Move over, Drake. Toronto has a new ambassador. Singer-songwriter Brat Star writes about Canada’s largest city with the romance usually reserved for Paris or New York. On her debut album, Southern Ontario Gothic , the Montreal-born artist turns movie characters and store brands, from Margot Tenenbaum to Hokas to an Aritzia sweater, into private mythology, delivered in half-spoken, half-sung deadpan with more heart than it lets on. Days before the release, Brat Star got together with her friend Clairo to talk twinning, Shania Twain and how her Virgo tendencies shaped the project.
BRAT STAR: I woke up and I actually did a HIIT workout. I’m obsessed with this woman, Pamela Rief. I think she’s German. She does these HIIT workouts and she’s smiling the whole time. My friend Isabella Lovestory put me onto her in 2020 during the pandemic and I’m still running it.
CLAIRO: That’s amazing. I like that she’s smiling the whole time.
CLAIRO: I have so much to ask you about. Your album comes out in three days.
BRAT STAR: Yeah, it feels like I’m coming out of the closet after 30 years or something.
BRAT STAR: I think I’ve been trying to figure out how to say what I want to say for that long, and I feel like I finally feel it aligned with my output.
CLAIRO: It’s not easy to present yourself perfectly. I guess I’ve never thought about it like that because maybe I’ve been putting out stuff so much since I was a kid that I never got the chance to be like, “Wait, what do I actually want to say?” But I think that’s so cool that you’ve been careful with your words and your splash into the world.
BRAT STAR: Yeah, I feel like in that way I’m learning to be more like you, or what you just described of creating without so much thought, just being more in a flow state with it. I’m on my way there after this project, for sure.
CLAIRO: That’s exciting. As someone who knows you, I know that you love Toronto a lot, and I want to know why you landed on Southern Ontario Gothic .
BRAT STAR: I just romanticized Toronto in a way maybe someone romanticizes Paris or New York. It’s the biggest city in Canada, so from a young age, growing up in Montreal, Toronto was always like, “We don’t like it over there. It’s the big city.” And I was like, “Doesn’t that sound exciting?” And then around the 2010s, I remember The Weeknd put out his first project, and it made me feel so excited to be Canadian. Then Drake came up with Views , and it really inspired me, and I kind of wanted to do my own version of that.
CLAIRO: It’s so beautiful to hear you speak about Toronto like that, because there’s so many songs about other cities, and it’s so cool how much you love it and how much you want the world to know about Toronto. What I like about you so much is the way you take so many things that are just everyday people or things and you make them into something so profound. I never thought about Hokas that intensely before you put out that song. This morning, I was listening to Connie Converse and reading her lyrics and I thought there was so much crossover. Even though she’s a folk singer-songwriter from the ’50s and ’60s, she recognizes so much about the time and place she’s in, but she finds a very funny emotional ground, which I think is what you do too, and it’s really difficult.
BRAT STAR: Thank you. I’m just a very obsessed person, and I put all my energy into my takes on things, the things I love. It’s funny because the humor stuff is more of a learned vibe for me. I wasn’t always funny. By nature, I’m a very sensitive and serious person, and I’ve learned to detach a little bit and when you introduce some space, then it can become funny, and that’s really cathartic.
CLAIRO: I feel like humor in emotional songs is incredibly important. You are a very relational person. When we got dinner, you were like, “I’m just going to get what you are getting because I’m obsessed with twinning.” I haven’t stopped thinking about that. [Laughs]
BRAT STAR: It’s so true, I’m obsessed with twinning. [Laughs] I love connecting. I think of art as translation, and I think of the craft of making art as getting better at translating.
CLAIRO: That’s beautiful. I think you know more movies than anybody I’ve ever met in my life.
BRAT STAR: That’s possible. I’ll take that.
CLAIRO: When you’re writing a song as somebody that knows so many movies, do you use stories that you get from movies or is there anything about the humor and the emotional part of music that comes through in movies for you? I know Margot Tenenbaum was a great example of that for me. How do you connect the two? You’re also putting out a movie today?
BRAT STAR: Yeah. I think the two are very intertwined. Sometimes I’m like, “Am I a musician, or am I more like a conceptual artist?” That’s something we talked about when we got dinner too, being inspired by the source of something, as opposed to being inspired by all the copy of a copy platonic versions. So that’s why I love the most base version of something, because it originates from this ideal, but it has all this interesting texture to it. And most movies are based on books or on classic stories, like Jesus, Shakespeare, whatever. Clueless is a Jane Austen novel, 10 Things I Hate About You is a Shakespeare play or something, and I’m obsessed with that.
BRAT STAR: And so when I write a song, I collect as much texture and sediment from that as I can. I let my mind be like, “Oh, what does this remind me of?”
CLAIRO: Wow. That’s incredibly inspiring.
CLAIRO: Stop. [Laughs] No, that’s really cool, and I do get that from your work. Honestly, I would say that you’re 100 percent conceptual artist, but you have a preferred vessel for it. You are so connected with words and that’s something I liked about you when I first met you, is that you were careful with your words, but you were also incredibly funny. But the seriousness you’re talking about when you describe yourself is not a negative thing. A lot of people talk about holding weight in their life, but you use it, you’re true in practice.
BRAT STAR: Wow, I’m so gassed by that, and it makes me want to ask you, how do you approach songwriting, and do you think of your songs as love songs or not?
