LILA GRAY INTERVIEW

Initially, it was going to be 12 songs, and I actually tracked two more. But then, I just felt like two of them didn’t fit on this album—maybe for a future project, but not this one. I literally tracked drums and vocals, everything, up until just before mixing, and then I decided, ‘You know what? I feel like this doesn’t belong on this project.’ Not to say I’m never going to put them out—there may or may not be a deluxe album, and one of those songs might make it onto that. But I’ve really been loving eight-track albums lately. There are a few projects that came out this year with between eight and 10 tracks, and I think that’s the perfect album length. It’s not a scary, intimidating 36-song album. It makes you want to listen to the whole thing and keep it short and sweet. I’m glad I trimmed those extra songs because the album just got finer and finer. Sometimes, you don’t need 12 songs on a record—sometimes, you can trim the fat. My last album was a little longer, so I’m glad this one is a short, digestible amount of work. And I can always throw some extras on later.

I think ‘intimidating’ is such a great word. I listen to so many up-and-coming artists and try to check out as many as I can. When someone hits me with a 12-15 track album, I’m like... I don’t know if I can do this.

It's such a single-driven culture now, where you put out one song, and even putting out an album or an EP seems like a lot to ask of people. I’m an album person, so I love it, but I get that a 15-track album can be a pretty intimidating number. People might listen to the first four tracks and think, ‘Okay, I get it, that’s enough for me.’ So yeah, I’m glad I kept it to eight tracks.

Yeah, I feel like—because my brother’s a musician too—I think musicians are album people. They have a vision they want to share. Consumers, though, are single people. They’re like, ‘I’ll give you three minutes of my time, and that’s it. I’ll give you 60 seconds on TikTok, maybe 10, and that’s all you’re getting.’ I feel like that’s been the clash ever since TikTok started rising. Speaking of which, we were talking earlier about the dark synth production you were going for. I found that particularly on 'She Moves,' my other favorite track. It feels very atmospheric yet intimate. Do you produce your own music? I couldn’t find that on the Spotify credits, or do you work with someone else?

Yeah, I do. I’m actually a producer and engineer. So I do all of that myself. I’m lucky enough to work with a lot of cool artists. What got me into producing was just wanting to translate my ideas directly without having to rely on someone else. I wanted to be able to say, 'This is my idea,' and have the skills to execute it immediately. This is the first album that I fully produced from start to finish. I’ve helped out a little on previous ones, but I wasn’t fully in control of the production process. For those, I was more involved in the creative side, but this is the first record where I took the lead on production and engineering.

It’s amazing that you produce and engineer everything. Do you include that in your marketing process? Like, 'Hey, I’m not just a singer, I do it all’! Has that been part of it at all?

It’s a bit sneaky. I’ve learned from this album cycle that I should lean into that angle a bit more. People have told me, 'Oh my God, I had no idea you do all of that.' It's not that I’m actively trying to hide it, I’m actually really proud of it. But I also don’t want to overshadow the collaborative aspect of the record. While I did all the production and engineering, I had some of my closest friends come in to help. One friend did the drum arrangements and played the drums, another did all the guitar parts. It was super collaborative, and I want to make sure that’s highlighted, too, not just that I’m the producer.

No, I know. I mean, even if you were the only producer, there has to be more than one person contributing to a song—that's just the way it work typically. It's the nature of collaboration! Speaking of collaborations, you had one feature: Michael Isaak  — I don’t speak French, so I won’t attempt to say the title of that song. How did that creative partnership come about? Was there a specific reason it was your only feature on this project? And are there other artists you'd like to work with on future projects? I know that’s kind of like three questions rolled into one, so I can break it down if needed.

