Q&A: Eliza McLamb's Honest, Empowering Nature
WITH HONEST VULNERABILITY ABOUT MAKING MUSIC AS A YOUNG WOMAN - Eliza McLamb encourages female empowerment by voicing her opinions through song, podcast, and work with other women in the industry. Growing up in North Carolina, McLamb found the joys of music, words, and debate. She attended GW University for college, but as the pandemic grew, McLamb was obligated to make her way back to her hometown.
After playing snippets of songs for an audience on Tiktok, McLamb gained a substantial platform on the social media app, and her listeners stayed tuned to see what else she had up her sleeve. McLamb provided. With short and sweet songs made on the spot from her viewers’ prompts, McLamb cultivated a closer connection with her followers, offering a special relationship with her fans and their creative ideas.
You can listen to Eliza McLamb’s most recent single, “Irish Exit,” on all streaming platforms. You can view the music video for her debut single, “Pontiac”, directed by Carolyn Knapp, on Youtube. And if you’re eager for more, check out the podcast, Binchtopia, where McLamb and her cohost, Julia Hava, discuss current events through the lens of psychology and sociology.
Read below to learn more about Eliza McLamb’s journey into the microcelebrity spotlight.
LUNA: You’ve been playing some shows recently, and you have some more coming up this month! Have you performed in front of audiences in the past? How are shows going for you during the pandemic?
MCLAMB: I was an acapella group in high school and college, so if that counts, perhaps. But no, I’ve never played solo shows before! Opening for Penelope Scott in Seattle was my first show I ever played to an audience like that with my own music. It was so nerve-wracking, honestly. The venue really softened the blow, it was the best venue I could have opened the show with. I played at the Vera Project in Seattle, which was totally a community operated venue. Everybody there was super sweet; really good energy. It also softened the blow knowing that I was just the opener and people were not there to see me - but it was really cool to see people who were there to see me! I honestly kind of blacked out. I ran my set beforehand and I just went on stage and kind of did it. It was really fun. The Portland show went great because I had already gotten that first one done.
The biggest thing that shocked me about it, was that I sort of started taking my whole music career seriously during the pandemic. So I have this kind of cerebral knowledge that ‘ok, there must be human beings out there listening to me and who know about me’ because I have followers and streaming numbers and whatever, but seeing real people come up to me and know who I was - that was something that kind of just hit me in another way of like ‘oh, ok, people are out there!’ It definitely is a different experience because there are a lot of safety precautions that you have to take - which I really appreciate - and people are being super cooperative with that. But it’s just nice to have people in a room together sharing space and being there with the energy and the music. That’s something I’ve definitely missed, and I know a lot of people have too.
LUNA: I know you didn’t expect your music to gain traction on TikTok, if that had not happened, what do you think you would be doing right now?
MCLAMB: I would be finishing up a political science degree and studying for the LSAT. That’s honestly what I thought I would be doing. I thought I would get into law or in politics somehow. I’ve always really cared about social justice and politics. I got into GW, because basically they gave me the most money, and I was like ‘ok, well what’s the best program at GW? It’s political science. That adds up, I’m just gonna do that.’ I toyed with the idea of switching my major to creative writing because I started taking those classes and I was like ‘shit, this is what I actually want to do,’ but that’s probably [still] the track that I would be on.
LUNA: Obviously, your hit, “Porn Star Tits,” is vastly different from the rest of the music you have released. What inspired that slight divergence?
MCLAMB: Well, “Porn Star Tits” was one of the first songs I wrote for TikTok, it was explicitly for TikTok. I was in a nice cradle with the algorithm, and I was doing this series where I would respond to comments and write a song, and somebody asked me to write something about the female experience, so I wrote it and it blew up. That’s how most people know me. At this point I was writing my EP, and I didn’t have management or anything, and I was kind of scared of losing relevance so quickly, you know? I knew that a lot of people really liked that song and felt really connected to it, and excited to hear a full version. Personally, and people who know my music know this because I talk about it, it’s not my favorite.
Clearly it doesn’t fit with the rest of the things I have in there, but it has a special place in my heart because I do think that it’s an interesting subject, and people obviously connect with it, which means so much to me. Especially with people who grew up living the female experience, and that really means a lot to me; to have that resonate with people. But yeah, it’s not my favorite, and if people didn’t really want me to release it, I probably wouldn’t have. But, I feel compelled to add that I had this feeling of ‘oh, “Porn Star Tits” bleh,’ and then I played it in Seattle and Portland, and feeling the energy in the room (cause people know that song even if they don’t know me because they’ve probably heard it once or twice on TikTok) playing it live made me love it again in a different way because people were so excited to hear it, and that was a really fun energy.
