Q&A: MINOE’S “Shell” Advocates For Kindness Towards The Body and Mind
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY—Yet it’s difficult not to compare your journey in this day and age, when everyone’s achievements and seemingly better lives are on display everywhere. MINOE puts into words what many people know but can’t place, which is how we speak to ourselves in a way we wouldn’t even think about someone else. Through a refreshing vulnerability, “Shell” exposes the harshest thoughts and emotions, giving them a space to exist while acknowledging their consequences.
MINOE is a Canadian artist from Nova Scotia. Although she took up songwriting at the age of seven, she began releasing music in 2019. Four years later, she released her debut EP Bleeding Hearts, a love letter to disco-pop. Since then, she’s been releasing music consistently. This year she released the catchy and empowering “Loophole,” followed by the emotional hyper-pop “Foghorns.” Her debut album, Stella Marina, is set to be released later this year and honors her Nova Scotian and Celtic roots.
“Shell” is an atmospheric piano ballad set in the world of Stella Marina. Although the concept of the album surrounds a selkie— a half-woman, half-seal mythical creature—the subjects at the core of the song are grounded in the reality of many women in their twenties. With haunting vocals worthy of merfolk, MINOE approaches body dysmorphia and the outer perception of women’s bodies. By externalizing the negative self-criticism induced by societal expectations, she allows the emotions to exist while letting them go.
Luna caught up with the artist about the release of “Shell” ahead of her album release, Stella Marina.
LUNA: Congratulations on “Shell!” How did the initial idea of the song come to you?
MINOE: The first line that came to me was “What a waste of 24.” I get really anxious sometimes about wasting my youth or not looking the way I want to look at the age that I am or being where I'm at in my career. I think it's a sentiment like a lot of people in their 20s can relate to as well. It's ridiculous as well. I'm so anti-ageism. I think my 30s are going to be my prime. I'm not really worried about aging, so I don't know. Maybe it's societal pressure that lives residually in your brain. When it's something like that, where there's a tension between how I really feel and what's circulating, then I like to write it down to try to explore it.
LUNA: I love that you said that line in particular because that is the one that caught my attention: “What a waste of 24, my younger self expected so much more.”
MINOE: It's hard. There's such a pressure. Especially on women, but on everybody—to be 30 under 30, be that exception, be the person who will be a homeowner. Even just making ends meet in the economy right now, it's pretty hard. That added pressure of, “Why am I not Sabrina Carpenter?” Girl, take a breath.
LUNA: One of my friends posted this thing that was like, “If I was sitting down with the 19 year-old version of me, she would not believe the things that I'm doing today.” 19-year-old me would probably be like, “That's it?” I don't look at my friends and think, “This person doesn't have their life together,” but looking at yourself is like, “Why is the standard so much higher?”
MINOE: I so feel you when you say that. My younger self was like, “You're gonna be famous by the time that you're 20 years old. You're gonna be like selling out Madison Square Garden, and there's no other option.” There were a lot of things that she didn't know. She was 12 (laughs). It’s hard. I'm trying my best. It's a thing in therapy to think that your inner child or your younger self would be so proud of where you are. I'm not actually sure if that's true.
For me, it's also with body weight. I've had a long struggle with that, and especially when I was younger, I had an eating disorder. I'm trying to look at myself through kinder eyes, but I'm a lot nicer of a person now to myself than I was back then.
LUNA: How do you reframe this mindset now of, “I'm not where I thought I would be, but I'm still somewhere?”
MINOE: It's so important for me to have tasks every single day that are in my calendar. If I do that today, then I've done the best that I can on that day. I have to break it up into small chunks. I feel good about where I'm at in my career most of the time. There's little moments where I spend too much time on my phone comparing myself to other people. That’s if I'm not taking time to go outside and see my friends and making sure I'm putting something in toward my career and my goals. Even if it's a small thing every day, if I'm doing that, I'm okay. Same with weight. If I can manage to get a 30 minute walk in for that day, I’m like, “Okay, you’re doing your best.” So I'm not sitting there being like, “Why aren't you doing more?”.
I struggle with it. I do. There’s a thing in pop culture where people always write from this healed place. I don't talk about body stuff a lot because I've struggled with it my entire life. It's a really hard thing for me to talk about but I also think it's important for people to see that I don't have to be [confident] all the time. “I'm a confident big girl, and I love the way that I look,” no, sometimes it's really hard. It's really hard when you don't like the way that you look. It’s not okay to sit there and hate on yourself all the time, but it's okay to have those feelings.
LUNA: How has writing this song impacted how you see yourself?
MINOE: Whenever I get something out on paper, it always helps. There was someone in the crowd at a recent show, and she really touched me. We had such a cute hug moment because she's a bigger girl and she told me she struggled with the same mindset sometimes. I said to her, “I had to put that down on paper to realize how ridiculous what I was saying to myself was. I would never say that to another person.” It's not fair. We had a little cry. It was really cute. Saying it out loud to see how it feels and to be able to analyze. It helps. If you keep stuff up there and you let it ruminate forever, it's not good for you.
LUNA: Is there any lyric in the song originally that didn't make it to the final cut?
MINOE: Everything stayed in. I almost took out the Ozempic line. There [were] a few months where I was like, “I need to change that line,” and then I kept forgetting. Eventually, I liked it. I try to stay away from trending topics when I'm writing a song because I don't want to date it. In a few years from now, maybe Ozempic will be like, “Oh, that's so 2026.” It feels poignant and it feels honest. That line came from seeing the comments under celebrities' photos. There's a lot of celebrities that have been doing Ozempic and weight loss. Do whatever you want. I have no say or claim over anyone else's body, and if that makes you feel better, then pop off. I've thought about it many times. I haven't done it, but I'm not committing to being a big girl forever. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I don't know.
