interview by MARIA MOTA
NESSA BARRETT likes her beauty with a little darkness. Inspired by gothic literature, old Hollywood, horror films, rock and roll, and her own tendency to romanticise life, she is drawn to things that feel beautiful and slightly eerie at the same time. “A beautiful woman in a white dress is pretty, but put her in a white dress standing in front of a grave and suddenly I want to know her story,” she says. “I like beauty with something slightly wrong underneath, darkness that feels beautiful and beautiful things that feel dangerous.”
Fresh off the release of her latest album, Tough Love, Nessa is taking her music on the road, opening for The Neighbourhood across Europe and the United States. On the album, as in her wider artistic universe, feeling things deeply and embracing the darkness we think we need to hide become areas to explore rather than escape.
Going back in time a bit, you moved to Los Angeles at 17 and quickly found yourself in the public eye. In a way, so much of your identity was being formed publicly. How did you distinguish between the person you were becoming and the person the internet decided you were?
It was definitely a challenge, and I think in some ways it always will be. Sometimes it feels like that younger version of me is still frozen in time for some people. For a long time, I felt this need to prove who I really was or correct people when I felt misunderstood. But I realised that’s an impossible thing to do. So I stopped trying to prove myself, and I just try to stay in my truth, letting myself become whoever I’m becoming without worrying whether the internet understands it.
People are allowed to have their version of me, but they don’t get to decide who I am. Learning that gave me a lot of freedom.
Do you feel you became an artist gradually, or was there a specific moment when you understood that was who you were?
I think I’ve always been an artist, even before I knew to call myself one. Since I was a little girl, I loved art and creating it. It’s always been the way I made sense of myself and the world around me. But I feel more like an artist now than ever before. I used to create purely out of instinct, and now I understand myself and my taste so much better. I know what I want to say, what I want things to feel like, and I trust myself and my vision. Music is obviously at the centre of it, but I don’t really see the things I create as separate anymore. The songs, visuals, writing, fashion, shows — they’re all different pieces of the same world I’m building.
What does music give you that nothing else does?
Everything. Music gives me hope, purpose and meaning. I really believe it was what I was born to do, because there’s nothing else in this world that feeds my soul the way music does. It’s also given me a safe space that I don’t think I ever had before. I’m allowed to be completely honest and vulnerable in my songs. I can say things I’m afraid to say out loud, and somehow those things connect me to people from all over the world. It reminds me that I’m not alone.
I think the most beautiful thing about music is that it’s taught me how to find love and beauty in the darkest parts of my life — and the darkest parts of me — and there isn’t a single thing that can do that for me other than music.
dress ZULEYHA KURU
mask DR + HARNESS
ring PIANEGONDA
You called Tough Love your darkest and most truthful work. Do you think your darkest music is actually where you feel most free?
I think so. Not necessarily because it’s dark, but because it’s where I’m least afraid of telling the truth. With Tough Love, I let myself be angry, obsessive, heartbroken, insecure, whatever I was feeling without judging it first. There’s a lot of freedom in letting the ugliest parts of you exist without trying to hide them.
I think sometimes we’re so afraid of our darkness that we forget it’s still a part of us, and making this album and all of my music taught me that I can make those parts of myself beautiful. So the darker and more honest the music is, the less scared I am to be me, and there’s nothing more freeing than that.
Have you always found beauty in darker emotions, or did music teach you how to see them differently?
For a long time, I was really scared of the darker parts of myself because I knew how easy it was for me to get lost in them. I’ve lost myself to the dark many times before, so I never saw anything beautiful about it; I just wanted to escape it. Music definitely taught me how to see it differently. It taught me that darkness doesn’t have to consume me, it could inspire me. I can take things that scare me, the things that hurt, the things that nearly kill me and turn them into something beautiful. That changed my relationship with those emotions completely. I’m not as afraid to sit with them anymore because I know they have somewhere to go. Music gave my darkness somewhere to live other than inside of me.
There’s something almost romantic about heartbreak in your music. Do you think you’re drawn to the emotion of heartbreak as much as you are to love itself?
