Tunes Tuesday Talks To Glitter Moneyyy - Transcript

Maud Mostly: Hello and welcome to The Other Team's Tunes Tuesday, a weekly series that discusses music and matters with queer artists you love. I'm your host Maud Mostly, my pronouns are they/them, and joining me this week is LA-based duo, Glitter Moneyyy. Thank you so much for being here. Would you two like to introduce yourselves?

TS: Yeah, thank you for having us! We’re Glitter Moneyyy, we spell our name with three y’s. I'm Tayyyslayyy. My pronouns are she/they.

QT: I'm Queen Trashley. My pronouns are she/her.

MM: Awesome, I love it. And I would love to dive right into your music because, oh my gosh, the first time I listened to it, I was just so excited and I can't wait to talk to you about it. Your most recent single, Peggy Sue, is about strapping, which is something that is a pretty common act and conversation in many queer communities, but still carries a lot of discomfort and stigma outside of those spaces, so what is the impact on yourself or your listeners when it comes to not only speaking to these topics through your music, but also actively celebrating them in your lyrics?

TS: I feel like it has just opened up an entire world to us. Peggy Sue, we released in the middle of the pandemic, so we haven't gotten the chance to do it live very often, but reflecting back on some of our other songs, we've had people come up to us after shows and say... I always used to say I... We have a song called wanna be on top about not wanting to get on top, and someone was like, ‘Oh wow, I always say that I didn't know anyone else felt that way,’ or SCD, for example, I know it's opened up a conversation between even me and my mom who... Oh my God, I hope she doesn't watch this, she'll kill me. But at one point she was like, Tayyy, what if I wanted a vibrator? I was like, Mom! Good for you! You should get one!

QT: I haven't heard this story. Wow, I don't know to feel...Wow

TS: I know! We can't send this link to her

QT: I’m gonna tell her that you said that

TS: Don't tell her!

QT: I'm literally texting her right now

TS: Stoppp, do not tell her. It’s for her, not for me. You don't want to embarrass her. Do this for her.

QT: or I could get her one for Christmas!

TS: I think…You know what, I think she's good.

QT: I'm not gonna text her.

TS: But yeah, it opened up so many great conversations, I feel like!

QT: Definitely. I mean, I know that my mom definitely did not understand Peggy Sue in its entirety, or my dad, or my grandmother, they all listen to it together, but it’s really, really fun to make a song that's so incredibly queer. There's not many songs you can put on your sex playlists that are gonna perfectly align with the kind of sex you're probably having, so Peggy Sue’s kind of our little addition to that, like here you can get through this is cishetero bullshit, and now you have Peggy Sue about strapping. Perfect! So it's definitely something that's been... I think the biggest impact has definitely been in the queer community, hearing from our friends like, I played your song while I was doing blah, blah, blah is pretty awesome.

MM: I love that, and I also love all the stuff that's just come up about family involvement in this song, I just think that is so awesome, and I also love this point about it just being an abundantly queer song, because I feel like there's a lot of messages related to sex in music, but definitely not through that lens of queerness and queerness being so much at the forefront.

QT: Yess

MM: That is fantastic. And I feel like on that topic, from the sex positivity of your lyrics to those conversations with your family, and even through the way that your merch is designed, your work explicitly centers that sex positivity, that focus on pleasure. So have you ever felt like or been told that you need to tone down your language to fit into a certain spaces as an artist, and if so, how do you manage those feelings and continue to release music that feels authentic to you?

QT: I think we've been told to tone down like don't think anyone's ever said, tone down, that's such a polite way to put it, people are much more brash what their opinions of us, which is hilarious because we don't care... People are constantly like, Oh God! Oh my god! Like they didn't know what this is gonna be about, they didn't know what they signed up for, which is interesting 'cause we're not secretive about it. We’ve even been on radio shows where midway through the interview, they're like, ‘So your music's really provocative and blah, blah, blah... What’s up with that?’ And we've already done a performance. We're already 30 minutes into this interview and now you’re like what the fucks going on? Like really? You just don't care.

TS: I mean, I feel like it's just a double standard because…

QT: Definitely

TS: Ludicrous! You would never say... I mean, maybe, but you wouldn't say to Ludicrous ‘your music so provocative’ or ‘tone it down’ or anything like that, I mean, every male hip-hop artist, I mean every... So much music is about sex, even outside of hip-hop, *singing* ‘When I think about you, I touch myself.’ Like did you say that was provocative? Probably, BUT it's just crazy that we get told this so often, I don't think we're saying anything that a male hasn't said in different ways.

