Q&A: Nep on Touring, the Making of ‘Noelle’, and Growing Up in Florida

MusicQ&A

Feb 10

INTERVIEW

“I WRITE IN BURSTS. FOUR SONGS IN TWO DAYS, THEN NOTHING FOR MONTHS.” Nep says this casually, almost offhand, but it explains so much about her debut album Noelle. The record unfolds in specific and sharp moments, like feelings you write down only when they become impossible to ignore.

“I love being specific to the point where it almost becomes general,” Nep tells me. It’s a philosophy that defines the album. Lyrics reference missed encounters, half-formed conversations, and honest depictions of painful memories. Her words are so candid that they have the rare ability to give names to feelings we’ve always had.

The ninth track on the album, “I Will Always Love You Alright,” is a near-perfect depiction of lingering heartbreak. The song captures the quiet devastation of realizing that love doesn’t disappear just because time has passed. Nep zeroes in on the moment of emotional avoidance, singing, “Stomach dropped when I spotted you the other day/Chicken out of saying something cool like hey/ Pivoted direction so I wouldn’t have to feel something.” It’s a lyric she’s especially proud of for articulating a feeling that’s both deeply specific and painfully universal.

Florida appears again and again throughout Noelle, as a complicated force that both hurts and profoundly shapes her. Growing up queer in a deeply conservative environment left its mark. “It’s a love-hate relationship,” Nep says of Florida. “I trashed it a lot, but I also fit in more than I thought.” That tension animates some of the album’s most striking moments, where nostalgia and frustration coexist without canceling each other out.

Nep is about to kick off a tour across America and the UK. Luna spoke with Nep about writing in emotional bursts, growing up queer in Florida, and trusting collaboration. Read more below.

LUNA: How are you doing?

NEP: Good. Honestly, I sleep in a lot, so I just woke up, but I’m having a great time.

LUNA: You’re about to go on tour! Are there any songs you’re especially excited to play live?

NEP: I love playing “Scar” on tour. It’s very talky, almost like slam poetry, so I don’t have to focus on singing as much. I’m also really excited to play “July (It Feels So Lovely To Cry)” this time around. We used to play it very low live, but we’re raising it a bit. I love dancing during that song, but before I was literally gasping for air. I’m excited to feel more in my element.

LUNA: Listening to the album, there’s so much duality. It jumps from heartbreak songs to love songs. What was the writing process for that like?

NEP: Some songs were written years apart. “Girls on TV” was written a couple years ago, and my manager and best friend encouraged me to put it on the album. Most of the album was written within the same eight months, though. I write in bursts though so I’ll write like four songs in two days, then nothing for two months.

LUNA: Are you a notes app person for lyrics?

NEP: Totally. I love the notes app and journaling. I love changing fonts and sizes in notes, adding pictures and building the aesthetic of a song.

LUNA: Were there any songs where the original demo sounded totally different from the final version?

NEP: “Girls on TV,” for sure. I made a super underproduced GarageBand demo before I handed it off to Jake, and he just flipped it completely. He sampled my voice and his voice and added parts that weren’t there at all before. When he sent it back, I finally understood why they wanted it on the album.

LUNA: What’s your favorite lyric you’ve written?

NEP: Probably from “I Will Always Love You All Right;” It’s the most personal without being gimmicky. The line, “stomach dropped when I spotted you the other day/ chickened out of saying something cool like hey/ pivoted directions so I wouldn’t have to feel something.” I’ve lived that moment so many times and I’ve been trying to put that feeling into words for so long. When I wrote it, I was just happy I finally captured it without it sounding cringe.

LUNA: That’s my favorite track on the album. It’s so heartbreaking. What does it feel like playing it live?

NEP: I couldn’t sing it without crying for about a year after it came out. Even in the voice memos when I was first making it, you can hear my voice crack from crying. Live though, the adrenaline changed that. I haven’t cried playing it live yet. It actually feels calming onstage, like a pause in the set.

LUNA: Are there lyrics that feel really personal but you felt like it went kind of unnoticed, or that people didn’t really see it as super intimate.

NEP: “Scar.” That song is just about me losing my mind. I wrote about my best friend from and I getting Wawa in college. “Wawa soda machine with my Adri.” That was our thing and such a source of comfort to me.

LUNA: Do you ever write lyrics that only one person might understand? Almost like an inside joke or message.

