Remi Wolf’s music is impossibly catchy. Her vocals flow out of her as easily as breathing does. Her backing band follows suit with their equally smooth instrumentation. As it turns out, there is a reason for that beyond simply raw talent: an ability to follow her intuition.
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Every songwriter’s process is different. Some prefer a concerted writing process rife with painstaking effort and copious overthinking. Whereas writers like Wolf prefer to let their natural artistry flow freely. She believes whatever comes out of her in the moment is what’s meant to be. The end result? Danceable songs with honeyed melodies meant to be sung along to.
While she’s always followed her intuition, Wolf made sure to give it full rein on her latest album, Big Ideas. The record is separated into groups of songs written in different studios with different collaborators. Wolf, who says she feeds off the energy of others, found writing that way to be beneficial for coaxing different ideas and styles out of her. Then, the connective tissue throughout is Wolf’s stellar vocals; you certainly won’t mistake her for anyone else when she’s blaring out of your speakers.
“I think that I, as a songwriter and as a human, thrive when collaborating with others,” Wolf tells American Songwriter. “I think that gets the best out of me. I love feeding off people’s energy, their talent, and their spirit.”
If there was one unifying idea behind this album—though Wolf doesn’t consider it a concept album—it would be living life on the road. But it’s less an ode to the highway and more about the overall life situations forcing her pen.
Wolf was highly prolific while working on this album. She talks of writing two to three songs a day with her collaborators—Ethan Gruska, Jack DeMeo, Kenny Beats, Leon Michels of the Dap-Kings, Jared Solomon, Carter Lang, and Knox Fortune. Each song was written about whatever was at the top of Wolf’s mind. And because so much of her life is spent on the road, the side effects of a transient lifestyle end up coloring much of her work.
“I was on tour and I was going through a lot of changes in my personal life,” Wolf says. “I wrote these songs [while] I was doing a lot of mental and physical exploration of myself and the world.”
Her frenzied approach to writing made Wolf rely on her instincts even more than usual. She says many of the songs on the album were sparsely produced and often recorded in one take.
“We were one-take wonder-ing,” Wolf says. “That was really cool to have as an experience because I feel like that doesn’t happen often. Everybody loves to comp shit nowadays, but we were in the mindset of getting the band to sound fucking good so that we could record all at once.”
Wolf previewed Big Ideas with “Cinderella,” a markedly upbeat song about feeling out of control in your life. “I initially imagined [yacht rock icon and backing vocalist extraordinaire] Michael McDonald singing the bridge of ‘Cinderella,’” Wolf says. “That’s something I do a lot of the time because I love him so much. It helps me get melodies out. I imagined Michael McDonald was my fairy godfather, coming down from the sky and telling me that everything was okay.”
Indeed, Wolf isn’t afraid to wear her inspirations on her sleeve. In “Motorcycle,” she wanted to achieve a sound similar to Red Hot Chili Peppers. She looked to the band’s 1999 release, “Porcelain,” as inspiration for the rhythm section of the song. With such varied listening habits in mind, it’s no wonder Wolf’s sound comes out as rich as it does.
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She walked away from the writing sessions for “Motorcycle,” feeling like she had a keeper on her hands. “I think we all thought it was something—we all had that feeling inside,” Wolf says. “That’s the best part of making music. When you know you made something good, it’s such a drug. We were drugged up that day.”
It’s hard to believe Wolf could walk away from writing any one of the songs on Big Ideas without that same feeling bubbling up inside. Despite how chaotic and adrenaline-fueled Wolf describes the writing process to have been, each song feels intentional in its own way.
As far as her hopes for how the album’s release will go, Wolf has “no fucking clue.” But she hopes listeners find some resonance in her big ideas.
“I don’t want to put any intention out there because I want people to listen to it and get what they get from it,” Wolf says. “I hope that it resonates in some sort of way because I have such a strong emotional connection to it. I think it’s my most honest work.
“Each time I make something new, I think there’s a little screen that gets lifted from my psyche,” she adds. “I think my goal is just to keep lifting those screens.”
Photo by Ragan Henderson
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