Q&A: total tommy’s “Winona Forever” is a Soundtrack for Finding Yourself in Unfamiliar Places
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Credit: Billy Zammit
A LOVE LETTER TO HOME AND IDENTITY — Following her recent comeback single “Pretty Little Mouth,” total tommy returns with “Winona Forever,” a punchy, emotionally charged track exploring home, identity and the feeling of becoming untethered. Blending dreamy indie-grunge textures with seductive melodies, the song captures the uncertainty of navigating change while searching for a sense of belonging.
Written during her final day of songwriting in London, “Winona Forever” arrived quickly, but carries the weight of a much longer period of reflection. The song explores the disorientation of distance. For total tommy, the inspiration began with a photograph of Winona Ryder riding a bike outside a block of high-rise buildings. The song also represents total tommy’s thoughtful approach to this next era of her artistry. While developing the new material, she returned to demos created during her London trip, revisiting ideas, writing notes, watching films and collecting moments of inspiration.
“There’s a picture of Winona Ryder that I’d seen where she’s on a bike outside a block of high-rise buildings, and the imagery of that inspired me so much of how small we all are in the expanse of a city,” total tommy says. “How it’s easy to lose your identity when you’re not surrounded by the people who really know you, and how we subconsciously shapeshift to fit our environments.”
Throughout “Winona Forever,” total tommy explores the ways people adapt when entering unfamiliar spaces — changing, growing and sometimes losing touch with the versions of themselves that existed before.
Credit: Billy Zammit
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
TOTAL TOMMY: I'm total tommy. I'm from Sydney, Australia, originally from Melbourne. I've been making music for about 10 years, but the tommy project has been around for the last two years now, and it was born because I just wanted to make rock music. It was the music I grew up listening to, and my old project was quite pop-focused. I just wanted to have a live show that encapsulated that.
LUNA: If someone were to have just found Total Tommy for the first time and they wanted to listen to one song that really encapsulated your career, which song would it be?
TOTAL TOMMY: “Losing Out” is the song I'm the most proud of. It was on my first record, bruises, and I was just angry when I wrote that song in it. I wrote it in three hours, and it's my favorite song to play live. I feel like that's going to be the song that really stands the test of time in my catalog, for myself, because I just get so much energy from that song, even now.
LUNA: Your newest single “Winona Forever” feels like a deeply personal reflection on home, identity and belonging. What initially sparked the inspiration or emotions for this single?
TOTAL TOMMY: I was watching a lot of film when I was writing the last few songs. The songs you will hear and the songs you just have heard, which is new for me, because I just have never been a person that can sit still long enough to watch a film. I was recording in the UK, so I was traveling from Sydney to London, which is about 24 hours in transit, so I was forced to watch movies on the plane, which was great. I was watching a lot of Winona Ryder films, just my entry into getting to navigate this crazy world of film that I'd never been really around. I watched Reality Bites, Girl Interrupted and Heathers. I was in the UK a lot last year, so I was missing my wife back home, and this song's just about being homesick and inspired by Winona Ryder in a way as well.
LUNA: I would love to touch more on the creative process behind “Winona Forever.” How did the song evolve from its initial idea to the final version?
TOTAL TOMMY: I wrote it on a writing trip. It was my last day in London, and I wasn't supposed to have a session that day, but I hit up my friends John and Mark, because I had about four hours to kill before I was going to the airport. I wanted to try for another song, and we'd written a few songs together, like “Amsterdam” on my first record, and “Losing Out” was written with Mark. We are long-time collaborators. I love the pressure of writing just before I go to the airport, because you've shared all the stuff from the trip, and you're about to leave, and there's just whatever's left on your brain. This was a final push to write something, and there was no pressure, which was great. I think I write well in those situations. It came out really quickly. I walked away with a demo, and then I listened to it on the flight home a lot, and then six months later, I went back to the UK and re-recorded the whole thing. I stripped it back to the song, and then reproduced it. It was really fun.
LUNA: The song touches on how we “subconsciously shapeshift to fit our environments.” How do you stay connected to who you are creatively when you’re constantly moving through new environments, experiences and influences?
TOTAL TOMMY: I've wavered a lot, like I think it's easy to lose your identity with that, but at the end of the day, I just really trust what feels good to me. That's the only thing I can ride on at the moment, like people can show me things, or people can tell me things, or you should lean into this, you should do this, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't feel organic to me, then I’m not going to like it. I really just try to just trust my gut. I think that's the biggest thing I've learned with this project. The more outside influences you have, or people's opinions, the more convoluted you are with your own ideas and artistic integrity. I show maybe two people things now, and that's it.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
TOTAL TOMMY: I hope people feel empowered, and they feel sexy and they can rage. I think there's so much energy in this new era and there's healed anger in a way. I hope people find power in that. I'm also going to play a show called We Can Rage, which is all female and non-binary artists in punk, so championing that. That was a big thing around this era of music because this fits the theme so well in my world right now.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new era of your career?
TOTAL TOMMY: It is the live scene, like it really excites me to travel more with this record. I've never been to the U.S. for music, so I would love to play in the U.S. and just discover new audiences and see what the scene is like in a country that's not Australia or the UK or Europe, because that's the only places I've taken my music so far. I'd love to just see what else is out there and spread the message.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
TOTAL TOMMY: I'm feeling good. I've definitely wavered in the last few months. I think it gets to this point when you finish your body of work that you're riding all the emotions of like, is this even good, because you're listening to it every single day and you get really close to something. Apart from playing it live, I've put my music away for a second in terms of me listening to it on a daily basis, but I did get to come back to it yesterday because I was writing a few things for our release, and I'm really happy with it now. I'm feeling good. For the rest of the year I'm just excited for shows and meeting new people.
Credit: Billy Zammit
