Ezra Furman on Confidence, Fame, and Getting What You Couldn’t Have
Whether thrashing through defiant anthems or whispering secrets by guitar in the dark, Ezra Furman’s music is a wild, beautiful collision of rebellion, vulnerability, and electric hope.
After beginning her music career in 2006 as the frontwoman of Ezra Furman and the Harpoons — a band formed during her time at Tufts University — she embarked on a critically acclaimed solo career, releasing pioneering albums such as The Year of No Returning (2012), Day of the Dog (2013), Perpetual Motion People (2015), Transangelic Exodus (2018), and All Of Us Flames (2022).
Furman's work gained even wider recognition through her contributions to the soundtrack of the Netflix series Sex Education, where her songs underscored the show's radical exploration of adolescence and identity.
Now back with her tenth studio album, Goodbye Small Head, Ezra Furman has triumphantly rearrived as a fighter for humanity, a poet for the broken, and a living reminder that rebellion isn’t just an attitude — it’s survival.
KP: In 2021, you shared your transition with the world, which is such a remarkable, brave thing to do. Seeing it made me recall a video segment you completed where you broke down “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend.” You said, “In the song, I’m asking to be your girlfriend in an old-fashioned, uncomplicated way — even though I don’t look the part of a cisgendered girlfriend and don’t fit the old-fashioned dream… That’s part of where the yearning in the song comes from.”
As a gay woman, it made me think volumes about love and relationships and how we may not all fit the traditional concepts of either, but we can still experience it just as wholly.
I don’t really have a question here, but I just wanted to give you the space to speak about the multitudes of our queer experiences and, yes, the yearning that can come from wanting that picture-perfect version of love in our own different, special ways.
EF: One thing about that song is that it’s not really an ideological song or a protest song that has its politics or its theory worked out — it's just admitting to this powerful yearning. I almost didn't quite have the courage to record it and put that song out. I think it was ready for the previous album, but I was like, oh, no, no, no, no. I wasn't even going to put it on the album that it came out on because I was like, well, it's this tough punk garage rock record… How would this fit in? This wouldn't fit at all.
I think I was also just embarrassed in front of my bandmates. I pushed through a lot of doubt about it, probably just because it's just emotionally vulnerable, but there’s also a part of me that’s like, why do I want this? Why do I want this thing that sounds so traditional? First of all, it's embarrassing because I know that I can't have it. I can't be this, I don't know, prom queen or something.
KP: I couldn't be either! [Laughs]. It's okay.
EF: But also, why would I want it? I reject that. I really, really reject that as a feminist. I want to remake all of these gender roles, and yet, I have to admit what I feel in my most unguarded self about it. There's something about it that connects really deeply to something about being trans. And for years, I was like, whatever, I'm just outside of all of these categories — all of the words just don't apply to me. I'm not one of the genders, and I'm not on your team — I wear whatever the fuck I want, and I don't need to define it for you. I don't claim some role. But really, I was just afraid. In some ways, it was a way of avoiding saying that I wanted those things. Even though I can't totally or coherently explain why I'm trans, or even, like, justify these desires politically, you know?
KP: Right.
EF: It's like what a lot of feminists realized about porn or kink stuff. I don't know. I think what turns us on turns us on, and it's okay, in the same way that we just want what we want. It's okay to not know why this gender brings me freedom.
I think that’s what brings a lot of the song its power — that’s all in there.
KP: I think it's so interesting, too, what you talked about earlier, because I feel like I've experienced so much of that myself, and I also don't know why. I grew up being a very obviously gay young girl and young woman — I never had friends, I never fit in anywhere, and I was always very much so a loner, but I would watch these movies with like, you know, the captain of the football team dating the captain of the cheerleading team, and I almost wanted it. But that is so not me at all — and it could never be me.
But I think because it's so far from our personal experiences, sometimes you kind of want to experience what you never had. And I think it's funny, because I so relate to what you said when you were like, why do I want that?
