Nineteen-year-old singer-songwriter Olivia Osby has always expressed her emotions and thoughts through creative outlets such as writing, poetry and journaling. But at age 12, Olivia O. began to learn guitar, and what started as the expression of words on a page morphed into the creation of music. Olivia’s growing understanding of deeper and more complex emotions allowed her to feel the emotional weight art could hold, and from there she was inspired to turn her personal musings into passionate and perceptive songs. “I was pretty bad at singing at first and was deathly nervous to show anyone any music I had made,” she says. “Around 14 years old, I gathered up enough bravery and started publishing my music on easily accessible platforms like Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and from there I started slowly building my discography.” The result is an emotive goldmine, a collection of music full of raw vulnerability and honest thoughts. Her self-produced solo songs showcase introspective lyrics, soft sounds and subtle experimentation which blend together to create an empathetic and eclectic collection of powerful and personal music.
Olivia not only releases music as a solo artist under the name Olivia O., but also creates tracks alongside her bandmate, Ashva Weinberg, as part of their work together for Lowertown, the band they formed during highschool. Earlier this year, they released their EP Honeycomb, Bedbug, a collection of six electric and lo-fi indie rock tracks inspired by artists such as Alex G, The Microphones, Animal Collective and Radiohead, which fit together to create a beautifully comforting yet melancholic sound. Songs such as My Dog and Best Person You Know perfectly capture the sounds of 2000s lofi folk and indie rock, bleeding together homemade folk with snatches of country, industrial, and electronic.
Sheesh Magazine chatted with Olivia O. about her inspirations and motivations, the importance of music, her band’s new releases, and more.
What have you been up to recently?
OLIVIA O: Currently, I’m in London for a few months to record the next project after Honeycomb, Bedbug. It’s my very first time in a studio and second time being overseas, and so far, I’ve greatly enjoyed the experience! I’ve been pouring most of my time into music and other creative endeavours. I finished a zine for Honeycomb, learned to animate, and I’ve been painting a lot too. I’ve also been practicing for live shows with Avsha a whole bunch. Hopefully we’ll be able to tour a lot as soon as it’s safe to do so.
What’s it like working with Avsha and how did you two start making music together?
OLIVIA O: I think Avsha and I are a perfect pairing because we greatly play on each other’s strengths and weaknesses. He’s an amazing instrumentalist. He plays guitar, drums, keys, bass, and he’s a classically trained pianist with a good knowledge of music theory, so he writes crazy instrumentals for me to work with or he’ll adapt my existing pieces so they have more complexity and are more unique. He also pushes me to do my best work because I think he sees how much I’m capable of, and most of the time that’s way more than I can see myself being able to accomplish. We decided to start the band when we were 16. We were best friends in highschool and both had been making music separately for a while. We took a trip together and got extremely close in our time there, and decided it would be fun if we tried to do a project together. Avsha had never worked with a female vocalist and I had never worked with anyone else on music before, so the idea of forming a band made us both excited.
Your EP Honeycomb, Bedbug for Lowertown recently came out! Can you talk a little about the inspiration behind it?
OLIVIA O: There is no direct meaning for the title of Honeycomb, Bedbug that I would like to disclose, but a lot of the inspiration came from the awareness of becoming older and dealing with my changing opinions of my world around me (more pessimism toward personal relationships and human nature) as well as dealing with the added responsibilities of early adulthood. I wrote half of the EP during the beginning of quarantine, so the intense and immediate changes of that time greatly affected my outlook on the world and created shifts in the dynamics of my close relationships that I had never experienced before and I couldn’t have anticipated. Understanding how to cope with all of these changes at once was the main inspiration for Honeycomb, Bedbug.
What music have you been listening to recently?
OLIVIA O: Oh man, most of my favorite musicians have been on repeat during lockdown just because I need something comforting to listen to during all this madness. I’ve also been listening to a lot of albums over and over again like Love What Survives by Mount Kimbie, good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar, Stratosphere by Duster and OK Computer by Radiohead. I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese musicians like Haruomi Hosono and Ichiko Aoba and some ambient stuff like Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin.
Olivia’s Lockdown Playlist:
How would you describe the music you create?
OLIVIA O: Vulnerable, articulate, observational. Most of my music is made spur of the moment and created to fill some emotional purpose. I usually write songs to help me work through difficult thoughts or experiences in my life because writing about them has helped me healthily think about and even sometimes find something positive from that difficult period of time. I choose to put my music out there for other people to find because I hope that it may connect with other people and may help someone who is currently going through or has gone through something similar.
Friends was your first full release as a band. How did you go about writing it?
OLIVIA O: Avsha and I began writing that album over our summer from sophomore to junior year of high school when we were 16. I had never written music with another person before, so I was extremely nervous! I’m glad I worked with Avsha for my first time collaborating because he was extremely patient as well as talented, so he could fill in the gaps where my experience was lacking (which was mostly in the instrumental areas). For our first album, since I wasn’t too great at guitar at the time, Avsha would write a guitar part or an instrumental and I would write lyrics or rewrite poems and find a melody to fit with how the instrumental made me feel or what it made me think of when I listened to it. Charlie was the only song on that album where I wrote a guitar part and that was the first song we wrote together. All the songs were based on people that had greatly affected my life, and the names were chosen by Avsha and I after finishing the song so the people I was writing about wouldn’t know the song was about them.
