Q&A: Kings Elliot Releases Highly Anticipated Debut Album ‘Born Blue’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
KINGS ELLIOT LEADS WITH EMPATHY ON HER DEBUT ALBUM ‘BORN BLUE’ — The artist focused on vulnerability from the beginning of her career five years ago when she released her single “I’m Getting Tired of Me.” Harboring a passion for lyricism since her youngest age, Kings’ songwriting is nothing short of moving. Throughout her releases, she has shown a sensitivity that has brought in a community of people who identify with the sentiments expressed.
Born Blue marks a significant chapter, with some of the artist’s most poignant previous releases finding their place alongside newer tracks. This project encapsulates everything that makes Kings who she is, encouraging her listeners to accept themselves wholeheartedly. It is clear from the first track titled “Sick Puppy Interlude” that she has found understanding and kinship with her community, which call themselves ‘sick puppies’. It is poetic that the interlude leads into what was her first single ever released, “I’m Getting Tired of Me,” as if looking back on the journey to get where we are.
Kings shows strength in her lyricism and her expressive vocals, which work together to bring forth emotions otherwise difficult to voice. The project covers a wide spread of emotions surrounding heartbreak, from someone’s misleading vows in “The Promise” and coming to terms with the ache of not being made for each other in “Starcrossed;” to audacious anger in “Sweet Nothing;” and finally opening up to the one in “Love and Landslides” and “Ashes In The Morning.”
The album also includes the sensual queer anthem “Whiskey and Wine,” detailing an encounter with an attractive stranger at the bar. The last released single “What If This World” questions if one can reconcile being highly empathetic with a world that does not value compassion, ringing true on more than an interpersonal level. The ending track “Made For Me There” is a piano ballad that looks at all the hurt and makes the resilient decision to keep going in spite of all that has happened.
Born Blue is out today. Find out more about the album below.
LUNA: First of all, congratulations. It's such a beautiful album. It starts with “Sick Puppy Interlude,” which in itself leads to the other tracks by hearing a crowd of people. How has it been for you to be in the public eye?
KINGS: It's the same as always. I feel like the only thing that's changed for me, to be honest, is that as soon as I put music out, I started talking about my mental health publicly. Before, I would hide a lot of my life, even from family or people that sort of knew me. I mean, you sort of just hide the sides you don't want anyone to see, and I felt a lot of shame. For me, it was almost like an emotional coming out to everyone that sort of knows me in my private life. It’s been very freeing just to come out and say, this is who I am, and this is what I deal with, and this is my music.
Of course, you get responses, some that are maybe not fantastic, but then you get the ones that are people that hear your music and that relate to your struggles. That to me has been the most rewarding, and most things like people hearing what I'm saying and then feeling like they relate to it, feeling less alone because of it, or feeling more understood, or saying to me “you're my comfort artist.” That's the most precious thing. That's kind of all that's really changed. I've made lots of connections with other people, and that's given me so much to keep going.
LUNA: We need to talk about mental health more, because a lot of people suffer in silence. So to have artists who speak up about it, that's very important. There's a lot of emotion in “I'm Getting Tired of Me.” Do you record your songs right after you write them, do you wait a little for the emotion to subside?
KINGS: A lot of the songs I'll record when I write them, and then later on, I'll be like, Oh, this bit doesn't sound as good, maybe I'll try and rerecord this part. A lot of the time I'll record it again, and then I'm like, oh no, the demo, the song that I recorded when we're writing, it is so much more emotional. If I tell you the amount of days we've wasted recording new vocals for songs and then being like, no, we just have to go back to the one recorded when we wrote it, because a lot of the time it really is bad. It feels so real and so raw at that moment when you write it, you record it, and it's really fragile. As soon as you sing it too many times and time has passed, something gets lost a little bit in the recording. I love recording when I'm writing and then it captures something.
LUNA: Yeah, it's like a time capsule, putting the moment that you're in exactly as it is.
KINGS: Yeah, because it's old school! Back in the day, you’d write the song and then have a week in the studio and you record everything, right? It's really cool that now you can just record and the quality is good, and you can just roll with it. Each song is from a completely different time and moment and emotion. Haven’t even thought about that, that’s so cool!
LUNA: There are artists, when they make a project, it's like a life saving float. It feels that way with your album too.