I love love and unfortunately heartbreak is all I’ve ever known. I romanticise everything in my life, and, naturally, it shows in my writing. There’s something strangely beautiful about heartbreak to me, because the more you hurt only means the more you loved, and I think that’s romantic, isn’t it? To have loved something or someone enough that losing it could break your heart. I’m not drawn to heartbreak because I’m a masochist and enjoy the pain. I’m drawn to what the pain represents. My way of writing about it is my only way of making love lovely again.
dress ZULEYHA KURU
jacket 604 SERVICE
full look BRIELLE
You’ve said “words are spells.” Is there anything you are trying to manifest with this album?
My song God Gave Me Expensive Taste on the album is about how everything you want in life is already yours. That song itself is magic. I wrote it specifically as a spell. But, I think more than anything, I’m manifesting freedom. I really believe that words are spells and when you say something enough, you give it life.
There’s obviously a lot of darkness on the album, but I don’t think I’m manifesting the darkness; I’m releasing it. I think the spell in Tough Love is taking everything that’s hurt me, making something beautiful out of it and finally letting it go. I think I’m manifesting becoming someone I haven’t met yet.
The media has a tendency to reduce femininity to an idea of softness that is easily commercialised. Has your relationship with empowerment and being a woman in the public eye changed as you’ve matured?
I think my work embraces femininity without making it feel soft, because there’s nothing inherently soft about being a woman. Not in the world we live in. Women are incredibly strong and powerful, and I think femininity can be beautiful and delicate while also being dark, complicated and dangerous. Growing up in the public eye has only made me understand that more. There are so many expectations placed on us. How you should look, how you should behave, how much of yourself you’re allowed to show before it becomes too much.
As I’ve gotten older, empowerment has become less about proving that I’m strong and more about allowing myself to be everything that I am. I can be vulnerable without being weak. I can be feminine without making myself small. I can be sensual without existing for somebody else. And I can be soft when I want to be and still have teeth. Womanhood is powerful because it holds all of those contradictions.
Is there something you used to be ashamed or scared of that you now consider part of your power?
Probably how sensitive I am. I used to hate that about myself. I feel everything so deeply, and for a long time I thought that made me weak. I wished I could care less, love less, hurt less, just feel everything a little less. But I’ve realised that feeling everything so deeply is a strength. It’s the reason I write the way I do. It’s why I am able to connect so deeply with other people through my music. Sometimes the thing that makes being a person harder for me is exactly the same thing that makes being an artist so beautiful.
dress JACQUEMUS
shoes LE SILLA
ring PIANEGONDA
What are the little things that make you feel most like yourself? And what’s the most “Nessa” thing you own?
I think I feel most like myself in really quiet moments alone. Especially when I’m home writing songs on my piano and my cat is sitting next to me. When there’s no one listening and no pressure for the song to become anything and I’m just singing because I want to. I think that’s probably the purest version of me.
And the most “Nessa” thing I own? I’m not really sure. I started collecting taxidermy bats. Maybe that? It’s a little weird, but it’s definitely me.
If your romantic life were a film, what genre would it be?
Right now? Probably the slowest slow burn ever made. I’m such a hopeless romantic in my music and in my head, but in real life I’m enjoying belonging to myself for a while. So the film would probably be a gothic romance where the romantic lead mysteriously never appears. I’m sure they’ll show up eventually — we’re just really early in the movie LOL.
dress MAXIMILIAN GEDRA
shoes JEFFREY CAMPBELL
top THEO
skirt NATASHIA STUDIO
corset DR + HARNESS
shoes JEFFREY CAMPBELL
ring JUGGERNAUT
headpiece PIERS ATKINSON
set LUXI DENG
shoes LE SILLA
ring PIANEGONDA
TEAM CREDITS:
talent NESSA BARRETT
photography NICK RASMUSSEN
styling CARLEE WALLACE at ART DEPARTMENT LA
makeup ROBERT BRYAN at THE WALL GROUP
hair MADELINE CAMPAGNOLO at THE WALL GROUP
nail artist BROOKE RITCHIE
producer and casting RYAN LUCCA
photography assistance MADELINE LUNZER
styling assistance CHRISTINA LOUGHBOROUGH
editor TIMI LETONJA
interview MARIA MOTA
cover design ARTHUR ROELOFFZEN