What do you hope people can take away from your songs?
OLIVIA O: I hope when someone listens, they can feel a connection with the feeling or the lyrics in the song, and I hope in turn they realize they’re not alone in the thoughts or experiences they’ve been through. Music has been one of the most important forces in my life for many reasons, but most importantly, it has helped me get through many difficult periods of my life and sometimes helped me derive some meaning from terrible experiences. That’s probably why most of my favorite artists are singer-songwriters, and why my writing style is greatly inspired by that kind of music.
How did you go about creating the ‘Best Person You Know’ music video?
OLIVIA O: Avsha and I had the idea for a video where we would kill him a bunch of different times in over the top ways. We knew we wanted it to not be too graphic, so a lot of the planning was spent on finding ways to make it feel less realistic and more surreal and dreamlike. We came up with a long list of ways a person could die, and chose the ones that seemed realistically within our ability to shoot, then we drove around for a week to parts of Atlanta and Georgia to scout shooting locations. I made a bunch of the props by hand (like the paper mache head, and the cake, and I painted the gun to match my dress) and planned all the costumes. We got our friend Michael Cully to direct, edit, and film the video, and we shot it over the course of a month during the summer. It was always extremely hot and we always came back after a day of shooting with so many bug bites, but it was worth it. The video turned out better than I could’ve imagined for our first real music video!
How have you been finding ways to stay creative in your personal life and the content you produce?
OLIVIA O: The isolating effects of Coronavirus have greatly impacted my life in many ways, from my relationships with friends and family, to the way I view myself, to the incredible boredom and monotony of my daily routine and the overwhelming feeling of having to sit with my thoughts day in and day out because of all the alone time. These past few months have been extremely wearing mentally, but I also feel like they’ve forced me to think about many things I have actively avoided, which has created many new things to write about. Half of the songs in Honeycomb were written during lockdown, so those experiences and themes definitely come through in the lyricism and tone of the EP.
What was the inspiration behind ‘Tourist Trap’?
OLIVIA O: At the time of writing Tourist Trap, I felt like I spent most of my existence within a box. I felt like I only moved from my bedroom to my school classroom back to my bedroom, doing the same things day after day. I was in this mind numbing cycle that I dreaded would extend into my life at University and then into my professional life after. I felt like I was always in the process of working to get to another, better place in my life, but it just felt like I was just moving from one box to another. I wrote this song before Corona hit in the beginning of my senior year of highschool, but I feel like the song has taken on a whole other form of relatability now with being trapped inside all day for lockdown or quarantine.
How do you stay positive despite the toxicity of social media?
OLIVIA O: People who spend their time being hateful online are usually jealous or hateful and bitter about something that isn’t, in any way, your fault. I’ve had a lot of men saying derogatory things to me online just because I am a woman and confident in my appearance or in my music. I’ve had people pick apart my appearance saying all kinds of unnecessary and rude things. No one online fully knows who I am. They don’t know my whole personality or any details about my personal life, so how can they make any accurate judgments on my character? I really have no respect for people who degrade or are hateful to other people, especially while hiding behind a screen. My advice isn’t perfect but I’ve found it’s best to give no energy or time to people like that. Don’t entertain the hate or give it any attention, because attention is all those people really want. It takes 5 seconds for someone to comment something that may stick with you for weeks or even longer, so just realize they’re trying to make you feel bad and what their saying isn’t worth thinking about for more than even a second. I’ve started to just delete comments that are unnecessarily rude, and I sometimes even have to block people when it gets to the level of harassment. The other day I had to block an account called @wormsheriff_sucks_at_music because they were sending me hate every half hour about how terrible my music was and how I’m a phony. It was quite ridiculous the lengths people will go to just to make you feel bad. If you gain a following online, at some point, no matter what you do, you will get hateful things said to you. Just try your best to brush it off and not take it to heart, because those people really aren’t worth wasting your time over or thinking about.
What opportunities and experiences would you like to see more of in music?
OLIVIA O: Starting out, I felt a sense of isolation with the music community in my genre because most of the artists weren’t welcoming, and I felt like what I made wasn’t good enough or that it didn’t fit in anywhere. Instead of excitement that someone new was beginning to create, I experienced a lot of competitiveness and some bitterness from other artists around me. Competitiveness with upcoming artists isn’t a new phenomenon, I just find it really destructive to genres of music. Having new artists unable to feel welcome or unable to be a part of shows can kill off local scenes as well as some people’s love for sharing their music. With that being said, I hope in the future, there will be more openness from other artists when new artists try to break into a scene because I think having a more positive and accepting environment will encourage more people to try to make music and make others want to come to shows and also get excited about supporting other artists.
What are your future plans?
OLIVIA O: In 2021, Lowertown will be dropping another project or two, so I’m extremely excited for that! I think out of anything I’ve made, I’m the most proud of this project so I’m really ready for everyone to listen to it. Also, hopefully soon I’ll drop another EP or album under my solo project Olivia O. I’ve been working on some songs on the side for fun and I’d like to put them out for other people to check out!
Follow Olivia O. on Instagram and check out both Lowertown and Olivia on Spotify.
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