One morning last August, Lili Trifirio became emotional.
“I’m honestly very nervous,” admitted the singer-songwriter, who was 24 at the time, and shook his head.She was the day before her indie rock band Beach bunny Headline for a sold-out show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Beach Bunny’s recent success seemed abstract to Trifilio, as most happened during the blockade on the internet, but the group’s biggest New York show to date will make it concrete. ..
“Overcoming the pandemic, the beach bunny has grown to 200%,” continued Trifirio after a sip of Ice Nutella Mocarate at a cafe not far from the venue.
Trifilio has a wide-toothed smile and a choppy Bob’s haircut, who likes to dye different colors such as magenta, lilac, and rust, but that day was a naturalistic blonde. .. On stage, she is known for her cheerful, serious aggressiveness. At a recent beach bunny show, she made enthusiastic recommendations to a local vegan restaurant, urged spectators to take Covid-19 booster shots, and sang “Happy Birthday” to all spectators. In her album, she is known for the emotional clarity of her songwriting. It seems that the shimmering amber traps the fleeting emotions.
Much of Beach Bunny’s recent growth in popularity is “Cloud 9Is a bouncy guitar-led love song from the Chicago band’s February 2020 debut album “Honeymoon” and was a huge hit on TikTok in March 2021. Currently with over 360,000 videos, Trifilio’s nimble Valentine (“But when he loves me, it feels like floating / when he calls me pretty, like someone” Feel “) to soundtrack lovers, crashes, and best photo reels. We have over 240 million streams on Spotify.
Some fans have asked Trifilio to record an acoustic version of “Cloud9” for use as a wedding song. Trifirio thinks it’s all a little ironic, given that she wrote it on the last day of her relationship that failed.
Indie pop duo Tegan and Sara’s Tegan Quinn said in a telephone interview, “The lyrics are very smart. In terms of melody, I think all their songs are really creative.” She and her twin sister Sarah were fans before “Cloud 9” was released, but the popularity of the song provided an opportunity to collaborate with Beach Bunny. With the new version — At the request of the fans — the pronouns of “she” and “them” are also characteristic.
Beach Bunny’s music has a lot of fans besides TikTok’s demographics. Actor Bob Odenkirk discovered the band a few years ago while flipping through the Chicago Tribune and wrote in an email that he “digged it out right away.” Like Pixies, Sebadoh, Cave Dog. Since then, he has become a vocal fan and has made a cameo appearance on Beach Bunny’s recent “Star Wars.” This is a spoofing video of the song “Entropy”.
“I’m an older Caucasian man. Her lyrics are longing and written from a female perspective,” Odenkirk added. “But I still feel very related to my pain and alienation at the age of 14, and I always do.”
Cloud9 Breakout (and previous TikTok success,Prom Queen”) Bringing the band an opportunity, Trifirio was afraid to be pigeoned or not taken seriously. “I was very crab about it,” she said with a twist of straw. “As I fall into this genre of internet bands.” No, I want to play big stages or play in my favorite band. I had all these weird ego dilemmas. “
Perhaps to combat those fears, Trifirio taught himself about music production during the pandemic. She saw countless interviews with producers who inspired her, including YouTube tutorials and electro-pop star Grimes. When the band started recording her second album, “Emotional Creature,” at Shirk Studios in Chicago last spring, she felt more of her experimental power.
“I think it’s cool that she’s an all-in-one show and doing everything,” Trifirio said of Grimes, citing her positively bright 2015 single.Kill V. MaimAs one of her favorite songs. ” “So, after hearing about her production, I said,” OK, I really don’t know how to do this, but can you give this atmosphere first? Previously, those I didn’t know to bring in a reference. “
That heightened ambition is evident in the bright, explosive and catchy lead-off tracks throughout “Emotional Creature” released on July 22nd.entropyTo the thrilling, almost 6-minute finale “Love Song”. This finale interweaves a medley of several other songs on the album at the last moment of satisfaction.
“It still sounds like a beach bunny,” Trifirio said. I’m growing up, so I’m happy with this. “
TRIFILIO has occurred In the suburbs of Chicago, she started taking guitar lessons with her fifth grade friend. “We couldn’t pay attention to it,” she says laughing in her recent video interview from her bedroom as a kid, whose purple walls matched a tie-dye butterfly shirt. I did. (She moved to her place during the pandemic, but still visits her parents often.) “But it was fun. There I learned basic skills. We hate kids. A few years later, when I was 13, I quit because I had something else to do. “
In his late teens, Trifirio attended a neighborhood jam session and began teaching cover songs himself. She’s on Twitter, and occasionally in Hannah Montana’s quotes, journalists compare her sound to “cool” 90s bands, but her most direct influence is pop group Aly & AJ’s 2007. It states that it is the album “Insomniatic” of. (You can hear the traces of the main force of alternative rock Letter to Cleo And a hilarious indie pop group Velocity Girl.. ) When she was 18, she thought: “Well, I learned a lot of covers. Let’s see if we can write anything with this combined knowledge.”
