This March, Suki Waterhouse welcomed a daughter, her first child with fiancé Robert Pattinson, two days after turning in Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin, her double-LP out now via Sub Pop. “It was a sense of urgency, which I think actually always helps me artistically,” Waterhouse told Uproxx over Zoom in the weeks leading up to the album’s release.
Ironically, Waterhouse’s versatile career benefitted most from patience. The British multi-hyphenate’s star power first manifested as a model in her teens, and she grew into acting — most recently starring as keyboardist Karen Sirko in the Emmy-winning series Daisy Jones & The Six. But all the while, Waterhouse was developing as a singer-songwriter under everybody’s nose.
“When I got to a place after writing tons and tons of songs where I finally put out the first song in 2016, I’d already made a bunch of songs before that,” Waterhouse says. “There was so much work that went in, so much trial and error, and so much of gradually gaining my confidence. I’m so glad that I didn’t make an album when I was 20 or 21. It takes a long time to discern your tastes.”
Across 18 tracks on Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin, it’s evident that Waterhouse knows herself — and she’s ready for the world to truly know her.
Below, Waterhouse touched on the process of making Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin, flipping the script on public perception with “Model, Actress, Whatever,” and showing her daughter the world on her The Sparklemuffin Tour.
I’ll have an idea and write it down, and then I like to wait to see if it still lingers or nags at me in two or three months before I tell anyone. When did you know that what we now know to be Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin was an idea that could not be ignored?
I probably came upon it about halfway through into making the record. I started noticing a theme of what I was talking about and where it was taking me. I just find myself reading so many people’s memoirs. It’s my favorite thing to do. I love hearing somebody’s story from their own mouth. I’m obsessed with Liz Phair’s Horror Stories: A Memoir.
And then, I was on Google late one night and found this Sparklemuffin spider, which has a ridiculous name, and thought, I would love to have that in an album title. I started fleshing out the story around the Sparklemuffin and writing out each song connected to the story. The Sparklemuffin in my world explores this turbulent journey entangled in webs of self-destructive choices. It sort of mirrors the lifecycle of a spider, and it starts with an allure of dangerous liaisons. There are certain songs that depict initial attachment, and then there’s entrapment — there’s a whole narrative that progresses. I guess it’s my journey and struggle to break free from consequences of my actions and also a kind of deep sense of self-reflection. I just love the idea of this little Sparklemuffin on the quest of redemption, with me as the Queen Sparklemuffin.
I like how you’ve compared it to your life in the public eye. Is music the one place that allows you to forget that you’re being observed and just play?
I don’t know if you could say that you’re forgetting that you’re going to be observed because, if there’s anything I love about music, it’s that you take something very internal and you’re able to externalize it. When I’ve finished the song and feel like it rings so truthfully, there’s such an excitement for me in that I know it’s going to be shared. There’s that dream that it connects with everyone else, and then you kind of get to throw this party, which is going on tour, and everyone comes together, and it’s not really my song anymore. It’s everybody else’s. When you get a song that connects to other people, and then you get to be the host of this place where you just get to exorcise those feelings together, I’m always like, This is the coolest job ever.
When you get to do that, it flips the script on how you’ve always felt visible and observed and nitpicked.
Yeah, there’s things that can always be difficult. You might be misunderstood, or you might just be at fault, and I guess you’re more available to have those moments. But also, it’s no one’s right in public to always have a seamless experience.
It can’t be understated how incredible it is that you turned in the album two days before giving birth to your daughter. What about this album — this material — demanded you to get it off your chest and work your ass off on it even while pregnant? Why couldn’t it wait?
I knew it was going to be much harder postpartum than being pregnant. I moved everything into my house for the last two months. I just didn’t really want to go anywhere. You kind of know what your whole year is going to look like, with touring. I mean, I couldn’t go on tour without having my new record out. That would be boring.
In a way, even though it was crazy, and maybe next time I would do it differently, there was something really magical about having two new things coming into my life. Obviously, the excitement of having my first child. At the same time, being able to keep working on this album, which has been my entire life for the last year and a half. I would call it a privilege to be able to keep doing both. Your brain doesn’t stop ticking just because you’re pregnant.
You told British Vogue that when deciding to try to have a baby, you thought to yourself, “What can make more chaos?” Is there a particular day or aspect of the unique chaos of expecting your first child while making a double album that makes you smile when you think back on it?
Probably those last few weeks of just sitting at home in a giant Muumuu. I think, in some ways, the limitations that were on my body toward the end — I actually look back and go, Oh, the album wouldn’t have been like that if I wasn’t pregnant. Because it literally forced me to sit for six weeks. There was something about having my producer just basically live at my house.
I guess what makes me smile is the day that we finished, which was a couple of days before [my daughter was born], suddenly going like, “We really need to move everything out now and get rid of these speakers and these hundreds of boards that are everywhere.” Watching all of the stuff be unloaded into the car and turning around, suddenly going, “Oh, my God, there’s a baby room now.” That room has completely changed, and an album is done, and it makes me smile because I knew that I was about to just enter into this completely different reality. It was like, And now, we’re basically going to Mars.
“Model, Actress, Whatever” is in my top three for several reasons. You sing about hoping people would know your name and you’d have a story, but then getting everything you thought you wanted and realizing that people’s perception of you and your story would be out of your control. What do you want for yourself now that it’s all been demystified?
