ME: I fell in love with your song Mimi a little while ago now and I’d love to know the inspiration behind it?
CALYPSO: I’m so glad you like that song, it’s one of my favourites. I wrote it in the first lockdown a couple of years ago, and the lyrics are centred around what I think a lot of people in their twenties feel. We want to follow our dreams and carve out our own identities, be true to ourselves and so on, but there’s a lot of pressure out there to conform in the standard ways: start working hard in a job that pays well but isn’t necessarily interesting or enjoyable, earn money, settle down, be stable etc etc. It’s a pressure which is hard to ignore, but succumbing to it feels like a concession, a loss. The way our brains receive and translate that pressure is depressing as hell. I tried to encapsulate a sentiment of being self-obsessed and driven by narcissism, while being completely useless and unmotivated at the same time. There’s that line, ‘always told I’m at a loss, both a slave and my own boss, but I’ve made friends with the albatross, can’t make money if you don’t give a toss’ . Essentially, that’s me trying to justify the fact that I wasn’t earning any money - in fairness, lots of people were being laid off or struggling to find work in the pandemic - but financial success is by no means the arbiter of happiness. Even now, post the peak of Covid mania, artistic dreams in this day and age can feel like millstones around our necks, but I’d take the pressure I put on myself any day over the pressure I get from other people.
M: The cover for that song is so fun - do you create the ideas for the covers yourself? Do you make them yourself?
C: I did the artwork for Mimi, and Anna, my girlfriend, suggested a couple of touches (the rainbow - because gayness was looming) and also helped fine-tune the collage aspect - I’m totally inept at making it all look smooth.
M: Where did the inspiration for that particular cover come from?
C: The Mimi artwork is a picture of me when I was around 4 or 5 years old, butt-naked, chilling in an inflatable rubber ring, I think on a summer holiday somewhere. I wanted to use a childhood picture because the blissful thoughtlessness of those days are completely antithetical to the attitudes expressed in Mimi, which feels like an anthem to overthinking. In a strange way I think the sentiment in that track, at its core, is a desire to be childish - kids don’t give a crap how they’re perceived, their concept of a status quo doesn’t really exist beyond the most basic social cues. There’s no capitalist phantom at your back prodding you into ‘achieving’ because virtually all your needs - in most fortunate cases of childhood - are solved and someone else’s responsibility. It sounds like selfishness, but that unique ability to be ourselves purely and confidently as children is something I think we should strive to cultivate and maintain in our adulthood, and Mimi tries to claim that energy - ‘tell them to f*** off when they ask for a twirl’. I wanted the artwork to reflect the joy of being in your own little world, and doing things entirely to your own benefit as the centre of your own universe. The speaker in Mimi longs for that, but that declaration of detachment from the world’s eye feels half-hearted and egotistical. It’s impossible to return to the decision-free world of childhood by making the adult decision to act like a kid again.
M: You’ve been releasing music on Spotify for two years now, what encouraged you to start releasing music?
C: I’ve been writing songs for over a decade now, and felt it was time to start sharing stuff with a wider audience. Nothing will ever replace a live show, but it’s always great when people are able to access music and even better if they write to me to say they’ve been listening to a track on repeat, or have even just enjoyed it! I’ll admit that there are a couple of songs up there that don’t represent my style or genre anymore - I think that’s a standard feeling for creator, and it’s a necessary part of artistic progression. I’m glad the songs are up there, even the really janky numbers which I produced rashly, because they signify a starting point. I wouldn’t publish something like Christmas Without Us as it currently exists right now, for example. It was hastily written and mixed in one day in a weird creative flurry. Its conception was completely natural and cathartic (I was feeling frustrated that I never got to spend Christmas with the one person I wanted to) and I do think it’s one of the best songs I’ve written in terms of melody, lyrics and chord progression. But in hindsight I should have waited for next year’s Christmas in order to get better at the production side of things. Maybe there’s a re-release in the pipeline, who can say? Still, I’m glad I did publish all the songs that are up there so I can listen back on them and remember how I felt around the time of their release. In a way Spotify and other music-sharing platforms act as sonic diaries for both artists and listeners. Music has a unique power to recall memories and moments, and if anyone can relate to or feel supported by the stuff I put out, then I think I’ve done my job.
