Spotlight: Inside Celia Inside's Creative Process: A Blossoming, Multi-Layered Artist

 

☆ By Marilù Ciabattoni ☆

 
 

“TEST, TEST, TEST — Oookay, let’s do it.” This is how New York-based artist Celia Inside begins her first audio response to one of nine questions in our interview.

I first got in touch with Celia to review her track “She Don’t,” for which she recently released a music video, on my blog, Art Kills. Her latest EP, I Insist, saw the light last August, and is the most recent installment of a series of independent projects Celia has released in the past few years.

Though I likened her to Kehlani at first, Celia’s art doesn’t need comparisons. An artist and “blossoming producer” — what a lovely way of saying “emerging” — she has a lot going for her. On top of her non-music-related day job, Celia runs a music blog called Iridescent Wave, featuring primarily women and queer people of color. Last but not least, Celia has been making music for 10 years.

From her email responses to my questions, I can tell she’s a former radio show host: her voice is as fluid as her rapping, and she talks without hesitation — the kind of voice you would gladly listen to.

Let’s do it, I repeat in my head.

Originally from Massachusetts, Celia used to play the guitar and sing background vocals for Boston-based indie-pop band Miss Geo. Other band members saw potential in the self-taught singer and decided to give her a chance.

Inspired by “unapologetically queer” artists such as Kehlani (my initial guess was right then) and Charli XCX, she also draws from childhood influences to compose her music — Mariah Carey, Brandy, and Aaliyah, among others, were constantly in her CD player.

Although learning new technical skills (like color-grading music videos, for instance) might be frustrating at times, Celia always keeps her bigger vision in mind, the “why” she’s doing what started it all. Creators like herself, she believes, have a passion for “doing something,” and sticking to these creative things is the key to finding professional success.

“I don’t wanna give up,” she admits. “But if I gave up, I would be sad that I wasn’t singing anymore. I need it. I need it to get through every day.”

To Celia, building layers of vocals comes naturally, to create a sense of fullness with her harmonies. A fan of hip-hop since childhood, the way she usually builds a complex net of sounds is actually very simple: while hearing an instrumental, Celia might hear herself sing over it and experiment with a rap flow.

This tendency comes out in her very first projects: Remodel (2016), TKO (2017), Covers (2020), and Call Me (2021). In her self-produced collection of covers, she wanted to honor artists such as Frank Ocean, Paramore, Rosalía, Amy Winehouse, and Steve Lacy while at the same time experiment with different keys and vocal combinations.

“I’m still learning my voice after all this time,” she reflects.

Her latest project, I Insist, produced by ayelookitsbrady and XPat, was written during the pandemic, and it ironically features emotionally lighter songs compared to her previous ones. Celia is proud of bringing out a brighter side of herself during such a dark time, making her music more accessible. She also believes the actual quality of the melody, story, and songwriting got better as she became more versatile. Compared to her first indie-rock EP, her style has changed a lot.

The three songs featured on the project, “She Don’t,” “No Attachments (You),” and “I Insist,” all tackle the same topics, in a way. Inspired by the people Celia is surrounded by, she mixes reality and fiction in her storytelling, wishing to uplift others with her bright approach to this new set of songs.

With so many projects going on, is there anything Celia can’t do? According to her, she still hasn’t fully challenged herself with music production. She would live to improve until her skills are “caught up with everything else,” meaning at the same level as her singing and songwriting, quality-wise.

Looking at the future, it’s no coincidence that she mentions Charli XCX among her influences — Celia would love to dip her toes into something more electronic and experimental, such as the dance-pop music of the likes of Rina Sawayama and Bayli. And who knows, maybe someday she’ll be featured on one of Charli’s tracks.

Celia sees herself in the future with another handful of successful releases reaching more people, more live performances under her belt, more self-produced tracks (what she calls her “self-produced era”), and more content on and off social media that is true to herself.

“And I wanna do more cool interviews like this,” she ends her last audio. 

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