LUNA: In the past you’ve mentioned how you believe that people are one with the Universe, and that we are all connected. How do you keep this mindset when speaking about your emotions - whether it be through song, or through the podcast?
MCLAMB: One thing I’ve talked about on the podcast, and something that I really truly believe in that has improved my life greatly, is that I can have unlimited empathy and unlimited love for every single human in the world with the knowledge that I was born in their body and in their circumstance, I would be behaving in the exact same way that they’re behaving. I can keep that, and also (this is a very key and important part) maintain strict personal boundaries. They both exist, you have to have them together! Because, if you have unlimited love and you have unlimited empathy, and you have no boundaries, you’re gonna kill yourself. And, if you keep up your walls to an extreme extent, and you can’t offer that love and compassion to everybody, then you hurt yourself that way too.
Really, what I find so powerful about songwriting and music and all of that is that it really reinforces my world belief that we are all one continuous living being separated into these different bodies. Like, I will write something that is so intensely personal to me (all my songs I write are for me) that it is blowing my mind that other people relate to them with their own experiences that, maybe, I have never experienced before. Or maybe they’re seeing it in a whole ‘nother way. It is just that proof that we actually are one continuous collective organism that experiences very similar things and emotions. That’s why I love what I do! I say things in the podcast, people resonate, I write things in songs, and people resonate. I never expect it to really hit people like that.
One thing that I didn’t expect people to have the same realization or experience with is “Irish Exist,” which I wrote about my avoidant attachment disorder - disorder! I mean my avoidant attachment style! It feels like a disorder sometimes, I’m not gonna lie. That’s something I feel like doesn’t get talked about enough in terms of women, necessarily, because women are always characterized with anxious ones, so I always felt sort of fucked up for always wanting to be the one that runs away. But at the same time I am a soft person; I am not a cold hearted human being. Which is why these patterns didn't really make sense to me. So “Irish Exit,” for me, was working through how it is possible for me to have such sensitivity and such care and such love, and still see these patterns in my life that hurt me. And seeing other people relate to that - cause I felt really alone in there.
There are plenty of songs that are like “fuck him and then leave,” and we need those songs as women too, for sure. But I just didn’t see that softness combined with what many people see as sort of the fuckboy mentality or behavior. So seeing other women, especially, or femme aligned people being like “no, I feel this way, that’s tough for me too,” that has been empowering and unexpected for sure.
LUNA: When you write songs, are the emotions you feel while writing from the moment, or is it more retrospective?
MCLAMB: Songwriting for me has always been like journaling, and the structure of it makes a lot of sense to me. So there are many songs that I write when I’m in the moment and I’m just trying to figure out how I’m feeling about things. I always start with a verse; most times when I’m going to record something, I have to cut out two or three verses because a song can’t be all verse (as much as I would love it to be). And then I get to the chorus where I sort of figure out the main idea. Sometimes the songs happen like that. But other times (especially with the new stuff I’ve been writing) the songs are retrospective; thinking about how I felt in a certain moment and looking back on that from a different angle. Almost like I’m in conversation with my younger self, which has been really cool because I can do sort of a blend of both techniques. It’s like looking back on them that’s having the current experiences, and that’s been powerful for me in its own way.
LUNA: You have one TikTok where you explain your process for recording demos using instrumental tracks from Splice. It’s really inspiring to see your process, because recording music can be so intimidating, especially if an artist is self taught. Did you feel intimidated before you started recording music? Do you still use this way of recording?
MCLAMB: Totally! You know, only 2% of producers are women. So it’s hard, first of all, when you don’t have a lot of people to look up to. Also, any man you ever talk to about producing describes it as if it’s just like an eighth dimension rubix cube. They’re like, ‘oh, you wouldn’t get it, there's so much to it.’ And that’s kind of shit, you know, it’s technology. Women get barred out of those fields all the time. Subconsciously, I try to fight the feeling of ‘ok, I’m the one who is a woman and I am soft and creative, and I bring this desperate idea to the man and he’s gonna make it make sense in a language that I don’t understand and it’s gonna be fine.’ And I found myself feeling like I needed to take some steps back from the creative decisions when making the music I would produce with men, and that really bothered me. That, more than anything, motivated me to want to try to learn, at least, just the basics. And I’m so fortunate now because I’m working with an excellent female producer, Sarah Tudzin. She does Illuminati hotties, and I feel so comfortable now bringing her my work. I’ll put like two bars of a drum in there and say ‘I want something like this,’ and I know that I can feel comfortable bringing that to her and she will get it. But the way that I envision my production for my songs is almost like I’m creating a little world, and I have textures or images or whatever, and that’s kind of hard to explain to another person.
