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“[Making this album] was the closest I’ve come to finding some sort of faith in myself.”
Leaning on her own instincts wasn’t just an aesthetic shift, but a way of entirely reimagining what a Baby Queen record could be. “I didn’t feel as artistically free and as trusting of myself,” Bella explains of her experience creating ‘Quarter Life Crisis’. “I really wanted to return to something that I’d had when I made my first EP, which was a total trust in my own instinct without the input of anyone else, and just being alone with my taste. That was something that I was able to recreate on [‘IHYDRM’]. I did feel super alone, and I did feel like it was me against the world, which was actually very conducive to leaning into my instincts. It was pretty magical, and I felt like it was the closest I’ve come to finding some sort of faith in myself.”
The idea that self-belief could be a relatively newfangled discovery for Baby Queen may come as a surprise; while her online presence is determinedly self-deprecating, her persona, paired with heart-on-sleeve lyrics that pull few punches, does a solid job of hiding it. This relatable honesty plays a large part in the strong connection she has with her Kingdom-ers, and made her a fitting choice for the soundtrack for Heartstopper, Netflix’s rosy teen romcom focused on celebrating queer identities. She penned her 2022 single ‘Colours Of You’ especially for the show’s second series, while elsewhere, her music has mediated on body image, Gen-Z nihilism, and her own sexuality with seeming ease.
“Even though I write these open songs, I can’t move through the world as that person; I can’t introduce myself to the world in my actual, everyday life as I truly am,” she admits, reflecting on the stubbornly lingering internalised shame that she’s recently uncovered in therapy. “How the fuck am I ever gonna be able to connect if I’m ashamed, you know?”
Her path to the therapist’s chair actually began with writing ‘IHYDRM’, when putting her life down on paper made it easier to spot the patterns cropping up. “There was this clear turmoil within the person writing it – who happens to be me, unfortunately,” she says. “I definitely realised that what was rising to the top in this music were my issues – my hatred of myself, my shame, my desire to please, my desire to be loved, my fear of rejection, my pride. All these things were coming through, and I realised that these relationships were taking the same route and following the same arc because of [these things] lying underneath, and that [this arc] was never going to change because the common denominator was me.”
‘I Hope You Don’t Remember Me’ covers the full breadth of the emotional spectrum as it responds to a string of Bella’s romantic dalliances, coming up bereft in some places and furious in others. Opening track ‘Abigail’, a fit of longing that eventually collapses into a storm of squealing guitars, was never intended to see the light of day – hence, perhaps, its use of real names. It was an exercise in catharsis but, according to the ideas still in Bella’s head, it simply wasn’t what a Baby Queen song sounded like. “Art can’t get any purer than that; it can’t get any purer than thinking: ‘I’ve just got this out my system, but it’s not for anyone else’,” she muses. “Now I think it’s one of the best things that I made during that time. I always think that when you get that feeling that ‘this is touching too close’, that’s probably one of the best feelings you can get when you’re making music.”
Later on in the record, things do get closer to the tried and tested BQ formula, such as on the insistently positive ‘That’s Fine’ (spoiler alert: it absolutely isn’t) and the deceptively airy ode to attachment, ‘Permanently Obsessed’. ‘Word Vomit’ does what it says on the tin, ruminating on an embarrassing night out and exemplifying Bella’s habit for saying exactly what’s in her head, while ‘Spite’ navigates the post-break-up grey area between love and hate. Released the morning of our chat as the album’s fifth single, lilting piano ballad ‘The Protagonist’ stands out for its slower pace and narrative turn, coming to reflect on Bella’s own behaviour. The throughline, then, is a startling sense of self-awareness – one that, she explains, has been hard won.