But I think maybe that's true for the other side as well. I mean, I've known the head cheerleaders, and they all want to be really cool, right? But they'll never be cool! [Laughs]. So maybe the grass is always greener — maybe it’s something like that.
EF: Yeah, for sure. And also, maybe that's just sometimes a passing impulse. And other times it's like, this is deep. So maybe it's worth claiming certain things, even though you could never have them. Just being like, what if I am actually going to do my own version of this? I think I'm doing that a lot — in my life, I need these things.
It's deep in my soul, deep, deep in my soul — it’s up there with being a religious Jew. And I know that almost no one understands that, not even who I'm hanging out with. The majority of people that I grew up with are not religious. I was so embarrassed and shy about it. I still get embarrassed and shy about it. But at some point, I just had to say, “You know what? I don't care if you understand this or not — this is a deep soul need. A soulful need.” Being trans is like that, too.
KP: I could definitely understand that. Your confidence and unapologetic attitude — both in your individualism and through your work — is so inspiring. Were you born with such self-assuredness, or is it something that you had to build over time? If you had to build it, what advice would you lend to women who seek the same kind of self-belief?
EF: It's really wild to hear you say that I seem very confident.
KP: Well, I think that you are, and I think that your music is very confident. I think your work is very confident. It comes off that way, to me at least.
EF: Yeah. Obviously, I'm getting on stages and screaming what it is that I have to say. So yes, there is a real confidence there. I think, especially growing up, I had no confidence anywhere in my life, except, for some reason, when I started to perform on stage. I had no doubt that there I could say what I needed to say. I don't know why I didn't feel confident even having conversations with close friends when I was a teenager, but yet I could passionately perform this song that I just wrote last week. I think that punk rock gave me that — I think that’s why I had that with regard to music. It didn't translate into other parts of my life, really.
But I just had gotten into punk, and I just saw that the best artists were just willing to fucking go for it. To just be wild out there in front of others… I felt like that was my only hope. That was the only thing that I felt confident doing. And also, you could write it beforehand, and nobody could interrupt you if you've got the microphone, you know? I was never a very good improviser, conversations were always hard, and I couldn't go to parties, but if you could go to a party and you had a machine that made you the loudest person in the room, and you've already written what you're going to say, wow… That was like a drug to me. It was the perfect solution to the problem of social anxiety.
KP: Yeah, I never thought about it like that before. That's so true, though.
EF: It's a comforting place to be because it's a power trip.
KP: And I'm the polar opposite! I've been a musician since I was very, very young, but I hate performing in front of people. It's almost like my secret talent. [Laughs].
EF: I know. It’s more logical to be afraid to do it. I actually developed more stage fright as I went on.
KP: Really? That's very interesting.
EF: Yeah, I think it’s because I would always play at open mics when I was young. I was always like, I think I might be the best performer here, you know? The stage was small, is what I mean. I'm just playing at a cafe in my neighborhood. I felt like I was actually pretty good for a 15-year-old with a guitar, you know? But then once the stage gets bigger, now I know that my competition is Radiohead. I got a little more insecure.
KP: Yeah, but you can keep up with all of them!
You’re gearing up to release your tenth studio album, Goodbye Small Head, on May 16th — congratulations! I really, really love it — and I’m incredibly particular when it comes to music. I need it streaming already! [Laughs]. What can you tell us about its writing and development?
EF: Oh, I could write a book. I guess I just got really overwhelmed promoting our last record and touring a lot. I mean, not even a lot, but I got overwhelmed and perhaps burned out last time. And it felt like I just worked too hard. I’m a parent, and I had to be a mom when I got home from tour. I was just working so hard on tour — there was so much pressure.
And the world was also exploding with transphobia and COVID, there was so much to deal with, and we had to cancel shows… I don't know; I think one day I was home, and I just fainted. And then I suddenly couldn't walk around the block without needing to lie down for three hours after that — I was like that for months.