So, he’s on the song called T’es Mon Homme. It was actually the first full song I wrote. I grew up speaking French, but it’s still my second language, so I was nervous—especially about my grandma judging my pronunciation! It’s taken me years to feel confident enough to sing and write in French, even though I grew up with it. This song was probably the one I was most excited about pre-release, but also the most nervous about because of the French. Still, I knew I wanted to incorporate two languages into the record. Michael is someone I’ve been following on TikTok for years. Back to TikTok, yeah—he just showed up on my For You page one day, and I became a fan immediately. He describes his style as “Egyptian Phoebe Bridgers,” which is so cool, and I’ve never heard anything like it. Eventually, he followed me back, and I thought, “What are the odds he’d respond to a message?” So, I just shot him a text saying I had this song and was looking for a feature. He listened, he liked it, and he was down to collaborate!

We haven’t met in person yet—we’ve FaceTimed—but not met face-to-face. He’s based in LA but living in New York now, so we’re hoping he can join a tour date in June. It would be amazing to perform the song live together. He added such a great touch to the track, especially because my vocals dominate the whole record. His voice breaks things up in a really nice way. I’ve also never collaborated with a male artist vocally before, and I love a good male-female duet dynamic. On my last record, I had more collaborations because I was struggling with the writing process during that album cycle. For this project, I had all these songs that I wanted to release as just me, but for this one track, I knew I wanted a collaboration. I think having only one feature makes the song stand out more and adds a nice break to the album’s energy. As for artists I’d love to collaborate with in the future, Sarah Kinsley would be a dream. She’s absolutely incredible. I saw her live in September, and I cried through most of her set. She’s such a star, and I know she’s going to go far. If I’m aiming high, she’s at the top of my list.

Yeah, she’s just so cool, but also seems incredibly kind and insanely talented. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying how she can be that talented but also seem so nice and grounded.  Speaking of tour — can you tell me a little bit about how that came to be, and what it's like performing these songs?

Totally, yeah. I just got back from Montreal last week after doing three small shows in Canada—Vancouver, Nelson, and Montreal. They were intimate album release shows, and I chose those cities because I’ve lived in each of them. I currently live in Vancouver, so it felt special to release the album with these shows before doing a larger tour in June, which will be more of a cross-Canada thing. I’d love to tour in the States, but visas are expensive. If some grant funding comes through and we’re able to get the visas, the States will absolutely be on the list. Otherwise, it’ll just be a Canada tour for now. I feel really lucky to play with such talented musicians who want to keep working with me. They’re also close friends, which makes being on the road so much fun—it’s basically a road trip with your friends at the end of the day.

Have you played with these people for a while, or did you just try to get them all together for this last these last shows?

We started playing together this year. For the previous batch of shows, I played with a different group, but everything has really clicked in the past year. For the Montreal show, I had a different band from the East Coast. They were all friends of mine—I'd played with one of them before, but not the other two. It was pretty chill. Now, though, I have my permanent band. Since we have these dates across Canada, it just makes sense to bring them along. I feel like I’ve been searching for my band—a group I can fully trust so I can just relax on stage and focus on what I’m doing. I don’t have to worry about things like whether everyone will hit the right chord change or nail the break in the song. I have full confidence in them. Plus, everyone gets along so well on the road, and that’s so important. It’s all really come together in the past year.

That's amazing. Do you like being on the road?

Definitely. The longest tour I’ve been on is about six weeks, so I can’t say I’ve done months on the road or anything like that. June will probably be a little closer to that kind of experience. I love it, though. It gets wild around, I don’t know, maybe 10 days in, when you start feeling like you’re living Groundhog Day—the same routine but in a different place every time. It’s so much fun, but it’s definitely exhausting. It kind of feels like how people describe running a marathon. You’re like, ‘Is this fun? I’m not sure. I might be losing it.’ But the adrenaline you get from completing it—and especially from the shows—makes it all so worth it. I just have so much fun on stage.

That’s amazing. Do you have any super fans—people who come to multiple shows or even follow you around?

I did have a couple of people this tour, and they were close friends, which was so fun and so sweet—they came to shows on both coasts! This was also the first tour where people asked me to take pictures with them and sign things, which felt completely surreal. I was like, ‘Me? Are you sure?’ It was such a cool experience. I don’t know if I’d call them super fans, but it really meant a lot to me that people wanted me to sign things and take pictures with them. That was a big moment for me.