KINGS: Your debut album is always your life's work up until that point. Some of the songs were written years ago, and recorded years ago, but they're so special to me. I always knew they would be on my debut album. They've all been in a different time of my life, and saved me in that moment, or got me through that moment, and now they're all kind of connected together. The emotion on all of them is very different, the subject matter and stuff. Yeah, it's been like my life saving float, something that keeps you going. For me also, a debut album is such a milestone. Personally, to know that I'm working towards an album, that's been something that has kept me really excited and artistically fulfilled. When you finish a song, song, song, they're just floating around, it doesn't feel like that.
LUNA: I'm very much an album girl. I love projects, and I think it's so interesting that on yours, there are songs that you recorded years ago, yet it sounds so coherent, and so well together. In one of the singles, “The Promise,” you’re saying, “when we were riding the waves and said I was safe, did you mean it?” Do you often get inspired by these moments in the middle of the night where you wake up and you remember a certain moment, and you're juxtaposing it to how it turned out?
KINGS: Yeah, well, a lot of the stuff I actually think of at night, but I'll write it in the morning. Some of the songs I dreamt about… like “Whiskey and Wine” or “Made For Me There,” I woke up and I had a melody that I was dreaming, and then I would record it. Normally for me though, the lyrics and stuff, a lot of the time it is when I'm moving or a lot of the time on the tube, because I'm bored. It's very ADHD, I need someone to speak to about it, but when I'm on my own, a lot of the time I will occupy myself with lots of things, and then I can't think… As soon as I go for a walk and I don't take headphones, or I'm on the tube and I've only got noise canceling, but nothing to listen to, then I start thinking. And then that's when the lyrics come, and often at night, funnily enough, I'm always doing things and I literally fall asleep at my laptop. I'm trying to do things, to finish things, and I’m falling asleep editing videos. That's why I'm like, I don't often write. Maybe I should, but I think I need to try a little bit more to switch off before bed. It's actually something that I'm trying to do.
LUNA: The title of the album is “Born Blue,” which you also reference in “The Promise.” What does being born blue mean to you?
KINGS: So it actually means a lot of things. I think a lot of people associate blue with sadness. Honestly, to me, it's not just being sad. Blue for me is my whole existence and the essence of me. Born blue to me means just born this way basically. Shoutout Lady Gaga (laughs). Obviously I wasn’t born with blue hair or blue eyebrows, but because this has become such a big part of me and everything I embody, Born Blue is just like, “This is what I'm giving you.” I was born like this, and this is part of my DNA, and in “The Promise,” I reference it in a way where I'm like, “forgot that I was born blue,” because the time I had with this person that the song is about made me feel for a moment that I didn't have any of the demons that I fight. When you think that you're actually fine, you just forget that there's this part of you that you fight with.
Photo by Danielle Painting
LUNA: That's a beautiful way to look at it.
KINGS: It encompasses not just sadness.
LUNA: It's all of all the emotions, all that makes us who we are. Listening to “Starcrossed,” there's a sentiment of surrendering to destiny. Do you feel that the surrender comes from a place of acceptance, or rather denial?
KINGS: Actually, I like thinking about that. To be fair, I'm very spiritual. I really go with my intuition and my gut, and I take signs, I feel very connected to the earth, and I believe in things like energies and frequencies and making sure that I think the right things. When I feel something and I get a sign, and I feel something's not right and I don't know why, but I just feel it… I will just think, well, it's the stars. I sort of have that acceptance, but the way you said it is true. I guess in a way, it sometimes makes it easier, because you don't have to search for too long. What is it in you that's telling you “well, I'm being told by the universe, so therefore I will accept”? And I don't accept everything. I think “Starcrossed” is a very romanticized song. It's clearly not just the stars that's in the line, obviously, there were other things, but it captures that hopeless romantic energy and that kind of 50s romance where you're like “we’re just starcrossed,” but truly, there's other things that aren't right. Otherwise I would have probably fought for it.
LUNA: Going from “Sweet Nothing” to “Love and Landslides,” it's quite the whiplash (laughs). We're going from anger to a lot of love. I was wondering, how did you decide to put them one after another?
KINGS: I love that so much! I spent a lot of time on how to put an album in which order. So I love that you listened in order and everything!
LUNA: I'm very much an album girl, so I need to listen in order.
