It’s an idiosyncratic approach that extends to her style too, whether the vintage Betsey Johnson and John Galliano for Dior dresses she’s worn on the red carpet, or the Björk puffer jacket she sported on a trip to Disneyland. Say what you want about Rae, but she knows her references. Where does she think that eagerness to learn about the wider constellation of genres that orbit contemporary pop came from?“I think I’m just a really curious person,” she says. “When I start doing something, I want to know everything there is to know about it. I’ve been learning so much about new sounds and new producers over the past few years, but I always want to know, What else is there? Where does the inspiration for this come from?” If you needed proof, you’d find it in the way she visibly lights up when talking about the other musicians she loves. “I started listening to Sophie a few years ago and I was just like, Wow, what is this?” she says, beaming. “And then I just went down this rabbit hole.” Is there anyone she’d be especially keen to collaborate with at this stage? “I mean, I would love to work with Arca, obviously! I just love her sound, and I think she’s so cool.”
Arca’s genre-bending, often abrasive dance music might feel a world away from the slickly engineered bangers of Rae’s EP, but as a budding scholar in the arts and sciences of pop music, she’s now willing to get a little more experimental. “I just want to hear everything, I want to try everything, I want to do everything,” she says, before adding, firmly: “And I want to work with people who will push me outside of my comfort zone.” Where just a few years ago she felt ready to give up on music entirely, she’s now more focused than ever—even if she remains tight-lipped about what, exactly, her next chapter might look like. “I think I know myself now, and I know what I want to do, and I know where I want to go, and to have full control over doing it exactly how I envision it. I wanted this EP to be the end note to the past few years, and a stepping stone forward in my career,” she says, before pausing and breaking into another infectious smile. “And I can’t wait to show you the next part.”
