Q&A: Caitlin Starr is Racing Toward the Crash on “Speed Saves”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Lauren Davis
“SPEED KILLS, BE CAREFUL” — is the phrase that Caitlin Starr was warned about. But for Starr, speed has never been so easy to leave behind. Her lifestyle has always been fast: long hours, multiple jobs, constant motion, racing across the city, chasing the next thing before the last one has even had time to settle. Speed became less of a danger to avoid and more of a means of survival.
On her upcoming EP, Speed Saves, Starr turns that contradiction into the project’s heart. Riffing on the familiar phrases “Jesus saves” and “speed kills,” the title transforms speed into something almost devotional. Across five tracks, Starr examines the relationship she has developed with momentum. For Starr, speed can feel like freedom, but it can also become its own cage.
That tension comes sharply into focus on “Cage,” the EP’s latest single about breaking free from the circumstances that keep us trapped. The song takes aim at societal expectations, beauty standards and systems of control, questioning who truly benefits from the structures that demand so much from us.
Aggressive, metallic guitar grinds against Starr’s melodic vocals before pounding drums propel the track into harder rock territory, with Starr delivering its chorus through clenched teeth: “If you want violence, try it; it gets me off.”
The “Cage” music video was directed by Villacortabuer, and it underscores the fast-paced sleek, and playful world of Speed Saves. "It's a typical night in Caitlin Starr's life," Starr says, who begins the video bathed under neon lights and literally put in a cage.
“The song asks who benefits from societal expectations, beauty standards, and systems of control, questioning whether anyone wins, even those who profit from subjugation,” Starr says. "It’s a call to fight back and reclaim agency by owning your story and who you are. It's perfect for the moment you decide to break out."
For Starr, those crashes are part of the story. But Starr's Speed Saves asks a more complicated question: What happens when the thing you're warned about is also the thing that keeps you going?
Tommy Krause
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
CAITLIN: When I'm writing, I'm not thinking too much about style. It's a mix of everything I've been listening to, but definitely years of all the different types of music that I've come into contact with such as jazz piano, grunge and hardcore. It all comes together.
LUNA: You are about to release your upcoming EP Speed Saves. What inspired the project and where did the idea of “Speed Saves” first come from
CAITLIN: I would tell people about what I was doing that day or this or that, and then they'd be like, “speed kills, be careful.” I'm always biking through cars really fast or not sleeping for days. I just thought of speed saves because it feels like you have to do that, especially in New York City. You have to be moving so fast all the time, and I think a lot of us feel that way too because of the pace of life, so it's a clap back. All the songs on the EP, those were the ones that felt the most true to me, out of the ones that my band was playing at the time. It all came together.
LUNA: The record explores the idea that constantly moving — working long hours, juggling multiple jobs, chasing validation — can feel like a form of survival. What did “speed” represent for you personally during the period when these songs were written?
CAITLIN: It's giving speed. I just grew up with such a fast pace, and so the only way that I know how to be okay is to just always be chasing that speed. There have been times, especially at the start of the process of writing and making all this music, where I've definitely lost my speed and was very bogged down by depression and all these different things. I’m back to feeling like myself to some degree and back out in the world by embracing throwing myself back into it. I don't know if I recommend that to everybody.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Speed Saves — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Caitlin Starr is right now?
CAITLIN: Honestly, I relate to them all in different moments, but probably “Caged” and “Piece of Clay” for sure. It also feels really good to be relating to songs that I'm putting out because I feel like sometimes you can record songs and then the timing between recording and releasing, and then you don't feel connected to it anymore. It feels like those songs feel very true to me right now, especially “Piece of Clay.” That is just always continuing, and maybe I will figure out the answer to that, but I don't know. I'm very excited for that to come out.
LUNA: You describe “Cage” as a song about the “cages of late-stage capitalism.” What does that phrase mean to you personally, and what forms can those cages take in everyday life?
CAITLIN: There's a whole bunch of different ones, but really for me, it's relating to my experiences with body dysmorphia and being bipolar, seeking all these labels that did keep me really trapped for a long time. It made me feel like I had to hide a lot, either hiding physically or hiding who I am and all these things. The chorus is, “If you want violence, try it.” My friend Amy, who's a total baddie, and she's in this band called Adult Human Females, she was talking with her band about how the government was coming down really hard on HRT and hormones. A lot of my friends are wonderful trans women, and they were talking about how they had to face so many different things. Sometimes if you keep bouncing back, it makes you stronger and cuntier. It was really dope. That's where the whole “If you want violence, try it” line comes from.
LUNA: The “Cage” music video literally places you in a cage before sending you on an escape mission. What inspired the video and how was your experience filming it?
CAITLIN: It was so cute. All these videos are just of me and my homegirls. I live at a house venue in Brooklyn, and we watch a lot of movies. We had been on this kick of watching Hackers and a bunch of like 90s Czech fantasy movies. I've always been a fan of Arkham City, just watching my brothers play it when I was angry or something. I just remember being like, “Damn, I want this video to embody like that.” The song is redemption core, and going back and doing all the things that I've been doing. Watching all those movies, the idea came together. I wanted to be caged in different scenarios. It was awesome. I feel like the vibe of the song while shooting the video, I definitely was fighting some cages, but I was having to go out of my comfort zone a lot, and I think it comes through in the video.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
CAITLIN: All these songs and all of my music are so related to my experience of being a woman and like a lesbian. Every group of people has to deal with extra things — if you're a woman, if you're queer, if you're a person of color — I feel like every one of those groups have certain things that they have to deal with every single day. Being in a woman's body, since you're younger, depending on your upbringing, it was incessantly taught that your body is your worst enemy in many ways, and not a lot of days go by where you're not having to think about just how you're perceived and what you're putting in your body affects how you look instead of maybe having energy.
Of course, the whole being queer part of it, I wanted the song for the first single to be a fun, hot, gay, queer anthem. There's so many things that groups will have to deal with, but that are additional and to the things that they have to fight back against. I grew up in New York and I got to be in this really epic queer community that I'm in now and the girls that have changed my life so much. I wanted to share that. The message to those people out there, people that maybe don't have that where they are, is that it does exist, and it's so epic once you find your people that make you feel seen.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new era of your career?
CAITLIN: I'm just surrounded right now by such baddie artists and women. They definitely inspire me. Everything they're working on and all the new music that's coming out. I feel really compelled to share the message of this EP right now, and it really is my truth. I've poured all the things that I've been struggling with into this. It means a lot to me to share all those feelings because I'm not always the best at sharing them through words.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
CAITLIN: At this moment, I'm pretty sleep deprived, but we out here. I'm going to play guitar for Comet. We played on bills together in the scene, and she was looking for a player, and I loved her music, and so that was really exciting. Yesterday, I put together this pedal board makeshift in my basement center video stuff. We have this release show we're putting on in the skate park in a warehouse.