As a result, she created a melancholic memory of the broken heart of “6 weeks” recorded on a computer with an acoustic guitar alone (“When you tear me up, let’s start from the end”). She gave it to her friends in the guitar lesson as easily as possible. Can you hear me I think I’m going to delete it. “
Trifirio’s companions gave her an ultimatum, giving her the very necessary self-confidence. “She was like,’If you don’t give this, I’ll stop being your friend,'” Trifirio recalled. “Oh, it seemed OK. The stakes are high.”
For the next few years, while she was studying journalism at DePaul University, Trifilio continued to write sharp, fluffy, power-pop songs, uploading them to a modest and growing online fan base. In 2017 she started a show with local groups such as drummer John Alvarado, guitarist Matt Henkels, bassist Aidankada (later replaced Anthony Vaccaro), and her solo project is appropriate. I became a band.
Trifilio’s straightforward and easy-to-understand lyrics often sound like an internal soliloquy. Sometimes they are scolding encouragement, and at other times they speak to her demon.Title track from 2018 EP “ Prom Queen” It straddles the line between the two. “Shut up and count calories” It starts with an awkward chord progression. “I never looked good in mom’s jeans.” This song has become one of the most downcast tracks to inspire the internet dance epidemic. As her anxiety grows, this song becomes a critique of Trifirio’s aesthetic perfectionism and diet culture. Admitted She said, “I had a hard time. [her] I am familiar with “the image of my body”.
Many listeners were associated with Trifirio’s anxious shy presentations. However, “Prom Queen” has been successful on platforms that often reward young people for adhering to exactly that practice that Trifirio criticized. It’s ironic when popular TikTok creator Addison Rae (the prestigious prom queen of the app) posted a video of her dancing and lip-synching to the song “I’ve never been selected as a prom queen.” Some people mentioned something.
TikTok can make incredibly popular songs overnight. It also very often divorces a song, or even a fragment of a song, from a larger context. Trifilio, who wasn’t used to the app when the Prom Queen exploded in 2019, could misunderstand that listeners who only listen to one or two lines support actions such as calorie counting. I was worried about that. So she pinned a long statement to the YouTube video of her song, clearly stating her author’s intentions.
“I wrote this song for everyone who was anxious, unloved, or unhappy with their skin,” she writes. “Don’t harm your health or well-being. Meet these invented expectations. It’s not worth putting your life at risk.”
Three years later, Trifirio, who was successful with the app, said he learned to give up control over how his songs were received. “As you know, I use music in the same way,” she said. “I’m sure the artist had a different intent than how I interpret things,” she added. “Prom Queen” is “now like a song for the average person.”
In July At the 2019 show in New Mexico, Trifirio was surprised to find Odenkirk, a familiar face at the march table. He mentioned the next audition he was preparing, and when they broke up, Trifirio wished him good luck. “He turned and gave me a finger gun, and he was like” I don’t need it, “she recalled with a laugh. “And I said,’Yes, you please do not i need it! ‘You need that level of self-confidence! “
The bold and confident sound of “Emotional Creature” shows how far she has come. Sean O’Keefe, who produced her album, described her as “one of the best songwriters I’ve ever worked with and was fortunate to work with many of the really great songwriters. “. (His credits include Fall Out Boy and Plain White T’s.)
On the new album, pierced pop-punk songs like “Gone” and “Deadweight” challenge emotionally ambivalent partners with all their heart. “You’re a diamond / I wish I could see you as I see” Trifirio is mid-tempo during a chorus that provides loving advice to a broken heart friend, or perhaps the singer himself. Sing in the locker “Weeds”. Writing her album helped her confront her history of “shame about feeling great emotions,” she said.
“It was like a moment of treatment,” she said. “Wow, even if every human has emotions, you have a lot of shame about being an emotional person.”
Since then, Trifilio has also appeared on TikTok. “She has little experience in the show, there is definitely an audience of young girls, mostly from TikTok,” she said. “They told me,’This is one of my first shows,’ and I said,’It’s amazing. I want you to go more.”
Such an experience seems to be a clear change for previous generation artists like Tegan and Sara. “Streaming has ruined the music industry for artists, but it also really made it really easy to gain popularity in every corner of the industry that didn’t exist when we arrived,” Quinn said. rice field. “Beach Bunny is one example. Just because people can find them, just this vibrant, incredible scene thrives around them.”
At a cafe in Brooklyn, Trifirio said, “When I was 16, there were some bands I saw and I would think it’s very cool to join a band.” She is preparing to greet some of her. The next night, a new physical fan added: And they learn other songs on the guitar. It’s wild. “
