The Nashville-based writer, musician, and actress talks Emmeline Armitage through the songs that once accompanied her turbulent teenage years and have since joyfully infused her songwriting practice.
It is immediately apparent upon hearing her Nine Songs choices that Lola Kirke’s love of music is a direct product of an affirming belief in storytelling.
Having been brought up in a near-mythic New York household, with a mother who owned a vintage boutique and a rock drummer for a father, Kirke possesses that rare quality of someone who is able to turn her life’s experience into art. For example, her resituating of that very childhood in the fictionalised locus of the ‘Wild West Village’, into the witty title of her semi-autobiographical debut book, Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1)
Kirke’s own music speaks similarly to the experience of coming into yourself through the medium of narration. Her upcoming third album Trailblazer aptly reflects a cinematic writing process, driven by some of Nashville’s finest collaborators, but also through a Hollywood veil of approval – the singer/songwriter has admitted to tweaking and finalising songs while in movie trailers (yes, she can act too). The result is so characterful as to become authentic, so authentic as to become characterful.
In the music video for the record’s first single “Hungover Thinkin’” Kirke, clad in cowboy boots, stamps a slice of pizza on the sidewalk before picking it up and eating it. She then laments ‘I was the life of the party’ and ‘wherever my car is, is anyone’s guess’, before lurching into a solipsistic meditation on being hungover: ‘Who did I piss off / Who’s ear did I bend’.
The song was co-written with Liz and Caitlin Rose (the former famous for her work with American national sweetheart Taylor Swift) and speaks to a universally relatable anxiety, but not without a certain charm.
Both the literary and the literal play havoc with Kirke, who from a storied upbringing has now found herself rooted in Southern Americana, due to her great ability to twist a terrific tale through song. “Hungover Thinkin’” and its follow-up single “Raised by Wolves” together showcase a blend of influences that has heralded Kirke a beacon of “sparkle country” by some, a creator of “smoky pop/rock” by others; it’s therefore no wonder she is attracted to songs that combine great lyricism and scene setting with new takes on old classics, and various resistances to genre.
As Kirke speaks about her early relationship with escapism, the sentimental music that reached her ‘adult child’ brain with free spirits and broken hearts, it reveals how they left a lasting mark on her now nuanced relationship with lyric writing and performance.
Reflecting on her relationship with being an artist now removed from Manhattan, Kirke explains, "I don’t think I can really shake the New York off me, I don’t know how many kids in other places were listening to The Strokes at aged ten…" The sentiment seems to be typical of the songwriter, who spent her youth discovering the distinct and zeitgeist music that spoke to something alive and unusually mature within her. The impulse to sing herself is therefore a reciprocal desire to ‘help people’ in the way she was, ‘or’, she adds contrarily, ‘to get laid’.
Even as she enters a significant period of success, marked by a near impossible trifecta of accomplishment – a recently published book, the release of an album, and beginning work on a new film – Kirke is still able to take a minute to sit back and acknowledge the formative imprints on her storytelling through her Nine Songs choices.
She is just as enamoured now, speaking about a great song’s ability to transcend circumstance, as when she first heard the haunting solos of Rick Danko, of Irma Thomas and David Bowie – those icons who each, in turn, gave an artist her own musical instructions to ‘truth’, ‘explanation’, and most significantly, ‘understanding’.
“Since I've Been Loving You” by Led Zeppelin
BEST FIT: I read somewhere that this was the first record you remember hearing and really taking a shine to. It seems both appealing and intriguing to me that a seven minute Led Zeppelin song found you at such young age. What was it about it that hooked you in?
LOLA KIRKE: I was in the backseat of the car on a long drive at night, coming back from a vacation with my family. And I woke up to the *sings guitar riff* and then Robert Plant screaming, and I just had never heard anything that sounded like that.
Obviously, I was a pretty lonely kid – which you’ll see from my song choices – and I don’t know how many others could say that they had heard side one of Zeppelin 3, “Since I Been Lovin’ You”? But this was just so soulful.
And the lyrics align with my other choices thematically, about love being this great force in your life, that has the ability to break you open, or in half.
So it was the performance, the sounds, the soul, and then the lyrics that came to me all together, and I heard it and I thought, ‘Well, love’s going to be really hard, huh?’
“Time Is On My Side” by Irma Thomas
This is a song that’s quite historied with covers. I particularly love this version though, for the speech breakdown she gives us at the centre of the song. Why did you pick this song, and this specific version?
I mean, again, I’d never heard anything like that before. The grit. You really fucking believe her, and I think that’s why this cover stands out. I have the chills just thinking about it.
The way that the music supports her – the arrangement means that she’s gonna come out triumphant on this one, no matter what. And it’s the kind of song that when you listen to it, you believe that you might too.
