REMI WOLF
Remi Wolf is this year's breakout act in “funky, wacky pop” — as she calls it. The California-native is following up her 2019 release You’re A Dog! with her new EP I’m Allergic To Dogs! dropping today, June 24. So far, three singles from the EP have been released: “Woo!”, “Photo ID”, and “Disco Man”; she sat down with Bridgette to give everyone a taste of what’s in store on the full EP.
Interview
Interview by Bridgette
June 24, 2020
Hey, this is Bridgette and today I’m sitting down with Remi Wolf whose EP I’m Allergic to Dogs is out tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by, Remi!
Thanks for having me, everybody! (laughs) Hi! (laughs)
It’s super awesome that you have your EP coming out tomorrow and so far you’ve released three singles from it: “Woo!”, “Photo ID”, and “Disco Man.” They’ve all been really awesome and they’ve all gotten some great attention. What was the process of making this EP like? Did quarantine have any effect on it?
Quarantine had no effect on the actual music. I think most of the music I actually created last year in the summer and the fall, kind of bouncing around houses and make-shift studios around Los Angeles and, actually, up and down the coast of California. Yeah, we would just— me and my co-producer Solomonophonic— would just set up studios in living rooms or bedrooms, wherever we were, and record. The only thing that has really been impacted by quarantine is the music video making process of everything, so most of my visuals have been created in quarantine either with a greenscreen or with 3D scanning and 3D animation and a lot of Zoom calls. (laughs)
Yeah, I feel like that matches your aesthetic so well, though. I think it definitely goes well with your vibe.
Thank you.
So that's kind of an upside.
No, yeah, it’s worked out really well. I’m really excited about how everything came together. It was really shocking that it came together so well. (laughs)
(laughs) Yeah, everything felt like the world was ending, but you were like “oh! This is working, we’re doing it!”
Yeah.
So you said co-producer: what's your process of working with people like when you usually make music?
Well with Jared— we do most things together— we kind of just get into the studio, lay down some synths or guitar or jam out on something for a second, and just start writing. The process is normally really quick between us; we have known each other for so long that— I don’t know, it just kind of works. I don’t know, the song just kind of comes out really quickly most of the time. Like normally we are done within 2 hours.
Wow, that’s incredible.
Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe the process. With us it's like a really specific process. When I’m working with other people, I feel like sometimes I’m a lot more anxious or just like—
More out of your comfort zone?
Yeah, it gets me out of my comfort zone a little more which I think sometimes really lends itself to the music and sometimes it really doesn’t. So I’ve had sessions where it’ll crash and burn and I’m just like “I think I’m gonna go home.” (laughs) And then I’ve had some sessions that really work out super well, like “Disco Man” was written with two other writers and they are just so talented and super awesome. They all made me feel really comfortable and we just wrote a great song. So it’s kind of a hit or a miss sometimes, but with Jared normally we end up getting something pretty good.
Awesome! Is there a track off of the EP that really just came together so perfectly, or that you just loved the way it came together?
Yeah I think— I mean I really like all of them. I love all of them, they’re all my babies. But I think “Woo!”, which was the first single I released, came together so quickly and with such catharsis in the writing process and in the room, I just kind of spewed it out. Like literally, it was so fast. And we probably put like three hours of work into it and were like “wow, this is… this is done.” (laughs) That’s always the best feeling: when you write a song and it comes out so naturally. It normally means it's good in my (laughs) personal experience. But yeah, all of them— I remember writing every single one and I’m attached to all of them emotionally, so it's hard to choose.
Of course, but that’s great. I guess it shows it’s really coming from an authentic place inside of you which is so awesome.
Yeah.
I know you mentioned a while back that you were considering maybe singing in Spanish. Is that something that we can look forward to in the EP or later on at some point?
Not on the EP, but I would love to dabble in that. I’ve been speaking Spanish since I was really young. I was in Spanish immersion schooling all throughout my life so I’ve been speaking pretty fluently for a really long time, and I love singing in Spanish. Some of my favorite songs when I was in middle school were Ricky Martin songs and Juanes songs. (laughs) Me and my friends would make dances to them and perform them in class, which was really… uh yeah, that was pretty weird of us, but (laughs) yeah, I definitely want to start doing that and writing in Spanish and just exploring that language a little more.
Totally, the romance languages lend themselves so well to music, I feel. Also, that’s not weird at all. In my spanish classes in high school, we used to make music videos to Juanes songs. (laughs) I was in high school, so don’t even worry.
Dude yeah, maybe it was just a thing that we all did! (laughs)
Like a universal thing we all felt. Maybe! Maybe some people will hear this and be like “yeah I did that too.” Hopefully. (laughs) So the EP is called I’m Allergic To Dogs! You sort of have a dog motif with the names of all of your EPs. Where did that come from?
I do. It started off as a joke between me and myself (laughs) where I thought it was super funny to say cows are dogs, and I was just like, “oh dogs are just like this universal animal. Every animal is a dog and every dog is another animal.” It was just this really weird mental process I had going on and it kind of just evolved into “you’re a dog!” And I would say that to people and it just kind of stuck. I don’t know, there have been a lot of dogs recently, in the past couple years, in and out of my life— a lot of dog moments. My family’s childhood dog passed away, which was a big moment. But I don’t know, there’s just been a lot more dog stuff happening and it kind of just made its way into my system. (laughs) And then I bought a dog, and now I have a dog who I am allergic to, but I love him so much. (laughs)
So that’s where it came from! That makes sense.
Yeah, does it? I guess so! (laughs)
(Laughs) So you have this release party that’s a drive-in benefit show— that’s super cool! I love that you’re able to adjust for the times, that’s super fun. What are you looking forward to about that?
