Q&A: Clairice Delivers Unfiltered, Emotional Lollapalooza Performance
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Audrey Hertel
RADICAL SOFTNESS TAKES CENTER STAGE — Rising Chicago artist Clairice made a stunning debut at Lollapalooza 2025, gracing the Chicago Made stage with a performance that was as raw as it was radiant. With her luminous debut EP Patient On Me newly released, Clairice used the opportunity to showcase a softer, more sensual side of the city’s music scene, performing a set rooted in vulnerability, desire, and the radical power of emotional honesty.
Clairice proves that tenderness isn’t just vulnerability—it’s power. Blending alt-pop and R&B with poetic clarity and raw emotional honesty, the result is a fearless, sensual exploration of emotional chaos, one that offers softness not as something to be hidden or apologized for, but as a source of strength, femininity and radical freedom.
Clairice’s Lolla performance felt like a reclamation. A reclamation of agency, desire, and of feelings once buried under the weight of societal expectations. It was a moment of collective catharsis, and Clairice stood at its center, completely unfiltered.
“I think that feminine power looks like radical acceptance to me,” she says to Luna. “That's really what the music is about—me accepting the parts of myself that are sometimes a little bit more difficult for me to accept due to societal pressures, or previous experiences where I've been in a situation and someone said I was too much.”
Patient On Me arrives on the heels of a breakthrough year for Clairice. After winning the prestigious Chicago Made Showcase competition in the fall, she earned a coveted slot at Lollapalooza 2025, taking the stage as part of the Chicago Made lineup on Thursday, July 31. Her performance showed a rare softness to the festival’s energy. As fans danced and sang along, Clairice brought a feminine, emotional depth to the local lineup.
With her breakout performance and a debut EP that refuses to hide, Clairice is rewriting what it means to take up space.
Following her standout Lollapalooza debut on the Chicago Made stage, Luna caught up with Clairice to reflect on the response to her fearless debut EP Patient On Me, how she prepared for her performance and what feminine power looks and feels like to her.
LUNA: Welcome back and thank you for talking to Luna again. It's super exciting to have you back since the last time we talked about your debut EP Patient On Me. I would love to catch up and see how life has been treating you and what have you been up to since the last time we talked.
CLAIRICE: We’ve pretty much been hitting the ground running, because we had the EP release show at Sleeping Village, which ended up being amazing and way better than I thought it was going to be, because leading up, there were so many moving parts. Then we went straight into preparing for Lollapalooza, and that was through the Chicago made showcase, so it's different from your average set. You’re coordinating with a bunch of people, so there were a lot more moving parts and a lot of communication back and forth. It was a little stressful leading up to it, but the performance itself was awesome. There were, surprisingly, a bunch of people for the 2:00 p.m. slot, which is pretty awesome. The response from the audience was just so great, like they were right there with me. It was definitely affirming and exciting because we're leading into releasing even more music starting next month, so off to the races.
LUNA: Now that your debut Patient On Me is out in the world, what has the response from listeners, friends, or even strangers been like? Has anything surprised you about how people have connected with it?
CLAIRICE: It has been surprising how some people have connected with it. I had a lot of people reaching out to me saying things like, “You are really stepping it up.” “I can tell that you keep getting better and better.” “I can't wait to see what you are releasing in the future.” That’s how you should feel about your music and you’re challenging yourself every time.
Patient On Me is the most cohesive project that I feel like I've released so far, so it's been exciting to get that kind of feedback. I've had a lot of people reach out to me saying how much it feels like we've gone through the same breakup or they resonate with it, especially the title track “Patient On Me.” I've had a lot of people say that they've been listening to that song and it's been soothing for them. I sang it for an audience at Steppenwolf a few weeks back, and it was an older audience, and I was curious how they were going to respond to it. It’s amazing to see it resonating with so many people, the way it resonates with me.
LUNA: Looking back on Patient On Me now, how do you feel like you’ve grown as an artist since the release?
CLAIRICE: Releasing Patient On Me and receiving the feedback that I have received, and then also getting the opportunity to perform it in front of an audience and see the response has only continued to affirm me and make me feel confident that I am truly on the right path. Patient On Me is the first full project that I released as Clairice, especially after my rebranding. It was a scary thing to do, and there was a lot of ‘I'm going to go with it, but I'm a little bit unsure, because I'm still connecting all of the dots.’ Since it's been released, I am more confident than ever. I'm going to be writing an album in the fall, and it has just mentally prepared me and made me feel excited to start that process.
