As she navigates the awkwardness of indie stardom, Webster has found a delicate balance between savoring her life as a regular, fun-loving person—she gets particularly excited when talking about playing Animal Crossing: “This shit is fire! It’s fun to be a kid!”—and her more intense evolution as one of the most promising young songwriters working. For all her punchlines and casual asides, Webster’s stage presence is no joke. With her four-piece band’s tight, slow-motion grooves, she sings pitch-perfect, eyes closed in deep concentration, seeming more like a seasoned bandleader than a Gen Z homebody who would otherwise be yo-yoing and watching baseball.
“I’ve always been really chill,” she says, and indeed, during our conversation, her mood is proudly laid-back—giggling and riffing, suddenly slipping into a British accent or making sarcastic, meditative hand gestures as she delivers a particularly koan-like sentiment. “Something I talk to my therapist about is my fear of people not liking me,” she confesses. “And my therapist is like, ‘Well, what if they don’t like your music?’ But I don’t give a fuck! I’m so confident in my music because this is what I like to do. It’s all I know how to do, really. So if you don’t like it, I don’t care—because I do!”
Here, she details the disparate inspirations that went into her effortlessly charming new record.
The Animal Crossing song “7PM”
Faye Webster: I’m inspired by the soundtrack in general, but I sent a link to this song specifically to my band: Research. Learn from this shit. I bought the game when it came out last year during the pandemic, and when I heard it I was like, “This shit goes hard!” There’s a piano and a güiro on it, and they made the hottest bop. Making video game music would be the coolest challenge of my life—to do something I love and admire so much for a platform I love and admire so much. I spend more time on games than music. It just makes me happy. It’s nice to not take shit so seriously.
The Promised Neverland is about a world where humans get farmed to be eaten by demons. I was watching it when I first started the record, and the second season came out when the record was being mixed, so it’s been an important show throughout the whole process. I was watching it a lot. There’s this one little girl named Emma, and while she was at the orphanage—aka human farm—she figured it out and saved the fucking world... spoiler alert! She is a sick female leader who knows what the fuck she wants! I fuck with that. If you were to be like, “You are doing a session and your band is all dudes,” I’d be like, “Gross.” But at the same time, my whole band in the recording studio is dudes. I’ve been with these people for so many years that I have a special connection with them. But it’s a funny thought—that I’m the youngest little girl in the studio, and everybody’s asking me what to do. It’s cool to be like, “What I say goes! It’s all up to me!”
We met seven, eight years ago. We were on Awful Records together. He was doing something so different from me, and the only times we’d link up was when Awful would get their artists together to do shows. We were in such different worlds. I’m in a room with an acoustic guitar writing a song, and he’s screaming into a mic over electronic music. But this person is obviously so influential—all my songs are about this person. A lot of the comedy comes from this person as well. I don’t feel like I was ever really having fun with a partner until we were together, and it does translate into my songwriting. This record, in general, is very hopeful. I was living alone, which I liked, but it was just weird to be alone all the time. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I wasn’t touring. Then it was somewhat of a dramatic change when we [started dating]. Immediately, I was like, “Please move in. I am so bored all the time!” Just being around your best friend all day is something I’ve never done. Ever. It has opened my eyes a lot.
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