Yeah, it’s going to be crazy. The entire show is going to be broadcasted into the car radios, so you tune into the radio station and hear the set, which is something I’ve never really seen before at all. I think it’s going to be a really unique experience for everybody and hopefully really memorable, in a good way. I’m super pumped just to perform because I miss it a lot and I had so many shows cancelled this year that it’s just going to feel good to release pent up energy (laughs) and scream a little bit, you know.
In front of a ton of people.
Yeah, cars. I feel like it’s going to look like a graveyard— it’s going to be creepy. I think I’m going to feel like it’s a creepy situation, like a horror movie type of vibe just because it’s going to be so silent, but I’m excited for that.
Yeah! I mean that’s a pretty unique experience I think. It’s cool that you can do that in LA because even in New York, I was thinking that’s such a great idea, but we don’t really have the space in New York for something like that. I feel like that’s such a good use of the space.
Yeah we have so much space in LA. So many parking lots here. I hope it’s going to go super well. If it goes super well, hopefully it opens up drive-ins as an opportunity for a lot more artists to start exploring.
Yeah I think it will! So you were saying you were really looking forward to screaming and getting that energy out. How do you usually get hyped up before a show? Do you have any specific pre-show rituals?
I change my outfit into something a little too hot, normally (laughs) like I’m sweating on stage. And then I take a shot of whiskey, maybe sing a little bit. Honestly, the shot of whiskey is the main ritual that I have going on. (laughs)
That’s the one thing that has to stay. (laughs) Why whiskey of all drinks?
It’s good for your vocal cords… it’s “good” for your vocal cords (laughs) it’s one of the better alcohol for your vocal cords. I think that might be a bit of a fable. What’s it called? Legend?
A tall tale? (laughs) Well whatever works! If it works for you don’t change it.
It works. And it has to be Jameson. That’s pretty much all I do, honestly. (laughs)
Well there! I mean like I said, if it works for you don’t change it.
Yeah, I probably won’t change it for a while. (laughs)
So you’ve been making music for a while now, and now you’re really hitting it full force with the EP release and doing a lot of shows. Is there a difference between how you’re pursuing music now versus how you were maybe when you were younger, kind of working up to this point?
Yeah I mean I think I’ve always been pursuing music at a pretty serious level, at least in my head. I’ve always had the goal of making music my career; it’s the only thing I wanted to do or have ever thought I could do on a professional level. I think the main thing that has changed between my high school years and now is just my persistence in songwriting and my persistence in bettering myself as an artist everyday and actively doing things to, in my mind, make myself a more open person. Yeah, just improving my artistry and really trying to work through what I want, what I want to do, and what I want to say. I guess it’s a little bit more intentional now than it’s ever been. But I think my passion and my intensity has always been there, you know?
Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think that there was a turning point for you where you gained this persistence? Or did it just come to you as you grew up?
Well, I went to school for music, and I think that being surrounded by so many talented people all the time really gave me this drive to keep up, you know? Some of my classmates were incredible songwriters, incredible artists, and I wanted to be like them— be as good, push myself to be better. And I don’t know, I think I have some competitiveness in me. I feel like I’m naturally a really competitive person, like I used to be a really competitive athlete and it’s just kind of carried (laughs) with me.
Carried over into other aspects of your life, yeah.
Yeah, so I think that that has something to do with how much I really put into it, you know? Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know, but it’s true. (laughs)
I think that’s a good thing though, because you can’t really teach competitiveness or persistence, you just have to have it.
Yeah. I guess that could be true, yeah.
I have to ask about “Shawty” because that’s the song that, when I first heard it I was just floored. I was like, ‘this is such a perfect song.’ As a listener, that was when I was like ‘Oh my gosh, who is this? I need to know every song they’ve made’. Did you view that as the song that would breakout? What was the process of that song like?
So I wrote that song in a garage with my friend Danny and also Jared, who I was talking about earlier. It was another one that came together really quickly. Literally the entire vocal of that song is one take, it was super fast. We barely edited it— that was another one where it was like ‘this is good’ because it came together so quickly. But I mean, definitely while writing it we were not like “oh my God, let’s write a hit today!”, we were just like “let’s write a song.” (laughs) And yeah, it just happened to be one that people really resonate with, which is super sick. Yeah, “Shawty”.
Love it. And what I love about that song is that it’s not really one genre: there are just so many different sounds in it. How would you describe your style, your approach, your sound?
I would say “funky, wacky pop.” (laughs)
That’s so perfect, I love that. Do you have any inspirations that have been important in your musical journey?
Yeah, I love Erykah Badu, I love Chaka Khan. I love The Doobie Brothers and Marvin Gaye, he’s a big inspiration for me. Joni Mitchell, Prince, John Mayer— he’s a big one. There’s a lot of them.
Very savvy choices. Thank you so much, again, for sitting down with me and talking about your new EP “I’m Allergic to Dogs!” that’s out tomorrow, which is super exciting. Is there anything else you’re looking forward to, besides that release? Or anything you want to share for the people who are listening?
I am looking forward to eating lunch. Maybe I’ll get some sushi for lunch. (laughs)
Yay! (laughs) We can all eat sushi and bump the EP together.
Exactly! Everybody eat sushi tomorrow and listen to my EP. (laughs)
Great! Well thank you, again, for sitting down with me, this was super fun!
Yeah, thank you for having me!
This interview originally aired on WNYU Radio with Bridgette Kontner on June 23, 2020 on The Sound Between at wnyu.org/archives/2020-06-23-the-sound-between