We really had to cancel a lot of shows because I just became weak. I became a weak creature, and I wasn't just before that. I didn't know what was happening because it was all of a sudden. They thought that I had some infection, but they couldn't figure out what it was. I went to all of these doctors, but I could barely do anything. I was just exhausted all the time, and I thought that maybe it was the beginning of my slow or quick death, you know?
So okay, that's like the backdrop, which is still kind of ongoing in a way because I'm still much less strong than I was before. I really have to watch out for exertion — sometimes I still have to lie down for a really long time. I just keep giving up and starting again with some new doctor.
KP: Well, I relate to you on a very deep level because I was diagnosed with Lyme disease back in 2018 — which is pretty ironic because I live in New York City and I can't remember the last time I went to any type of wooded area — but I ended up testing negative in 2020. It took me two years to kick it, but then I was diagnosed with hyperPOTS, which is a form of dysautonomia, as a result of the infection. I couldn’t walk for almost seven years without feeling lightheaded and like I was going to faint. My blood pressure and heart rate would go through the roof every time I moved my body, even when raising my arms just to pick up my phone. The fatigue was crushing — all I ever wanted to do was sleep. So perhaps that’s worth looking into! It’s become especially prevalent after people ended up with COVID, so a lot more doctors are familiar with it now.
EF: This was like a health consult! I’m going to look all of that up. Thank you so much. But anyway, to get back to your question, I had a lot of health stuff that was scaring me, so I just wanted to explore overwhelm and the loss of control. I started to realize that all of these songs are about losing control and sort of giving way to an immense experience. And that was sort of rhyming with other things — I had been thinking about what makes an album, like, sort of a mystical text for people, you know? Sometimes The Beatles albums are like that, or [Van Morrison’s] Astral Weeks, or one of my favorite albums — not to be a cliché — is In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. Some music can be kind of a mystical experience for me — and for others, too! I wanted to make something like that. I'm not sure that I did, but I do think that these are about that kind of headspace of losing control. Making the record, I constantly had this Frank Black song stuck in my head, “Manitoba.” Do you know that one?
“We all need love and care. Our species runs on love and care. Those aren't luxuries or poetic things — that's actually the engine of human life. That's how every child grows up into an adult, by being loved and cared for. That's how we all survive.”
KP: No, I don't.
EF: The chorus goes, “I have seen the face of God / And I was not afraid / I have seen the face of God / And I have dearly paid.” I was reading William James and in The Varieties of Religious Experience, there's a chapter called “Mysticism.” It's mostly just excerpts of people talking about moments where they're just overwhelmed by the oneness of all things or by blinding holy light, you know? That kind of thing that human brains sometimes do. So, yeah, in different ways, I think that these are like all of those kinds of accounts — about giving into weakness and apprehending immensity.
KP: Yeah, for sure. And I think — hearing the background now about what was going on in your life personally while it was coming together — the record makes a lot of sense to me. I already loved it, but it takes on a different dimension now.
Especially touching to me off the record was also “You Mustn’t Show Weakness,” which starts, “Not with all the good girl and boyfriends watching you / You mustn’t show weakness … The new world is flawless / You’ve got to have good skin / You’ve got to have it together whatever the weather / Whatever secret storm you are born and living in.”
EF: You know, I took the title from a poem by Yehuda Amichai. Do you know that writer?
KP: I don't.
EF: He’s a very beloved 20th-century Israeli poet who writes in Hebrew. He has a poem called “You Mustn't Show Weakness” that I really love. God, I think that was written in mid or late-October 2023, when Israel had started massacring and destroying Gaza. And also, yes, at this time of weakness in my life, I don't know, it seemed like everybody's motto — “you mustn't show weakness.” Just the cruel side of society and the impermissibility of weakness and tenderness — it's such a heartbreaker. And I think we all feel it in our social lives, in our professional lives, and then also in international events. It's just the ringing world motto right now, and it’s horrible.
I think I was listening to The Smiths at that time; I don't know. It's one of those things where I thought maybe I could write a song like The Smiths, but it doesn't really come out that way at all.
KP: I kind of hear it, though! That makes sense to me. I think it's a really, really great track.
