Eliza McLamb: Girl, deconstructed
Plus, "the Taylor Swift of it all"
VANCOUVER – The final bars of Billy Joel’s “You May Be Right” are bouncing off the walls of the Crypto.com arena, and through my TV set, when Charlotte’s text illuminates my phone.
“Thoughts on the Taylor of it all?”
It’s Sunday night and Taylor Swift has just concluded a textbook appearance at the 66th Grammy Awards, holding court as only she can.
In the course of a few hours, the starlet snagged two awards, including a symbolically significant 13th Grammy for Best Pop Vocal of the Year, and announced her forthcoming 11th studio album, which is all but guaranteed to sell a bajillion copies.
She stole the show even when she was off-stage, exchanging whispers with Lana Del Rey behind a large fan (to prevent lip-reading), crossing the floor in a much-needed distraction from Trevor Noah’s opening monologue, and belting along to rumoured rival Olivia Rodrigo’s performance of “Vampire”.
But while the show was a victory lap for Swift, whose stock has never been higher thanks to her wildly successful Eras tour and tabloid-ready romance with Travis Kelce, the night carried a palpable sense of exhaustion from many of her peers, including Rodrigo, Miley Cyrus and former collaborator Ed Sheeran, who all smiled meekly when she announced her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
And who can blame them?
At 34 years old Taylor Swift is proving to be one of music’s most prolific songwriters, simultaneously re-recording her back catalogue while also producing new material at a pace that far exceeds the two-year release cycle adopted by most of her contemporaries, ensuring that they never have a second to catch their breath.
The breakneck pace has some fans worried that she is becoming overexposed. They post Reddit threads referencing 1989, the last time Taylor was universally adored, they say her relationship with Travis is causing mass fatigue.
I text Charlotte that Midnights would’ve been my pick for Album of the Year anyway, but Taylor dominating in this way isn’t much fun to watch.
I don’t know what else I expect her to do, though.
So often, it feels like we shrug off artists, and particularly female artists, in their prime, when they are most powerful, just to welcome them back when they are older, weaker, and more dependent on us. We accuse them of being overexposed, or unfocused on their work. We resent them for giving us exactly what we’ve been asking for, which is more of themselves.
This tension is familiar territory for Eliza McLamb. As a popular musician, podcaster, and Substacker, she spoke with me at length, recently, about parasocial relationships, the expectations of her audience, and wanting to restore a sense of mystery to her life. Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, also found the 23-year-old waxing poetic on her Capricorn lifestyle, her early days “On The Road”, her new studio album, Going Through It, and more.
Charlotte texts back saying she hopes that, after the Superbowl, Taylor goes into “strictly work mode.”
As she accepted her fourth Album of the Year award, the popstar said “All I want to do is keep doing this… It makes me so happy.”
Gird your loins.
ES: I never do interviews in the evening. This feels oddly glamorous.
EM: I know, I actually just moved my therapy slot to the evenings because I find I’m in the mood to chat more then. I’ve digested the day.
ES: How are you?
EM: I’m good! It’s been kind of crazy. The album was released and it was my 23rd birthday all in the same week. It’s sort of like that feeling after you take molly — you know the next week is going to be hard. It’s a privilege to have your waking life feel strange in comparison to being in the spotlight for a little bit, but it’s been nice to return to my routine.
ES: What did you do to celebrate your birthday?
EM: I really wanted to ride some roller coasters. My boyfriend and I were going to go to Six Flags but they’re weirdly not open on Wednesdays, so we went to “California’s Original Theme Park,” Knott’s Berry Farm. They have some great coasters there.
On Friday we did this big birthday-slash-album release party celebration which was awesome. Cool bar. Great DJ. My friends all played covers of the songs on Going Through It…
ES: Oh wow.
EM: It was supposed to be a surprise but I’m a Capricorn so I know everything. They were worried I might think it was weird that they were the first ones to play these songs. I was like, “Why does nobody think I want this to happen? This is fucking sick.” For a certain group of people, the fact they missed Illuminati Hotties singing “Anything You Want” will be very upsetting.
ES: It’s funny, we were just at Knott’s Berry Farm with our friends not that long ago. It’s kind of a weird experience. We were there during Boysenberry Festival and they were putting that shit in everything. I get that Knott’s has a storied legacy but at the end of the day are you a theme park or a berry propaganda machine?
