It seems like you’ve found two people who get you in Jorge and Tamaryn, who you’ve been working with on the album. What has it been like to work with them? They worked on the whole record with you, right?
They’ve worked on a lot of it, for sure. There’s some other stuff that hopefully I’m doing with Ariel Rechtshaid that we started years ago, and then we’re going to do some new stuff. But Ariel is like the busiest person on earth now, so it’s just a matter of us getting enough time to properly do it. But there’s some songs with Ariel — and I know people think it’s songs they’ve heard, but there’s some that they haven’t. Jorge is in my band right now, he’s going on my tour with me. We have a really good dynamic. He’s the most ideal producer to work with — not to be like, “Oh, you know, that works with women.” But it’s hard to get producers at a certain point, especially when you’re starting out, to take you seriously as a producer. That’s the thing about producing as a female, because they say, “It must be a vanity thing,” as if these male producers, some of them aren’t vanity things. But God forbid an artist puts their name on something. You collaborate with someone and people assume you don’t do any of it. I’ve had to hammer it into people that I also produce my stuff, and they still don’t believe it. He’s not trying to coddle you while doing it or something. He really does listen. And he has good taste. And Tamaryn, she’s one of my favorite songwriters and I’ve always wanted to work with her. I think she’s an important artist too. She writes such interesting, cool pop songs for herself. Our music’s different, and it still sounds like me, but she got me. It’s cool because I’ve never really been able to work with many women before too.
You mentioned touring. I know you have a few shows booked for this summer in Europe; do you mean just that, or is there —
There’s going to be more shows. They’re just not announced. I think there’s a date thing that they’re figuring out. Because also, I’m going to be finishing the record at the same time, and I don’t want to — that’s the whole thing, too. I mean, a lot of it’s written. I don’t want people thinking I haven’t started the album or something. A lot of it’s done. It’s just more mixing, rerecording certain parts, changing certain lyrics. It’s little details. Hopefully it doesn’t feel like I’m on the clock, like on a Japanese game show. Like, Okay, you have one session and you have to write three songs or else you’re not going to be able to have things covered for two years. I would like to be able to do that without that weighing me down. But maybe it will just be these songs.
