Getting Candid with Middle Part [Interview]

Name 3 Songs: One of the reasons why I personally was drawn to the record is because we don’t see people making songs about these topics. Your song “Superstar” is really interesting because it’s this idea that everybody wants this fame, but what does that even mean? And the glass box imagery of your album is interesting because it’s an idea we talk about on the podcast in regards to label expectations of what you’re supposed to be. Have you felt these pressures to conform either from others that you’ve worked with or even putting pressures on yourself?

Middle Part: Yeah, whenever Time Is Elastic came out, I felt like I had to make pop music and I hated it. I was listening to a song that was coming out – I love it now – but I felt like I had to have a stylist, I had to lose weight for photo shoots and I had to constantly be in front of a camera. And I just didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it.

I felt this pressure to constantly make these great songs instead of just letting go and being like, what does this song want to be? And these are still problems I deal with today, but when you hit a million streams, your phone starts ringing. The first label we talked to was RCA and I couldn’t get behind the message that they were passing to me – do you like the mainstream system? Do you like the major label system?

I was like, no, not at all. They’re like, would you consider signing to a major label? I was like, I don’t think that I would at this point, just because it seems pretty sickening the way that you treat young women and young men and the way you exploit them. And so I don’t want to be a part of that. 

Right now I’m back in this place of feeling like a baby band, like where I’m kind of at the ground floor, like trying to get the record out there more… I don’t feel those pressures as heavily as I did, but they still exist. You still have to play some kind of game. 

This is so interesting to hear about your process, because coming from your experience of not having done songwriting before you started Middle Part and now to where you are, I think it’s really interesting seeing your growth. Because if you go through your discography, depression has been like an ongoing theme in this music. But specifically the way that you’ve written about it has changed over time and it feels like you have a better understanding and grip of what you personally are going. Has your relationship with songwriting changed? Or do you feel like part of this is getting older and understanding your own emotions? Orboth have to do with how your lyricism has grown over time?

With Disruptor, I knew I wanted to paint a more specific picture. In “Get Fixed,” I talk about the old car bed, and then the pains of growing up, and I wanted that red car bed to be a fixture in the person’s mind of nostalgia and how easy it was to be a child.

I used to be very vague with my lyrics and I continue to not use pronouns in my music because I want it to be applicable to whoever’s sexuality and or whatever they’re going through.

But in Disruptor, I was like, no, I’m going to be specific about the situations going on in my brain and maybe someone else will latch onto that. But I was afraid to do that prior. I think maybe that’s what’s changed. And I thought I was being vulnerable before. But it was still easy to release those songs because it was like, yeah, you could think about this song this way or you can think about it the other way. 

And with the songs on Disruptor, you’re like I know exactly what he’s talking about and he’s talking about something that’s happened to him directly. And that’s a really scary thing to do. And so that was a challenge for me. And I want to continue to be more direct. 

So what changed? Was there something that you realized or what changed in your mindset as far as being like, no, I wanna tell my story even though this is gonna be hard and even though this is scary?

I think what changed is that all the problems that I had in the beginning, all the things that I was excited about in the beginning were just stripped from me. The year leading up to the record was like the hardest year I’d ever had to deal with.

I mean everybody goes through breakups and I think a lot of people deal with people with cancer, but these were all like new things for me that happened in a span of two years that were really, really crippling in my life and then also just to my brain.

All the excitement that I had in the beginning was just gone. At this point, writing Disruptor, I was like, I don’t know why I’m even here. I really needed to face myself. I think that’s what it is because it’s all like a journal entry to me. And I wanted to make sure that I was facing myself in a very forward way and saying the thing that was hard so I could deal with it.