Indie-pop favorite Clairo wrote her 2019 debut album Immunity after earning viral fame for her early singles. Now, she’s just a week away from the release of her follow-up album Sling. For Clairo, the process of writing her sophomore album was immensely healing, but it almost never happened. In fact, Clairo says she was ready to leave music behind before Sling “changed everything” for her.
Clairo appears on our new digital cover. She became a Gen-Z hero for her deeply openhearted songs, but ended up wondering whether she wanted to stick with music at all. So she headed to the country to find herself, and a way forward. https://t.co/s1y6uOyuQ9 pic.twitter.com/5HmpulS4y6
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 8, 2021
Clairo recently talked with Rolling Stone in a cover interview for their latest issue. The singer spoke about coping with her anxiety in the face of viral fame and how she first met her Sling producer Jack Antonoff. Clairo admitted that Immunity and its subsequent tour was such a whirlwind, she was nearly ready to leave her career behind. “This record has changed everything for me, because I was fully going to quit music,” she said.
Part of Clairo’s frustrations also stemmed from her being overly sexualized by others in the industry. The singer said she even stopped going to the studio by herself because she was sick of being objectified:
“I was pissed off. I was pissed off that that’s a part of this, and that I’m just supposed to accept the fact that that’s a part of it. I have moments where I wonder if it even matters what I write. I put in so much effort, but is it going to get to a point where I’m just overly sexualized again? You’re so desperate for someone to hear you out that you just let them do it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Clairo talks about how her history with anxiety and depression may cause her to part ways with her musical career in the future. “It’s an unlikely pair, for sure. It makes me so anxious, but this is my life,” she said about performing on stage with crippling anxiety. “I don’t even know if I could continue to do this forever,” she continued. “If it comes to a point where I have to choose between the two, I might have to quit. And I’m okay with that. I’m just hoping that I get to a point where I don’t have to make that decision and that I can just go about this in a healthy way, which I think I’m starting to.”
Read Rolling Stone‘s full interview with Clairo here.
Sling is out 7/16 via Fader/Republic Records. Pre-order it here.