Ondine Wants to Tell You a Story
Photography by Julien Carr
Although Ondine doesn’t define herself by any singular genre, one thing is certain: she is a storyteller. The New York-to-Chicago transplant finds that across artistic mediums, introducing a good narrative provides backbone to the final piece. Stories tend to linger, allowing us to clasp onto them. We attach ourselves to these tales and form memories surrounding the time and place we first heard them. Ondine appreciates this phenomenon, weaving together layers composed of setting, character, and action until her melodious canvas is complete.
Like the descent from sweet tooth to cavity, her genre-inclusive 2018 EP Baby Teeth created a world of youthful innocence hardened by the realities of maturation. One of the accompanying music videos to the project, New York I Luv U (But Ur Bringing Me Down), painted New York as an island of longing amidst a “rat-infested birthday party.” By channeling the personal, Ondine has built a multiverse that documents different facets of her life. Her next release is set to reshape the structure of an album into that of a book, complete with three different chapters. Read our Q&A below to find out more about this next project, her approach to songwriting, and her creative journey leading up to this point. Stream Baby Teeth on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get your tunes.
So, you’re originally from New York. What brought you to Chicago?
Yeah, so I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan but I bounced around a lot. My dad lives by Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. My mom lives in super, super deep Queens—Hollis—in our family home. I live in Chicago full-time now but I go back to visit a lot. I’ve had a very strange back and forth with Chicago for the past five years. I came here to do one semester of my junior year of high school and stayed for a year and then moved back to NY, where I finished out the rest of high school. I took two gap years before going to college and then decided on Columbia because I wanted to get out of NY. I did that for one semester, then dropped out, moved back to NY, and then COVID happened. So, I was stuck there for two years. At the end of those two years, I was like “I need to get the fuck out of here,” and decided to move back to Chicago.
How’d you initially get into making music?
Both of my parents are pretty creative people. My dad works in the film industry, he used to be a director. My mom is a writer and was a creative director. They’ve always encouraged me to be creative. When I was a kid, before I knew how to write and spell, I would sing to my mom and she would write down the lyrics. That’s what got me interested in music. I ended up joining a professional children’s choir when I was 7 and learned a lot about music through that. In high school, I transitioned into writing my own music more frequently.
The lyrics to your songs read like a story. What’s your process for songwriting?
Music is just a cathartic thing for me. It’s basically like throwing up when you’re sick, which I know sounds gross, but it gets everything out that you’re going through. I’m trying not to rely on this too heavily because I think that it’s important to write when you’re not going through something super traumatic or heavy and just finding joy in creating. But, for the music I have out, which I put out when I was 17, it was a really difficult period of my life. I was writing and writing and writing trying to process everything I was going through.
Most of the time when I write a song, I don’t even know what it’s about until I’m done with it. Then, I can go back and look at it and be like, “Oh, that’s what I was going through mentally.” So, I don’t really think about my writing process but if I’m writing with another person or working with a producer, I’ll talk about different ideas. Or, I’ll just pick words I like and try to base ideas off of them. Everything is lightly unintentional.
Would you describe yourself as a storyteller?
I think it’s a big core of what I try to do in music. I don’t necessarily know if I identify as a musician. I love music and I love making music but I think I really connect to the storytelling part of it more than anything. I don’t really make [music] just for it to sound good, I do it because I either need to say something or I need to figure out something for myself. Then, hopefully, people that listen to it can either relate to it or understand what I was going for and enjoy it themselves.
Directed & Edited by Aria Herbst
Your video for New York I Love U opens up on rats eating a birthday cake whereas Shortcake is set at a disorienting tea party. What was your artistic vision with these videos?
With New York I Luv U, that literally came to me in a dream. I was just thinking about all the really crappy guys that I hung out with in New York as well as Pizza Rat. Those two things were kind of one and the same and I thought that I could just throw them a birthday party. I feel like New York is basically a rat-infested birthday party anyway … so, that’s how that came together. I love things that have really strong narratives because I feel like they’re more interesting. Not that purely aesthetic things aren’t great and amazing, but I like when you have something like a storyline to hold onto.
Same thing with the music video for Shortcake. I don’t even know how I came up with that one. Everyone in that video is supposed to be a different aspect of my personality that I grapple with. I also love makeup and face paint and wanted to incorporate that into the video. I worked with my friend Aria Herbst who knows more about film and helped me flesh out the idea a little bit more to the point where it could be doable. I thought the idea of killing off different aspects of your personality that you don’t like was an interesting idea.
Who are your songwriting influences?
There are so many. I really like folk music and music that is very story-driven. I’m obsessed with Joni Mitchell. I think her songs and writing style is crazy. If you ever want to do something fun, you should just get high and listen to Joni Mitchell. Listening to her music while high is like, “Wow, she is actually telling a crazy story right now.” All the guitar lines reflect and go along with the lyrics you’re listening to, it’s wild. I also really love Nilüfer Yanya. Her music is amazing. You know, I feel like my music lives in this weird space where I don’t really know how to define it and don’t think it fits in a genre very well. The first time I heard [Nilüfer’s] music, it just made sense and I felt that we lived in the same musical world which was a nice feeling because I don’t get that often.