Is that something you want people to feel, when they listen to your music? Do you hope for that kind of reaction?
Oh, of course I hope that. That’s always the hope – that people will feel empowered and inspired and that they’ll be helped the way you were helped. As I said, I was a pretty lonely kid. I didn’t know many other kids that liked the same things as I did, or were even experiencing a lot of the same things. I had a pretty dysfunctional and unusual childhood, but music was the way that I didn’t feel alone in this world.
The best part of me makes music because I want them to feel that way. The worst part of me makes music because, you know, I want to get laid.
*both laugh*
The classic dichotomy…
No one wants to feel alone, okay?
“Hot Burrito #2” by The Flying Burrito Brothers
And what about Hot Burrito, not #1 but #2…
Yes, number one is sad, but number two, again, is kind of triumphant.
This was one of my favourite songs growing up, and another difficult one to ask your friends if they’d heard of it. But Gram Parsons was kind of the backdoor to country music for me, or rather the gateway drug. That’s how I hit the harder stuff later on.
I used to listen to this song over and over and over again. I was addicted to it. I love the energy behind, it even though I have no idea what it’s really about. “You loved me and you sold my clothes / I love you, but that's the way that it goes?” Sure. It’s that kind of ‘60s / ‘70s poetry where it sort of makes sense, but it goes perfectly with the music.
Lola, sometimes your music gets situated between country and rock or pop, naturally between various shifting genres and influences. This song strikes me as that curious mix, is that one of the reasons why it appeals to you?
I remember before I even thought that I could make music of my own I became really obsessed by Gram Parsons. And I remember being so blown away that he was still kind of obscure and not super well known as a musician, I thought obviously it must have been really popular. Particularly because he was around a lot of people who were really popular and helped them to become known in their own right, like The Rolling Stones and Emmylou Harris.
I once read that he was too rock for country, and too country for rock. He’s not the first artist of that time that made their way into my psyche and into my heart, but I did feel so sad for him when I read that.
And that’s the kind of difficulty of being someone who genre bends, and something I think ‘Fuck, have I done that myself?’ – more wide–ranging success might not come to you.
But I’m so glad they made the music that they did, because that’s the music that feels like part of my DNA. I know the words without knowing what they mean. And it’s been such a huge part of my life.
“Soma” by The Strokes
The Strokes to so many are a quintessentially New York band. How did growing up in New York influence your music? Do you feel like you identify with being a New York artist, and whatever that label entails?
I was ten years old, playing hooky, laying in my mom’s bed watching MTV when the music video for "Last Nite" came on. And I didn’t understand it. I thought it looked new and old at the same time, and I LOVED it.
I became obsessed then with Is This It and listened to it over and over again, still not really knowing what Soma was. But I loved the sound of the song and Julian Casablancas’ performance towards the end of the song, when he kind of starts screaming and yelling, whatever’s going on. The Strokes were a huge part of my life.
Once at school, when I was in the office, not wanting to go to gym class, I remember ringing my mom up and telling her that if you visited www.thestrokes.com you could click a button and it would play the song. And I asked her to hold the phone up to the computer to play it to me. Obviously, she was like, ‘I’m not fucking doing that’. It was a different time then, you know.
I live in Nashville now, but I don’t think I can really shake New York off me. I guess I really am a New York artist. I don’t know how many kids in other places were listening to The Strokes at the age of ten…
“Teenage Wildlife” by David Bowie
I hear this as a song crying out to be in a movie, perhaps it is. I’m wondering whether, because as an actress you have a relationship with character in that way, if songs are particularly cinematic to you? Whether you think about where it would be in the film of your life?
I definitely would listen to this song on big headphones as a teenager when alone on the subway, going somewhere I shouldn’t be going. So that’s where it would be in the film of my life.
This song always feels like a twin of “Heroes” to me in a certain way. There’s actually a really difficult but amazing film called Christiane F. I don’t know if you’ve seen it? It’s banned in the States, but it’s a German film that’s based on a book that was required reading in Germany in the ‘80s and ‘90s, particularly around the heroin epidemic.
It was the journals of this young punk girl named Christiane F., and on the poster it said something like ‘Cigarettes at ten, pot at 11, heroin at 12’. And anyway, they ended up making it into this movie, and David Bowie did the soundtrack, which was strangely very glamorous. And it has this scene with these kids running through the train station with him singing.
That’s all a long-winded way of saying that this song is relevant to the cinematic ideal of teenage wildlife. This song made me feel like ‘Okay, I’m going to run through that train station too.’
I mean, it’s harder now to listen to “Teenage Wildlife” at thirty-four, but, you know…
There’s always a part of us that is still a teenager.
