Alt-pop artist gigi is making waves with her vulnerable, dreamy music. Most recently, she has released “When She Smiles”, an atmospheric track layered with lush harmonies. Securing the opening spot for Noah Cyrus’s The Hardest Part Tour, this new era for gigi is going to be nothing short of iconic. Gaining her audience from posting covers and original music on TikTok, her career is growing quickly, and it’ll be super exciting to see where she goes within this upcoming year.
Ahead of the tour, and following the “When She Smiles” release, I got the chance to hop on a Zoom call with gigi to discuss everything from her career to her Tumblr days.
Brigid: First off, congratulations on your single release! How are you feeling about the release and everything that comes with it?
gigi: Thank you! I feel really incredible about it. I’m really proud of this song. I wrote it probably over a year and a half ago, so I’m happy it’s out. It’s come a long way and it’s lived a lot of different versions. I’m just happy that it’s here.
Brigid: Totally. Can you tell me a bit about the creative process behind the song?
gigi: Yeah! So one night, when I was living in Nashville, I came home for a few days to see my family and I couldn’t sleep. So, I went over to my guitar, as I do. Usually when I write, it’s just a voice memo recording. But, I had my whole setup on my computer. So I actually wrote the song inside of Ableton, and just did a simple guitar progression. Then from there I came up with the melody and lyrics, then I just started layering different vocals over it. With each one it just changed colors, with the chords I was creating. I remember thinking “this is really weird.” I remember when I was done making the whole thing, an hour had passed by and I had no idea. It was so quick. It’s not too common where I just lock in and don’t think about anything else, but it was just one of those things where it spat out of me. I didn’t put too much thought into it… well to an extent I did, to come up with it, but it was just kind of like a download. That’s how I saw it. I downloaded it and it came out.
Brigid: Yeah, I was going to say the layers of harmonies in there are crazy. It’s kind of magical, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it. It’s awesome.
gigi: Thank you! I appreciate that. I want to release the demo, because the demo is so different. It’s terribly mixed, my first version. But, I think there’s something cool about that. It’s so lo-fi, I guess. That version is just so drastically different. For a long time I was like “no, I’m not re-recording this, it’s cool the way it is” but then Aidan and Jen just brought out something completely different out of it. It’s cleaner and sleek, in that way. I’m obsessed with both versions of it.
Brigid: The demo would be cool to hear, to see how it progressed.
gigi: Yeah, because at that point it was just a really ‘verbed out shitty guitar and vocals. I thought about going back and fixing it up a bit, there are points where something’s flat… but if I’m going to put it out there I’m just going to leave it.
Brigid: The music video is also really cool, I think the visuals really capture the song. Can you tell me a bit about the video?
gigi: So the lyrics are a little dark, and I wanted something that encapsulated that feeling of being in a situation where you know better, you know who this person is and they’re abusing their power over you. I wanted to create a world that was acknowledging those things. The imagery, the animals… I’ve always loved animals, and felt drawn to them and how much they can say without saying anything. I wanted to lean more into that darker side of me, aesthetically.
Brigid: I feel like it captures that really well, those dark, trippy visuals that go along with the lyricism.
gigi: Svenja was awesome in collaborating, I sent in a mood board and we kinda honed in on what it would look like. I’m also just a big fan of mixed media. It was really cool to make a video like that, where it’s more about aesthetics explaining that story.
Brigid: For sure. So your sound is really unique, I think, especially with this latest track. Can you walk me through how you ended up with the sound you have now?
gigi: I’ve always been surrounded by music. I grew up with my older sister, she was really into theatre. That was the first time I was really introduced to music. My family would just play Spanish music, that’s usually what I was listening to. Or the hits, but it was never… I know there are people who like, their dad showed them Neil Young or Pink Floyd. I didn’t come from a background where I was being introduced to copious amounts of music. But, when my sister found her love for music, a lot of things rubbed off on me. I remember being like, 12, and her being like “this Lana Del Rey person…” I was 12 years old singing lyrics I should not have been…
Brigid: Altered your brain chemistry!
gigi: Literally. I think a lot of it started there, I wanted to do whatever she [my sister] did. She was in the school play, I was in the school play. In my times doing theatre growing up, I never felt like there was any role that fit me. At this point, I was struggling with my sexuality a lot. I felt like I didn’t have anything in these musicals that I could really relate to. I was about 15 when one day, the director had left and practice was over. You weren’t supposed to touch the piano, but I went over and taught myself a C major chord. I remember playing the chord and being like “woah.” It sounds so simple, but for somebody who never really thought that I could be musically inclined… It was a process of having an obsession with learning different songs. That’s where the songwriting really started, just first learning a lot of songs. I learned a lot of Marina and the Diamonds, this is like, 2015. I was listening to a lot of The Neighbourhood and The Killers, that was all I listened to when I was younger. After a certain point, I was starting to do little melodies. At the time I was on Tumblr, so before I started really writing, the lyric lived separate from the actual music. I would write poems and journal entries. At some point they blended together, so I was creating melodies and lyrics. It became an obsession. I started piano and the ukulele at the same time. Once I got bored of ukulele, I went to guitar. Guitar really became my instrument. I always went back to it. Years down the line, now I’m here. I knew I wanted to do music by 17. It never occurred to me… like I just thought songs existed. I never put the actual thoughts together, that I could write a song. I think that as somebody who was struggling with their sexuality and their body and so many things as a teenager, it was the place where all of that went. I feel like writing has allowed me to understand myself and the world around me in a way that i can palletize. At one point I was very disconnected from myself, and I think writing has brought me to the point of always knowing what I’m feeling.
