Q&A: Shybaby Has Nothing to Hide on Debut Album "Is This Intimate"
SHYBABY IS A LEO: DRAMATIC, AMBITIOUS, AND CONFIDENT — Just as Leos are ruled by the sun, her debut album, Is This Intimate, burns bright and stings. Although Shybaby formed in 2016 and wrote the songs on the project years ago, the music carries the same punch that it did at conception.
Shybaby is Grace Eire, or maybe Eire is Shybaby. By day, Eire walks the streets of Brooklyn as a music publicist, stoic and calm. By night, she screams into microphones and throws herself onto the floors of venues and pubs as her alter ego, which is her own “permission to be ridiculous.”
“Shybaby Grace is the best Grace,” Eire says.
Is This Intimate is, as many women are in this lifetime, messy, toxic, and all-knowing, all in the best way. Shybaby confesses through fast tempos and gritty guitar her experiences that are worth screaming about: your partner leaving you alone at a party for an orgy, forgetting a hookup’s name the day after. Inspired by the recklessness of FIDLAR and the relentlessness of Blondie, each track is raucous and jaunty — Shybaby wants you to see the absurd, and Shybaby wants you to dance.
Continue reading below as Shybaby and Luna catch up about New York, Lewis Hamilton and what it took to make Is This Intimate.
LUNA: Shybaby's earliest project is from 2017. Where does Shybaby come from, and how did it begin?
SHYBABY: I'd always wanted to start a band since I was young, but I was too scared to do it or, more accurately, to fail at it. I grew up playing viola and that's what I figured I should stick to — I thought I was going to play professionally. I met Tess, who I started the band with, singing in an a cappella group I founded when I moved to New York in 2015 (the nerd shit runs deep with me). Together with her, I finally found the courage to just finally do it. We found Charlie, the OG drummer, on Craigslist, and he knew Ben, who played bass with me up until a few months ago. Now Tess has a kid upstate, Charlie is on tour playing drums with Enjoy, Siickbrain, and other cool people, and Ben is engaged. And I have Shybaby.
Shybaby’s different now, as I’ve sunken into it and understood what it is for me — and also as the lineup has changed and the personality dynamics follow. I’m happy where it is now and very excited to do more.
LUNA: Is New York an important place and idea to your music?
SHYBABY: I think New York has shown me that you really can just do stuff — do whatever the hell you want. Growing up in a smaller town in the most boring state in the country made doing anything seem pretty far-fetched and impossible, to me at least. When I moved here and saw people deciding to make a music video, deciding to put a bill together, deciding to go on tour... my brain exploded. I realized I could do all of that too, and people are too self-involved to really notice if you fail. I also have finally found myself in a position where I feel like I'm a part of a community — I can go to pretty much any show and run into someone I know and that I'm happy to see. I guess that would happen anywhere though if you've been there nine years.
LUNA: Seeing your live show and artist persona is completely different from seeing you day-to-day. What's your relationship to performance and public perception?
SHYBABY: I always say that Shybaby Grace is the best Grace. We're definitely two different people. I feel most myself when I'm yelling into a microphone in my underwear on a sticky floor. I don't know, it's where I've given myself permission to say what I need to say, to be seen, to take up space. In normal life, I don't feel like I have that available to me. I'm working on that with my therapist (hi, Patrice).
LUNA: "Kiki doesn’t like it when you leave me at the party" as an opener fucking rocks. You mention polyamory and non-monogamy in this song. What's your experience with those two?
SHYBABY: “Kiki” and “Greenlight" are about the same person, “Greenlight” being the beginning of it and “Kiki” the end. I liked that this person liked me and … was communicative with me more than I liked this person. The situation wasn't at all for me but I thought I could adjust my needs to meet his. Obviously, it turned out pretty badly for me and I ended up crying on the L to my friend Kiki, who really didn't like it when he left me at a party we were at together to go to an orgy with another one of his partners. But if it works for you or anyone else, then awesome! I'm a Leo, though, and I just have a lot of love to give and kinda want someone to myself.
LUNA: With "Skype Sex 2013," how early were you on the internet? What was your experience like on the internet?
SHYBABY: I was on Tinder since it started in 2012, when I moved to Chicago after college. I have always had a hard time telling people how I feel about them or believing that they'd feel a certain way about me, so it was pretty nice at first to have that confirmation that they thought I was cute before we met. Seeing as I'm still on the apps (not Tinder — I'm banned??? I still don't know why) 12 years later, it's not going great (laughs). Waiting for Lewis Hamilton to like me back on Raya.
LUNA: My favorite songs are the ones at the end — these are probably the sadder ones compared to the beginning of the album (like "Sorry,” "Drug Dealer,” and "O Baby”). Anything you can tell me about them?
SHYBABY: "Sorry" I wrote for Tess when she told me I was being stupid one time. I'm aware of the dumb things I do but fixing them is easier said than done. Such is life.
"Drug Dealer" is kind of where I start to take responsibility for what's going on through all of the rest of it. If I don't say what I need, if I try to bend to what other people want, if I try to infer and assume instead of doing what's good for me, it's going to not only be a bad time for me — it's gonna be a bad time for everyone. That was also recorded all live in one take with nothing overdubbed, and we'd just learned it a little bit before recording. It was the last thing we tracked after many hours. I messed up the words in one spot, and we kinda trip over a few spots, but I love those bits. It's messy just like it was messy getting kicked out of someone's house at 3 a.m.
"O Baby" is a Tess song (she wrote the lyrics for and performed lead vox on "O Baby," "Roebling," and "Huevo Sin Sal") about a friend who called from prison. I kept Tess' songs on the album (with her permission) because we wrote the music together, and because it's a part of that time we were creating together! And I still really love her songs.
They're all pretty sad songs, but those are the ones where sonically it goes to that space. It's more fun to not be sad!
LUNA: In a PAPER interview, you said that you write these songs as initial thoughts come to you. When they become songs, where does the thought go? Do you continue to dwell? Does turning them into songs make them disappear?
SHYBABY: I've been dwelling on the shit in these songs since I wrote them. Anyone who knows me will tell you I tend to overthink and to turn things over until they're long past dead. I still think about these people the songs are about pretty often (some more than others, and with varying changed perspectives — but think about them, and who and why I was with them, nonetheless), but now that it's finally out, honestly, I feel free from them.
LUNA: When did you decide that Is This Intimate was ready to be out in the world?
SHYBABY: I'm a music publicist during the daytime, so I've been putting it off for a long time because the time was never right. My publicist brain kept telling me to wait until I could do it with the perfect rollout, or until I could put together a whole team. But nothing's ever going to be perfect, and I can always do it again, better. I can write [and] have been writing more songs and I'm dying to move on and get going on the new music and to play more live with the current band. We’ve evolved since this record! I actually ended up not even pitching the album around to anyone until the day before (sorry, Aleah!) because I wanted to prioritize my clients, and it's really busy right now. I guess that’s still me not sure about how much space I can take up, but I can do it better next time.