I really do encourage women who make their own music to get more into producing, even if they can just do it a little bit. Because it’s your responsibility to put your vision into the song and you can tell. And other people can hear when it’s not totally your vision in something. You owe it to yourself to do as much as you can, and learn as much as you can, so you can create the fairest representation of how you feel.
LUNA: You have so many unreleased songs! How do you know when a song is finished? Do you incorporate revision in your songwriting? Lyrics or instrumentals.
MCLAMB: There definitely have been times where Sarah and I are sitting there and we’re like ‘ummmmmm let’s add something different right here’ and we can kind of just change things then. But usually I have things that are full and complete, I’m saying that, ‘I want these instruments, these are the exact harmonies that I’ve already tracked and I just need to record here.’ But I feel like, the feeling of when a song is finished is when I can listen to it and really tap back into that emotional place and be like, ‘ok, we’ve really covered all the ground here.’ Even when I write breakup songs, it’s never just that - it’s always a conversation with myself. It’s always bargaining ‘is this how I want to say this, is this what I want to say?’ And that is in the music. I think it’s important for me, and my style, to not be like, ‘here is my agenda, here’s the thesis of the song, and I’m gonna say it.’ I like to leave room for the nuance and I like to have the questions still kind of circling around there as I do it. So I feel like the song is done when I’ve covered all the ground that I want to cover.
It happens too where a song will come out and I can’t stand to listen to it. It feels, to me, like getting a tattoo. Like I have tattoos now that I got when I was 18 that I wouldn’t probably get now. But it’s kind of beautiful because at one point I wanted that, and now it’s on my body forever. Even though there are some of my lyrics where I go ‘bleh,’ that’s what I thought and that’s how I felt at one point in my life. And that deserves to be honored, even if I wouldn’t write it again now.
LUNA: You’re coming up on a year of the Binchtopia podcast! What inspired podcasting for you? Where do you pull inspiration from for the topics you cover?
MCLAMB: Part of the reason I went into political science is because I do care about politics and I care about social issues, and when I was taking classes for that degree, I got really into sociology - which I ended up loving even more than the political stuff. I knew that I loved to open my big fat mouth. I love to talk and I have lots of thoughts and feelings, and some of that I can get through in a stylistic way with music, but some of it I just can’t - I want to talk about stuff. So I met Julia, who I had been following on Instagram since I was in high school, and I was like, ‘oh my god I’m meeting Binch City!’ I was like, ‘hey I’ve been kind of thinking about wanting to start a podcast’ and she was like, ‘no way because I’ve been thinking about that too.’ So we got together to talk about it. In terms of topics that make us more inclined to choose them, something that has a lot of different angles, sides, and lenses that you can look at it through, as well as things that people find relevant to their own lives and applicable, is really important.
A lot of times we’ll find a current event and try to connect it to something we had learned in school, or some other topic. I remember we talked about Courtney Stodden and their marriage and their coming out about being groomed, and then that got us thinking, ‘you know, why is it that older men go for really young women?’ And, ‘why is it that women feel pressure to stay young and look young forever?’ Then we got into Susan Sontag. It’s kind of just this big web of stuff that we like to untangle and unpack, and any topic that allows us to do that. Which, to be fair, is most topics if you look carefully enough.
LUNA: Lastly, what can we expect from you in the upcoming months, anything spectacular?
MCLAMB: Nothing is really planned yet, in terms of release. What I’m experiencing now, especially for artists who got their start on the internet, is to do this circuit of single releases where they release a single, and then three weeks later release another single, and three weeks later release another, get on playlists, boost their spot, get more streams, whatever. And I am really uninterested in doing that. I have a full project in the works. It’s really in the beginning stages now - and that’s not to say I won’t have a single between now and then - but I am excited about the full length record that I am working on. And that is really taking up a lot of my life and a lot of space. I am anticipating it and I am very excited about it. So that is coming, and it is something I am feeling good about.
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