Q&A: Carol Ades’s ‘Worst Person In The World’ Vocalizes the Complex Process of Self-Love
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD IS WHERE THE INTRICACIES OF GIRLHOOD AND SELF-REFLECTION MEET—Through candid songwriting, Carol Ades approaches feelings every girl has felt with a mix of humor and sadness. At times theatrical and dramatic, Ades captures self-awareness in a time capsule—showing that it does get better.
Ades is a New Jersey-born, Los Angeles-based musician that began her career with songwriting for popular pop stars. She began releasing her own music five years ago, where her talent for intimate and honest lyricism combines with catchy indie-pop melodies. Her debut album Late Start was released in 2024, now she’s heading towards new yet familiar horizons with Worst Person In The World.
The title track begins with a duality that is at the core of the project: self-hatred and a God complex. Her balanced tone between serious thoughts and humorous lines, such as “I’m right on the brink of taking the kitchen scissors and cutting my hair,” show how deep a spiral can feel in the moment, compared to how unserious it seems in hindsight.
Moving onto “Familiar Hell,” the production combines violin strings and a kick that makes for a theatrical yet lively atmosphere. The lyrical approach to going in circles and repeating patterns, as well as denying your own involvement in your misery, builds an emotional dimension. “Merry Go Round” deals with the repetition of actions in a much decisive way. With a heavy guitar and drums, Ades ventures into indie-rock as her desire for a change takes the front seat.
It isn’t all about the sadness and desperation with one’s state of mind. “That’s My Girl” shows the beauty of falling in love with someone, and how the emotion can remind you there’s happiness waiting if you look closer. “Normal Feelings” is a stripped-back, acoustic guitar lead track that accepts the process of going through common feelings. The song has the advantage of offering grace after the self-hatred that ruled within, while highlighting the hopeful times of the present.
The project concludes with a full circle moment on “Turns Out I’m Amazing.” Going from “Worst Person In The World” to this closing track shows a chronological development in the thought process of learning to lean into the hope and self-love that is right there for you to grasp. Ades leaves the listener with an anthem that doubles as a mantra for kindness towards your own self.
LUNA: How would you say that this project differs from Late Start?
ADES: Late Start was the first project I ever put out. It definitely took longer. I wanted for the EP to feel a little bit more playful. I was going through bigger themes on Late Start. The EP felt a little bit more isolated. I wanted to go a little bit more pop with it, but they feel like they feel like cousins.
LUNA: Where do you find inspiration outside of music?
ADES: Oh my gosh, everywhere. I think everything else is more inspiring than music. I think it's so funny, because I love making music. It's the right medium for me, singing and writing—but I've never been a big music listener. I find inspiration in movies, TV shows, books, decorating my house, looking on Pinterest. Thinking about my own life and writing about my own life, a little bit of everywhere.
LUNA: “Familiar Hell” has such vulnerable and honest lyrics. Take me through your writing process.
ADES: Well, it's different every time. Some of the songs on the album I had the titles, and then I worked from there. Some of them, we were just trying to write something, me and my friends, and I was beating myself up so hard trying to make it something great that then this song just became about how frustrating it is. It was meta for a lot of these songs in that way, but usually I just sing a bunch of melodies, then I usually know when it's the right thing. It's a practice of really trusting yourself.
When you're writing or you're in a conversation, you know when something is special and right. You don't really know why you know, but you do. It's years of practicing trusting that voice, so I know when I have it and I know when I don't. For this EP, we took a lot more time to go back over ideas whereas in the past I would be like, “Oh, well, we have it or we don't.” Like, it has to be finished from the moment we start. When we end it, it has to be there. This time we went back and sort of edited things which was different and I hated that. I'm never doing that again.
LUNA: There's a lyric in “Familiar Hell” that says, “I could be truly anything, and that's just too much to ask.” If you weren't a musician, what would you be?
ADES: I wake up every day hoping and praying that I want to be something else. Literally the other day, I woke up and I was like, “Oh my gosh, maybe today's the day I'm interested in some weird niche,” and then I'll spend the rest of my life just researching this thing in a tiny hut far away from everything. I think that's where it comes from. I want to do so much. A lot of us feel like that. You fall into a certain path and you have certain interests and things you're good at, and things you're curious about, and then when you make a career out of it and assign goals and dreams to it, sometimes it can lose its magic. I always have to remind myself that I can do anything. No one is holding me hostage to do anything, I could go out and be anyone I want in the world, and try all these different things, but then I get so overwhelmed. I'm like, “Oh my God, wait, I changed my mind.”
LUNA: “Merry Go Round” has such a heavy drum production, it really stands out. Would you like to explore a heavier genre, such as rock?
ADES: I’m thinking about what I want to make next and taking my time figuring out what I want to return to and what I want to do. I grew up on Avril Lavigne and that world, and I think it's so magical. Naturally, I lean a lot that way when I'm writing the songs, even “26” has a little bit of that. That's definitely a part of me. I have a few songs that already live there. I'm thinking about maybe fully going there next.
