Interview - Kimbra

Congratulations on an incredible new album, can you elaborate on what the inspiration behind A Reckoning was.

I’m getting into my 30s now and I just wanted to make a record where I really confronted a lot of the darker parts of what lives in me, I played a lot with the fantasy, whimsy and escapism that music can bring. I think this was a really internal record for me where I thought, ‘okay, let me understand some of the things that confuse me within.’ Anger, for example, you know, it's a confusing emotion for a woman sometimes, and we often don't know where to put that fire. So instead of running away from it, A Reckoning was all about me going ‘alright where does this aggression come from? How can I understand it? And how can I put it into healthy expressions of sensuality or force for good, you know, how can I change things and make it better?’ That's where a lot of the inspiration came from initially, looking at different sides to conflict as a human experience. Then as it developed it became important for an exercise of meditation on what the world is going through. And then it kind of became like, 'wow, maybe this is actually about us all.' Not seeking to annihilate what is uncomfortable within us, but actually looking at it and understanding it.

Would you say this was a really cathartic process for you compared to your previous albums?

Definitely, a lot more than any of my previous albums. When I wrote the songs, I wrote them because I had to, to get something out or because I couldn't name a certain emotion. So I had to write a piece of music to try to understand it, you know, to try to literally hold it. And the whole process was so cathartic because in this album I’m exploring aggression and all of these big feelings. When you get to do that in a song, you get to release some of that pent-up emotion and free yourself of it. So it does feel really good to put them into art, rather than storing them up inside.

Going a little bit deeper into that, do you feel like you were running away from these emotions? Or that you weren’t ready to tackle them in your music for whatever reason?

I think I touched on things in my previous music, but maybe I didn't go all the way in… Like I'd make a story about someone else or just not fully go there in my music. There is definitely a confidence that comes with the confrontation on A Reckoning. I think we're all sometimes running away, you know, it's a very human thing to not want to look at those parts of yourself, but once you start doing it, like on the opening track save me, once you kind of just talk about things as they are and have that honesty with yourself, it all becomes it becomes less scary.

And do you think now, you're at a point in your career where you have been able to take that time to find that confidence within yourself?

Yeah, it has been all about finding confidence and also going through adversity and hard times and, you know, transitions in my team and being with a major label, and then moving into more of an independent phase. With that kind of transition, you really have to take a bet on yourself and step into your own power. I do feel like a lot of what I've been going through is reclaiming a real sense of myself and what is important to me as an artist, which is telling the truth, and conveying these emotions that are nuanced and complex.

We love to see that from artists and congratulations to you for actually doing the hard work and managing to put it into your art. It is so hard to be vulnerable, and that rawness and honesty is so evident on A Reckoning, that is what makes this album so special.

I really appreciate that because there are days when I’m just thinking, what am I doing? But when someone says, ‘Yo, when you did that, it helped me connect’, it’s powerful and it's worth it, for me. I will sacrifice some of that emotional privacy, but it's worth it if someone else feels permission to go there themselves.

A little bit of a throwback now, and I’m sure you get asked about your feature on “Somebody That I Used to Know” with Gotye all the time, but did you expect it to blow up as much as it did? And what was the aftermath of that for you like?

Well, I did not expect it to blow up like that, I can say that with full honesty. I didn’t think it was a typical number-one song, but I knew it was very poignant. So it definitely came as a surprise. But the aftermath was a beautiful kind of ambition that set in me. I thought, if this song can do so well, with an artist that is so experimental, that breaks all the rules of pop, then I'm going to dare to go bigger than ever. Sometimes great success makes people want to conform a lot, but for me, the aftermath was like, 'alright, let's push this super far… let's really believe in the power of pop music that’s not like everything else.'

That's so encouraging, that is what the world needs more of, pop artists who are daring to do different, you know?

Right? It's totally what moves the culture forward, like when we have people like Prince and such who think, I don't care what everyone else is doing.

This ties into what we were talking about before about finding vulnerability within yourself, when you first started in the industry, what's a piece of advice you would have given yourself?

Trust yourself, you know what to do deep down, so trust yourself. I think when you're young and in this industry, you have a lot of people, usually men, that are authority figures in your life guiding you. Sometimes with that, you lose your ability to just trust that you know what's best and that you're the artist. You don't need everyone to give you the validation that what you're doing is right. Every day, I work on my art and work on myself, and I get a little bit better at trusting that inner voice.

LISTEN TO ‘A RECKONING’ BY KIMBRA NOW ON QOBUZ!