I feel like I’m in a place that I didn’t really ever think that I would be in, where I’m able to make this music, make this art, and go on tour. When I put out my first record [2022’s I Can’t Let Go], I made it independently. Honestly, I had super low expectations. I’ve been putting out music for ten years, just uploading it myself on DistroKid or whatever. [Signing with] a label, people listening to it, or even doing interviews about it like this, I never for a second thought that was a remote possibility. I’m so mystified and grateful that this is even happening, so I really want to just be able to keep doing that.
You mention low expectations. There’s a line in “Nonchalant” where you sing, “I don’t like to talk a lot / I don’t want the shoe to drop / ‘Cause then you’ll know me.” Does Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin represent you being ready to let the shoe drop and let people truly know you
In the whole story that I wrote out for the Sparklemuffin, that song is almost like me adopting a facade of detachment to shield myself. That song almost has a defensive stance. It depicts me being at the beginning of a gradual opening up to intimacy and comfort or the spider emerging from its cocoon, kind of curious, but apprehensive at the danger that might meet me.
I understand it’s a character, but I’m also curious about the song’s opening line: “Sometimes, I’m so damn nonchalant / That I can’t get to what I want.” Is there something that you’re shamelessly indulging now that you would’ve been maybe too worried about admitting you liked in the past?
I mean, I feel like “Model, Actress, Whatever.” That was a song that I wrote and then literally put to the side. It’s almost like I’ve been working so hard to — it was a big struggle to get a label to reply. All of those labels that said, like, “Oh, no, we can’t because she’s this or she’s that.” And I was like, Oh, you can’t put this song out. You’re just going to make everyone think that again. But if there’s something I’m indulging in now, it’s almost being able to laugh at that and make fun of it and write a song like that that also feels like you’re owning all of that. It feels kind of empowering. When you see the music video, it’s not like “woe is me.” It’s very much hilarious, like, let’s enjoy this and laugh at ourselves.
Is there an additional message you wanted to send with the “Model, Actress, Whatever” video?
There’s a scene at the end where I’m like, “Oh, did my makeup look okay?” I guess it’s exaggerating those perceptions of what people think you might be like. It’s really for people to enjoy. I feel like there’s a lot of heaviness around things about the industry sometimes, and I think I really enjoyed making it quite lighthearted.
Yeah, I took it as: I know that this is what you think about me, and I want you to know that I can laugh at that.
Yeah, yeah.
The song itself hits on how people normally describe you or how they have described you in the past. How does that description differ from how you describe yourself or how you wish people would describe you?
I don’t think I mind. People can describe me however they want, really. To be honest, it’s always crazier and it’s always more conflicted in your own brain. Everyone else probably isn’t thinking about you as much, you know what I mean? But it’s about what’s going on in your head. You probably have that feeling about something, too. Like, Oh, I’d love to do this, but no. Whatever people know me as, I won’t be able to break out of that. It would be impossible.
Sometimes, there were things that felt like confirmations in the world that were coming back to me, and if you have that in your head, it just takes a long time. But I’m also really glad that it took a long time to break out of that, because it also gave me ten years of making music and putting out things that I thought were cool. When I got to a place after writing tons and tons of songs where I finally put out the first song in 2016, I’d already made a bunch of songs before that. There was so much work that went in, so much trial and error, and so much of gradually gaining my confidence. I’m so glad that I didn’t make an album when I was 20 or 21. It takes a long time to discern your tastes and find people that you collaborate with that you absolutely adore and bring the best out of each other. There’s no part of the process that I wish had been different in the grand scheme of things.
It almost worked to your favor that all those people were distracted by their perceptions of you because it allowed you the space to become who you actually were or wanted to be without the pressure of expectation, like you mentioned earlier.
Yeah, I think so.
You described “Supersad” as trying “to write a nineties song you could hear playing at the mall in Clueless or as an opening track for Legally Blonde.” First of all, you succeeded. But secondly, which nineties movie plot best mirrors your life at the moment?
Oh, my God. What do we think? I would love to say Almost Famous, but not quite because I guess I’m not in a side-stage, kind of groupie phase. I’m at my own show, but maybe it’s somewhat similar.
What are you most looking forward to about The Sparklemuffin Tour with your daughter?
I kind of have this romantic idea of watching the world go by. She loves looking out the window, and looking out of a tour bus window is really quite fun. I guess my romantic version of it will be just showing her [the world], going through America and her peeking out the window — being excited by that. She’s at that point now where everything’s super interesting.
Do you think you experienced vulnerability while making this album in a way you hadn’t necessarily before?
I mean, it’s always an incredibly vulnerable state to be in making a record. Even the fact that I got to make another one. Or even that there was an anticipation and [I] have fans that wanted another one. That was a new thing I would never have known that when making the first one.
When it’s all done and you feel happy about it, you kind of forget that there are so many peaks and troughs. There are moments where you just think, I want to throw the whole thing out. It’s like making any piece of art: There are times when you feel incredibly frustrated or think, Is this any good? That happens all the time, and it’s only up until you don’t have control to change it anymore that you make peace with it. After I made the first one, when you’ve turned it in, at the time, you kind of have this sense of completion and you’re like, Oh, that’s everything that I have to say about everything. And then, life happens. And now, the slate is clean again.