Brigid: It’s therapeutic for sure, to have a place where your emotions can go. It’s so interesting that you mention Tumblr and like, 2015. I feel like so much art spawned from that era. Like, Halsey was a Tumblr girl.
gigi: Yup! That Halsey EP, Room 93-
Brigid: It’s SO good.
gigi: I listened to that religiously. Still hits. All those artists that I was listening to at that time were literally the thing that kept me sane. I was really struggling with coming to terms with my sexuality, I grew up in a Christian household. I knew something was a little different, but it was hard for me to come to terms with that. Those writers… that Troye Sivan album…
Brigid: I love that album!
gigi: What he did with that album… he was like a lightpost. All these young queer kids could look at him. That saved my life. What I like to write about now, it’s with the hope that it can provide that comfort and relief that you aren’t alone. That’s the thing I’ve struggled with constantly, no matter how many friends I’ve had or how many people love me. As I’ve gotten older it’s changed, but when you feel lonely in your formative years, nobody can pull you out of that. That music was that thing.
Brigid: I’m the same way as you, a queer kid raised Catholic. I’m not even from a small town, but even in a suburb, it’s interesting how alone you can feel so alone as a kid. That music and those online communities were crucial.
gigi: Oh yeah, I was chronically online.
Brigid: Same, still am.
gigi: My brain is fried. We lived in the guinea pig era, before parents really knew about the internet. I know a lot of people that have had a lot of terrible experiences on the internet, I think it was just a blind spot where nobody knew what was going on online.
Brigid: Definitely, I think social media just evolved so fast.
gigi: It was a nightmare. The internet was very sketchy. Now it’s a whole different beast, we’re so oversaturated with information. And as an artist there’s the real version of you, and then all the pictures and content, however you choose to use it [social media]. I feel like I’ve always been somebody who thinks 10 steps ahead about what everything means, which can be beneficial but also not. For other people it’s like, it’s just a post. I find that I have to manage and check in with myself when it comes to social media use, and I know a lot of people feel that way. We’ve undergone a lot of change very quickly, our age group.
Brigid: I was going to ask if you feel a lot of pressure as an artist on social media, because I feel like a lot of marketing these days is just like, the expectation to go viral.
gigi: I started posting covers on TikTok to cope with grief. My little sister was always on it, she was using TikTok when nobody was using it. I can’t remember the exact time, it was towards the end of the first quarantine. August, I think. I really started posting after my sister died. I was going to therapy and stuff, but I was really active on social media. I was really trying to be normal, that’s all I wanted. I was trying to cope, I was also going through a breakup… the foundation was very unstable. I decided to just play covers, I didn’t want to show my songs… After this happened with my sister, I was like, who can relate to this? I only know one person who lost a sibling. It was a very isolating feeling, one of the most isolating things. I had been posting for a few months, I had about 300 followers. I was having a breakdown because I had read something my sister wrote to me a few years before she passed away, about me as an artist. I broke down, and I went to my guitar and the first words that came out of my mouth were what was in that video. The whole song just flew out. It was the weirdest thing, I uploaded it and had reservations about it. The balance between compressing something into a few seconds and then moving onto the next thing… it’s very mind numbing. I think there is beauty in connecting through that. I uploaded it and walked away from my phone, then saw it had some crazy number of views. I was like, what the hell? I kept refreshing and refreshing. Within two days, I had 60k on TikTok. There’s no words for that kind of moment. That moment really showed me how not alone I was. That was the first time I felt not alone in my grief. Yes I have my family, but everyone deals with it in different ways. To hear so many people’s stories about the people they’d lost… it broke my heart, but it was so healing for all this to happen. I think moving forward, there was a rush of everything, that feeling of being heard. I’ve been thinking about it, what social media presence means online, for the developing artist. I think TikTok and social media are amazing because it gives a lot of power back to the artist, but a lot of that power is in the algorithm, and that’s not something you can rely on. On TikTok, it’s not set up like a grid. That’s just the gamble of things. I definitely don’t post enough, but I think it’s important for me to do something when I’m called to it, otherwise it’s not authentic. I don’t know honestly, I think it’s a conversation everyone in the industry is having. I think there’s so many other ways to be connected, and the aspect of live performance. I’m so excited to go on tour. So, I think the pressure is there, but I’ve always been a firm believer in that whatever is meant to be real, will be. I try not to let anything I do come from a place of franticness. I believe there’s a divine timing in my life.
Brigid: Totally. I’m really sorry to hear about your sister, and I think it’s so beautiful that you were able to not only build your career, but build that healing community. That’s really special, to be able to have that.
gigi: Thank you, for sure. It’s one of those things that’s unexplainable. The song that originally went off, it’s crazy that it was a song I originally wrote about my sister. It was so unexpected. It’s helped me to listen more to myself, to always find something special [in each song].
Brigid: Shifting gears to wrap up, you’re going on tour with Noah Cyrus! How are you feeling about getting on the road?
gigi: I’m so excited, it’s a literal dream come true. I remember when I was going to school in Boston, listening to “July” on my walk to class, feeling every word. I was feeling very nostalgic, having no idea where my life was going to go or who I was going to meet at school. That song really comforted me. I didn’t think, out of all people, I’d be opening for Noah. She’s just so cool and sweet. I’m really excited to be a little part of what’s going to be an incredible tour!
Listen to “When She Smiles” here!