“After the Fire is Gone” by Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn
This is a song that laments ‘The bottle is almost empty, the clock just now struck ten’, which to me has echoes of your own song “Hungover Thinkin’”. I’m interested in the idea that a classic country song cannot tell a story of love without pain entwined, how much do you think this is true?
Well, I think that something that’s intrinsic to any story is an element of drama and friction. There has to be something that is between the hero and them meeting their goal, or the end of their journey. And without pain we can’t know joy.
I think that for me, the things that cause me pain are such great gifts because they inspire me tremendously, in spite of themselves, to create. I think that must be true for a lot of people, otherwise we’d hear a lot more songs just about happiness. And that would be boring.
When I first heard this song, I think I was so young that I was just drawn to the voices. But then, as you said, country music is often so cinematic and when you listen to this song it’s a movie, about one of the saddest things – that you can’t be with the person that you love, and that the love that you did have with the person has gone.
I write about this a bit in my book, but shortly after deciding this was the saddest song I’d ever heard in my life, I realised that there was a lot of truth to the song happening in my home.
And the song kind of became this understanding and explanation, as so many country songs did for me, that these other people in this music have gone through these things and therefore, I know that I’m not alone.
“It Makes No Difference” by The Band
On to another heart-breaking song. I’d actually never heard this one before, so I was grateful for the introduction, although I did just write in my notes ‘very sad’. Why did you choose it?
Once again, that song, when I was going through one of my first heartbreaks, felt like someone had read my mind.
There was nothing that anyone could say or do to change this feeling of deep tragedy that I could no longer be with that person. And I think that that’s part of the gift of Rick Danko’s performance singing this song – he was the bass player of The Band and a few of them traded-off in turn who sang – he just sounds like a raw nerve, the way that he sings.
And so, I feel like he was the perfect person to communicate this incredibly universal idea, that when it’s over between you and another person there is really nothing that can cure it, except time itself.
That’s a beautiful sentiment. Sad, but beautiful.
Did you cry when you heard it?
I think it was so sad that I actively tried to disengage. I was worried if I leant into it, I might never come out.
You know how on Spotify, you can see what your friends are listening to? I saw once that one of my friend’s had listened to this song at 6am. I knew exactly what kind of night she’d had.
“Coyote” by Joni Mitchell
A beautiful choice from one of our greatest songwriters. I know the lyrical aspect of your work is something you hold to the core, being a writer by profession also. What’s the difference, for you, between writing prose and lyrics?
Well, I feel like Joni Mitchell is really the master of writing lyrics as prose.
That’s such an apt way of putting it.
It’s a full story. And I feel like for me, I’m very long-winded and as a lyricist I’ve had to learn how to communicate an idea with fewer words. I hope one day I can write a song like “Coyote”. It’s a full movie, it’s so fun, it’s so sexy.
And it’s also filled with this real dilemma that you can really understand – can I love this person? Can I trust this person?
I mean, she’s got fucking balls in that song! She’s a full character, he’s a full character, they’re all full characters! Whether it’s the waitress or the men at the roadhouse that they encounter.
Few others can do that the way that she can, create such rich characters with so few words.
“Why Not Me” by The Judds
Which perfectly brings me to your last track. I recently watched that haunting movie Urban Cowboy, and listening to this song really reminds of me that film, where melody and melancholy work completely in tandem.
Oh, so good.
The lyrics to this song, and I suppose the majority of country music, are very simple and yet very piercing. Related to what you were just saying, is it harder to say something that is so simple, and yet gets to the core of the meaning, than something that decorates around the surface of truth without really reaching it?
Yes, absolutely. It’s way harder to write something simple and true. That’s why country songwriting so often is treated the way that it is. There’s an element to it that’s almost desk-job like to it here in Nashville, and I don’t say that to diminish it at all.
Country songs are often written by more than one person, and in my experience of writing country songs that way I understand why. You need people to help shepherd those ideas.
And then you have amazing people like Dolly Parton, who wrote “Jolene” in a day. But I think that sometimes you need the kind of room, both physically and literally to be like – how do we say this idea?
And why this song in particular?
You know, it’s funny, I guess I didn’t even realise, I’m learning maybe I am sound first and then lyrics later. Often the incredible sound will lead me to what is an amazing lyric. ‘Why not me?’ is definitely a question I’ve asked in many forms throughout my life. I’m the youngest child and I think that’s a pretty characteristic youngest child question.
But I also think what’s so unique about The Judds and so many of their songs, is while they are such a pivotal and seminal country band, they aren’t really that country. There’s almost like a groovier, funkier element to this song. I love the arrangement and the melodic guitar line that goes on top of the acoustic. The harmonies are so cool. It’s so fun, and so simple, and so fucking catchy.
That’s a song I’d listen to twenty thousand times.
Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) is out now. Trailblazer is released on 21 March via One Riot Records.
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