LUNA: “Normal Feelings” lists a bunch of normal feelings. What is your favorite lyric on it?
ADES: I am sure someone has said this before, I don’t think any of us are necessarily creating original thoughts. These are not original thoughts, but I love in the chorus the line, “I'm gonna have to kill you if you ever die.” I love the way it makes me feel. It feels really sweet. But all the lyrics are little bits of my life, like dating boys with heroin addictions and trying to convince my parents that this is a good path for me.
LUNA: Most of the songs are about your thoughts or self development, except “That's My Girl” which talks about someone else. How does that fit along with the other songs in the project?
ADES: Initially, I had written that song with my friends, and we just loved the way it felt. It felt really fun and coming of age. That one was also taking a little hint from “Dreams” on Late Start, and I wanted a little moment of levity on the project too. I think there are elements to “That's My Girl” that are still quite obsessive and answer seeking. If the EP is this short journey of… it starts with “I'm the fucking worst, and I just cannot get out of my own way.” Then you land at this calmer, coming of age that's like, “Turns out I'm amazing.” The beginning feels really self deprecating and trying to pull yourself out of these spiraling feelings, then “That’s My Girl” is inching towards, “Actually, I have everything I want. Maybe this hot girl that I just met is the solution to all my problems, and I'm going to put them on somebody else.” I think it still fits in the world, but it's fun. It feels really cute and like it belongs in a 2000s movie, which is definitely a part of my world.
LUNA: Which romcom or coming of age movie would it be part of if you could have it on the soundtrack?
ADES: Such a good question. I feel like what's coming to mind is Clueless. It's a little bit ditsy. A romcom that's a little bit lighter and sillier. The movies I tend to watch have a darker undertone, like Lady Bird, or The Worst Person In The World, or Perks of Being a Wallflower, are some of my favorite coming of age movies. “That's My Girl” feels a little bit more like, “We're entering into a semi delusional new world, and we're taking a break from all the heaviness.”
LUNA: Was there a track on the EP that you were doubtful about putting on the project?
ADES: “Normal Feelings.” We just had such a hard time with the production, we ended up going back to the first day of writing it, demo production with the guitar. I think it's hard sometimes with a smaller project, because you want it to feel cohesive but you don't want every song to sound the same. Sometimes it can feel like there's limits to how far you can explore sound. When you have a twelve-track album, there's a little bit more room to stretch and build your way from one world to another. I just love this song and I think it deserved to come out. That one was so frustrating, because when we were working on it had a totally different sound. It was a little bit more in the vein of “Worst Person In The World” with the piano and more theatrical. I was getting in my head about it. I was like, ‘I want it to be cool.’ And then I was just like, “What does that even mean? Get over it. Let it be what it is.”
LUNA: The music video for “Turns Out I'm Amazing” feels very emotional. What did you intend to express with it?
ADES: I wanted it to feel really scrappy. We had no budget, it had to be scrappy, but the song came from such a genuine place. I really wanted the video to feel genuine and well made. I kept having visions of my nana in my outfit. We were over there for Christmas. She lives in Vermont, these rural mountains in Vermont, and I told her about the idea. I was like, “Would you want to put on my dress and just dance around?” It was so beautiful watching her see herself as younger. Realizing that she carries every version of her she's ever been everywhere she goes as well. It just felt like, “She is me, and I am her, and you are you, and we are us,” which can feel so corny sometimes. When you can come across that feeling in a really genuine way. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous she is. I feel like it perfectly encapsulated the feelings of the song, which is that anyone is at risk of forgetting that. Everyone is going through life trying to navigate who they were yesterday and who they are today and who they will be tomorrow. It is so hard to be kind to yourself sometimes, really believe in yourself out loud. It was so beautiful to see her version of that.
LUNA: Where do you picture yourself, or where do you hope you will be, in a few years?
ADES: Honestly, right now, I'm kind of in a funny spot trying to separate from this EP and think of the big picture of where I want to be. When I was younger, maybe my motivation was that I really wanted to be seen and famous. As I've gotten older, I've healed a lot of that in myself and so the desire to be the biggest and brightest and best and all of those things has annoyingly gone away, and now I'm having to figure it out all over again. Okay, what's my relationship to this thing? What kind of music do I want to make? I want to continuously impress myself. In an ideal world I'm getting to play bigger shows with more opportunities and build bigger worlds but I also really want to, in a few years from now, have carved my own path.
I've always seen that for myself. Sometimes I get frustrated that it's not happening as fast, or the growth isn't happening in the same way that it has for other people, or my path looks different than other people's. I'm trying to figure out what that really means. I don't think it's a typical pop star path. I want to do something a little bit different, maybe bring a little bit of theater and different performance into my world. So I have no idea, but I did see a psychic and she said that everything I want is going to happen to me in this next period of my life, and that makes so much sense to me. I'm ready.
