In Kurt Cobain’s private journals, the Nirvana frontman wrote, “I like the comfort in knowing that women are generally superior and naturally less violent than men. I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock ‘n’ roll.” There’s no doubt that Cobain was referring to the women and femme artists today who are currently grabbing the indie rock world by the throat, and one of the most definitive artists of this modern alternative movement is glitter grunge pioneer Kit Major.
A classic punk enthusiast in her own right, Major recently released her latest EP Love.Sick.Major on October 25. A record dripping in glitter, catharsis and a vast galaxy of both sonic and visual influences, the LA-based rockstar’s latest musical effort is a colorful work of art. Love.Sick.Major serves as a definitive record from Major’s discography, with every project from the “Solo Disco” singer conveying a new era. Fusing together elements of pop, rock, grunge and punk, Major’s artistry serves as a passport to another world.
As she pulls influences from 1960s sci-fi, horror punk and 90s pop music, Major defines her music in one word: timeless. Offering a nostalgic sense of comfort for those who may yearn for something more gritty and otherworldly, Major’s Love.Sick.Major is an exciting glimpse at the world she is relentlessly striving to emulate as she chases her desire for something dirtier.
I’m super excited to chat about the EP and everything that’s been going on with you! On November 9 you played your EP release show, how did that go for you?
It was so much fun. It was really, really such a great experience and I had some friends who were on the bill with me. It was at The Redwood Bar in Los Angeles, and I really love that place. It felt like a really great place to celebrate, just being surrounded by friends and family and great drinks.
That’s the important thing! Any major release is such a huge deal, but what’s been on your mind since the EP came out?
I’m already moving on to the next thing. It’s been fun because I’ve been living in this part of the Kit Major world for a while, and I’m very much the kind of person to release something and then already have the next thing coming up. So I’m excited for the new songs that are being recorded right now and being written and starting to build the next world that’s going to be added into what I’ve been doing. I’m always attracted to things that are shiny and new.
With Love.Sick.Major you can totally see the world that you intended to create. For future music, do you want to explore something different in terms of your sound or look?
I’ve spent so many years writing, and then once I do a genre or style I move on. And there are things that I really love, like one of my favorite songs that I didn’t put on the EP is “Let Me In Your Band.” It has this very, very cool surfer bass line and surf rock guitar. I want to explore that more — a lot more surf punk and a lot more of an old school punk feel. I touched on it a little bit on “In A Polite Way,” but that was a more playful version of it. I just want to give myself permission to write a little bit more dirty.
With the songs you chose for the EP, each one had almost its own distinct personality. How did you decide on what songs to choose?
It kind of naturally progressed into that. About a year and a half ago I released “Break Up Again,” which was the first song in this world, which didn’t end up on the EP. But “I Wish U Didn’t Hate Me So Much,” the B-side to that single, did, and those were kind of the two moods that I moved through and explored on the EP. From there, the things that I wrote were where I chose from. There were some songs that didn’t make it on the EP, there’s some songs that I don’t know if they will ever come out, or maybe I’ll come back to them another time. But it felt like those were the ones that were the standouts, in my opinion. If I walk away and I have them stuck in my head or they mean something. “Fade Away” for instance I wrote with my dad. He started with the guitar for that song, so that one meant a lot, and that one almost didn’t make it on the EP. But I came back to it a couple months later and was like, I think this is a fun vibe. So it really is about: did it age well in the process of all of this coming together, and does it still feel true into the story of this world. That’s kind of what helped me decide which ones were going to stay and which ones are in the vault.
Do you have any songs off the EP that, at this point, are your favorite or that stand out the most to you? I know that’s always difficult to answer.
Actually, I have the answer. Because I’ve looked through them all and they’ve all had their moments to shine in my brain. So right now my favorite is “Potion Seller.” It’s so funny, I love that one. It’s just fun to change the interpretations of it. Those lyrics are a story, so when you do it live it’s really fun to tell the story instead of just singing it. And that one was written in February, so it’s one of the ones that are closer to what a newer sound for me is. I really like it because it’s just something that’s very fresh and moves things forward in the direction that we’re going.
Regarding your songwriting process, what comes first? Is it a riff or a lyric? Maybe an image or a feeling that you get first and then you want to write a sound to that?
It changes a lot. It also happens very quickly, so there are some times where I’ll get an idea for a song or I’ll hear a song and I’m like, ‘That’s a cool vibe, I really like that.’ But usually it will hit me in a place or when I’m driving, and I’ll hear the melody and the sound in the world that it’s in and go from there. Then it just comes out like more of an improv and a free flow of the subconscious. Then from there sometimes the song just writes itself there in that moment or I have some fill in words and I’m like, ‘This is the melody and this is the vibe.’ I just wrote a song this last weekend and I was in the car. I could feel what the song would be like. I heard the drums, I heard the guitar, but I don’t play instruments. So I had to pan out on how it would sound on the steering wheel, and then do some voice memos in my car.
With your band or your musicians that you work with, how does it work out when you have to relay those voice messages or sounds in your head to them?
The process is called “7th grade sleepover” (laughs). I’ll be like, ‘Look at the wall,’ and then I’ll go full out sometimes if they can’t look at me. But I’m always like, hold on. You just have to play with my imagination here. That’s why it’s really, really special when I find people that I can connect with and work with who really dig your vibe and know what your references or what your style is like. There’s certain sounds that I just naturally gravitate towards. I love weird. I love dirty. I love loud. I’m always open to collaboration too. So, whenever I bring in something, I’m always like, here’s this song. Here’s this melody. Here’s this guitar. I usually love working with people who can hear what I’m trying to do, and we can talk about the vibe in the world, and then they’ll just noodle around.