EM: It was especially weird going like in the winter on a weekday, because fucking nobody is there. It was kind of awesome. I love being able to prance around a ghost town and never wait in line.
ES: Does Knott’s have a stabbing vibe? Like, in Canada there are theme parks where you sort of worry about public safety and I wonder if they deal with that, or if it’s just family fun.
EM: You know, I don’t know the social politics of Knott’s Berry Farm. Laughs. I wish I had prepared more thoroughly for that question, but now I have something to look into.
ES: That sounds like an amazing 23rd birthday, though. How does it compare to when you turned 22?
EM: What the fuck did I even do for that one? I need to check my camera roll because I don’t remember at all. Whenever this happens to me I get horrified.
ES: It is hard to remember.
EM: It just makes you think about the feeble human mind and how it slips away. But *anyway* I see in my cameraphone that I was in Idyllwild, CA. It’s this beautiful little mountain town two hours north of L.A. It gets snowy and I rented a cabin there for me and my friends. It was really nice. We made martinis and pasta and hung out in the hot tub for the weekend.
ES: That sounds lovely. Not necessarily what I expect for someone turning 22, but I love it.
EM: What do you mean?
ES: I mean that sounds like something me and my thirty-something friends would have done last year for the first time.
EM: So you’re like “Oh going to the roller coasters is applicable because you’re a child?” Laughs.
ES: It exudes a child-like wonder that martinis and hot tubbing in a snowy mountain town lacks.
EM: You have to remember I’m a Capricorn, I came out of the womb like a baby grandfather.
ES: I’m so happy you brought up astrology because, I’m a Pisces and, in preparing for this, I definitely Googled whether Pisces and Caps get along. Laughs. Specifically, I was checking whether Capricorns and Pisces can be friends, and, we can, so long as I don’t lie to you or keep things to myself. We need to have an open channel of communication.
EM: I’m really happy that you seem to be committed to that so far.
ES: Knock on wood, I don’t think I have lied to you yet.
EM: The thing about Pisces is they withhold information for their personal gain and Capricorn is always scheming one step ahead, so if you lie I’ll already know about it and then it will be awkward and embarrassing for everyone when you come clean.
ES: It could be cool in the sense that you’re thinking one step ahead and I’m just a fish going with the current that can keep your plans under wraps.
ES: I wanted to ask, are you living full-time in L.A. right now?
EM: Yes, I’ve been living in L.A. full-time for the last three years.
ES: Did you move there with the dream of becoming the world’s best podcaster-slash-Substacker-slash-musician?
EM: Uh no, I moved here totally by accident. I was in college when COVID hit. I was at my parent’s house for a month and decided I couldn’t do it anymore. I decided to move to a farm because I felt myself being addled by the internet and I didn’t have any physical skills. Laughs. I wanted to do something that felt hard tactile and rewarding. I worked on a chicken farm in North Carolina for a while, and I fucked with that, so I decided to work on another one in Kansas. I drove west. That was fun.
It was about then I started posting my music on TikTok, which was not the monster that it is now. I would head to the greenhouse in the morning and then write a song for TikTok in the afternoon and just, like, listen to podcasts about Russian history. It was kind of sick.
ES: This is like a dustbowl fairytale, what the fuck. Incredible.
EM: The beatniks were real and I was one of them.
ES: Yeah you were literally on the road.
EM: No, I hate that book.
ES: But you actually were.
EM: It’s true. But yeah I went to Colorado and I was camping around and I met a guy on the trail. I decided to camp with him because he had a memory foam mattress and it was elevated off the ground. I was basically resource maxing; everybody I knew thought I was going to get murdered. I barely convinced him to leave this weird wellness smoothie pyramid scheme thing that was happening. That was an era–for like two months.
Then I was in Portland visiting a friend and wildfire hit. I was stuck in that city for a month because I have horrific asthma. I couldn’t even go outside.
After that, I decided to go see my friend Kat in L.A. I thought it would be a nice little cherry on top of this weird year. School was going to start in the fall, so I decided to take the semester off and then return to it in the new year. But I landed in L.A. in September and I felt called to be here for whatever reason.
Also, I was technically studying political science but wasn’t enrolled in any of the classes. My academic advisor had spent weeks trying to explain to me that I needed to take political science classes and not sociology of race and feminism and shit. I thought, I’m not going to be $70,000 in the hole for a creative writing degree, and I don’t want to go back to my parent’s house. It turned out Kat had a laundry shed that no one was living in, so I could live there.
