With her penchant for dark-hued chanteuse pop torchery, glammy haute couture makeovery, and primitive protozoan punk rockery, I’d find it believable if you told me that Edith Pop was birthed from a test tube combining strands of DNA stored over the years from Edith Piaf, Edith Head, and Iggy Pop (yes, the latter is technically still alive, but clearly his DNA was donated to rock ’n’ roll science long ago and replaced by strands of barbed wire) thus inspiring the stage name of Edith “Edith” Pop.
Or not. But I’m sticking with my theory given how Edith Pop combines the theatricality and musical properties of pop, glam, and punk in her musical persona—not to mention borrowing Iggy Pop’s famous incorporation of foodstuffs on stage (I recently witnessed Ms. Pop prepare a steaming pot of vegetable soup at a live show, chopping the vegetables, boiling them in a hot pot, and ladling out the product to her audience all the while performing songs on stage.
Then again it’s easy to make such wild conjectures given how Edith Pop has deliberately erased much of her digital history outside a few recent musical collaborations (more info below) and a few older scraps left behind from when “Edith Pop” was a band (more info below) all culminating in the Sneaker-Pimps-meets-Shirley-Manson musical renewal of “Tokyo” (a song about losing oneself, and reinventing oneself, in a hotel room/womb far away). But hey luckily I scored a phone interview with our leading lady. So keep reading to get the inside scoop from the artist herself right after the DELI exclusive video below—a Cindy Sherman-esque photo montage capturing the Many Moods of Ms. Pop………..
EP: Music saved my life and helped shape my entire personality, starting with my dad who was a musician. And then when I got into punk rock I finally found something that spoke to my anger and dissatisfaction with suburban experience growing up upstate. That’s what moved me and made me want to make music of my own which I did in a hardcore band called Pandha Pirahna.
Then I got really into glam music—classic stuff like T.Rex and the New York Dolls, the music plus the decadence and excess and theatricality that was part of the genre. A lot of the Edith Pop alter-ego came out of that—but in the guise of a debaucherous, excess-driven teenage girl. Someone obsessed with themselves and consuming everything from media to drugs to boys.
On the unmaking and remaking of Edith Pop:
EP: At first “Edith Pop” was this personality where I could express myself in new ways and go to places I couldn’t or wouldn’t before in my music and live shows. (editor’s note: live shows described in one previous press profile as “cathartic” musical exorcisms of a “teenage alter ego” in which Edith could be found “seduc[ing] her audience by sprawling on the floor, mounting the mic pole, and other such provocations.”) I started a band, also called Edith Pop, with my best friend who was already on the indie scene, and we developed a following and got some press. The turning point was when I sold a song to Steve Madden. At that point it’d all gotten wrapped up in this corporate-driven brand-driven influencer thing, and I lost track of the art in it and the whole reason I wanted to make music in the first place.
This persona I’d created was kind of destroying my personal relationships. It all shifted—I realized it was out of control. When I first started making music, things weren’t so brand and influencer driven. When you’re pushed to put out content all the time, and to be networking all the time, it keeps you from making a meaningful connection to your art or to the people around you. I got fed up and took everything I’d created offline and out of circulation. (editor’s note: This is a great summation of the social media age: the conflict of content vs. art; online networking vs. IRL connection. Plus it sounds like Edith Pop has a good episode of Behind the Music in the works that is if the show still existed and were updated for the Internet Age.)
On creating Edith Pop 2.0 and “Tokyo”:
EP: I finally realized this project could be anything I wanted it to be. Like David Bowie, I could remake Edith Pop at whim. Like if I wanna make a nearly hour long experimental track that’s based around an episode of Magic’s Greatest Secrets, because I’ve been binging the show on Netflix, that lines up with the episode perfectly as an alternative soundtrack, I’ll do it.
With “Tokyo” I had this mental image of being in a big, tinted-glass hotel room way up in the sky. In a sleek, clean, hyperreal space, dreaming about video games at night. The song itself was birthed all at once and unexpectedly. It started when I met this guy at a party in LA, and we connected immediately as fellow New Yorker. His name’s J. Randy and once we got to talking music he said “I’m at this great studio right now, you should come through. I’m gonna lay down a track with my friend Dae One who’s a producer who’s worked with some well-known names in hip hop.”
I went to the studio and it was all tied to something called the M.O.B. Collective which stands for Music Over Business so that’s perfect. Their mission is to bring together emerging artists with established artists. I went into this beautiful studio and immediately started working on the track, and it all came together from scratch in just a couple hours, and it perfectly captures the mental image I had in mind.
On working with producer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Meviu§ and on the future:
EP: The other few tracks I’ve got available to the public right now are collaborations with Meviu§. (editor’s note: previously profiled in The DELI!) They’re all on Spotify. I got to know Daniel (aka Meviu§) when he was tour manager for another band I was in called A Place Both Wonderful and Strange. He’s really open-minded and creative, and he eventually started playing with us and did a remix of one of our songs. So when we stopped playing live we decided to start making tracks together and our collaboration grew from there. We have a song coming out soon called “Ghost (remix)” which is a remix of a song where the original’s never been released!
EP: I’m going to keep remixing Edith Pop. Literally. It’s a new phase. Edith Pop is like a character that now exists outside of a specific time who rejects modernity. She lives outside set timelines or set expectations, even my own. (Jason Lee)