MICHELLE
No one does alternative R&B quite like MICHELLE -- a group comprised of six twenty-somethings from NYC writing about their vibrant experiences living in the city. After a bit of a hiatus following their 2018 debut album HEATWAVE, their latest single "SUNRISE" sees a more reflective side of the group. We sat down with them to talk about this track, the great remixes that have arrived so far from the likes of Leven Kali and Arlo Parks, and what’s still to come for the group.
INTERVIEW
Interview by Bridgette
September 8, 2020
Today I’m joined by Sofia, Julian, Charlie, Layla, Emma, and Jamee, but you may know them better as MICHELLE! Thank you so much for being here, everyone!
Jamee: Thank you for having us!
Tell me a little bit more about you all as a group. You’re all from New York, right?
Jamee: Yeah, born and raised for the most part. (Laughs)
Julian: Charlie’s a traitor!
Jamee: (Laughs) No we weren’t supposed to name who!
Charlie: Hey come on, yeah! What happened to the anonymity?
Jamee: (Laughs)
Charlie: I wasn’t born but I was raised.
I’d say that counts!
Julian: West Coast, right? You’re truly West Coast?
Charlie: Yeah, I was born in San Francisco.
That’s the second best to New York, I’d say! I love it. So what was the inspiration behind the name MICHELLE?
Julian: I remember I was in an Uber. Maybe it was a cab, maybe it was a Lyft — I don’t endorse any of them. But it was two years ago and we had just finished this album. I sent a text being like “what should the band name be?” And I thought it should be Gertrude. And then I think Charlie suggested Michelle and we were all like “that’s great!”
Layla: You suggested Michelle!
Julian: Really? I suggested Michelle?
Layla: I feel like this story is just going to get more and more convoluted as time goes on. But I feel like you guys were going back and forth with names and I feel like you said Michelle and we were all like “yeah!”
What was the inspiration behind having one name for everybody? Was that just sort of how it came together?
Jamee: Yeah I think we were debating between We Are Michelle and just Michelle, but I think we kind of liked the fact that you couldn’t tell it was a group from the singular name.
Right. Also, I love that origin story. I’d say keep changing it! (Laughs) So how does your collaboration process usually go? Since you’re a group, how do you all find yourselves making music as a group?
Julian: Usually we set aside some time, about a month or about two weeks. And during that time we form mini bands within the larger band: so three or four of us at a time, sometimes two of us at a time. And then within those smaller groups we try to do the first 50% of a song, and then once that first 50% is done we kind of see— like wow, we’ve got like 12 different ideas. And then we develop them all and produce them all out until they’re finished.
Kind of like a divide and conquer sort of thing, but still collaborating in groups. I love it! So obviously, these past six months have been out of the ordinary to say the least. Were you all together? How did that affect your creative process with everything going on?
Charlie: We were pretty far split up for a long time and people were in the city and out of the city and just all over the place. We were collaborating remotely for a little bit with the quarantine videos and sending bits and pieces of bits and bobs back and forth. But sort of throughout July and August what was really amazing was everyone kind of got back to the city around the same time of the people who weren’t already there, and so we started having these writing sessions again: social-distanced, outdoor, mask-on with a little guitar and a dinky little CASIO keyboard. And it was kind of, you know, as different and freaky and weird as it was, it was kind of same as it ever was in terms of the stuff we were writing and just how it felt to be together. MICHELLE is always going to be MICHELLE no matter what freaky, messed up circumstances you put it through.
Aw, I love that! So, “SUNRISE” is your most recent song. Did this happen before everything? (All nodding) Yeah, I figured. I love this song, I think it really captures the essence of MICHELLE so well. What was the process of making it like? How did it come together?
Charlie: So originally after HEATWAVE there was a five-month gap where we weren’t really writing anything and we were playing one or two shows—
Julian: We wrote “Party Renaissance”!
Sofia: We did write “Party Renaissance”.