I lose my power if I begin to feel defined, or known by people who have never met me.
ES: Oh my god.
EM: That was three years ago and I just never left.
ES: How long did it take you to get out of the shed?
EM: Listen, I was not particularly eager to leave the shed. It was free. It was fine. It was small. It was kind of insulated. You could barely fit a small mattress in there. I recorded my first EP in that shed, which is awesome.
But yeah I spent a while selling solar panels door-to-door and living there, because what are my marketable skills? I have janitorial knowledge and chicken farming. Like I have literally nothing. No degree. But then I nannied for a while, which helped me save up some money, and I met my friend Julia and she had an extra room in her apartment. We moved in together and then we started Binchtopia.
ES: And at no point did you consider becoming a memory foam mattress saleswoman where you could preach the values of a good night's sleep?
EM: You know, sales is not for me because I’m too good at it. Like, it’s dark-sided for me to pursue it because I don’t believe in convincing people to buy things they don’t need.
ES: It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.
EM: No one stands a chance against my Capricorn will.
ES: So you moved in with Julia and immediately started co-parenting a podcast?
EM: Yeah we met on the pretense of wanting to start a podcast. I think that’s what some people enjoy about it: you can see our friendship grow throughout the show.
ES: Speaking of which, you seem to have quite a passionate fan base… We’re living in the age of parasocial relationships and I wonder what it’s been like navigating that sort of attention at this stage in your career?
EM: It’s complicated, and I think most people making art right now would agree with that idea. I know my audience base, and it’s mostly either teenage girls or what you might call 26-year-old teenage girls. People who are still attached to the identity of girlhood. And one of my favorite things about that group of people is their intense emotional dedication and their passion for whatever it is they care about.
At the same time, I don’t consider myself an authority on anything. And so I struggle with the idea that making good music, or writing good things, or making a good podcast qualifies me to be in some sort of privileged position. I always want to maintain that whatever you get from my creative output, in whatever form that takes, it’s a chance to connect with yourself.
I don’t know if you can see it over FaceTime, but I recently started getting a chrome manicure on my nails to remind myself that I function as a reflective surface for people. It’s not my responsibility to absorb what people project onto me. I just do my own thing and people are allowed to have their own responses to what’s happening. I lose my power if I begin to feel defined, or known by people who have never met me.
I also take umbrage with people who mine the parasocial bait with fans, who take advantage of kids who have access to their parent’s credit cards, and who make money off this feeling that their favourite artist knows them and loves them. Like, I do care about my fans, and people generally, but if you listen to my music and we’ve never met, I don’t know you. I think listening to my highly emotional music is a good opportunity for you to connect with yourself, but please know it doesn’t tell you much about me.
ES: One, I’ve never heard of someone putting a physical reminder on their body like that, and, two, are you OK? Laughs.
EM: Laughs. I overthink a lot. I know I do. It’s a lot to have people looking up to you in any capacity, and I’m seeing it at a comparatively low level compared to other musicians. I don’t that attention to make me narcissistic or have me thinking everything that I put out is always going to be meaningful. But I also don’t want it to kill me. I don’t want to absorb all the bullshit that comes my way either. I think it’s a nice reminder to stay as neutral as possible when it comes to that kind of stuff.
ES: I feel like I’m pretty good about knowing that I can’t control how other people react to or perceive me, but I’ve realized that’s not the case for a lot of people in my life. They worry a lot.
EM: I think that’s also compounded when you’re a woman. There are a lot of people who just don’t want to see you get it right, who will do mental gymnastics to make sure that you are always getting it wrong. Like, I’ve only had one negative review of the album, to my knowledge. The guy wrote, “This is just meaningless trauma porn.” And I looked at a few other albums he reviewed by other men and he likes Bright Eyes. Laughs. Like, oh, it’s because I’m a woman.
ES: We don’t talk enough about the fact that a lot of album reviews are just long-winded ways of saying “She’s a woman.” Like, back when guys were getting paid $2 per word, they had to come up with 497 other words just so they could make rent.
ES: Was it daunting to write this album, knowing you had an audience who might be carrying certain expectations?