My stance on it, though, is I really hated the way that people were talking about their bodies. The way they were saying, "Oh my God, she's back.” She didn't go anywhere. She just got skinnier. You couldn't be a fan of her while she was in a chubby phase, and now that she's thinner… So that's why, “Thank god for Ozempic.” It's sarcastic, it's a diss to the comment sections that I've seen. Not on my own videos but on other people's. Sometimes looking at the comments of other people's stuff is actually worse than looking at my own comments. People are generally pretty nice, but I don't know. Maybe the further you are away from a celebrity, the more you feel like you can just say whatever you want. That's been pretty discouraging, so that's where that line came from. I didn't know if I wanted to keep it or not, but it stayed.
LUNA: What are your musical influences?
MINOE: It changes all the time. There's a few that have been with me for a long time. I'll always go back to Lykke Li. She's huge for me. Tove Lo. A lot of Swedish girls. I've been loving Slayyyter for a while now. Even before WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, I really got into her from her last album. It just was pure pop perfection, then this one she added the grit in there. She's so inspirational. I love her vibe. Lana [Del Rey] is always there. I'm pretty eclectic. I really take from a lot of places and genres, and every song has its own musical influences depending on the emotion I'm trying to convey. I'm never trying to have an overall sound of, “Okay, this whole album is going to sound like Lykke Li.” Maybe this piano thing, we want a similar effect and we'll put it in. There's like a lot of tiny pieces of references, but those are my faves.
LUNA: You have an album coming up. What can you tell us about it?
MINOE: It's coming in October. It's called Stella Marina. It's about my early life. I had a really difficult childhood. I had a lot of problems with my family and I wanted to talk about that. I'm really passionate about being a positive representation for kids who don't feel safe at home or didn't feel safe at home. I think a lot of the time, even now, a nuclear family situation is assumed a lot. That's not always the case. I grew up like you know in a pretty rough area, so for a lot of the kids that I grew up around that wasn't really the case. I’ve been thinking about them a lot and wanting to be a representation for them, and also to talk about Nova Scotia. I love Nova Scotia. I've only loved Nova Scotia more since I've moved away from it. I've been working on Nova Scotian, Celtic influences and talking about my childhood. All of it, I've done in a mythical way because I didn't want to be too on the nose with anything.
I wanted to be a little more poetic, so I created a story, a character which is Stella, and she's a selkie. It's a mermaid, but it's a half woman, half seal instead. It’s Scottish and Irish folklore. They take off their seal skin, and then they're a beautiful woman. I always loved that imagery. I watched old movies when I was younger about selkies and hymns talking about the selkies and the sirens. Stella gets trapped on a boat by some evil sailors, and she gets dropped off on the coast of Nova Scotia. They steal her skin from her, so she can't go back in the ocean, but then she finds it again later. She goes into the ocean but she ends up swimming up the St. Lawrence and she finds Montreal. Then she's like, “Maybe people aren't so bad. I'm gonna try something here.”
Maybe the next era will be more like a city pup era, but this is all Scotian influences. Violin, lots of strings and oceans and seagulls and a lot of atmospheric stuff going on. That's the whole vibe of it, it’s like a storybook and retelling childhood trauma through it.
LUNA: Is there a specific theme or song on the album that you're excited for the listeners to hear?
MINOE: There's another single coming out in September. I'm excited for all of them. We worked really hard on all of them and we've been working on it for two years now so it's been long enough. I'm ready to give birth to this project. There's one coming in September called “Small Town Girls,” and that was the first one we made for this project. It feels the most like this project of all of them. It's about those girls that I grew up with, the troubles that they have with their families and stupid guys. It's such a love letter to them. I'm really excited for that to come out because I can see their faces, the girls that I grew up with. We don't even talk anymore, but they're very inspiring to me.
LUNA: We are a collection of all the people that we've known.
MINOE: Absolutely. My last project was Bleeding Hearts Disco because I am a bleeding heart. I will remember people forever, I'll keep them with me forever. I’m deeply, deeply impacted by people's stories even if they're not mine or if I just heard them from someone else. I'm a storyteller so they stay with me. There's so many crazy, messed up things that happen to these girls in these small towns that are not protected. Despite all of it, they're so beautiful and so fun. They deserve so much better. I love that song. This song is truly who the album is for as well. That small town girl who had to be tough and had to grow up quickly and had to be adaptable. That oldest sister who had to carry heavy weights at a young age. That's very much who the project is for.
LUNA: What is something you hope you get to do in your career?
MINOE: Music is so random, I feel like I never know what's gonna happen, so I try to stay away from wanting one specific thing to happen and keep it open. I do my best, show up every day, and then whatever happens happens. I have little targets, like I want to hit 100,000 followers or a million streams, but they're step by step.
I will say though, since I was a little girl, I've always wanted to host SNL. I'm lowkey pretty funny. I've thought about going into comedy, and I've had a few funny things online that have resonated. Sometimes I do a bit of stand up in my shows on the fly. I would love to be there as a musician but get to show that side and have fun with that. That's always been a huge dream of mine. A lot of my goals are as a songwriter. It's easier to say as a songwriter, “I want to write for this person.” All of the people I just named, like Tove Lo or Lykke Li. If I was in a room with them writing, I could die happy pretty much.
LUNA: What would you like to say to anyone that relates to “Shell?”
MINOE: Take a nice bubble bath. Exactly what I said to that girl at my show before, recognize that if you are saying those things, let yourself say them and feel them, but also recognize that they're ridiculous. I didn't make this song to be like, “I hope everyone gets together and feels worse about themselves.” It's really the opposite. A lot of the lines are sarcastic, and I hope that you can cry with me absolutely, but then also recognize that's not real. You're not wasting 24.