EF: That was one that Sam, the drummer, really made into what it became. He found the samples that are in it — those strange, fragmented vocal samples. It feels like the coolest-sounding shit that we've ever done.
KP: It's really awesome. I love it so much.
EF: Yeah, and it scratches a lot of itches. I mean, for years now, I’ve just worshipped Portishead — it's not my world, I don't make that kind of music — but I need to. And I mean, that song doesn't really particularly sound like Portishead, but it's like something of that cut-up vibe, you know?
KP: Yeah, I definitely hear it! I really loved “Sudden Storm,” so selfishly I’d like a little inside view on how that came to be. [Laughs]. Can you share a little bit about its inspiration?
EF: I mean, basically, it’s about having a seizure. And when I wrote it, it felt like having a seizure. Some of these songs I worked on for years, and some were tracks that I wrote in half an hour. I wrote “Sudden Storm” in half an hour. I was basically in a manic state — I also wrote the lyrics to “Grand Mal” on the same day, the same morning. I really almost felt like what was happening to the narrator of the song was happening to me as I wrote it. It was like tearing out of my head, you know? These lyrics, they really came on like a storm. And both of those songs, they're the first two songs on the record.
I had just had this talk with my friend who has epilepsy, and she speaks about her epilepsy sometimes in such a beautiful way. I mean, she lives with it, and it's very unromantic, and it's frightening, and it fucks up your life in many ways. I mean, it prevents you from doing things. A lot of people with epilepsy can't drive a car, things like that. But she also speaks about it in this mystical kind of way, and the place where she goes when she has certain seizures… She was just telling me all about it. I couldn't stop thinking about it, basically. That same topic of the world and life and reality — suddenly it’s so much larger than your brain can hold. A seizure is like a storm of electricity in the human brain that the system can't handle, and the body shuts down because it's too much electricity at once. So that was just me thinking about my friend and what it's like to be overwhelmed by emotions.
KP: And I think, with both, comes a tremendous sense of strength. My ex-girlfriend had epilepsy, and I don't know how she did it. I don't know how she lived such a normal life — she'd have a grand mal seizure and then hours later be like, “I'm going to this party!” And I'd be like, “I don't know if you should be doing that.” For me, as I said before, someone who is chronically ill in a very different way, I think it inspired me somehow. On one hand, I was like, “You're fucking crazy.” But on the other hand, I think I was very inspired, because maybe my issue isn't exactly that, but my body shuts down in other ways. I think that they're the strongest people — they just carry on and don’t try to get a grip on the things that they can't control. Really, I think that's a great lesson for everyone.
EF: Yeah, that's a very interesting way of saying it. And I think already, even before I was ill, I was thinking a lot about disability and reading a lot about disability justice because of the care that people with human bodies need. Our last record was very communal — All Of Us Flames. It was about networks of solidarity and support and care — in a public way, in a communal way. I was talking in the first person plural. I didn't think this before exactly, but this contains some other side of that — the first-person singular side of it. I don't think I have it together enough yet to say exactly what I mean there, but I think that these songs show how overwhelming it is to be a human being. We all need love and care. Our species runs on love and care. Those aren't luxuries or poetic things — that's actually the engine of human life. That's how every child grows up into an adult, by being loved and cared for. That's how we all survive.
KP: It certainly is. I don’t think I can pick a favorite off the record; they’re all so incredible, but I really, really loved your cover of Alex Walton’s “I Need The Angel.” What was it that drew you to that particular track?
EF: Okay, so that was the first Alex Walton song that I ever heard, probably in 2022. Part of how I heard of her is that she's local to Boston. Or she was — now she lives in New York City. God bless her! But I became really, really obsessed with her record, SHAME MUSIC, and then everything else that she did. I got to know her, and we made some music together, which came out last year. We made a couple of songs that were just a standalone, little single.
