![]() As she prepared to audition for music college, her vocal coach said she had an in at American Idol. Wolf met a bunch of boys at an after-school music centre where they jammed Stevie Wonder and classic LA punk and funk – including her main collaborator today, Jared Solomon. I wanted to hang out with my friends and feel normal and grounded.” For a long time I’d had this weird split life. “It was either stop or try to make the Olympic team. “I was exhausted from skiing for 10 years and the constant travelling,” says Wolf. (Her coach used to call her “Remjob”, a fantastically inappropriate nickname for a 10-year-old that Wolf has since repurposed for her fans, the Remjobs.) Meanwhile, she sang in a harmony group and started a band with a friend. Wolf had been an obsessive performer as a kid until she discovered her skill as an alpine skier: she twice represented the US at the Youth Olympic Games. ![]() Realising that her dream to make music professionally was in reach was a wake-up call. She’s more serious and a trace more fragile than you’d expect. ![]() Cigarettes are her last vice: she smokes on her back step as we talk, revealing a tiny flower tattoo on each finger. Wolf has been sober since going to rehab last summer. Her parents snapped into “get it done” mode and immediately helped arrange treatment. I didn’t want to be miserable any more.”įinding her feet. “It took my career starting and actually having something to lose to make the move. It was just exacerbating it.” She had often dallied with the idea of rehab before concluding she was actually fine. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t taking away any pain. “I decided that, if I wanted to have a career, I couldn’t keep going, because I would eventually die or not be able to function,” she says. The next day, she wept through lunch with her family and asked for help. After the show Wolf got blackout drunk, a nadir that followed months of drinking before 9am interviews and acting destructively towards loved ones, and years of prior substance abuse. Last June she played LA’s first post-lockdown live show, a drive-in gig where she gyrated in yellow parachute trousers while fans beeped in appreciation. The pandemic slowed a lot of budding pop careers, but Wolf says the pause saved her life. She had also been smothering her feelings with alcohol – her blown-out new single Liquor Store notes the parallels between insecurity and addiction. Singing is like screaming, getting shit out.” “Most of the time singing wasn’t a direct expression of what I was actually feeling, but it’s an expression. Her family are more “get it done” than “feelings” people, she says, so she’s naturally private. Her songwriting started out as straightforward catharsis. “I think I thrive in the chaos.”ĭespite her apparent lack of inhibitions, Wolf – who broke out with 2019’s You’re a Dog! EP – is only just starting to realise how much she used to squash down her emotions. “I never thought I was weird, I was always confused by the people around me.” She credits her attitude to her parents – her Sicilian mother and Russian-Persian father “are pretty weird and very confident” – and to the “chaotic” three-bedroom house where they lived in Palo Alto with her three younger siblings and two dogs. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt a pressure to conform at all,” says Wolf, Zooming at a chin-first camera angle from her LA home, where Matisse and Frida Kahlo prints hang on the wall (“They’re fake,” she clarifies helpfully). Her vivacious world feels true to life and also offers a portal out of this shabby one: famous fans such as Nile Rodgers, Beck and Camila Cabello have already taken refuge, and Wolf’s debut album, Juno, is one of autumn’s most anticipated releases. Her super-saturated videos conjure the sinister charm of deepfake kids TV she is partial to an outsized feathery hat and not shy about dancing in the street in a thong swimsuit and green Crocs (albeit filmed side-on to avoid “full crack”). ![]() Her largely freestyled lyrics collage fast food (“Orgy at Five Guys with five guys”), Hollywood royalty (she threatens to “Billy Bob and Angelina” an awol ex) and cult porn films (“What’s better than two girls? Two cups!”) into remarkably human and gleamingly catchy songs about the difficulty of staying connected to your feelings in a turbo-stimulated world. ![]()
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