INTERVIEW: Yours Truly
The musicians that comprise the pop-punk band Yours Truly get it. They get what it means to be human, to be young and confused, and to be misunderstood. Made up of songs about mental health, self destruction, and isolation - Yours Truly has created a universe to escape into - one where the misfits can feel their pain and dance alongside it all at once. Noisescape spoke to the lead singer, Mikaila Delgado, about their new singles, “Lights On” and “Hallucinate,” and their new EP, is this what i look like, dropping July 15th.
Photo by Jon Pisani
Your single, “Lights On,” is described as a song about “how you see yourself and how much of what you see is influenced by those around you.” You touch on themes of self doubt, self destruction, and paranoia, using the motif of turning on the lights to symbolize revealing your unaltered self. Can you talk about the process of writing such a personal, confessional song? Was there a catalyzing event that inspired this song?
I think it was mostly Covid, isolation and being confined to your own bedroom. [In isolation], the only life that you get to live is on social media. When you're constantly looking at yourself and other people, you start thinking to yourself, “I am not out living my life like I normally would. How much of being in this band and my career really determines my own self worth? How much do I respect myself?” The other part of it is being online— looking at people online during that difficult time and thinking “you look like you’re doing alright.” I think [the song] kinda stemmed from there. I am a massive self-sabotager, I absolutely destroy everything in my life, so I think that having time to be at home and think about everything is absolutely essential for me.
The music video for “Lights On” draws inspiration from horror movies such as The Shining. Glamorous and eerie; viewers are only given split seconds to collect all the clues, as the video cycles between blood splattered hotel walls, ecstasy inducing neon shots of you and more. You wrote the music video yourself. Can you talk about the inspiration behind the music video, and the process of writing and executing your unique creative vision?
It was the first time that we have ever done anything like that. We had always done music videos where we are just playing somewhere cool and coming up with how we want it to look. I think for this song, we said “let's try to do something that is kind of self-destructive but in a cool way.” I had watched Big Little Lies during the lockdown and I loved how glamorous it was, but how it incorporated little snippets of absolute devastation. It’s a murder mystery— you don’t know who’s died— so I was quite inspired by that. We filmed in Brighton because it is such a nice part of the UK, near water. It had this hotel that seemed expensive, but obviously something had gone on in this hotel. I wanted it to look like me & the guys were escaping the scene together, which I think goes back to how I looked towards the band; being with the guys and going back on tour, as my own saving grace from all the things that we had all gone through collectively. That was what I imagined was my way out of feeling like shit. So I kinda tried to show that in the video.
What was your overall saving grace during the pandemic?
Well, I guess [my saving grace was] writing these songs and how easy it was to write these songs— just having little moments of being able to get together and work on this EP (which wasn’t even supposed to be an EP in the first place, it was just something we did) but being able to work on things while we were so stationary. I find that the guys and I get quite complacent when we are touring and traveling a lot because we get very in the moment, but I am very proud of these songs because I feel like it kept us sane. It reminded me of writing Afterglow where we were all at home. It was that same kind of feeling.
Speaking of your EP, Is this what I look like, comes out July 15th. What can fans & casual listeners expect? Would you consider this EP a “pandemic record”?
I don’t think we intended for it to be a pandemic album. It definitely has songs on it that are inspired by the feelings of being isolated but there’s no song on there about going through a pandemic. It's more about the thoughts that you have when you're isolated, and the thoughts that you have when you have time to reflect. We put out an album called Self Care two years ago, and that album was kind of like “things are shit but we have our friends, we have each other.” Whereas this EP is like “I’ve been so isolated from my best friends that I don't know what they’re thinking and I really need to start thinking for myself.” This EP is a blend of a lot of different sides of the [pop-punk] genre. There are some dancier songs, there are some poppier songs, it's also got the heaviest songs we’ve ever written. It's the first time we’ve ever experimented with electronic elements, so the EP is quite dance-y, but you look at the lyrics and realize that it is quite morbid. It's kinda like a happy-sad, dance EP. I hope it's relatable. I think something that I always try to do is make something that is relatable.