Okay, now let me think. There’s something about the song that seems anthemically perfect for this record. It's such a confession of need, and I guess that is sort of what I was wanting this whole record to be. Lex — she goes by Lex — she just always writes in a way that you just can't believe she's saying that, you know? She gives me that feeling. I mean, I think I’m honest in my writing, and then I hear her stuff, and I'm like, I mean, I know we all feel that way, but we don't just say it out like that, you know? It's such a gift when an artist makes you feel that way. And I often get that from really, really great music — that I've been following rules that I do not need to follow. Somebody shows me the ways that I've held back aren't necessary. I don't know why, but a lot of her music does that for me.
Part of it was also just like, we ought to be covering each other's songs, just songwriters in general, you know? I mean, I always wish that somebody would cover one of my brilliant songs. I want to hear someone else's voice on it. When I was young, my ambition before I had a music career going was that I wanted to be a songwriter in a band and not the lead singer. I wanted to have a singer sing my songs. So I guess I felt like, well, I should be covering other great songs if I want somebody to eventually cover mine. Put my money where my mouth is, sort of.
I just really love the song, and somehow in it, I found this breakdown of the barrier that stops you from begging — from pleading for your life.
KP: It worked so well for you. I’ve been listening to it all morning! And speaking of, your work is so adored — I think that it’s a warm blanket to many, many people. It also is very expansive. Is there a deep cut of yours that means the most to you, or one that you wish more people appreciated?
EF: Yes, all of them. [Laughs].
KP: Good answer! [Laughs].
EF: You know, something that I'm really proud of that I think in a way got consigned to an EP that not many people really heard is the song “The Refugee.” It's about a refugee — in my mind, it's my grandfather, who was a child refugee when the Nazis invaded Poland, where he was born. He became homeless in Europe when he was a kid and escaped a death that a lot of his extended family did not escape. I don't know. I think there's been an ongoing global refugee crisis for over a decade, really, and I wonder if there's just going to be various refugee crises for the rest of my life. I hope not, but it seems that way. It feels like one of the most central political issues of our time and one of the most central spiritual issues to me. I mean, the Hebrew Bible cannot stop commanding us to love “the stranger.” And the word “stranger” means someone who's from somewhere else who needs to stay with you. It means refugee.
I think there's something about having refugee blood in me. There's something about issues of refugees that's central to the meaning of my life. And I'm very proud of that song — the writing, the lyrics, and the poetry of it. On a craft level, I'm very proud of that. And also, how many songs do we know about refugees? I'd like there to be more, and I'd like them to be heard.
KP: I certainly agree. After Sex Education ended, which you scored so incredibly, as well as after the release of your nine EPs, you said that you felt like an era was ending and that you were in some “kind of post-career moment” so you could “do art now” — which ended up being such a gift for us, because the album is truly remarkable.
You also began performing at shows delightfully called “Ms. Ezra Furman doing what she wants” because in them, you do whatever you want. [Laughs]. I really love that.
What does this newfound freedom feel like for you? I feel like you have only the best of your work still ahead of you.
EF: I hope you're right. “Post-career moment…” Yeah, I was always a little impatient with the idea of a music career. The idea of trying to widen my reach and grow my audience — I do want to do that, and it's sort of very necessary for financial reasons, just to make this a viable thing. I need to keep growing the audience, but the widening of the audience is never as interesting in the way that the deepening of the audience connection was for me. Like, deeper, not wider. I just always think deeper, deeper, deeper. And I pursued music. I mean, I was always doing it, but I kind of thought that I was going to write literature and books and poetry.
I was doing a lot of that in college, and at the end of college, my poetry professor was like, “Okay, you're winning poetry contests, you're writing lots of poetry — you should go get an MFA and go to grad school and become a poet.” And I was like, “Yeah, okay, but I formed this band, and I think I want to go make literature in dive bars.” You know? I didn’t want to be at a university being a writer.
