA: We're going to start with asking you, how was the tour with Demi Lovato that you just wrapped?

ROYAL: Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Honestly, probably the best three weeks of my life. It was a really special experience. I loved every second of it. It was awesome.

LUNA: Are you ready for this weekend? For When We Were Young Fest?

ROYAL: I'm really excited! I'm a little nervous but I think I'm just excited to see how it all goes and to see some of these other bands. It's gonna be great.

LUNA: On that note, I want to touch on how you've collaborated with so many great players across the spectrum in the alternative rock scene in the past few years. When you do get to go back to working on your personal projects, like this EP, do you have to tune yourself back to a certain mindset?

ROYAL: For the most part, I definitely just write about my own experience. So the more time that I get to take off from writing for my own project, I feel like the more I have to write about and the more material that I have, because [of] the more life I got to experience. So, in a way, it almost is beneficial to take some time off from writing for myself because I get more stuff to write about.

LUNA: I think even just compiling a five-song EP is a pretty hard decision to make because you’ve established that structure for yourself from the very beginning, in a sense.

ROYAL: Yeah, definitely. It was tough to pick the songs — there were a lot that were in the running for it, but it's so fun. I love that I get to do it. There was a longer list and then I just trimmed it down to the ones that I felt like really got the point across the best.

LUNA: “Happiness” is the word that gets reiterated so many times throughout the project, but it talks so much about how it is not happiness. So how did that name and that theme come around in the first place?

ROYAL: Especially some of my previous projects — and especially the last one — were really heavily centered around me experiencing my very own worst depression that I've ever had. I think my goal for this next project was… I wanted nothing more than to figure out how to be happy and how to find my own joy and peace in the world. I thought that it was really important that I wrote about that because I think our words are really powerful. And I think that what we speak and the thoughts that we have and the things that we're singing onstage manifest themselves into our reality. So I wanted to try my best to center everything I could around the idea of happiness in hopes [of figuring] out how to be happy on my own. The songs are not necessarily about being happy but they're about the journey and figuring out how to get there. But, I mean, it's working, and I think that I'm sort of in a better place. Now that I have been in it for a really long time, I think that's a testament to how powerful our words are.

LUNA: Very happy to hear that. In that sense, does it end on a more hopeful note after the five chapters?

ROYAL: Yeah, absolutely. I think the final chapter, “NO REGRETS” is… I mean, it was not the ending, I think it's the beginning of something else, but it definitely lands on a very hopeful note. Sort of like I don't give a damn anymore. I'd be happy if my life depends on it. No one's going to tell me any differently. And this is what I'm going to do.

LUNA: The other song I want to bring up is “Death of Me.” The line “Happiness will be the death of me” is very powerful in many different layers. How did you initially come up with that line?

ROYAL: I felt almost forceful in my determination to figure out how to stop being so unhappy. I think I was just really in a bad place for a really long time. I wanted nothing more than just will myself into figuring out how to be a happy person. And that's sort of what it felt like: no matter what, I'm going to figure this out. If it fucking kills me, I'm gonna do it. I think that's really what the line means to me: happiness will be the death of me, I'm not going to stop until I figure it out.

LUNA: I also want to ask a little bit more about the videos that go with every track. Is the storyline basically a set? Is it an actual filming set where everything took place?

ROYAL: Yeah, so it supposed to be — not really metaphorically — but it sort of represents my life. I'm on all of these sets and I'm doing all this stuff and I'm doing all this work. But it's like, you're seeing me as the actual artist. So I'm going from set to set and you're seeing all the in between moments. It's supposed to represent what it's actually like to be living in my shoes. And the visual for “Death of Me,” I'm being fed all the content that I've ever made. I wanted to break that fourth wall to invite the viewer into the actual world of what it's like to be an artist.

LUNA: What I love the most about your collabs is that you work with so many prolific women in the scene. With the new punk resurgence, I think one thing that has changed and has been different visibly from the past punk scene is that there are more frontwomen and more women artists in general. But is there anything else that you noticed that can still be better with this whole new resurgence?

ROYAL: It's always going to be important for representation for so many communities. I think that there's always going to be a need for more representation, but I do have hope that we continue to move in a positive direction. It's not just about women, it's about trans women. It's about queer people. It's about people of color. It's about so much. I think just moving the needle as much as we can and lifting up the voices of the people around us that need to be heard is so important.

LUNA: Because of how much you're being straightforward in your lyrics, a lot of vulnerability is involved in your songwriting. And for you to be on tour a lot and for there to always be so many different things going on at once as an artist, how do you sit yourself down and be like, “I'm going to be really, really vulnerable with my lyrics today”?

ROYAL: You know what, it's interesting. I find that I just am that way. Even in my day-to-day life, I'm very vocal about what I'm feeling, how I'm feeling. I'm very honest with the people around me. I don't know if that's just a testament to how I was raised or if that's something I learned from my mother, but it's very easy for me to communicate my feelings. And I think that I actually have a harder time fictionalizing anything; I have a harder time making up stories. If I wanted to sit down and write a song about something I've never experienced before, it's actually more challenging for me than just pulling straight from the feelings that I have. So it's always come naturally and I think that, obviously, people relate to it. So that's great. I think it gives people a voice that maybe they didn't have in some of these songs because it's a lot of stuff that maybe people don't talk about typically, but to me it's just always felt very natural.

LUNA: I also wanted to ask, what would be your personal favorite track from this project?

ROYAL: I think “Love Abuser (Save Me)” is probably my favorite track from this project. It's some of my favorite lyrics I've ever written. It reminds me a lot of Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. Nirvana is my favorite band of all time. It was, like, the first time that I felt like I wrote a song that actually felt like a grunge song. I've been trying for a really long time to make something that gave that sort of vibe.

LUNA: I thought it was interesting how, even though the bigger bracket would be alternative rock, a lot of the tracks definitely experiment with different genres as well. Off the top of your head, can you name a few genres that you had in mind making these songs?

ROYAL: I definitely feel like I try my best to reach different genres. I like to not do the same thing too much. But I mean, it's all very raw. It's all very alternative. I think there's some hyperpop influence. There's some pop influence. A lot of the time I don't even really have an idea of what I'm going for the song until the song is actually done, and then it's just a matter of seeing if they all fit into the same world together. I think on the story that I'm telling and the words that I'm using, then I do the sonic palette of the song.

LUNA: Besides being part of the When We Were Young lineup, are there any more plans for the rest of 2022 for you?

ROYAL: There are a few more things. We get to go to the UK and play a couple of shows over there next month, which will be really cool. And then we have some festivals in November. Then I have my headline at the Troubadour at the end of November that I'm very excited about.

LUNA: Well, those are all my questions for today. I wish you all the best with all the plans that you have for the rest of the year and an early congratulations for wrapping this EP up and releasing it next week.

ROYAL: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This has been lovely.

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We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