Charlie: Oh, we wrote— yes, we did write a song that never ended up going anywhere but lives in the archive of forgotten but still really good MICHELLE songs. And then we all ended up meeting back up and, you know, we’d had all of these ideas over the past couple of months, and we just decided to throw them at each other and see what happens. And I had written this little keyboard part that ended up being part of what would become “SUNRISE” and then Julian was like “Oh yeah, I’ve got these drums!” and then that sort of happened. And then Emma wrote that original first line of the hook: “couldn’t ever be my sunrise” and the song sort of spiraled out from there. But what was interesting is all of the upcoming material that we’ve worked on has been reworked and reworked and reworked so many times and in so many different incarnations, and “SUNRISE” has kind of just been itself the whole way through which is refreshing and different. And it’s this very pure picture of when we made it, which was around December 2018.
Wow, okay. So it’s been in the works for a while.
Julian: True, but I would like to say that it may have sounded similar the whole way through, but we’ve had like two different second verses, we scrapped the second pre[chorus], we re-recorded the vocals like four times with four different singers, we sent it to get mixed by a person who sent it back using the mixed bass stems, we did some last minute tambourine overdubs, we cut a piano solo—
Charle: Yeah but for us that’s like nothing.
Julian: That’s true, that’s true. But the devil’s in the details, and that song has no details.
That’s funny. Speaking of variations of the song and how it’s changed, we’ve been lucky enough to get a couple different versions released from the stripped back version to the Leven Kali remix. It’s been so cool to see so many different sides of the same song. How did those come together?
Sofia: And there’s more versions coming! Yeah, we’re just going to keep giving it to you. That’s the beautiful thing about a label is they’re very well connected and we ourselves are very well connected, as well. So when those two forces meet together the possibilities are endless, and so we’ve been very grateful to collaborate with Leven Kali, we have another remix coming out, we have another remix with a feature coming out, we have the stripped version, and so it’s nice that with this new family that we’ve welcomed into our family — and they’ve welcome us into theirs — we’re able to milk out the most of these songs that we’ve created.
Right, and really give it the attention it deserves. And like I said, I think it’s really cool to see different sides to that song, too, because I think it works in so many different ways, which is cool to listen to.
Emma: I think, back to the point of— yes, this song has been reworked so many times but it also has lived with us since December 2018 right after HEATWAVE, you know? So it’s cool to imagine and reimagine a song time and time again with different voices, with similar voices and new takes; like seeing how can this one thing grow into other things? I think that that’s exciting and I haven’t had the pleasure of having a piece of work do that before of my own, so that’s cool.
Julian: I just want to thank Charlie, because Charlie is a perfectionist. Charlie will not sleep until a song is perfect and the song nearly killed me, but I do think it’s perfect.
Charlie: I think in the end on “SUNRISE” when we were re-recording the vocals with Emma, of the lead vocal in the first verse, I think we ended up hitting about 300 takes.
Oof, wow. What a blessing and a curse to be a perfectionist.
Charlie: Definitely a curse.
Well it comes out amazing in the end, but the process is just grueling. That’s awesome though; I think it shows because the song sounds so tied together from a listener perspective. So, I saw you all back in January at The Dance and that was such a fun show. The aesthetic of that venue just matched you all so perfectly, it was great! Is there a NYC venue that you’re dying to play again once we’re out of this pandemic?
Layla: Webster Hall, 5sure.
Sofia: Bowery Ballroom has been on my hit list since I was a wee one. And we probably would have played it by now! But it’s okay, let’s make sure it’s still there so that we can go.
I’m surprised you all didn’t say you wanted to bring back the basement of the Brooklyn Bazaar (laughs).
Jamee: (Laughs)
Sofia: Honestly, that was such a fun show!
Jamee: I have the poster up there (points to the wall behind her).
That was just simultaneously the weirdest and coolest place (laughs). Amazing, well thank you all for spending your afternoon with me! I really appreciate it!
All: Thank you!
This interview originally aired on WNYU Radio with Bridgette Kontner on September 8, 2020 on The New Afternoon Show https://soundcloud.com/wnyu/michelle