Meg Myers
Opens Up About Darkness
Words: DJ Stella
August 6, 2014
We caught up with Meg Myers in Lollapalooza before her performance about whats behind her music.
So is this your first time at Lollapalooza?
Mmhmm. Yeah, my first ever.
As a new artist on the scene, is it intimidating, is it welcoming? What’s the vibe like?
It’s been welcoming, very welcoming, everywhere. We’ve been on tour the past two weeks too, and everyone’s been awesome everywhere. So far. It just started today, though.
Any cool stops on the tour?
Um… well, my favorite place was… Oh, god, I don’t even remember where we were. But we were driving from Buffalo to I think Milwaukee or something… I don’t know, but we were in New York, and it was just so green, and it started raining, and being like tornado warnings and stuff, which was kind of scary, but exciting at the same time. I think that was my favorite. And we stopped for ice cream. It was cool, yeah.
Your first EP is Daughter in the Choir, right? Were you ever in choir, were you the daughter in the choir? How’d the name come about?
I never was, no. We got the lyric from the line in my song “Curb Stomp”; “I’m a daughter in the choir.” It felt right, you know? A lot of my lyrics do have meaning, and it does have a lot of meaning, I’m just not sure how to explain it.
So you’ve grown up pretty conservatively, pretty religiously, I’ve read, right? How did the change happen between growing up conservatively and then performing at Lollapalooza and singing some pretty intense songs?
Um, well, I stopped being a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 13, and I never was again, I’ve never been religious again. I would say I’m a very spiritual person, but I sort of gradually grew away from the religious world. I picked up a guitar and a bass when I was 13, and just started letting it all out.
That’s great! So, your biggest single right now is “Desire”, and the music video is a pretty intense music video. How much creative control did you have in the process of producing it?
I think this is a really important process, and my whole idea since I signed was to work with people who let me do my own thing, and so I had a lot. I still collaborated a ton, and that’s been another thing too, you know, collaborating and letting other people take over sometimes. I’ve been learning when to let them, and when to step in and say, “no, I want to do this”. But yeah, I wanted to do something that fit the sexuality of the song, and the darkness, but that wasn’t just all about sex. Because the song is so sexual, I wanted to make it really uncomfortable and weird… and so that’s why we have the teddy bear on the t-shirt and the cartoons in the background…and the song to me is just so much deeper than sex, it’s really weird… it’s innocent and vulnerable, but also a very powerful, sick song.
What made you write it; where did that darkness come from?
Um…. Just within, man! No, but, when I went into the studio that day, it was like something really magical happened between me and my producer and we just finished the song that day, it was really cool. We don’t usually do that; it usually takes us a couple of days, sometimes a week to finish a song, so it was really cool how it came together. We were just in one brain, and it wasn’t about anyone, it was just this feeling I had, and things I’ve been through, and I just needed to express a side of myself that I hadn’t before.
So who are you excited to see at Lolla? If there’s one performer you would like to perform alongside, who would it be?
I’m not going to get to see most of the people I want to, but Blood Orange is somebody that I saw on the list (I’ve got to look through the list again), that I’d really love to see. I really love his work, and a couple of his albums.
And, if you weren’t a musician, what do you think you’d be?
Maybe a dancer? Or, if I wasn’t in the entertainment world at all, I would say doing something with animals, or nature.
Alright, well, thanks for joining me, and we can’t wait to see your set!