LUNA: You’re making your Lollapalooza debut—how does it feel to be representing your hometown on such a major stage? Is there a specific moment when it really hit you that this dream was becoming reality?
CLAIRICE: It feels really exciting to be representing Chicago and Chicago Made Showcase here at Lolla, because I don't think that there is a lot of representation for artists like me that are more pop leaning, which was really cool to be in that showcase and be representing a genre that nobody else was there to represent and show. Chicago has hip-hop and R&B, and it's a powerhouse for those things, but there's also so many different genres here. It felt like a privilege to be able to be someone who gets to represent that in that kind of way.
When I was on the stage doing my performance, there was a moment when we got to “Patient On Me,” and the crowd started raising their hands and waving them back and forth, unprompted. It was really cool to see the audience connect the dots in the moment and initiate that crowd response. It really hyped me up. It felt like another affirmation that I am on the right path, and I will be back, and it will be bigger than ever. This is very much just the beginning.
LUNA: How did you prepare for your Lolla set? From building the setlist to rehearsals to mentally getting ready—what’s gone into making this moment feel truly yours?
CLAIRICE: For this showcase, we have some time constraints, and since it's a part of a bigger project, I had to be really thoughtful about what I want people to take away from the moment who have never experienced me before in this short amount of time. I decided to choose an older song that I released a few years ago called “Truly.” I decided to do that because I felt like it showcased more of my confident pop side of the music that I make, and it's quirky and it's neurotic and it's a little bit more unhinged, and then lead into “Patient On Me,” which is my favorite song that I've written so far. It shows more of my R&B, sensual, softer side. I wanted to make sure that the minutes that we had were showcasing a wide range of what I'm capable of, and hopefully leading people to wanting to know more.
LUNA: Can you describe the atmosphere and energy you’ve felt from the Lolla crowd? Was it what you expected?
CLAIRICE: I went in with zero expectations because it was a day crowd on a Thursday, so to see such a large crowd, and not only was it a good sized crowd, they were excited to be there. They were up on the fence, eager. They’re excited to see what Chicago has to offer. To have put this thoughtful intention into building this short time frame that we were given into showcasing everything that I have, and seeing people be there right with me every time I was like, ‘How y'all doing,’ ‘How y'all feeling,’ they're enthusiastically responding and initiating dancing on their own. You can't really ask for anything more than that as an artist, especially when you're given a fairly short amount of time to be able to achieve that response was huge and really exciting. I felt like I was on cloud nine coming out of it.
LUNA: Do you have any specific pre-show rituals or post-show regimens that help ground you or boost your performance on stage?
CLAIRICE: I'm definitely at the point of my career where I like to take the time and space to ground myself and to do some basic vocal warm ups. I have a little DoctorVox vocal mechanism, which I sadly have lost in the fitting room. My whole motto is when we get to the point of the performance actually happening, it's like, we're here, we've we've prepared for the moment, and even if we don't feel like we've prepared for the moment, it is what it's going to be, so just try to ground yourself as much as possible, and go out there and be present no matter what is happening. I just try to get my mind right in that space, and keep to myself pre-show.
LUNA: Last time we talked, we focused on what messages you hope your young women and femme audiences can take away from your music since your storytelling comes from a deeply feminine space. What does feminine power look and feel like to you right now, and how do you hope it comes across to your listeners?
CLAIRICE: I love that question. I think that feminine power looks like radical acceptance to me. I think it is about accepting all of the parts that I think society might have judged us for, whether it be being in your full sexy, being in your full emotion, being in your full rage, being in your full sorrow, being in your full joy. Taking up space like that is what feminine power means to me.
I try to really step into that with this music. That's really what the music is about, is about me accepting the parts of myself that are sometimes a little bit more difficult for me to accept due to societal pressures, or previous experiences where I've been in a situation and someone said I was too much. It’s radical acceptance and confidence that you are who you're meant to be and love all the parts of you, even the parts that you are ashamed of because ultimately, at the end of the day, it makes up who you are. There’s nothing wrong with that. We're doing the best that we can.
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?
CLAIRICE: I'm feeling excited right now. I think this performance was affirming. There's a lot more music to be released this year, leading into sessions and album writing in the fall and through the winter. I'm really excited to dive into that creative process, because I've really been getting into all the music business aspects of things. Next month, I have my single “Gimme” dropping with Rich Robbins, another local Chicago artist, and I'm really excited for that to happen. I have a slew of singles that'll be trickling throughout the rest of the year that I'm excited to release, so it's on up and up from here.
Photo Credit: Audrey Hertel