QT: Well, I think that people... There's so many things about us that people see, scan our bodies up and down and listen to that doesn't compute for them. So one, they're seeing two femme bitches that are not ashamed of their bodies, that are loud, not ashamed to act however they want, and so that's a problem. That's what the fuck is going on. So they see two bitches that aren't traditionally skinny out here in the fucking bra and panties and rapping about our pussies, and they're like, ‘Yo, not cool.’ Yet, when you see some other mainstream artists right now who do fit the more traditional looking Hollywood body type and blah, blah, blah, it's just like, Oh, their music's great. Like no one ever really even talks about how their music is provocative, but you get these two bitches like us out there, it's like, ‘What are you guys doing? Like, what do your parents think? How do you sleep at night? How are you a role model?’

MM: Yeah, definitely, just those intersections of the fatphobia, the queerphobia, that sexism, misogyny, the racism, all come into play when we're having these kinds of conversations, and particularly as emerging artists and where you are now, do you feel like that left you at certain points where you've kind of hit a ceiling in certain ways, you can't perform in certain places, do you feel like it's stopped you or held you back, or do you feel like that, you know, I don't care. We're moving forward. Do you feel like that's been powerful enough to push your way through those barriers?

QT: Yeah, I giggle because our thing is like we will play anywhere, any time, any place in front of anyone. We played so many shows in front of audiences that were not ready for it in any way whatsoever, or didn't want it, but dammit, we're booked.

TS: What's the place that comes to mind? I have one.

QT: I know what you're thinking.

QT: I was thinking of that political dinner that we got booked to play that one time

TS: Oh, I don't even remember that

QT: He was like running for congress or something. We were just like, “hey who got a dildo in this bitch? But also, we played the gathering of the Juggalos

TS: Yess

QT: Yes, which is a very not traditional Glitter Moneyyy set whatsoever. Nothing about that festival would be like what you see at one of our usual venue shows, we played it anyway!

TS: We also... We've maybe never talked about this, I don't know, Trashley may get upset, but we were visiting our friend in Miami

QT: Oh...No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m gonna put my foot down. Nope!

TS: Let’s just say we went to an open mic that was not prepared for us and rocked their world.

QT: Yes, that's a very very great way to put it.

TS: But on the flip side we’ve played festivals with kids and had a young, maybe six-year-old girl just in the audience were like, ‘you see the kids... Yeah, we see the kids’ on stage, we get off stage, this girl comes running over to us and it's just a child, and she’s like ‘I loved you!’ And the mom was there and the mom was just like, ‘she loved it. Great job.’ We’re like, ‘Oh my God, thank you.’

QT: Yeah, that was a funny one. We don't talk on stage between songs very often, but that set, No, we were like, there's kids here. Like our titties are out and these people's children are here. So... Anyway, to your original question. I haven't seen it really stop us for being able to book certain venues. There's so many parts of Glitter Moneyyy that people seem to connect to. So a lot of times it's like, Oh, you guys want us to show up and be our badass punk selves and fuck everything up, or Oh, you guys wanna hear some political songs, dope dope dope, you don't know much about our pussy songs, but you're gonna hear those today. So we kind of just come in and surprise people that think they're gonna get one thing and yet they're gonna get all of the things. So if anything, I think our subject matter has only propelled us to hire and higher, greater and greater…that’s the end of the sentence. That’s just how I end sentences now.

MM: I absolutely love to hear that and just such fun stories about the absolute diversity of audiences that you have been able to connect with. I love this idea of the six-year-old kid just being ecstatic, you know, I think about kids in the 2000s dancing hard to S&M by Rihanna, no one was saying anything. Everyone was okay with that.

QT: That is so true. It's so funny. It's so strange. My first concert was Chaka Khan concert when I was like seven, and I was like, This is the bomb! And now I'm like, Oh, this is like What? This is like what children are seeing at our shows?

TS: It’s the energy, right? It's in the sounds, the meaning isn't there

QT: It doesn’t matter

TS: They're just like, well, these people look cool

QT: They’re jumping up and down, they’re really sweaty!

MM: Yeah, that is so true, and I love that you have that energy that you bring to your performances that just obviously translates to all these groups in just so so so many ways. And with that, you have been teasing the fact that new music is on the way, which is so exciting, so you know what do all these mix of fans, new and old, have to look forward to in terms of sound and theme?

QT: Great question! Yeah, we do have new music on the way, we've been in the studio, probably more than we ever have in our careers. Last couple months. Go ahead Tayyyslayyy, Whatcha gonna say?