EM: I was always really excited to make an album, especially given this current climate in music where people tend to prioritize EPs and singles… I knew I wanted to make something with a narrative, something to be listened to from top to bottom. I would write songs and save them because I knew they needed context around them. They needed to be placed in something larger. Like, I wrote “Before” right when I moved to L.A. When the song cuts to that lo-fi bit at the end, that’s me singing when I’m 19. It’s sweet because it’s the youngest my voice is on the record. I wrote it and saved it because it marked a moment for me.
I wrote “16” in one night, just hunched over a little keyboard. I knew it was the red beating heart of the record that I could build everything else around. Once I had those two songs, it was easier. In terms of other perspectives, the only song that is responsive or acknowledges that cultural gaze is “Modern Woman” which has been so great. I was conflicted about putting it on the record, but every time someone calls it “typical sad indie girl shit” I’m like, gotcha.
That’s what I like about certain artists. They will zero in and figure something out. They’ll dedicate a lot of time and attention to this methodical practice, this study of what they’re trying to create.
ES: I know you get a lot of questions about “16” but… It sound of sounds like an ambient track and I wonder if that was your intent when you wrote it?
EM: Definitely. I think Sarah killed it with that one. The initial demo that I sent her was just two chords and she stayed true to that. We wanted it to feel small and claustrophobic. It truly felt like there was a darkness following me in that period of my life. In the background of the song you can hear these almost chirpy cricket songs, and these low ambient bellows. It makes it feel like there’s a demon in the song, which is purposeful.
That song, to me, is about how fucking meaningless and mundane abject suffering can be… It’s not going to have a hooky chorus like “Mythologize Me”, it’s going to have a dull ache. I wanted you to feel like you were drowning in the song.
ES: Maybe it’s because I’m a Pisces but I don’t mind the idea of drowning? Like often, when I’m falling asleep, I picture myself going underwater. Is that weird?
EM: I don’t think it’s weird at all. Especially if you’re going to sleep. The idea of going underwater is sort of like joining the collective unconscious, which is what happens when you sleep. I fuck with that.
ES: Going back to “16”, it seems like you have a real talent for tapping into the feelings of when you were younger and I wonder what your relationship with youth is like at this point?
EM: I’ve always felt pretty old, as I mentioned. But I’m in this kind of therapy called internal family systems therapy, which was pivotal to how I see my life and my emotions. Essentially it’s about seeing yourself as a collection of parts, seeing the self as multiplicitous. I have an interesting relationship with time because I have such a vivid memory. I’ll remember things in such present detail that it’s almost as if I’m going there. Shit got so bad for me as a teenager I don’t know why I didn’t kill myself. Laughs. But one time I did mushrooms and I had a vision of my 20-year-old self going back to me when I was 16, putting a hand on her back and saying “I’m here.” And it’s like, oh, that happened. When I was 16 I could feel that 20-year-old’s energy and that’s why I got through it. Maybe I sound crazy but I don’t feel the past is something that isn’t going to happen again.
ES: I’ve talked a bit about my own therapy in this newsletter and the one time I connected with my inner child unexpectedly. It completely changed my whole outlook on life.
EM: A lot of that will always be alive in you in some capacity. Most of the responses you have to things formed when you were six or seven. I’m grateful I can connect with those parts of myself and acknowledge them in some capacity.
ES: How’s your relationship with your mom now? (Editor’s note: Eliza’s mom lives with bipolar disorder; you can read more about how it affected their relationship here. )
EM: I feel grateful to my mom for being so open about everything. It’s hard for her to have these songs and my writing out about her. We didn’t talk for a few years because it was rough for me, and I needed to figure out how to have a personal boundary. I needed her to get as far away from me as possible because that was the only way it was going to work. I did some healing and my mom did some healing and we were able to have this really beautiful open dialogue, which is ongoing, but I think the watershed moment for us was the thing I sing about in “Just Like Mine”. Realizing we are the great heartbreak of each other’s lives. That grief is the experience we share, it’s a connective tissue… The knowledge of each other’s pain was a way for us to come back to each other.
ES: Can we talk about musical families for a second? Like, if you were to place yourself in a family tree with other artists–the people who influenced you–who would be there?
EM: I don’t want to position myself in comparison with these people but… the number one person for me has always been Lana Del Ray. I find her so versatile. She balances fantasy and honesty. I think she’s a true artist, and I find her earnestness so beautiful. I always looked up to her in that respect.