There's something about music — it just seems like it's in the world and in people's lives in a more satisfying way. But what I'm saying is that making music is like making literature for me — it's just the version of making literature that I chose. And if you think of it as that — as an art career and as a literary endeavor — then you get very bored with thinking that you have to make this single pop and engage on social media and play the biggest venue in town. Because, okay, that's cool and that's useful and all that stuff, but I want to be like Flannery O'Connor, you know? I'm not as excited by Aerosmith as much as I am by John Ashbery or something, if you know what I mean. Maybe that might all come out sounding quite pretentious, but I don't know — I've just got some writing to focus on, is what I'm trying to say.
“I’m just so grateful that so many women do demand their freedom, and they all showed me how to demand my own.”
KP: I do. And I think it's such a great time in your development to focus on that, too.
EF: But I will happily become a pop star! [Laughs].
KP: Well, that leads me perfectly into my next question. In a conversation, you said, “I used to really want to be hyper-famous, and I’m so relieved that didn’t happen. It could have, I dodged a bullet. If I’m going to be an entertainer, I feel like I gotta be just a little bit famous. I really like the amount of fame that I have.”
I resonated with this incredibly deeply. I basically became an overnight success in the fashion industry when I was just 14 — I went from putting ulcers in my stomach from avoiding the cafeteria at lunchtime because I had no one to sit with to sitting front row at fashion weeks next to Vogue and getting fan letters from strangers around the world within a matter of weeks. It changed the trajectory of my life forever — it’s also how I’m sitting here with you right now, but it was quite the whirlwind.
But, for me, I chose to walk away from a lot of that when I was 20. I fired my agent, my publicist, and my manager at the time. I canceled a TV show they were supposed to film about my life and put it all behind me to focus on more meaningful work instead of just chasing attention. It was a huge ego death-driven journey and probably marked the most important transformation of my life.
For me, especially as a gay child, I was very lonely and very misunderstood, and if no one wanted to be friends with me, how could anyone ever love me? That’s how it felt to me — so when I started getting attention, started getting press, started getting photographed, and people finally wanted to know me instead of feeling ashamed of me, it became addictive. I think in my brain I conflated press with love — if I was getting attention, then people loved me; if I wasn’t, then no one wanted to know me. My past was just reverberating in my mind, and I welcomed public attention to keep it away.
I say all of this, though, because, for me personally, I know that I used to use “fame” as an elixir. Do you feel that your relationship with fame had anything to do with healing internal wounds? Where do you think that craving for fame came from inside of yourself?
And by the way, you did dodge a bullet.
EF: Definitely, definitely. There was a drive toward fame that certainly came from feeling unseen. Not understood. Invisible. I really felt invisible. More than anything, I think I was closeted. There was all of this stuff in here that nobody knew about, and I don't want them to find out. But it was obvious — if you could get any chance to show just a little glimpse of it to someone, it felt like such a relief. I always liked songs that sound all upbeat, and then if you're listening and you're like, what did they just say? That's so heavy. But the drums keep going, and they get away with it. I always felt like I wouldn't talk to people about what I was feeling — that I'd smuggle these little confessions into my lyrics, and no one would really ask me about them. People wouldn't even really notice. Especially if you're playing with a band, it's just a vibe. No one's that worried about your little cryptic lyric.
My early lyrics are much more oblique, and you can't always quite tell what I'm talking about. So yes, somehow I had to unload all of this — I needed someone to know me.
KP: You wanted people to bear witness to it, really.
EF: Yes, exactly. And I just felt like I was carrying secrets. This is a little heavy… You don't have to include it, but when I was 20, I started to cut my skin and bleed and self-harm. It was just that the inside wanted out, you know? I wanted people to see the cuts — I was desperate for someone to ask me about them. And so the songs were also that. I was making scars on myself that I hoped people would ask me about. That dynamic is not the dynamic anymore, thank God. I really do feel like I healed from some of that desperation. Like, please see that I'm hurting, you know? And now it's much more social than that. I think it's much more of an exchange. And I think that leads me away from the fame desire, because it's more people — the intimacy is threatened by fame. Do you know what I mean?