TS: I don't know, I don't know what I was gonna say. I just personally really excited about the music we're working on, and we've recorded, I feel like we've just grown... It feels to me like we've grown artists and I'm excited to share that with everyone.

QT: Same, yeah. Our entire friendship, that's been going on for the past 13 years, we’ve always shared music, we've always talked about music, music is a big part of our friendship, it's always been music, and so making our first two albums, we were both mostly listening to the same stuff and going to the same shows and just absolute maniacs, and then of course, Ms. Pandemic came by and shut off all the things that we enjoy in our lives, but we also both individually got into a lot of very different music, which was exciting, 'cause we were so far away during the pandemic (we lived together at the time). We're getting different influences, we really did grow into some different music, I think we both found a lot more inspiration from bands that we've never heard of before, for example, Oceans of Slumber, dope band, so it feels like we're bringing more sounds and more inspiration into what we're working on now, which is really exciting. It kind of feels like the movie Bring It On when they're like, ‘all else has failed, now you have to bring in a bunch of different fucking topics and do all this shit to be the best cheerleaders versus the Black cheerleaders. It's kind of like that. But not lame though. It's really cool. It's really good.

MM: I also just love on the side that is actually the second time somebody's brought up, Bring It On in Tunes Tuesday interview.

QT: No way!

MM: Truly an influential movie

QT: In all of our lives

MM: but it's amazing to hear how many potentially new influences will be coming into this future music. As far as lyrics, potentially not giving away too much, I don't know what you're willing to share, but with lyrics, what kind of themes are you really hoping to speak to or have you been speaking to in the work that you've been working on?

QT: Well, right now, we gotta get out this ‘What the fuck just happened over the last two years album?’ We gotta lay the egg of ‘Holy shit, our lives at the lowest point they ever could have dreamed of,’ so a lot of our music is kind of dealing with the emotions that came up and the turmoil and the trauma of the pandemic, and even of moving to California at the beginning, we moved here February 2020, so not great. So going through this isolation alone together in this apartment, and in a state that neither of us have ever lived in...It was a crazy experience. So we still have... We have things to say about that and processing that, and what's so funny about that, which I love talking about with my therapist, is that it's not over...We're still in it. So we're still kind of trying to figure out where we fit in the world right now, I think we all kind of are... Everything changed, everything shifted. Like life is crazy now, Hashtag theslap. So I think our new music definitely involves us trying to dig ourselves out of the rubble of the worst of the pandemic and blah, blah, blah, and this new album we'll see where we land.

TS: Yeah, I definitely feel like this is some of the most vulnerable we've been...We've gotten vulnerable before, but this feels really personal and raw and...

QT: Oh my God, I love how you say raw

TS: And we do have, of course, some party songs

QT: Absolutely, because that was also part of what kept us alive during the pandemic

TS: Yeah, I mean, immediately we were partying pretty hard.

QT: Yes, way to hard. Yeah, like two weeks off to work, we gotta go hard every single day of this two week shut down, and then by week six, you're like, man!

TS: Maybe we should stop blacking out every night, I don't know

QT: Really gotta tone it down! We used to just stand up and get wasted, it was great, great times, beginning of the pandemic

TS: good times, good times

QT: Pandemics season one baby.

MM: Yeah, memories, memories. Thank you for speaking to all that though, I just... Do you think it will be harder to release those raw, more vulnerable songs compared to the more party anthem songs, or do you feel like you're just excited and ready to put it all out there?

QT: I think they're all fucking bops, even our songs where we’re like, ‘Here's what my therapist said on the way to the hospital.’ Like they’re still bops! Every single song we’ve worked on has been like the best beat, the flows are just so amazing, the way we're writing flows these days, even though we're getting into some serious shit, it all still has the spirit of Glitter Moneyyy, we never take ourselves too seriously. And at the end of the day, no matter what song we're making, it has to be a banger

MM: I love that. Okay, I don't wanna quote Succession because I'm not that person, but I'm just thinking of the “All-bangers, all the time.”

QT: Yes yes

MM: Well, if you wanna stay tuned for those absolute bangers, you can check out the links below, stay tuned on their social media for those releases, and check out all of the music that we have mentioned today, and all the stuff we didn't mention, just go through the Glitter Moneyyy, discography, you will not be disappointed. Thank you so much for joining me this week on Tunes Tuesday, and Glitter Moneyyy will be playing us out.

*Peggy Sue by Glitter Moneyyy begins playing*