I love that—that’s so fun! Switching gears back to the album, what’s your strategy been for marketing it? Do you enjoy using TikTok or Instagram? Are you a fan of short-form content, or does it feel more like torture?

I hate it so much. I really do. My strategy has been to focus more on doing interviews and less on posting, though the posting still has to happen pretty frequently because, unfortunately, it’s the most effective. I heard someone talking about musicians and short-form content promotion, and they said, ‘Musicians are sensitive people—we’re not meant to be putting ourselves on blast three times a day.’ And that’s basically the key to TikTok, isn’t it? It’s exhausting and doesn’t leave room to create actual art because it’s so draining to constantly come up with new videos people will interact with. That said, I think I’ve figured out my personal boundary with it this time around. Before, I’d just keep posting and posting, coming up with new stuff nonstop, and it would take me out of actually enjoying the excitement of releasing an album or being productive in a creative way. Now, I set aside one day a week to batch-create content. That day kind of sucks, but once it’s done, I don’t have to think about it for the rest of the week. I just hit post when I need to and use the rest of my time to write music or stay off social media. I feel like I’ve found a balance, but I’d love it if the tides shifted and interviews became the main focus again. Sadly, I don’t see that happening unless the TikTok ban actually goes through—and even then, who knows? They’d probably just come up with another app. It’s so frustrating.

It’ll be interesting to see. I feel like artists have just started to internally accept that TikTok is the way to promote themselves, and now, just as that’s happening, they’re going to take it away. As a music blogger, I’d love for something else to take its place and for people to start paying attention again, but I’m also accepting of the fact that short-form content is here to stay. I have one more question for you — I ask this of everyone, and I’m really curious to hear your answer. Since you’re going on tour, what’s on your rider?

Okay, so I’ve only recently started playing venues where they actually pay attention to the rider. Before, I’d send a rider, and I don’t think the tech would even look at it, to be honest. They’d show up for soundcheck and say, ‘Oh, you have your own mic?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, that’s on the rider I sent out three months ago.’ The two things I always put on my rider are: one, some kind of bubbly water. I have a crippling addiction to it, and it’s probably terrible because I’m singing, so burping or hiccuping is a thing—but I love bubbly water, like, love, love, love it. If you're in the States, I think you’d call it La Croix. I call it Lacroix, though. I’m not sure how it's actually supposed to be pronounced.

You can just say that —I know we pronounce it wrong.

Yeah, no, I got into a full argument with someone the other day, and they were like, 'Yeah, but the La Croix River—that’s what it’s named after in the States.' And I was like, 'Yeah, but it was French settlers.' Anyway, we don’t need to get into that. But that water, if we’re going for the perfect thing on my rider, any flavor of that is what I want. And then a bag of Miss Vicky’s Honey Dijon chips. That would be my standard. But I hear you have to change it up every couple of years, otherwise you start to hate it, you know?

Yeah I’ve heard that too.

But there’s no tricky thing on there. I’ve heard of people asking for a single green gummy bear.

Hahaha yes I heard that was something Dave Grohl does but I have no idea.

I think that’s who it is, which is smart. Because, as I said, people don’t read my rider. So it’s like, yeah, I should maybe put a trick in there to see if they’re reading it thoroughly.

Is there anything you want to add that I did, or talk about quickly before I let you go?

The deluxe album will be coming out in the spring, and there's another music video as well. We did release one alongside the album for 'Something I Knew Was Missing.' The video is very, very queer. We'll be putting out another video soon, and I’ve shot a lot of them. Also, there are plenty of tour dates coming up in June. Everything will be linked to my Instagram, so I always plug my socials. The username is the same on every platform (lilagraymusic). But yeah, I think that's it!

That's amazing. It's been great talking to you. I’ve been listening to your music for a while, and I think this is definitely the most cohesive project I've heard from you. It's so good! I'm excited for the deluxe album, the music video, and all of your success as you go on tour.

Thank you so much!