More about: Baby Queen

Honouring the poetry that goes into songwriting, Close Reading is a series of intimate conversations about all the books, films and thoughts behind some of your favourite songs. Diving into the lyrics and picking apart the lines that make you want to sing along a little louder, Lucy Harbron is sitting down with some of the most exciting songwriters around to hold a magnifying glass up to the lyrical form.

Going from 0 to 100 in 2021, Baby Queen (AKA Bella Latham) quickly topped ones to watch lists thanks to her solid vision and catchy hooks. Managing to perfect the tricky balance of thoughtful lyricism and addictive pop choruses, tracks like 'Want Me' and 'Raw Thoughts' solidified Bella’s spot as one of the most exciting new acts around.

Off the back of her recent release The Mixtape, Baby Queen is in a period of reflection as she works on a new album and prep for her biggest live dates yet supporting Olivia Rodrigo. Talking past and future, oppressive word counts and TV crushes, Bella and Lucy unpicked the process.

The first character we should unpick is Baby Queen! Who is she?

I’ve been having conversations about this a lot this week. I was at the pub and we were talking about the name and how I regret a lot of things about my career but that’s one thing I really do not regret. I feel like I’d written the music prior to naming Baby Queen—'Raw Thoughts', 'Buzzkill' and 'You Shaped Hole' all existed, so I feel like I got to name those songs in a way like what do these songs want.

I felt like the songs were lilac purple so I needed this thing to be lilac purple, I wanted people to see the colour when they heard them. And what I liked about the name was that its infantile but regal, I like the mixture of those two things and they seem to come up a lot in my music. Especially in the album I’m currently working on, it’s all about this grown up person that’s unable to be a grown up in any sense of the word.

Does she differ from you?

It’s interesting as Baby Queen is a separate thing from me. I’m obviously not Baby Queen although I am, I speak about her in the third person a lot. I’ll go out and get wasted and be like “oh that’s so Baby Queen of me.” Baby Queen is braver: she’s the cheekier, louder side of me but theres also this really solitary, thoughtful person that comes through the lyrics. You can hear that the depth is there but Baby Queen is just a lunatic. She gives me the bravery to push more boundaries.

The idea of a stage name is very American, and the imagery behind the mixtape was very American dream, pop culture inspired. Is that something that influences you?

I think it was something I felt like I had to do. Given the opportunity, would it be as Americanised? No! I like being a British artist, I like the British scene and I think my music is London.

I hate talking badly about stuff I’ve done as it means a lot to a lot of people but it’s strange that the American link comes in. Even now, I’ve been rediscovering '90s rock but American rock. I’ve been listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana, so now this new album has an American '90s vibe. 

But I definitely feel more connected to British culture and British music. I’ve never really even been to America! I only watched Hannah Montana growing up. I guess American culture is culture: that’s what you see.

It feels symptomatic of our generation, like the Disney channel generation. When I was in primary school I spoke with an American accent for years…

Literally that was me, I wanted my name to be Stacy! It’s definitely a point of contention for me and I’m really watching in my inflections. Because I learnt everything from Taylor Swift, I want to go record all my songs in that American country accent. But I’m trying to consciously tell myself: look you’re not American, sing in your actual accent!

You said about being more inspired by the British scene, what are some things you’re into that feel very British to you?

Recently I’ve been on a big Oasis thing which I never have been. They’re so quintessentially British and are something I feel like I missed out on as my parents never listened to rock. But I love properly British artists like Lily Allen. It’s a bit of a polarizing statement for some reason but The 1975 are one of my favourite bands, I listened to them obsessively when I first moved here and I still love them. I think Matty Healy is a genius honestly, I love his lyricism. 

I worked at Rough Trade when I first moved and got to see all the bands coming through. There’s an amazing underground scene here, a big sub-culture of brilliant, brilliant, brilliant music coming through and amazing artists that create a whole world around what they’re doing. And then books wise, I love Kae Tempest and artists like Little Simz that bring poetry into everything they do.

It’s a good intro into talking about 'Want Me' as that first verse is so intensely lyric heavy and spoken word—it feels more like a monologue rather than a pop song! How do you balance that literary side with big pop choruses?

I’m so obsessed with lyrics which is why a lot of the time I’ll ditch melody completely. I talk a lot in my verses because I want to say all this and I can’t fit those syllables into a melody. I think melody limits lyrics, so I find it really tough to have sparse verses: they have to pack in the information so it can break apart at the chorus. I feel like I can accept a chorus if the verses feel intelligent so now I painstakingly spend hours of verses and just let the choruses be the chorus. 

With 'Want Me', there was never a verse melody. I was always just going to speak as I had a lot to say and then the chorus is probably the most repetitive thing I’ve even written. I posted a story asking people what their favourite Baby Queen lyric and my cousin jokingly commented “want me, want me, if you want me”—it’s a fucking awful lyric! But you can forgive that as the rest of it is so hectic.

It’s like your verse is a whole essay and your chorus is a conclusion…

Yes! Literally! I feel like I’m researching for an essay every time and it’s not just the points of the essay but you have to have the right lines to lead in and out of the chorus—it’s like putting a jigsaw together. It’s a lot of hard work and I feel like the verses are me saying “I’m clever I’m clever I’m clever” before going Pop! Pop! Pop! 

I really relate to having too much to say, I was always chronically over word count in all my uni essays.

I wanted to go do an English degree and write novels and stuff so it’s always going to be lyric first for me. If my melodies suffer because of it, so be it. It’s a risk I’m going to take.

I love the French bridge—I Google translated it for this and you proper pranked me…

I can do the accent really well as my dad’s half French, so it’s really convincing and then you translate it and I’m like “I no speak French much really but I up looked it blah blah.” I sound like a lunatic, every time I sing it live I hope theres no French people in the audience, and now I’m going to have to go sing it in Paris… But its cheeky! It’s got that wink to the camera sort of thing, and I think theres a lot of that satire and irony in my music. Cynical satire, I love that silent little giggle.

It fits perfectly with the vibe of the video and that French noir character. What was on the moodboard for the video

Obviously the song is about Jodie Comer from Killing Eve because I was completely in love with her. I haven’t gotten over it, I keep telling everyone I am but I’m definitely not…

You can see Villanelle all over that song as she’s this character I was obsessed with and then it’s parallel as in the show she’s obsessed with someone. There’s a lot of cheesy moments in the video with the performance. But the humour mixed with the intensity and seriousness—everything about the song is so inspired by Killing Eve.

What was it about the show that had you so hooked? Obviously besides how fit Jodie is…

So many people kept telling me to watch it and that I’d be obsessed with this girl, saying she reminded them of me. I think it’s the childishness of the character, like when she goes into the museum and screams “this is so BORING!”. I put it on and my life was over, I was obsessed. I loved the tone, it was satirical, intelligent humour and everything about it was everything I love about art.

The song is so addictive; it was one of my top played of the year…

It’s a beast of a song! It’s kind of annoying when you write something like that, when it’s just the one. You can’t replicate that feeling, I’ll need to find my new obsession to ever feel like that again. You can’t bottle it.

Baby Queen Recommends...

To watch: Rick and Morty or Bojack Horseman

I love that intelligent but childish humour. Someone once called me the Rick and Morty of music and I loved it.

To read: Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

It’s a big story about sexuality, but it’s so easy and beautiful. I think we could all relate to it, realistically no one who listens to my music is straight…

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More about: Baby Queen