KP: Yeah, I absolutely do. I was on your Instagram earlier, and you spoke about touring — maybe it was about a year ago — but you said how important it is for you to have a sense of community at your shows. I think about that often. My favorite concerts that I've ever gone to, they're never at arenas. I don't even go to arena concerts. I'm not interested, you know?
I got to see Lady Gaga when she was closing out Roseland Ballroom here in New York City, which, I don't know, maybe the capacity is like 3,000? It's so small. And I mean, I love her work. I'm an Italian New Yorker; I cannot not love her work. [Laughs]. But I wouldn't bother seeing her in an arena. I'm not interested in that. And then I think of some of the concerts that I've been to that had such a strong sense of community, and one group that immediately comes to mind is CocoRosie.
EF: I love, love, love.
KP: Me too! I think I've seen them about six or seven times. But there's such a strong sense of community at their shows. I think about why, and I think it’s really just because they're much more intimate. And so, I think that in a sense, reaching these levels of fame, like where you're selling out arenas, like you said, it's wider, but it's not deeper. And to me, the artists that I think you can argue affect the most change on people in this cellular, molecular level are those who are able to reach people deeply, not widely. And that sense of community, I think, is able to feel so intimate, it's able to feel so real and genuine, because you're not in an arena setting with tens of thousands of people where you can't even see the artist and you're watching them on a screen. There's just something so impersonal about that. Of course, I'm using that as a metaphor, but I also mean it literally as well.
EF: I definitely understand what you mean. I understand also, though, that the width matters. It's a kind of power that you get. And, I don't know, sometimes I look at my music, and I think it has a lot of worth. In some ways, it's very appreciated, far more appreciated than I ever thought it would be. And then sometimes I'm like, I guess I'm just going to be sort of underappreciated my whole career. Sometimes it does feel a little disappointing. I get a little angry about it. And then I hear an interview with someone who's properly famous — tabloid famous — and I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God! No, never mind!
KP: Yeah, I think I've had a lot of time to think about that while I've been stuck in a bed for the past decade. [Laughs]. And I think the level of fame — or the level of attention that people get for their work — I think it is definitely by far the most palatable to be Googleable, but not to be chased.
I remember when I was younger and I would go to fashion weeks, I'd be chased — you just feel like a bird in a cage. And so for me, I'm very grateful that I kind of drifted away from all of that consciously. I'm very Googleable, you know? People can Google me and find out way more about my life than I really would like them to know, but I don't get chased on the street. And once in a while, someone will recognize me, but it's not to the point where I can't go out to dinner or I can't go for a walk in peace.
And so I think it's that middle ground that is best — where you could still hold a lot of power to affect change and have a platform, but it's not to the point where it's bringing this incredible stress to your life in terms of feeling like you’re trapped.
I think that your music is so powerful and so incredible, and I think that it's only going to just naturally pick up more steam as time goes on. And even at the moment, I think you have such an incredible hold on the people that do listen to you. I think your work means a lot to them, and I think that's the highest praise that you could pay an artist, right?
EF: Yeah, most times that I think about it, I feel so grateful. And I do feel somehow like I cracked the code, you know? I have an audience, and they will be there. They're not about to disappear. I mean, some of them might, but I feel like I've got reliable people out there. And I have enough. This is just viable enough that I can keep justifying locking the door and writing songs all day.
KP: That's amazing. It’s a gift to all of us! And lastly, what do you feel makes a provocative woman?
EF: I'm shook.
KP: So funny. You know, the interviews always go really smoothly, and then we get to this question where everyone is like, “Can I have five minutes?” [Laughs]. Take your time!
EF: Wow, this question. I mean, just by asking that, you’re being one. [Laughs].
Um, you know what? This very question reflects what a different position a woman is in than a man is. Think of the question being, “What makes a provocative man?” It's a very, very different question — and answer. I feel like… Wow, I don't know!
My gut response is that women are all involved in a freedom movement — a provocative woman knows and owns her freedom. I just think that every woman has to demand her freedom — or choose not to demand it.
I'm just so grateful that so many women do demand their freedom, and they all showed me how to demand my own.
–
Photography: Eleanor Petry