I love Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. When I was younger, like late elementary school, I thought I was Billie Holiday reincarnated. That sounds crazy and I don’t anymore but I was just so in love with her. I found a picture of her when she was younger and thought I looked like her. But also, she lived a super sad life. I hope my life doesn’t end up like that.
I love classical music too. Not for songwriting, but for harmonies. I grew up in that professional children’s choir and then went to high school at [LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts] and their vocal program is all classical music. You learn how to sing arias and different languages and go up in front of your classmates and sing in front of them and have them roast you.
You recently opened for Maude Latour at Schubas. How did you guys meet?
It was the craziest experience of my life and how I got that show was honestly even weirder. In October, I played the Golden Dagger opening up for Folie and Forget Basement. They make music that is very different from my music, which is kind of a general theme of my life. So I was playing that show and ended up meeting this kid Tobiah. He had just moved here from Winnipeg, Canada a week prior and we ended up becoming friends and hanging out.
He’s super talented, he does video work, and is also the most socially capable person I’ve ever met. He can start a conversation with anyone. He’s friends with Maude’s best friend. So, Maude came to Chicago and was asking around for someone who made music in Chicago and could open up for her. Tobiah brought up my name and then I got a DM from Maude’s manager asking if I wanted to open up for her. I didn’t know if they were going to like me very much because I make very sad music and Maude’s is very upbeat, very pop and happy. I was a little worried about that. But honestly, that was one of the best shows I’ve ever played in my life. It was truthfully the most quiet, receptive audience that I’ve ever played for. I walked into it super anxious because it was a sold-out show and I made music that was so drastically different from [Maude]. I couldn’t envision the crowd who sold out this show being okay with me performing for them and not feeling bored. But, overall one of the best shows I’ve played. Maude’s fans are absolutely insane. I got so many kind messages afterward.
What do you love about performing live?
I love it so much. I didn’t understand how much I enjoyed it. After I graduated high school, I forced myself to play as many shows as I could. Anytime I got offered a show, I would take it. I wouldn’t even question it because I wanted to get more shows under my belt and feel more comfortable on stage. I did it so much that I ended up not enjoying it anymore and it felt like a chore. When I was physically not allowed to play anymore during lockdown, I realized how important shows were to me.
The whole digital streaming show thing, I couldn’t do it. Like, I did two of them and it was a fun experience but just doesn’t feel the same. I like being able to connect with people and physically be in the same space as somebody. I don’t really understand why anybody would watch that or really pay attention to it because it’s basically the same thing as listening to someone’s music on Spotify, just with a more visual element. When you go to a show, being in the audience is part of the experience. You’re going out, you’re going to something, you’re making a night out of it. It’s something to do that’s not sitting down and looking at your computer.
I missed it a lot and I’m so happy to be doing it again. I was also really lucky that the two shows I had coming back were at Thalia Hall and Schubas, so just instantly back at these really nice venues. I thought I was going to have to go through the whole open mic and venue networking thing because that had been so much of my life after I graduated high school. This is totally a testament to Chicago and how supportive they are of musicians too because the music scene here is so accessible and so nice. It is not like that in New York.
I loved the song You, your collaboration with FINGY. How’d that track come into existence?
I met her at Columbia. I feel like [You] is more house-oriented, which fits in more with the genre of music she likes to create. I think we made that song right before the pandemic because I remember I was living in New York and there was a brief period of time where I came to Chicago for 2 ½ weeks to play a show at Schubas. That’s when we made the song. We were at her house and she was like, “Wanna make a song?” And yeah. It’s super house, super fun, and upbeat. We were kind of just fucking around. I know it’s my voice on it but I feel like [You] was more of a song that I wrote for her to use. I like challenging myself to write for other people and I want to do that more in the future. If I’m not writing for them, I want to help them write songs for themselves. I just really like writing.
What upcoming shows and projects are in your future?
I don’t know about shows, I kind of just let those happen when they happen. But, I’m trying to come out with an EP in early March that I’ve already shot a music video for with my partner. For this project, I was thinking about how streaming works and the music industry works, and how no one really listens to albums anymore. I really wanted to try to challenge the structure of an album by making a storybook with different chapters in it. The “book” at the end is basically the album where you can listen to the chapters in it that explore different themes. It’ll have three different parts: Drool for Lust, Drool for Love, and Drool for Life. At the end, the album is going to be called Drool and it’ll be a culmination of all the songs that are on the EPs and different interludes and some extra songs. This will be the first time I’ve released new music under my own name since I was 17 and I’m 22 now. So, it’s been a second but I’m really excited to do it.
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