P.B

when will we get Rapunzel back on vinyl? it has been on my collection list for so so long. i fear i’ll die without it

thank you!

private blizzard = quote from a margaret atwood poem about cities "each in his own private blizzard". which feels true to how I wrote it. sitting in coffee shops and just unraveling quietly, while people next to me talked about groceries gossip something trivial etc.

private blizzard also = the contrast between really personal songwriting and how BIG this album sounds. lots of very grand tracks on it (as evidence by tragedy, how.....), the BIGGEst is six minutes long. the guy who scored midsommar and some other a24 movies added orchestration etc to a few tracks on this album which is pretty sick!!

the ballads are my faves but my friends seem to all have different ones

i love how small this corner of the internet is I feel like i don't have to think too hard about it

anyway it's out august 23rd, just in time for falll

It’s absolutely fucking hilarious to me that tumblr is where you’re most active lmao, it feels very on-brand, very Frank ocean of you 😂

No question really just wanted to share something. So the other day my little sister was watching a tv show ( it was fucking Ginny and Georgia :/) and I was just scrolling mindlessly on my phone until the most soul-shattering, stunning song comes on and though I paid no attention to the show before this point, suddenly I’m transfixed whilst the song plays and when it stops I’m left absolutely speechless and close to tears. The song that played was Retrograde, by you and I’ve never felt an emotional reaction to a song like that on first listen (and I listen to a lot of music if I do say so myself 😌) So yh , you just reminded me of the power of music, in just a few seconds you moved me emotionally to a place that I don’t think I’ve ever been before, and I’m in awe of rapunzel and of every other release that you have ever put out in the world.

Ok nvm maybe there is a question here- I’m curious about the writing of Retrograde. How did it come to be ? How did you decide that you were going to open rapunzel with it? Yh I think that’s all the questions I have :)

(Sorry to badger you like that I’ve been thinking about retrograde ever since I heard it and I just wanted to let you, anyone, know what it was like hearing a song like that for the first time)

Much love xx Judes ❤️

very kind of you judes, thank you, means a lot.

retrograde felt like a natural opener chronologically, I started it just before I left my hometown. I had messed around with the piano riff for a while, it felt haunting. didn't come up with anything for a long time and then one day I blurted the "meet me at our corner" line and the rest followed.

A lot of rapunzel is about feeling liberated in queerness and exploring it, but it felt important to include a song that talked about some of the challenges that came before the "feeling liberated", the devastating parts of living in places where you can't be open. "stable life" was another one of those bleaker songs.

something that only me / my friends really know is that the outro of grateful "we talk into the dead of night, share history in the dwindling night, and thank the stars that here is where we've reached", is about the subject of retrograde. full circle moment.

How? comes out on April 10th. this is one of the *older* songs on the album. For context, I thought this was going to be the first song I put out after rapunzel. we tried working on it with like 7 different producers but couldn't figure out a direction for it. I put it on ice until JT and I started working together on P.B in Nashville.

It's a frantic and shapeshifting song. each section feels very different from the one before it. JT nailed the arc of it.

there won't be an official video for this one, but we're doing a big video for the next single. filming that later this month, abroad.

Thank you sooooooo much

P.B

JULY/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

For starters, I went on tour in July which was fucking incredible. With my first couple of tours in 2022 (with Joji & then my own solo US/UK tour) the nerves were sometimes so all-consuming that I'd spend the mornings spiraling, curled up in a ball in my hotel room...then soundcheck -> warmups -> go time. I always had a great time during the show but the before / after was mentally draining.

Before heading on this Asia tour, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to play shows in cities I'd grown up in/spent a lot of time in and that I was ticking off a bunch of bucket list items in a two-week window. insanity. This tour was also my official send-off to the rapunzel project and it definitely made things a little more sentimental.

Going in with that mindset, I had a fucking blast. Meeting so many of you, playing my first festivals, solo-venturing out in new cities and trying new cuisines. I've already posted a big highlight reel on IG/The TOK, but I thought I'd share a cute little video snippet of my nani (Grandmother) dancing to Blur during my Delhi show.

August was filled with a lot of traveling. The big 17 hour flight from Singapore to LA felt as long as it sounds. Head in the Clouds in LA, which had a snazzy Amazon Prime livestream - my sister watched it - then back to Nashville to work on finishing this album during the weekdays. Flew to LA to play my label the new songs (they seemed to like them). Spent a couple of weekends in NYC, writing in coffee shops, and walking around the park and getting an ear-break. another weekend in DC for a much needed catch up with friends from home.

September has been a bit more settled. I've been in the studio mostly. Nashville is a great city but I don't know all that many people here and the loneliness has been deep. I've asked for a "table for 1" more times than I can count. my running joke with my friends (who very cutely call to check in on me) is that I've never heard my inner monologue so clearly, which is probably good for the music.

As far as that goes .. some of my favourite songs I've ever written. the album has really taken shape and it has a name (P.B). If you guess it, I will literally send it to you right now. it's a bit of a mouthful ngl.

There's a small chunk of it left to finish and write. The singles have been sitting in a folder in my computer for some months now. they will be in your ears "soon". I know i've said that word so many times.....I didn't realize how legit releasing a song could be....weeks of lead time, getting press people to hear it, teeing up things on social media (the tok...), making sure you have videos lined up....things I never ever thought about when I started out.

it took a second:

I spent a few years writing songs in my living room (while I was living in Singapore), but couldn't really find a producer there. I moved to the US when I was 18 and finally got introduced to a producer a year later through a mutual musician friend.

I remember wanting to impress this producer and wanted him to keep making music with me, so I worked really hard in the days leading up to our studio day to perfect a couple of songs. I then had him produce and record them during our studio day -- one of them was double take.

From there, we kept working together (in a similar way) and as the rest of the music gained traction, I got more opportunities and so did he.