Indy Yelich Shares New Song 'East Coast,' Admits She's Cried to Sister Lorde's 'Girl, So Confusing' Remix Too
Elinor Kry
Indy Yelich is a minute late to our interview because she's adjusting the AC in her apartment; there's a heat wave in New York City, and she's trying to have a Brat summer. “Who isn't?” she asks rhetorically, adjusting her floaty white cotton dress. It's giving a cottagecore vibe in the city, poet against exposed brick, pointing out the birds she feeds on the fire escape.
“I feel like it's a little... What's that term? It's like... I always joke about it with my friends, the coquette thing. We always laugh at that coquette thing.”
But yes, a Brat summer is an idea she's closer to than most; she and her sister Ella (better known as Lorde, etc. etc.) recently attended Charli XCX's Brat show at Brooklyn Paramount. Lorde's attendance marked a ceasefire in the gentle frenemy-style conflict captured in Charli's Brat track “girl, so confusing.” Not two weeks later, the ceasefire turned into one of the greatest pop friendship problem-solving acts of diplomacy of our time — the “girl, so confusing” remix featuring Lorde healed fraught friendships between girls everywhere in one well-crafted verse. Indy, meanwhile, is just happy she didn't accidentally let out the secret.
"All I can say is that I'm glad I shut my mouth and kept it shut," she says. “It's so beautiful. I actually was listening to it yesterday in my SoulCycle class and I was like, ‘This is kind of iconic,’ and I was also crying.”
Related: Indy Yelich in the City
Brat summer/pop girl summer continues with Indy's own entry: “East Coast,” out today, June 28. The song chronicles an age difference relationship gone awry, in the context of endless bicoastal travel — a thudding heartbeat undercuts the sadness of it, taking her up and out of a tough situation. Musically, she says she's been inspired by a myriad of influences: Katy Perry's One of the Boys, Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape, Frank Ocean's “White Ferrari,” and The Verve's “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” among them.
Below, 25-year-old Indy tells Teen Vogue all about her new music, reflecting on having a fully-developed pre-frontal cortex and what she plans to do with it.
Teen Vogue: So I saw your mom's Instagram post about how she made merch for “East Coast.”
Indy Yelich: Yeah, she made merch. She literally made it at the mall.
TV: I love that. She just went in there and was like, make a shirt. Do you show her everything that you make musically?
IY: I actually don't show my family much. I show it when I feel like it's radio ready. I have such a specific ear and mixes are really important to me, and I feel like the best way for someone to hear something is through their headphones, not on the big car speaker, so I want it to be perfect before they hear it. I show it to my friends and I play some to my sister, but mainly the whole family, it's... I didn't show it to [my mom] until it was mastered and mixed and ready.
TV: What kind of feedback does Ella tend to give you?
IY: She gives me more advice on the side of advocating with myself in terms of visuals or press stuff. She very much is like, "This is your thing, show me when you want to show me." But the funny thing is I've only shown her two or three songs and each time it's like this eloquently beautiful paragraph and I'm like, "Oh, thanks girl." Coming from you, [it's so powerful]. I think [other] people have heard it before I show my family just because [my family's] opinions mean the most.
TV: Thinking back to where you were a year and a half ago when the Threads EP came out, how do you feel you've grown since then as a person and a musician?
IY: I actually did this TikTok Live yesterday. I do this little series called Indie with Indy where people show me new music, and I showed them [an unreleased] demo and the person who wrote “Red Wine Supernova” wrote [it]. And then I was thinking back [on] the last two years of releasing music, and I realized I'm in such a better place mentally. I actually feel like I'm glowing from the inside out because I think you really have to turn 25, your frontal lobe has to form. I guess my perspective is if getting older means more clarity than I'm here for it, and I think that does show up in my presence and my energy. It shows up in a summer bop I guess. I trust my own voice now a lot more than I did.
TV: That's such a good feeling. What kind of headspace were you in when you were writing “East Coast”? When was that?
IY: I wrote “East Coast” last August, a year ago. I wrote it after I had kind of been going back and forth from the East Coast to the West Coast every two weeks and all of my belongings were in a little carry-on and I was going back and forth having this massive argument with someone that I just dated on and off for years. Think Carrie and Big, Carrie is moving to Paris. But yeah, I remember this moment, my two best friends were driving down the PCH and I was in the backseat and it was really sunny. They were in their bikinis, they're glowing, “Cool” by Gwen Stefani is playing and I was literally getting these text essays and I just wanted to get my phone and just throw it out the window.
The next day I went to the studio and I was like, "How can I lay out a song with a verse that's all my emotional history with this person? The pre is the arguments are starting to form and then the chorus is letting go of something that no longer serves you. How can I get this person's voice out of my head?"
My personal life was just f*cking with how I saw myself and so I was not in a good place, but it really validates something with me creatively being able to write that cathartic feeling with those synths and that chorus and that sireny-echoey background vocals. Maybe writing that song healed something in me I didn't know was quite damaged and broken.
TV: I like the Carrie-Big comparison, as I've been watching Sex and the City for the first time recently. A key part of his allure is his age and that allure of an older man. There's so many great, devastating pop songs about that.
IY: I feel like it's so relatable because they want you to be this grownup at 22, 23, and you're like, "But I'm a kid. I just want to be free." And their voice is in your head and you realize, “Oh, it's not [anything] to do with me at all.” Maybe it's this thing of they're jealous of your youth and your freedom and when older men want... they want you to get real. They want you to see the world for what it is, and that tough love mindset is a very strange imbalance that I had to figure out. Getting a man's voice out of my head took me years. It was really a hard, scary process.
TV: Especially with women songwriters, I feel like you're often told you're an old soul or you're wise beyond your years.
IY: Oh God. Oh God. If I had to hear that one more time at 22… I was born in 1998, please. The old soul, God, I should write a song called “Old Soul.” That's so good.
TV: Please do.
IY: Literally, [he said that] on our second date. Old soul. I'm like, "No." I'm 22, not an old soul. Oh God.
TV: “East Coast” has this opening that's very much that acoustic kind of twinkly lead in and then the beat hits. It sort of reminded me of SZA's “Good Days,” that kind of almost nature-y beginning. It's also the airplane motif, the turbulence, the takeoff. What were you thinking about with those sounds as you were making it?
IY: Well, when we wrote it initially we wrote it on piano and a bit of guitar, so when you strip it back, it's really sad, and I wanted that beat to feel like a heartbeat. I want it to feel like my heartbeat in the verse having a bit of a panic attack. Like the argument, the abrasive voice on the phone, the back and forth, the losing your self-esteem, and then the pre, those synths rise up and you start to be like, is is just me, or is it not just me? Am I not actually the problem here?
And then that chorus, that cathartic rush, windows down, sun on your face, crazy hair. Oh, I'm not. I'm letting go of something that doesn't serve me, even if it's painful.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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