On the Rise
METTE

The Minnesotan is currently in London, traversing the bustling streets and running a tad late for this call to discuss the imminent release of her debut EP as METTE – METTENARRATIVE, which arrives today. Despite the gear shifting upwards on her schedule, Mette is content in what has been one of the best years of her life. “It’s all in the creative pursuit of dreams being realised, so when I say ‘busy’, it’s not in an overwhelming sense: it’s just buzzing, it’s bubbling, it’s percolating. I can feel it.”

Three decades worth of work pursuing dreams of being a performer have led Towley to where she is now, and while we are only just being introduced to this era as an artist and songwriter, her journey to the present has been winding yet awesome to behold. Mette's passion for dance began aged five, when she watched her violinist uncle accompany dancers at the Baltimore School for Arts. Soon after, she was the one commuting to dance practices in order to find her feet through years of training. She graduated and veered towards being a backup dancer. It wasn’t long before she herself was on the stage.

In 2014, she joined Pharrell’s dance troupe, The Baes. A few years later, Pharrell would select Mette to star in the music video for N.E.R.D’s and Rihanna’s track “Lemon”, in which Rih-Rih shaves Mette's head and thus symbolically unshackles her into liberated movement. For an artist so early in her career, the opportunity was life-changing, but also proved that incredible results could come from doubling down and committing to the work. Since 2019, she has performed in blockbuster films including Hustlers, Cats, The Old Guard and, most recently, Barbie. “As I’ve grown up and really come into my own as a woman, I understand now being disciplined in rehearsal gives me more freedom in the moment to enjoy myself when I’m on stage.”

It’s this desire to freely connect without judgement that recently led Mette to her first Notting Hill Carnival to shoot the visual for “FOR THE PEOPLE”. Arguably the antithesis to her previously conceptualised music videos, the frivolities of the Carnival helped to capture the spontaneous joy Mette feels when dancing and, ultimately, connecting with others on an innate level. “This is what I call the ‘people’s cut’ because I wanted my first ever carnival to be a genuine reaction from myself and my experiences there by just wanting to go out and meet folks and dance and groove.” She reflects that dancing while performing on stage can be isolating despite instigating an immediate reaction from an audience, but the carnival allowed space for improvisation. “The true beauty of the carnival was people coming together to celebrate their heritage and life. The energy that orbits that kind of environment is just palpable; it really left an impression with me.”

Both the carnival and “FOR THE PEOPLE” serve to reinforce the significance of community in Mette's life, the shuffling beats and accompanying choir vocal emphasising the multitudes of love in culture, family and friends that help lift a child to succeed at their dreams. “Community is the reason I’m an artist,” says Mette, from her teachers and friends at dance school to the artistic peers who helped her write the record. “One of the reasons the EP is called METTENARRATIVE is because the meta-narrative is one of my favourite literary ideas, this umbrella of human emotion. For me, it’s about getting connected to parts of us that can never be disconnected.” However, for Mette, community started at home, most specifically with her mother. “My mother is so resilient; she sacrificed a lot so that she could really put me in the position to live out my wildest dreams, so there’s an incredible amount of respect and reverence for her.

“I never had stage parents,” she continues. “My mum would drop me off at competitions and be like ‘Here’s your make-up bag, I’m gonna go read books at Barnes and Noble and you’re gonna go in there and do your thing.’ That gave me a lot of confidence to just walk into spaces where I didn’t know anyone, so I credit her for that. I’m also really good at doing my eyeliner because I’ve been doing it since I was 13 years old!”

Being alone during the pandemic proved hard for Mette, specifically in the absence of her mother over 18 months. That time inspired “MAMA’s EYES”, her breakout single that captures the tenuous love between two strong willed women that is as instinctive and honest as it is rhythmic and celebratory. “I’ve always found a mirror in her; I have her eyes but I have her spirit, so I feel that sense of mirroring with her. Not being around her, I felt very lost, so I wrote the song from this place of hollow longing and turned it into celebrating the closeness of the relationship. It’s the ultimate respect that I have for her.”

While her mother proved her muse in “MAMA’s EYES”, Mette turned inward for latest single “VAN GOGH”. The videos for the two represent two sides of her journey, from the family home videos of her dancing as a child in the former to the stylised, multi-character experience of the latter. “I have a lot of the family archive videos on my computer and sometimes I do look back at these videos just to make sure that my authentic voice is still resonating in the work that I’m doing now.” With “VAN GOGH”, Mette was at a loss for inspiration before she found it within herself; the end result is a carefree and buoyant ode to the multitudes one person can embody. “All humans are multi-faceted, and sometimes putting myself in a box has been some of the saddest of my life. I truly want to live fully self-expressed.”

The video for “VAN GOGH” sees Mette embodying a range of different characters, from a yuppie banker with a black eye to a femme popstar, a Lover God and many in between. “Those are all qualities that exist within me. Some days there’s a duality.” She references the pop-star at the beginning of the video. “Femininity and sex appeal is an amazing tool, but sometimes it comes from playing up certain archetypal roles to get what we want. I’m interested in that intellectual femininity and how we use make-up or clothes to carve out spaces for ourselves and distort the male gaze a bit. Fluidity is in my work, and I’m very much interested in dismantling my own ideas about femininity.” Mette turns to the masculine character in baggy jeans and a goatee. “I was so into the king look and what attributes of my own character come out when in costume. I can be handsome too; it’s within me. When I took off the moustache, my stature changed, and then I was giving ultimate femme with a 17-inch ponytail - these are all sides of me and I want to live in harmony with every facet of my being. I’ve admired a lot of different kinds of people in my life,” she adds. “People that codify themselves in different ways, and gender in terms of performance has always been something that I enjoy playing with.”

That’s not to say Mette hasn’t been on the receiving end of critical comments online for her multitudes of gender expression within the video. “It’s crazy to me that folks will employ some of the darker sides of themselves in order to tell people what they can and can’t do with their bodies. Right now we’re talking about my performance, but there are a lot of folks that are going through some incredibly challenging periods because there’s so much hate in the world, and that’s in their real life.” She is clear to honour the distinction between her exploration of gender expression and others lived experience.

Whether it be performance or expressing her vulnerability in songwriting, Mette is on an ongoing quest for self-expression and learning how to be her most authentic self. “The goal in life for me is to be in that sweet spot where anything is possible and all can coexist, but also being comfortable in the in-between spaces and being fluid in terms of that I’m going to discover more about myself as life continues to unfold. I still have questions. The unknowing, to me, is the greatest adventure.”