M: You haven’t yet released anything this year - is that something we can look forward to?
C: I’m exploring a lot of options at the moment - I can’t reveal too much, but I’m gearing up towards an eventual album. Where, when and how that’s going to come to be is yet to be decided, but I’ll definitely release something before. I’m currently working on something so 80s it will hopefully make you spontaneously grow shoulder-pads.
M: For such a recent artist, having 25k monthly listeners is amazing - how does it feel to achieve that?
C: It feels fantastic, flattering, and really heart-warming. I have really great fans who consistently support, share, listen - you name it. It’s so important to have that intimate fanbase, and I love chatting to them and interacting with them via Instagram, getting their opinions on various things apart from music too. They’re a great bunch.
M: What is one of your biggest goals for this year when it comes to your music?
C: I just want to write and write and write. It’s something with which I’ve been struggling recently because in the past all my music has been rooted in catharsis, some way to digest being miserable and turn it into something cute and compact that can be expressed and stored away. I think as time goes on I’m far less actively miserable, but there are pernicious thoughts and frustrations that don’t seem to have an obvious outlet. Writing a song about heartbreak is so much easier than writing one about more banal subjects: how to keep up with friends, how to get enough steps in or stave off a nicotine addiction. It used to be the case that I would sit down to write and something I thought was great would appear, but I suspect it was because music really was the number one escape for me. These days I get so caught up in whether it’s good enough or authentic enough that it can stilt my creativity. So I guess my goal is not only to write as much as possible, but also not to be such a savage judge or perfectionist - it drives me crazy and I end up deleting whatever I write.
M: You’re British I believe and most of your listeners from what I can see are actually from New York. Does that feel surreal to you?
C: Having fans in New York definitely makes me think I’m cooler than I am. I’ve actually never been to the States, but I’ve had a few requests to go over and do a gig - who knows? I’d love to go. All I really know about NYC is the way it’s portrayed in media, film etc. My family once went but I was really young at the time, so they left me in England. Fair enough, I’m not bitter about it at all. It is a little surreal to have so many listeners over there, but above all I feel appreciative. I think traditionally in the music world as a songwriter or artist you’re encouraged to build a base on home turf, but thanks to the internet, it’s no longer essential - you can start planting the seeds in any corner of the world.
M: Do you feel it’s important to talk about being queer in your music for other queer listeners, such as myself?
C: Definitely. I think to some extent queer artists have a responsibility to our community to express our queerness in whatever way we find the most comfortable and authentic. The music industry doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to stuff like queer-baiting - marketing teams seemed to have cottoned on to an idea that it’s suddenly ‘cool’ to be gay, and it feels like the queer culture is getting hoovered up into the mainstream, only to be repackaged into some kind of hetero-but-edgy aesthetic distributed by people who want to make money. Maybe that’s just me being cynical, but I do think it’s important for queer people who are both in and out of the closet to feel that there’s a defined space for them in music, a zone which is safe and loving and understanding to artists and listeners alike. Part of that is being able to experience a swathe and variety of queer artists, from big timers to little ole indie crybabies like me. In a world where being queer can have consequences of physical endangerment and ostracism, it’s so vital that there is a clear open-armed community into which you can fall.
M: I like to end on a fun one - your music has been put on a lot of peoples playlists with cute names and aesthetic vibes. What would you name a playlist with purely your work in it?
C: I absolutely love all the playlist names - most of them have some reference to Sappho, the OG queer lyricists. A couple of other favourites are ‘a silly little wizard cat in a silly little wizard hat’ and ‘gay yearning except i have good taste’ . There are others which are called stuff like ‘taking off my makeup at the end of the night’ or ‘calm yourself’: I love seeing what mood the listeners are adopting from the songs, the insight it gives me into their lives - it feels like we’re all living something similar. It’s very warming. If I were to have a playlist of just my songs though… that’s a tough one. I think the majority of my songs are characterised by having some contrast - if the melody feels upbeat, the lyrics are going to be sad. And, since I’m an indecisive Gemini (sorry), I’d give it a name along those astrological lines. Astrologicalypso? That’s rubbish, sorry. In my Spotify bio it says I enjoy ‘small beers, long walks and crying’. So, there you go: “Small beers, long walks, salty tears”. I think I’d better leave the playlist names to the listeners.
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