KINGS: Oh my god, that's so great. Because for me, obviously, some of it is personal reasons that other people might not fully understand, and maybe I can give you some insight, but some of it is chapters of my life. This is a little secret, but “Starcrossed” and “Sweet Nothing” are about the same person, and then “Love and Landslides” is about the love of my life. So it was almost like… the romantic star crossed. Then it’s like, f*ck you. And then real love actually appears, the person that's actually with me through the ups and downs, “Love and Landslides,” “Ashes By The Morning” and “Dancing Alone.” Those three songs are love songs for this person that has had my back. A lot of it is personal and also the fact that, having borderline personality disorder, knowing that I can go from, “Starcrossed” to “Sweet Nothing,” to “Love and Landslides,” it really shows how the roller coaster of my brain works, and how the roller coaster of my life usually feels. So it kind of takes you on that journey with me.
LUNA: It’s nice that there's a representation of having those emotions in that order, and also that love can appear when you least expect it. The production of “Cigarette Smoke In My Eyes” sounds very fairytale-esque but the lyrics of the tracks are not. I was wondering, is it inspired by expecting a certain outcome and then being disappointed by what you actually get?
KINGS: The whole concept is about masking, presenting something that is not actually what's there. “I'm pretending I've got cigarette smoke in my eyes. I'm the diva. I'm not crying.” For me, whenever I think of the songs, I just think of this dramatic woman in the 50s. That's what I envisioned the whole Born Blue era. Obviously, it's from a real experience. It is all about masking and showing that, oh, it's all fine, but actually deep inside… and this is something I obviously have a lot of experience with, hiding how I actually feel, inside I'm literally imploding, I feel like I'm dying, but outside, I'm just like, “it’s okay.” I love when a song is wrapped in production that you wouldn't think and then you listen to the lyrics, you're like, “oh sh*t.”
Photo by Danielle Painting
LUNA: “Ashes By The Morning” is very gorgeous, very vulnerable. I feel like a lot of people have had this feeling before, where we wish, where we could express to someone that we're not doing well, and we want them to be there for us, and when we’re not meaning to push them away. I feel that having a song like that that's really important. I just wanted to say that.
KINGS: It’s one of my favorites. I do love it. I've cried a few times singing it live.
LUNA: Speaking of these last two, there's a lot of references to smoke and ashes in the album. Thinking of “What If This World,” it's said that once everything burns down it will rise from the ashes. Do you think that's still possible in the world that we're seeing nowadays with all the suffering and everything that's going on?
KINGS: I hope so. With “What If This World,” I do think of this really dooming thought that is like, “what if we weren't meant to be here at all?” That is obviously not very hopeful. I like yours better! But I do think at some stage, humanity, myself included, we will have to wake up or be wiped out. Maybe that's too depressing, but there will be a wake up call eventually. And I do think something beautiful always comes from something tragic, like somehow, somewhere, I do believe that. I think if you don't, it's hard, because that's our only hope.
LUNA: Absolutely, but I love that it speaks about the world being… I don't want to say doomed, but I can't think of a better word. I feel that it also says that people who have so much empathy and who feel so much about the world, it's often seen as a fault, you're too sensitive or you're too empathetic, and I feel like the song says the opposite. It says no, it's good that we're feeling all of this. And I really like that, that sentiment being recognized.
KINGS: Thank you! Yeah, I agree, because I've often been told that I'm hyper sensitive and I am, but it allows me to feel a lot of things. And to be inspired and to express and to feel for other people, for animals. To me, it's a blessing, even though it can be a curse. It can feel very heavy, but then it helps putting it into songs, and then somehow it feels beautiful again.
LUNA: I feel like the world wouldn't turn without sensitive people. We keep the world going, because otherwise, yeah, it would really be doomed.
KINGS: It’s the people that are so sensitive, that make art and that define culture. If it wasn't for those people, yeah, imagine. So, 100 percent I think it's a strength.
LUNA: I also wanted to say there's a lot of strength coming through the project. I just wanted to say, you should be proud of creating such a beautiful body of work.
KINGS: Aw, thank you!
LUNA: I feel like it will really help people going through tough times, or who have been through tough times and are still having a hard time reconciliating with it. I was wondering, what do you hope that people take away from the project as a whole?
KINGS: Well, I really hope they take away what you just said. I think that's so wonderful. My big dream always is that people would listen to my album for comfort, for inspiration, for fun, I guess, but obviously, it's very sad. My dream is for it to be timeless, for people to come back to it in five years and say, “Oh, I want to listen to that Kings Elliot album.” The songs to stand the test of time, and for them to be songs that people just always come back to. Especially when people tell me “I listened to your song,” and, for example, “Ashes By The Morning.” I hear this a lot, “and it's the first time someone's described how I feel.” If I can do that for some people, then that makes me so happy. It makes everything worth it.