NEP: Totally. In “Soup Song,” the line, “your name is an anagram and mine is a joke,” the funny part is that I don’t even know if the person it’s about understands it. Maybe no one does, and I kind of love that. I love being specific to a point of being almost general.

LUNA: I love the song “Doc.” It feels so visceral. What was the writing process for that?

NEP: I wrote it pretty soon after what it’s about, during my sophomore year of college. My dorm room had mold in the vents so I remember sitting in my room coughing when I sat down to make it. I wrote it all at once in a burst of creative energy. When I feel inspired I know I can sit down and write a song.

LUNA: That’s so interesting. What do you think puts you in the mood where you know you can sit down and write a song?

NEP: I write best when I’m consuming a lot of art: movies, TV and painting with friends. Doing anything creative boosts me into songwriting mode.

LUNA: When did you realize music was really your thing?

NEP: When I was about 15, my song “Marmalade” got on a Spotify editorial playlist and stayed there for two years. Before that, I hated everything I wrote. I’d go home from school and just write constantly, thinking I sucked. That playlist was external validation that someone liked it.

LUNA: What were you watching or listening to while making Noelle?

NEP: Gilmore Girls for sure. I also got really into Letterboxd. Watching tons of movies definitely fueled the album.

LUNA: What’s your Letterboxd top four?

NEP: Dune: Part Two, Singin’ in the Rain, Howl’s Moving Castle and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Fuck J.K. Rowling, though.

LUNA: Wow that’s a great list. Who are your biggest musical inspirations?

NEP: Cavetown. They’re the reason I started making music. I learned GarageBand and Logic because of them. I love how they’ve shifted over the years and changed genres. I’m never quite sure what I want to make. With the last album I went super produced and pop, but now I’m wondering if maybe I’ll pull back in the future and do more guitar stuff. So someone who switched it up like Cavetown has always been an inspiration for me.

LUNA: There’s definitely a sonic shift from your last EP to this album. And Noelle contains a few different genres. What do you think caused this change?

NEP: My best friend Jake produced everything. I’m not great at electric guitar, so he brought in fun things like a slide guitar. It was super collaborative and really fun.LUNA: Is there anything specific on the album you can point out that you’re super proud of?

NEP: The bridge on “Florida Girl.” We had a terrible bridge for so long, and I was stubborn about changing it. I went home, wrote a new one in a day, recorded it on a 58 in my room, and sent it back. When it clicked, it felt amazing.

LUNA: I absolutely love “The Soundtrack.” Can you tell me a little bit more about that song?

NEP: I wrote it about one of my exes who's kind of famous. I had him blocked for three years and saw his face on Instagram because he collaborated with a famous person I follow. I remember feeling like my world was crushing in on me when I saw it. It’s funny now that we’re friends so we can laugh about it, but at the time it really hurt.

LUNA: There are religious references in your music. Do you have a history with religion?

NEP: I grew up Presbyterian and went to church every Sunday until I was about 13. I’m an atheist now, but my church was all about community and love. But also growing up in Florida I often saw religion used in really exclusionary ways, which made me feel really disconnected.

LUNA: You write about Florida so much in your music. What I think is so interesting though is how you talk about Florida with both love and frustration.

NEP: It’s a total love-hate relationship. I didn’t even mean for it to be like that, but I think the album captures me grappling with that.

LUNA: How do you think growing up in Florida instructed your music?

NEP: A lot of my music comes out very queer in a country and folky way, which makes sense because I am queer. But because I grew up in Florida, making music was like my fun little secret diary since I felt so disconnected from so many people around me.

Writing “Daytona,” which is kind of a rip on Florida, was one of the first songs for the album and people were like, “Man you really hate it there.” But there’s so much I love, too. “Florida Girl” came from realizing I fit in more than I thought.

LUNA: Your melodies and guitar riffs are so wonderful. Does that come first or do the lyrics come first?

NEP: Thank you so much. Usually bass chords and lyrics come first. Jake handled a lot of the awesome guitar parts. We were really good at critiquing each other and changing things together.

LUNA: Has performing changed your relationship to the songs?

NEP: Definitely. Hearing people sing lyrics back to you is wild. It reminds me why I write music and makes me want to do it again.

LUNA: What’s next for you?

NEP: I’m working on new songs for a Noelle deluxe album. I think I can say this… it’s not announced yet but whatever. I’m producing all of it myself, and I’m really excited.