Q&A: Lucia’s “Wash you clean” Sets The Tone for The Artist’s New Trajectory
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
WITH THE COMFORTING YET MELANCHOLIC GUITAR STRINGS, “Wash you clean” marks a new beginning for Lucia. Nowadays the artist knows what she wants out of her career, and as she heads into the last year of university, she is ready to begin an adulthood where she makes music her priority. Despite the newness it represents, “Wash you clean” talks of returning to the basics.
The New York native debuted in 2019 with her single “That Night,” which recounted the intoxicating sentiment of having a crush when you’re young and the hurt that comes with being separated from that person. Despite the success of this first single, Lucia evolved from the old-fashioned sound to an indie-rock and folk approach, which fits with the new horizons the artist is exploring in her songwriting.
“Wash you clean” has a distinct voice. With detailed lyricism, the artist’s style is seeped in metaphors dissimulating more complex themes. In this latest release, Lucia focuses on the action of rolling in the grass, only to end up getting cut by hidden glass. Inspired by growing pains and losing friendships, she pairs youthful carelessness with the reality of consequences.
Lucia’s soft vocals are comforting with undertones of sadness, though they leave a haunting trail that fits wonderfully with the indie-rock production. In the end, what we’re left with is the nostalgic longing for a return to being taken care of. “Wash you clean” is the lead single off an upcoming EP which will be Lucia’s first released project.
Luna spoke with Lucia about the single and her following releases.
LUNA: When did you know you wanted to become a singer/songwriter?
LUCIA: My parents are musicians and continue to work with music in various ways. My mom specializes in piano performance and my dad is an experienced drummer. I got a guitar for my eighth birthday and we would play music together and have family night jams and stuff - but that wasn't when I started making music. There was a period after that where I went through this phase of “all my family is making music, I don't want to make music.” I started making really bad art, but that never stuck. I was initially secretly writing songs. When I realized that I wanted to do it was the summer I went on my first tour.
Until then, music had been pretty much a hobby to me, which has been a good thing because it feels a lot more authentic. Honestly, I express my feelings and emotions and thoughts so much better in music than I do in my own journal. When I really started to see my music pick up in a genuine way, I was taking breaks from social media. I was very involved in my present life, and not really where I was on the interwebs. Playing with a band and writing new songs felt like I was talking about such great questions about faith and what it means, not only having a crush but what it means to be in love, and telling stories. That is when I was like, “Oh, this is really awesome.” I started to feel super, super proud of myself. That's when I got to this point of, “Okay, I'm going to start taking this seriously.”
LUNA: Congratulations on your latest single “Wash you clean.” I feel that it speaks about a specific moment in time. Could you tell us more about that?
LUCIA: I'm still new at maturing, I'm only 21, but in this process of having growing pains with friendships and family… I think a part of growing up is realizing that some people aren't meant to be in your life, and some people are meant to be in your life. Dealing with that as an issue of seeing your perspective change on someone that's been a common theme throughout the past couple years. A lot of the people I was friends with in the beginning of freshman year, I'm not friends with, which is okay and it's how life works— but in the moment it feels so hard.
“Wash you clean” was a reflective song. There’s a lot of ways that I've been let go from friendships, I've been the one who's, I hate to say done wrong because these situations don't even have a particular problem, but I've been the one who has done wrong in those relationships where it's something I was dealing with, or some way that I acting. It was something that, from someone else's perspective, was like, “That's not right for me.” I've been on the other side too, where I've reflected on relationships and been like, “I'm starting to see this person in a different light.”
I think it's just like a natural thing about growth and about relationships. That's one part of it, and another part of it is I'm going into this final year of school, which feels like the send off to full adulthood. I'm a very nostalgic, nostalgia-driven person. All of my interests have so much nostalgia attached to them. The first thing I think when my life gets too stressful or too hard is, “Oh, I wish I was five years old again and didn't care about any of this stuff, and could live at home with my parents and not do anything.” So I think it's also a sense of remembering when times were less complex, even though that's not really an objective standpoint.
LUNA: I feel like friendship breakups are not approached as much as romantic relationships, and they hurt really bad too.
LUCIA: Sometimes even worse!
LUNA: Is “Wash you clean” the beginning of a new project?