Going off of references or influences, I would love to hear some of your favorite artists. And outside of musical artists, what else do you draw inspiration from?
Oh, that’s a great question. I love The Cramps, Green Day, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Oasis. I love Britpop. There’s this band called Echobelly and they’ve got this really fun song called “King of the Kerb.” Those standout moments in songs, anything that sounds like a surfer dude in a car moving at a certain cruising pace. I love that. There are certain images that really inspire me. I love ‘60s camp and horror punk and monsters. I love that sort of aesthetic, and I love horror movies. Earlier this week I was just rewatching a lot of Stephen King movies, so I was just watching “The Shining” and “Carrie.” Every time I say this, I feel like I’m just getting older, but I love old things; I love old movies, I love old music, I love old bands. I just live in a very specific time capsule bubble. I go back to those movies and I go back to those records and that’s where I find a lot of inspiration.
Your music has this sense of wanting to create your own universe because you’re not really satisfied with this one. In your music, what do you hope to offer that you don’t find is offered in this world?
I really love that you said that; that really resonates with me that you picked up on that. Because that kind of is the main goal. It’s kind of like a passport to another place. I think with my music there’s a sense of timelessness. I turn to music as my comfort. It’s my love language. It’s how I connect with people and I think it’s a way to slow things down and not take things so seriously. I like bringing in a bit of being just whatever you are and being whatever shape and form and color that is. I like having things not in a box. I like having things blend and not feel rushed. So I think the world that’s in there is being able to be sexy but also ugly but also beautiful and funny and smart and witty and having things that don’t have anything to do with looks and don’t have anything to do with societal standards. It’s being able to exist and having your own personal personality. My songs are very full of my personality and I hope that it just can connect with someone else. I think part of why I like a lot of old things is I really like having a sense of timelessness. I think having a world that feels like you walk into this little colorful bubble is what I would love. For anyone to just kind of go back into who they are and be okay with whatever their interests are and not giving a fuck about what other people think.
You’ve also said you grew up a bit during the making of this album. How did that happen for you?
In my brain I still felt like I was writing “Solo Disco,” even though that was a couple of years ago and that song was the very last of that disco pop era that I was doing at the time. I was really committed to only having that one sound. As I’ve been growing up and letting myself fall back into my roots of my songwriting, I’ve been giving myself that permission to combine pop and rock and just do it my way. I had my previous EP, Vampire Saturday, and that was more on the emo side of alternative music. I just remember having such little experience outside of performing with my laptop and my pop tracks, so moving into last year where I was playing shows live with my EP that I put out in 2022, I was playing with a live band. I was learning so many new things on how to work with other people, how to perform with other people. There were times where I completely lost how I was performing because I wanted to make sure that everyone on stage was feeling confident and cool. And I lost a lot of the things that I loved performing when I was doing my pop, which is dancing, moving around, shaking my ass (laughs). And I had this feeling as I was working through these songs and writing these songs of, now that I’m performing live with the band, I want to make songs that feel right with this kind of energy. So I’m learning and picking up different parts of me that I like and parts of me that I don’t like and parts of me that I want to bring to the stage, while also recording that and capturing it so by the time I dropped the EP I finally had an understanding of who I am as an artist. If you come to a Kit Major show, I know exactly what you’re going to get. And it feels natural and right for me. I think when I say growing up, you kind of have to get rid of that inner critic that comes with learning new things.
You’ve changed your sound a little bit over the course of your career. Did you ever feel a certain pressure to stick to one genre or sound a certain way?
I love pop music and I love music, and that’s part of why I write so many different genres. When I would be writing pop, I would change and gravitate towards different things in pop that felt very limiting in certain worlds. I would have a Y2K song, I would have an ‘80s synth song. In my head, since I’m writing it and I’m the artist and it’s my pop music, technically it all works. But a lot of the things that I would hear and a lot of the feedback was, ‘We don’t know who you are’ and ‘This is so different, it’s hard to keep up.’ So then it’s like, why does that seem like a bad thing? I loved exploring pop music. But what I think is really, really cool about rock music is there’s just something there where you can explore and it feels a little less like there are these rules. I don’t know exactly what that is, but that’s part of what drew me more into being like this. This is fun. I want to just fucking get in the box and play. I don’t want to keep it safe just because I’m going into a different story in a different universe. It’s not a different artist, and it’s not a different sound. But there is something there about pop music where I do feel it’s a little bit more about having certain bubbles, and I just like having a mess.
When it comes to your music, your sound, your image, anything, what do you want to convey the most?
I think having fun. Having a good time and having a sense of freedom. There’s just a very, very cathartic feeling when you can let yourself go and be free. That’s something that I would love for people to take away from my music and from my shows. To just feel more comfortable with themselves and just being in a place where you can be exactly who you are. Especially getting older, I remember being a kid and being nervous because I loved my imagination. And I remember being like, ‘Oh shit, I don’t want to get older because I’m going to lose that,’ but you actually don’t. I just feel like I would want to help make sure that that’s something that you can keep. I like being silly. I like being imaginative. There are just certain things where I think I had a different perception of what life would be like when I was younger and wanting to make sure that that is something that is just completely kept safe. Because we have a world that moves fast, that is judgmental, that has all of these expectations and is heavily political. As we get older every everything is getting harder and I feel like imagination and playfulness is something that I really cherish.
That’s such an amazing answer. Did you have any final thoughts or anything else you wanted to touch on or let people know?
I’ll be doing my first tour, a West Coast tour, next year. So I’m excited for that. More details will come with it, but that’s something I’m really stoked about.
Keep up with Kit Major: Instagram // TikTok // Spotify // YouTube // Website
