“Boys never wanted to kiss me, so now I do comedy,” sang Cat Cohen in her first special. It’s one of many thunderbolts of millennial self-awareness from the New York comic, whose acerbic revue appeals to the id rather than the ego. On her new follow-up, Come For Me, Cohen calls out her own coping mechanisms of consumerism, social media and astrology to distract from the emptiness of being “a young 30s girl” in 2024 (“Why is it so easy to get pregnant and so hard to get a house?”).

As an actor she’s been cast in some of the most important comedies of her generation: Only Murders In The Building, What We Do in The Shadows, Broad City, Girls5eva, Search Party and the hugely under-rated High Maintenance, and she’s published a captivating book of her poetry.

After having a mini-stroke at 31 caused by a congenital heart defect, Cohen has been on a journey of personal growth, having gained more perspective about her life while healing and flourishing in a healthy relationship. Her second special is an opportunity to take stock and reflect on how far she’s come since her debut – Netflix’s The Twist… She’s Gorgeous, which was based on her 2019 Edinburgh Fringe show. “I watch the first special and I’m like, ‘Who is that?’ I have no idea. But this one I feel more connected to,” she says. “You work on stuff for so long and you want it to be so perfect that by the time you finish, inevitably there are some jokes where you’re like, ‘Who is that?’ But I feel that way less with this new special, because I can still stand by most of them thematically.”

Cohen has previously admitted to “contributing to the problem when it comes to main character energy.” “Oh my God, I actually need to stop,” she says. “I’ll always be the main character in my own show, but I’ll hope to approach things with maybe a slightly more demure tone. But we’ll see – I’m about to start writing the new show and I have no idea what will come out,” she says of the new project, for which she revealed a working title of Broad Strokes to Mike Birbiglia. “I’ve been letting it simmer and I’m waiting for divine inspo to strike, but I’m distracting myself with posting about this one on Instagram instead. It’s so funny, I worked so hard on this material, but now I’m like, ‘If I don’t post right, no one will see!!’”

The album’s songs are polished, self-aware and fiercely hilarious, with the combined forces of two elements of her stage character: shimmering Vaudeville glam and Y2K pop girly best friend who just got a new healer. OVERDRESSED is the perfect level of unhinged.

As a lifetime Spice Girls girl, the poppy sheen Cohen chose to run throughout her album is confidently nostalgic. “Couros produced all the tracks and just killed it,” she says. “The night before I met him, I was listening to Spice Girls and other early ‘90s pop, and just wanting to re-create the songs I’d grown up playing at slumber parties and dancing to. I knew I wanted to make a super poppy record that was like taking those cabaret songs I’d written and mixing them up.”

The pair teamed up with Belot and Pura Bliss in the studio too. “The four of us had the best time, it was so magical,” Cohen recalls. “We were just ordering Wingstop and brainstorming pop hooks — bridges mostly. Their musical prowess came in handy on the bridges. I’m a big Swiftie, so I need that good bridge!”

Cohen worked closely with Broadway heavyweight David Dabbon, an Emmy nominee with whom she co-wrote many of the show’s songs. “He’s just like a classically trained beautiful genius who can appreciate my sense of humour and makes me laugh,” she says.

“What I try to do with my act is high glamour with disgusting gross girl behaviour,” says Cohen, explaining the thought process behind the album’s cover art. “So I wanted to capture both of those in the image. I was thinking like a deranged hostess – that glamour. There’s a picture of Debbie Harry where she’s in a kitchen and something’s on fire. It’s like she’s trying to make a turkey for the first time and you look in there and it’s charred and black, and she’s like, ‘Let’s drink instead!’ That’s the tone.”

Growing up in Texas, Cohen’s friends were listening to pop and country. “But then there was a vibe shift when I discovered The OC,” she recalls. “Those soundtracks opened up my musical world and completely re-shaped my brain, and introduced me to so many bands that I still listen to.”

She then entered her indie rock phase, or as she reflects, “Quietly emo – Never bold enough to dress or act that way publically, but in my room writing poetry and listening to Iron & Wine, Death Cab and Bright Eyes and, like, sobbing. My arc is that I’ll always appreciate the pop and the Broadway, but in my heart I’m like a sad indie girl crying in my room writing poems.”

“First of all, it was an impossible task,” Cohen says of the Nine Songs brief. “I guess some choices were easy – I knew I needed a Taylor and a Lana, cos those are my two girls. The rest I was like, okay, what songs am I just obsessed with?”

“Since high school I’ve made a monthly playlist of like, September 2009, October 2009… and it’s all in my Spotify,” she says. “So I can go back and see my taste over time. What was interesting to see when I was browsing is what artists I keep going back to, and what I’m still listening to that I was also listening to back in the day.”

Cohen’s song choices hold a mirror up to her own music, reflecting on just how influential these artists have been for her. The disillusionment of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” is tangible in Cohen’s existential track “Good Not Bad”: “Life’s a bitch and then you die / But for now it seems like we’re all alive / For sure we’ve been stripped of our rights / But we might as well enjoy tonight.”

In the same song, Cohen’s line, “I can’t think of any wonderful woman who isn’t easy to hate,” meditates on her connection to Taylor Swift’s world, her own creative path and the mercurial public judgments that follow.

“I don’t think people ever change / No, I still want the same shoes that the Spice Girls used to wear,” Cohen sings in the opener to her new special. Looking back over the song choices that have been the most pivotal in her life at the end of our chat, she reflects, “If you ask people their favourite songs, it's all about coming of age, don't you think?”