LUCIA: Yes, it is. I just started working with a label. I'm still getting used to promoting my music and knowing when the right time is to tell everyone things but very early on, I've been secretly like, “This is a part of a bigger project.” It's a part of this EP that is called “In Love & war.” I'm super excited about it. There's going to be five songs on it and the first song, “Wash you clean,” is on it. The next song that's coming out, called “The circus song,” is going to be on it too.
We decided to call it “In Love & war” because on this topic, I feel like my headspace is a lot less centered around crushes and drama and stuff, at least in a way that’s typical to talk about… I naturally started writing stories, so the next song is a lot more about this made up story of getting robbed by a clown. Listening to the lyrics, it is a lot more deep. It's more informed by life experience. I haven't gotten rid of love songs entirely, but in one of my other songs I talk about religious faith and the army and soldiers as a metaphor for these acts of love and things—and obviously, war is on all of our minds right now.
LUNA: Are there any previous singles that will be on this project?
LUCIA: None of the singles that I had released under the Lucia Zambetti artist name, although all of them are going to be moved over to just Lucia. It's going to be five completely new songs, which I'm super excited about. I haven't released stuff in a long time.
LUNA: Yeah, the last single you released was last year. How come that you waited such a long time to release this one?
LUCIA: I had gone on tour after I released that song, and I was just focused on how to deal with this newfound passion of music. It felt so right to me to just be up there and feel like, this sounds so corny, but like I’m making an impact. I was kind of dealing with this, “Okay, do I drop out of school? Do I quit school completely and pursue this?" At the same time, I love learning and I'm almost done. I started to calm down a bit, and started to have more conversations with record labels and management. I had never had management before, and now I have the best manager ever. It was taking this pile of mess, and organizing it.
I think a big thing I've struggled with in the past is I'm not very technically talented at production. All of the production that I've done on my own songs has been very experimental, almost in a derogatory way [laughs]. I love all my songs that I've posted before, but I love them in a different way than I would love to hear my voice, not even my singing voice but just my energy. It's very different from the stuff that's about to come out, simply because I didn't really feel represented in the final product of my work, and a lot of that was because I didn't really know what was going on. Now I know what I'm doing. I think it was a lot of orientation last year, and now everything's in order. I've got a great team, and I'm so excited about these songs, so it feels good.
LUNA: I feel like you have such a distinct way of songwriting. What inspires your writing?
LUCIA: First, I'll say that writing music for me is like throwing up or crashing out. I don't know how to explain it in any other terms. I've never sat down and been like, “I need to write a song right now.” It's always been very reflective. A lot of the inspiration comes from the mood of the songs. I dabble with the melody on the guitar before I start writing the song. The happier ones, naturally, I'll just talk about something happy, and it'll just be something from the back of my mind that'll come up. One of the songs I wrote was about my partner telling me about his childhood tree house. I totally forgot that he told me about that, but I started writing it and that's the process.
From that point, I take a lot of inspiration from older folk artists who do an amazing job of setting the scene and really identifying objects in a way that makes you feel like you're there. They can do so in such a simple way. I'm a very organized and aesthetically-driven person, so when I start to think about a mood or a memory, it's very easy for me to try to establish everything that's there. Another thing is a lot of my inspirations use a witty, almost punny way of expressing—I think that's super interesting and super beautiful because at the end of the day, it's words. Words are weird and words are interesting. Growing up, I listened to a lot of John Prine and all of his pictures and jokes are just things that have stuck with me forever. That one you can really feel in “The circus song,” because it's such an absurd story that would never happen, but at the same time it's deeply rooted in human relationships.
LUNA: It seems like you really take from these experiences that everyone might have, but you make them sound so unique and you really put a whole message behind it. What are your hopes for this next year of your career?
LUCIA: Just continuing to find a sound that feels authentic. Not only a sound, but a representation that feels authentic. I'm someone who is very passionate creatively, and at the same time I am very self conscious. I constantly am thinking about how people are perceiving me and that's a given with social media. Finding a good balance that feels natural and feels almost impressive to my fans and people who support me is the biggest thing. I want them to feel inspired, while at the same time, I'm so inspired by them.
Not to sound too esoteric but amidst all this music marketing and all of these rules of how to do it and the best ways to make your music popular, also finding a good boundary for when to stop consuming so much. If you get too caught up in that it's hard to find authenticity—and while inspiration is so beautiful and so crucial, I also think that each of us have the capacity to develop this sound that's so deep, and I'm trying to find that.
