The Lush Cinematic Soundscapes Of Pom Pom Squad’s Dying of a Cheerleader
Sammy Ray
By Grant Sharples
When Mia Berrin moved to Contemporary York to survey performing, she fleet realized it became as soon as a mistake. It wasn’t appropriate with who Berrin is as an particular particular person, and she didn’t cherish the means she became as soon as treated. So she began playing in a punk band, skipping classes, and “figuring shit out,” as she tells MTV Info. She launched an EP known as Disapprove It Right here in 2017, nonetheless the initial lineup of her neighborhood, Pom Pom Squad, in the end dissolved. She became to solo shows, performing with honest a guitar until she in the end met her original bandmates: guitarist Alex Mercuri, bassist Mari Alé Figeman, and drummer Shelby Keller. The workforce became as soon as set up. The shit became as soon as figured out.
“It all felt a diminutive magical,” Berrin tells MTV Info. “The day that I met them, I had been via this breakup, and I had misplaced my band no longer too long earlier than. , these two of us [Figeman and Keller] had been dropped in my lap. Alex also took discipline to achieve encourage to the the same characterize where I met them.” She has a chum who calls days cherish these, where the whole thing meshes so with out problems, “magnet days.” “It became as soon as a magnet day!” Berrin says.
On June 25, three years after the lineup became as soon as pulled together as if by some invisible force, Pom Pom Squad launched their debut album, Dying of a Cheerleader. The parable, co-produced with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, explores sunny indie rock, vitality ballads in 6/8 time, a Doris Day quilt, and thrashing punk. Nonetheless these descriptors merely scratch the skin of Berrin’s most up-to-date effort, a swirling series of songs that merges apparently disparate motifs correct into a composite equipment. For that implies, she’s realized inspiration in some of pop’s boldest auteurs.
“I reflect some of the artists that fascinate me essentially the most merely now are artists who are the vogue, nearly, cherish Billie Eilish or Rina Sawayama,” she explains. “They may be able to coast any place of their tune, nonetheless as long as they agree with a central coronary heart, theme, or listing, it soundless feels cherish their mission.” Berrin spoke to MTV Info about unifying her ingenious approaches, the album’s placing and campy visuals, RuPaul’s Scamper Recede, and more.
MTV Info: The album traverses so many genres in a seamless means. How did you coast about meshing so many tips into this unified imaginative and prescient?
Mia Berrin: I conception of it as a movie soundtrack, cherish what different choices of the narrative arc need. As I became as soon as writing, I became as soon as placing the songs in different slots and scenes. The song “Crying” is the greatest instance, where assuredly I knew that, to me, the 2 pulls of the parable had been going to be more grunge-punk-indie rock-targeted, and the assorted pull of the parable became as soon as going to be lush, Motown, cinematic stuff. “Crying” became as soon as the closing song that came together on the parable. I knew that what became as soon as missing became as soon as a moment where each and every in fact meshed in one song. It became as soon as in fact laborious to settle out that balance, and it nearly by no way made it to the studio. Nonetheless when it did attain together, and when it did in the end gain to the discipline that it is now, it felt cherish a in fact perfect bridge in a means. It took various finessing and considerate placement and sequencing.
MTV Info: You acknowledged that you had been nearly letting the pictures attain first and the tune would apply. Is that the system in the encourage of Dying of a Cheerleader’s songwriting? Had been you writing lyrics to decided tips and visuals that you already had in tips?
Berrin: I grew up journaling loads, so I’ve gotten rather correct at clocking when a conception of mine is commonly a lyric. Nonetheless on this direction of, there contain been a pair songs that had been written or existed earlier than. “Head Cheerleader” became as soon as one of them. I reflect that, as I became as soon as exploring that imagery, and likewise inspiring about rising up and no longer being a teen anymore, the cheerleader listing develops in that sense of my lifestyles. This conception of the loss of life of a cheerleader came to me.
This listing of being beneath this crazy, campy, amorphous construction honest felt cherish a terribly mountainous metaphor for where I became as soon as in my lifestyles, which became as soon as buried beneath this conception of femininity or this model of myself that I felt cherish I needed to rob to be socially acceptable to other of us. Across the time I wrote “Head Cheerleader,” I had in fact fallen in love with someone. It became as soon as a game-changer in terms of how I understood myself as a unfamiliar particular person. It all came from that emotional discipline, after which heightening it round this listing of seeing how some distance I may possibly also push that became as soon as in fact enjoyable.
MTV Info: Something that stands out about this album are the visuals, from the Aged Hollywood-esque video for “Crying” to the marching-band-inspired aesthetics in the video for “Head Cheerleader.” What are some of the suggestions you’re exploring in the iconography?
Berrin: Ever since I began Pom Pom Squad, the dazzling of it to me has been nearly equally as essential because the tune, if no longer equally essential. I cherish when an artist can way an journey or a sense all around the parable. Love if someone pals you with a sense, that’s a rather important thing. I cherish when tune can build you in a terribly disclose headspace and bring you encourage to a particular moment. I reflect curating the arena round this myth has suggested it in so many ways. This myth in fact did open up with pictures earlier than it began with tune, oddly. I became as soon as exploring being quarantined. I had a obvious desire to dissociate from my actuality of being in my condominium and being in a confined house. I spent various time in quarantine looking out at [RuPaul’s] Scamper Recede. It felt cherish the whole thing I needed to be and assemble in my inventive lifestyles: enjoyable, campy, sharp, infrequently in fact serious, and emotional.
MTV Info: You’ve these in fact ragged songs — Tommy James and the Shondells’s 1968 psych-pop hit “Crimson and Clover” and “This Couldn’t Occur,” a model of Doris Day’s “Again” from 1949 — on the album, nonetheless they don’t feel out of discipline. How did you coast about repurposing them for Dying of a Cheerleader?
Berrin: What I cherish most about these songs is that they transcend their time in that they’re so saccharine. “Crimson and Clover” particularly is such an unintentionally creepy song. That’s what I loved about them. There’s so important cinematic possible in that vogue and in that technology. Quite lots of instances when I hear older songs repurposed in a identical means, it’s in hip-hop. I grew up on hip-hop; I became as soon as continuously in fact inquisitive about sampling. I cherish the sensation of sharp a particular song, after which, on the other hand decades later in your lifestyles, you hear that and where the sample originated. It’s cherish musical worlds colliding.