BRAT STAR: I know, yeah. My bad. [Laughs]
CLAIRO: I like your writing because it’s a different approach than mine. It’s become inspiring for me as I work on music to try to get to a point that feels new while also explaining a hard truth or a very universal feeling that all people go through. Everyone falls in love, everybody goes through hardship, and I’ve been listening to a lot of old folk and Appalachian music and New Orleans jazz and just tons of genres. It’s like these older, more traditional places where I think I actually find some of the most interesting lyrics because they’re either all covering each other’s songs or they’re putting their own spin on it. And yeah, I mentioned Connie Converse because she writes about her being afraid someone’s going to leave her, being in love, or knowing someone’s bad for you, all these really integral feminine experiences, but she’s saying them in such a hilarious way. And that’s how I feel about you, it doesn’t get old.
BRAT STAR: I’m anti-hauntology. I’m like, “Let’s stop being obsessed with the past. Let’s just be right now.” And your music is so right now.
CLAIRO: That’s so interesting because I am obsessed with the past. When we first met, I was so enamored because you are obsessed with the now and the future in a way that’s not threatening. You bring up things like Aritzia or Hokas and these key parts of a young girl’s life, that’s pushing it forward and can feel uncomfortable to the person who’s romanticizing the old world. Not in a bad way. You’re Bob Dylan.
BRAT STAR: Wow. I feel like a big motif in this conversation is, “I can’t believe Clairo was telling me that right now.” [Laughs] I’m really happy that you see that because we were also talking about Shania Twain, who I admire because she’s someone who does this too, where she really does think of her audience and she wants to give people hope. It’s very Virgo. Like “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” all those songs are really sending out that message, and I just love that so much. I love her so much.
CLAIRO: I mean, what’s not to love about Shania?
CLAIRO: That messaging is very powerful, and people overlook it quite a bit. Maybe they consider it corny to make a song about uplifting yourself, but we do need it. We do need someone to say, “Go outside. Everything’s okay and be in the now.” That’s why enjoying Shania Twain in 2026 is a very special experience. She’s saying all the right things in terms of uplifting my spirit.
BRAT STAR: No, literally. I think with her it works because there is this darkness that’s never spoken, but you can feel it. It’s part of her energy. It’s not just blind optimism, it’s lucid optimism that’s arrived at and earned. And this brings me back to the hard truths motif, where hard truths are meant to help you grow, so it’s ultimately a positive thing.
CLAIRO: And you also don’t always have to write about the hard truth. The need to prove that you’ve arrived at a hard truth is something I’m working on, and instead of trying to explain that I’m finally here, why don’t I just be happy that it’s over with?
CLAIRO: Would you say that being a Virgo heavily influences your workflow?
BRAT STAR: I mean, how could it not? My workflow is the most Virgoan thing ever because I literally just go step by step. I was like, “Okay, now I’m going to write my debut album.” And then I was like, “Okay, now I’m going to write my first song.” And that was “David Fincher.”
BRAT STAR: I love that song too, I have to say. I kind of build songs in the album like a house where I start with a foundation, and then I’ll arrange a little bit more and a little bit more till I get to the roof.
CLAIRO: Do you come up with the visual concept at all first? Do you know that you’re going to be walking around the city and wearing sunglasses and being full first?
BRAT STAR: No. I mean, that’s the thing is these Oakley shades, I got them at the airport. You know what I mean? I was touring with Luke [Fenton] and Dill [Dylan James Hancock] and at the London airport or something. I was like, “Ugh, I need some comfy sunglasses.” I’m really all about comfy and function, and I let that dictate the swag.
BRAT STAR: It’s also a very Canadian vibe, just to be authentic, No Frills energy. The actual visuals for the project are things I built after that were simply what I was wearing and maybe an exaggerating version of my vibe.
CLAIRO: I love it so much. I remember telling you your songwriting to me is so crazy in the way when I used to smoke weed and I would get a little bit too high and everything would feel a little bit too real. It feels like you see the world more clearly than most people, and sometimes when I can really understand what you’re talking about, it almost freaks me out that you’re able to have such a microscopic understanding of something because it’s not that simple. I don’t know, I’m super excited for your album.
BRAT STAR: I’m so excited for your album too, actually.
BRAT STAR: No, I know, I know. It just had to be said because I love twinning.
CLAIRO: [Laughs] No, I love twinning too. Your song on the record, it’s called “Aritzia Sweater.” Those lyrics are what sent me into a spiral in a good way. A lot of girls know Aritzia, but no one’s ever written about Aritzia. No one wants to touch it, but you’re touching it.
BRAT STAR: That really means the world. I just wrote it and was like, “Let me just say the craziest shit right now.” And then I think I asked my husband a million times, “Are you sure this is not so insane?” And it ended up on the record.
BRAT STAR: Someone I really admire is Drake, and I feel like people don’t give him enough credit for embodying bitterness and pettiness and jealousy. So that’s kind of what I wanted to explore in “Aritzia Sweater,” just being a person who’s really bitter and who’s kind of like, “Everyone is fucking fake, and I’m the only real one because I wear Aritzia. I’m not wearing Gucci or a rare vintage thing that doesn’t have a brand name.”
CLAIRO: I think it’s a necessary balance. Music has to have this balance. We need bitter songs to be able to have the sweet introspective ones. They can’t exist without each other. So it’s cool you’re doing both.
BRAT STAR: Yeah. And Taylor Swift also does this so fucking well. Blank Space,” a classic touchstone, but it really changed my life when I discovered her and this song four years ago. I was just like, “Whoa, who is this person? Now I understand why everyone’s so obsessed with her.”
CLAIRO: I know. That song is amazing. Your album is going to rock everybody’s socks off.
BRAT STAR: Oh my god. I’m floating a thousand miles above the earth. I’m really shook.
CLAIRO: I’m shook too. I think everyone’s going to be shook when they hear your record.
BRAT STAR: Our closing vibe is we’re shook.
CLAIRO: Super shook right now. Interview shook.
Source: Fashion
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