An Interview with Amelia Day

On your online profile, your style is described as modern folk while also drawing from different genres. Besides folk influences, what describes your music, and will these influences be quite apparent in your next EP, "Ego Trip?"

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Ooh, yes - it’s definitely heading more in a rock direction, particularly in that 90s alternative rock inspiration. I’ve been listening to a ton of ’90s female rock: think Gwen Stefani, a lot of Sheryl Crow, Alanis, Tori Amos, that sort of vibe. Being in an area that has such an appreciation for grunge-rock and alt-rock - and especially with everything that happened this year politically - I’ve been trying to get way more comfortable writing and playing electric. But then again, I’m just not a really angry person! Experiencing this intensity of emotion is quite new, and it was so cathartic to channel those feelings into art to ultimately allow me to release them. I found the most solace in music written by angry women (she says, holding the easy grin on her face that stayed for the whole interview) - for like nine months.

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On the Clementine Trilogy:

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Clementine is personal, laid-bare, less rebellious or angry, and dives into the meat of a very raw story. It’s about my now ex-girlfriend - my girlfriend at the time of writing - and how they had to grow up way too fast and see some heavy things way too early. I see pictures of them as kids, and I’m like, "That little five-year-old had to deal with what you’re telling me?" As I’ve been performing it, it morphed from me just witnessing it and more fully internalizing the weight of growing up around men who are, in a word, assholes, and passing that tension down to the wife, which ultimately she projects onto the kids. Ironically, the only way to heal that is to open yourself up again to being hurt, which is what the lyrics, "Peel back your layers, Clementine" relate to, all through the metaphor of Clementine.

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You seem to have a sound that borrows from a lot of literary influences. You do have a clear and distinct personal style, though - do you have any advice for creatives feeling almost a sense of insecurity around their work coming across as a total mashup instead of a personalized style?

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Thank you for this! Honestly, the most important thing for me in the writing process is to put any expectations of how somebody might perceive it to the side. Besides, of course, the actual metrics for good songwriting, like catchiness. That said, throw anxieties out about “Is this too pop-y?” or “too theatre kid?” because at the end of the day, what matters is that you resonate with it, and the right audience will show up and appreciate that. I’ve been living back and forth between here and Nashville the last few years, and I’ve met some seriously icky industry people and have had some weird conversations.

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Not all are horrible people, but I think there’s a lack of understanding about the artistic process from, say, people who might be interested in managing you. If you’re a folk artist and are told something like, “Try your hand at writing a song that sounds just like Noah Kahan,” or something, while that could be a cool writing exercise, will never match that artist. Anyone who tries to emulate one specific artist will only ever be a second-rate version. It’s honestly really hard to market my work sometimes because I don’t submit to a specific niche, but the fans I do have are really into my music. I really do think I have a pretty specific sound.

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As someone who’s a bit of a Greek mythology fan, what are some easter eggs in your music that draw from history or religious texts?

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I am also obsessed with mythology, and it really influences my work, so thank you for this question! My song Eastward of Eden is a cautionary to climate change and the general downfall of humanity - it’s very dark - but there’s a lot of mythological influence to it. Especially because pretty much every mythological warning is about hubris - pride.  There’s this line, "Broader wings of metal; surprised when we fell," and that is meant to allude to Icarus and the tale of flying too close to the sun. 

Then, of course, there’s also a lot of Biblical references, seeing as they’re very relevant to my life! The queer experience of having grown up in the church is a very unique one, and there are at least two sides to the coin of every religious text. So while the modern church might interpret a part of morality a certain way, I’m like, "No, that’s not what it’s trying to say!" In Eastward of Eden, there’s this whole criticism of the side of American colonization that proclaims: “The world is yours - do what you want with it!," which isn’t what the original biblical verses commonly pointed to actually validate. It captures the irony of saying, "Here’s the bounty in front of me, but by using it, I’m depleting it."

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That’s what is so interesting to me - is that we interpret the message of the Bible as essentially saying, ‘It’s all for you’, as though the original story of Adam and Eve’s fall is obviously setting up a warning against greed and overstepping your privileges by treating them as rights. There’s so little real literary interpretation going on.

 

Yes! I include so much biblical alliteration across my work, as someone who’s been deeply affected by it. I think a lot of religions are tied into this story at its root - whether you are for Jesus, or Mohamed - of the divine coming into a human figure, and how we project ourselves onto the divine. Most of my songs have some sort of Biblical illusion in them, and I could go on for hours. There’s so much there, especially in the new stuff.