Your songs are quite revealing and confessional, and yet they have so much energy. Do you ever write songs with how they’re going to be performed in mind? Do you ever feel a push-pull between the lyrical content and high energy production of your music, especially when you’re performing it live?
I've always approached lyrics as a diary entry. I've never written a song that hasn’t been authentically about something that I am going through. I think the main part [of constructing songs] is writing what feels right and trying to be authentic about it. I’m not trying to be like “this part here is gonna be the tagline and it’s gonna be the really interesting thing and I’m just gonna say some metaphorical stuff here.” I’ve always approached songwriting like “I feel like saying this and that feels right to me.” People see past bullshit and people see past lyrics for the sake of being lyrics. Though I don’t think that I am the best lyricist by a long shot, I think that I am quite direct and not very creative in terms of metaphors and stuff like that, but the one thing I can say is that I’m honest and I think that connects with people.
You just released your new single, “Hallucinate,” featuring You Me At Six’s Josh Franceschi. What was it like collaborating with him on this song?
It was absolutely unreal. I grew up absolutely obsessed with You Me At Six. I remember having a You Me At Six Tumblr page when I was 13-14, when Tumblr was absolutely popping. I have just always been a huge fan so being able to work with him was something that I didn’t think was ever going to happen. We reached out, just hoping that maybe he'll say yes, and he responded with “I really like that song, I'd love to be on it.” All of a sudden I met him and I was watching him sing a song that I wrote and he was saying “oh we should do this and these are lyrics I wrote.” It was very surreal. I look back on it, and it feels so out of the ordinary. He was really awesome. He had a lot of advice about being in a band that was quite inspiring.
Can you tell us the inspiration behind “Hallucinate?”
For me, the song is about how I get so anxious that I start to feel like I'm on another planet. I am absolutely terrified of taking drugs, but I always think to myself when I am super anxious and having an anxiety attack “I wonder if this is what it feels like to be on drugs.” The song is essentially comparing being so so out of it and anxious, that whole feeling, to being under the influence of something. That’s why it's called “hallucinate.”
You declared on Instagram that “Hallucinate” is your favorite Yours Truly song thus far. Why is that?
I think it's because of the chorus and the ending of the song. This song is something that is quite different. We have never done anything that has an electronic dance feel to it before, so I think that’s fun. The chorus is a chorus that I would've imagined on an Evanescence song; it has this goth pop feel to it and the ending is super heavy & super dark. After finishing this song, I was like “this is what I want Yours Truly to sound like” and I think that’s why I love it so much. It has such a pop element to it but it's also dark and edgy. It's one of the most impressive songs vocally on the EP, so I really got a chance to find who I wanted to be vocally and who the band could be going forward.
Can you talk about the inspiration and creative process of making the video?
I really wanted the video to feel futuristic and game-like. During lockdown, I started playing a game called Cloudpunk and I loved the way the world looked. It's like this cyberpunk, Lego world. There is a story in the game about artificial intelligence and finding who you are to your core and the fact that things can change but who you are stays the same. I've always used games and music as a way to escape and deal with my anxiety. I've found those two things as things that have kept me sane and given me something to look forward to. I wanted to honor that in the music video. We’re at a party, it's quite dingy, and we have these anxiety attacks, but then we enter this game-like world where we are our alter ego and our best self.
You have two shows coming up, in London and Manchester. How are you feeling about them? What is the creative process of preparing for live performances?
I’m very excited about the shows! I think in terms of getting ready for them, we were just on tour and we did a couple of one off shows in Brighton and London, so I think getting back into the groove is exciting. When you play the same songs all the time, it becomes muscle memory, then you just get to enjoy them. We’re going to play “Hallucinate” for the first time, so I think the main thing is practicing it so that it sounds really sick live and then just enjoying the other songs.
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