Brittany Howard, too, is someone who I think is super dynamic and super badass. That album Jamie is one of my all-time favourites. I think she knows herself. She uses her whole self as an instrument. She knows the power of her pen and her guitar and her voice. She channels it and I think that’s super sick.
And then Sufjan Stevens. I think Carrie and Lowell will go down in history as one of the greatest albums. It’s such a study. That’s what I like about certain artists. They will zero in and figure something out. They’ll dedicate a lot of time and attention to this methodical practice, this study of what they’re trying to create. It’s a bummer to me that so many people are pushing for short-form stuff or things that don’t connect to a larger body of work. I love lore and exploration, so I’m always going to love people who are going to do that.
ES: It’s interesting to consider that pretty much all of your creative outlets are lore-driven. They all work in sync with each other, which may help explain why people are so into you.
EM: The more I try to think about marketing myself as a product, the more I want to shoot myself into the sun. But from a marketing standpoint, yes, everything feeds into itself… I think being confessional is its own currency. I’ve never really thought about it like that, although I think it does work for me in some ways. I’ve just shared a lot about myself online, which is sort of a double-edged sword. Looking back, there are things where I’m like “Damn, I didn’t need to drop that on my podcast.” But I didn’t know anybody would hear it.
ES: Why does the idea of marketing yourself elicit such a strong reaction?
EM: That’s a great question. It’s something I constantly struggle with. I just really believe that, if you don’t know someone personally, the only thing you can judge is the art that they put out. I truly wish I was like a wisp floating in the air that could just put out an album every once in a while so that the only thing people could talk about me was the work. I want to save myself for the people I know and who I love.
Any time you’re selling yourself, you’re selling the simulacra, the bite-sized marketable piece of you, which is necessary in this economy… I think I needed to go through this era of sharing everything but I’m looking forward to having a little more mystery in the future. It’s hard to do when you have a bi-weekly podcast.
ES: I had a question I wanted to ask you, but now I forget. So let me ask you this: what happens when we die?
EM: Laughs. Do you ask everybody this?
ES: I ask people who I think will answer it, yes.
EM: I’d start by saying the obvious answer is I don’t fucking know. That’s the thing we need to know and have comfort with.
But my theory is that our bodies are borrowed for our time on earth. When we’re not on earth anymore, we die and the soul goes back into that collective consciousness where all life comes from… I do think we have some long-term karmic cycles and that there are lessons we learn from each lifetime. I don’t know how I feel about the idea of doing it over and over again until you get it perfect and ascend to nirvana. I respect that idea but I don’t know how I feel about it personally. But I’ve had connections with people in this lifetime. I feel like I can tell who has been around the block a few times, and who has been around my block a few times. I think in another universe I was my mother’s mother, for example. It helps me put things into perspective; there’s probably something I have to learn right now.
ES: That’s a beautiful answer. Thank you for sharing it with me.
EM: It’s mostly Buddhism.
ES: Buddhism comes up a lot in this newsletter for whatever reason.
EM: I think that now atheism is cringe, Buddhism is having a moment. Laughs. It’s like the nice atheism.
ES: This reminds me of the question I was going to ask you! You’ve mentioned somewhere that you’ve been watching monks on YouTube. How did this happen?
EM: I love the concept of a YouTube monk because the idea of vlogging like that directly opposes the concept of asceticism. But it’s so calming. It’s an opportunity to give into all of my spiritual-materialist urges.
ES: What is spiritual-materialism?
EM: It’s the idea of being a spiritual person. Like meditating to have a clear mind or pursuing spirituality for the goal of simply being someone spiritual… You see it all the time in corporate settings. Like, “We’re going to power, pose, and meditate so we can crush the market.” That’s not really what meditation is for.
Anyway, I love to see the YouTube monk’s daily routine. I love to see why he participates in his community. I’m going on to YouTube and seeing this bald little guy being like, and it’s very important to love everyone. And I’m like, “That’s what I’m doing.” I know that when I watch him my mirror neurons are firing as though I’m doing whatever he’s doing. My brain believes that I’m doing that.
Eliza McLamb is a podcaster, Substack-er, and musician. She lives in Los Angeles.
Thank you Ethan !!! Really enjoyed our conversation and the pre-blurb about Taylor <3