“Rostam was the first person to put my voice so forward,” she explains, having hidden it under layers in her own mixes.
Right: Dress and belt SAINT LAURENT by ANTHONY VACCARELLO, necklaces CLAIRO’S OWN.ĭrawn out by production from Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij, Immunity amplifies Cottrill’s message, both metaphorically and literally. Left: T-shirt COLLINA STRADA NEW YORK, jeans and shoes MARINE SERRE, necklaces CLAIRO’S OWN. “I think it’s great,” she assures me, “but it definitely wasn’t all I wanted to say. “I just tried my best to keep making music while in school, and hopefully sustain this virality, because it’s so hard to do.” In May 2018, trying “to figure that out” she released “diary 001” – a six track EP that included collaborations with Rejjie Snow and Danny L Harle. “I knew I wanted to be a musician, but I didn’t know how I wanted to say it yet,” she explains. All the while, she was trying to tread water.
The internet, which had been a safe space, reared its anonymous head and spat accusations that she was an industry plant, refusing to believe such impact could be organic. Her first year in college was spent being chased by industry folk and recognised in class for the “Pretty Girl” video. “I think I was just getting frustrated about people having opinions on it at all, because it wasn’t necessarily supposed to become what it was.” “For it to go viral, that’s something that was really scary at the beginning because it made me want to corner myself off, it made me want to not be so vulnerable and not be so open,” she says. Like the rest of Gen Z Cottrill grew up online, and her honesty on the internet was crystalline, baring all in her uploads to pages she assumed would always be private. “By the time I had my first week at school as Syracuse University, it was at a million views,” she tells me. Uploading songs to an invisible internet audience gave Cottrill a place to go when her surroundings weren’t as inviting, and “Pretty Girl” was the first to take off. Through middle school and high school she’d try out other hobbies but sports and art didn’t spark anything similar to music. The then-18-year-old Cottrill lip-syncs over magenta subtitles, plugged into headphones while she does caricature-ish hand gestures. The playful drum machine and keyboard track hides deeper meaning in plain sight, detailing the feeling of needing to change for someone else in a relationship. In 2017 a greasy-haired, greasy-skinned Cottrill uploaded a goofy video to YouTube for a song called “Pretty Girl”. Right: Full look CHANEL, coat MARINE SERRE.Īside from her mother’s liberating advice, another marked event had to happen for us to hear Immunity. Left: Turtleneck KWAIDAN EDITIONS, shirt DAILY PAPER. “It’s like a weight has been lifted, because the world is slowly getting to know the person that I actually am.”
“It’s a crazy time for me, I guess,” she affirms. Her voice is soft, but croaks like I’ve just woken her up, my question reaching into the limbo of a nomadic existence and pulling her into reality. She has to ask someone to find out where they’re currently stationed. She’s on tour with Khalid when we speak over the phone in August, having released Immunity while she orbits North America. “It not only changed the way I thought about myself and how I spoke about myself, it changed how I looked at other people.” “For my mom to bring that visual into my life was really necessary and important,” the 20-year-old tells me. Her mother, and “absolute best friend”, told her to think about a nine-year-old version of herself, how hurt she would be if she said those things to her. Insecurities swarmed - about her looks, about the way she spoke - and, in a lot of ways, she didn’t feel good enough. Cottrill struggled with her mental health growing up in Carlisle, Massachusetts. It’s a nod to both the emotional purity of kids, and advice from the singer’s mother that has stuck with Claire Cottrill for life. On the record’s closing track, “I Wouldn’t Ask You”, they cushion her embracing, manipulated lead vocals as a choir, sweet cheerleaders promising: “you’ll be alright / you’ll be alright”. After a jingly keyboard breakdown, you canhear their giggles sparkle at the end of “Impossible”. After some scrutiny and self-inspection, her debut album Immunity charts Clairo‘s truth.Ī group of nine-year-olds are featured on Clairo’s debut album, Immunity. Order your copy of the issue now…Īn endearingly haphazard video Claire Cottrill uploaded on YouTube went viral and suddenly the spotlight was on her. Taken from the Autumn 19 issue of Wonderland.