Sabrina Teitelbaum is ready to cry on stage. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the singer behind the project Blondshell opens up about her upcoming album Violins, her sobriety journey, and her love for Mitski’s emotional performances.
The record, out Sept. 25 via Partisan, follows If You Asked for a Picture, which dropped just a year ago. Teitelbaum tells Rolling Stone that she didn’t plan on releasing a new album so quickly. “I don’t feel like I even knew that I was starting to make an album,” she says. She had just put out her second record and figured she had “all the time in the world.” Instead, she found herself writing steadily anyway, and the title track Violins changed everything. “I was like, ‘OK, this is an album now,'” she says.
From Song Bank to Record
Teitelbaum says she hates holding onto completed songs. “I really hate sitting on songs and not doing anything with them,” she says. “I think I have a subconscious fear that they’ll go away or something, or I’ll lose the excitement around the song.” So she recorded fast. “So every time I write, I’m like, ‘I need to go record this really fast. I don’t want to just have a bank of songs,'” she explains. “We just got on it, and made the record.”
The Wedding Playlist Nobody Asked For
Teitelbaum also shared details about her wedding playlist. She is not engaged, she clarifies, and she is not planning a wedding. “I’m not engaged,” she says. “I’m not getting married or anything.” But she has built a collection of songs for the wedding weekend, including Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” and “Like Eating Glass” by Bloc Party. “I want the 2010 vibes at my wedding,” she explains. “Because I think, in my heart, I live on Tumblr forever. It has to feel a little bit like [Kaya Scodelario’s Skins character] Effy Stonem at the wedding. I can’t feel like, ‘I’m getting married and giving up the Effy Stonem of it all.'”
‘Lucky’ Is Sarcasm, Not Truth
One of the album’s standout tracks is “Lucky.” Teitelbaum sings “I’m lucky I got lucky / I feel beautiful and rested” over the chorus. But she did not mean it. “When I wrote it, I was very under-slept, and I didn’t actually mean it,” she says. “The reason I didn’t put that song out as a single is because I felt like people will hear it as genuine, they won’t hear it as sarcastic.” She wanted to avoid being misunderstood. “I don’t want everyone to think that I’m saying that I feel beautiful and rested all the time,” she says, “because I do not.”
Still, she sees the song’s potential live. “Now looking back, and feeling the way that I feel in this moment, it is nice to be able to perform a song that’s like, ‘I feel beautiful and rested. I feel lucky,'” she says. Fans shouting along will likely miss the sarcasm entirely.
No Deluxe Edition This Time
Teitelbaum confirmed that Violins will not get a deluxe edition. That is a change from her first two records. “I feel like I’ve done it now a couple times,” she says. “And I want to let the record stand on its own, not follow it up instantly.”
Sobriety at Seven Years
December will mark seven years of sobriety for Teitelbaum. She describes how her life felt defined by partying early on. “I think my life felt, at one point, defined by partying, and the friendships that I had partying,” she explains. “The version of myself I felt like I could be when I was fucked up felt like, ‘That’s the right me. That’s who I am. I’m confident in that version of me.'” After getting sober, she felt lost. “For a while, my life was kind of defined by the absence of that, in a way I didn’t like,” she says. “I felt really kind of wholesome for a while. It was like, ‘How do I find myself without that?’ which I guess is kind of the whole thing that people talk about.” Now, she says, it feels less defining. “Just as important for me, personally, but less defining,” she concludes.
Veganism Is Over
Teitelbaum has stopped being vegan. She admits she needed to start eating meat again out of necessity. “I need the protein,” she says. “I was getting so tired. Thank you for not judging me. I can’t eat meat, because it grosses me out. But if it’s hidden, if it’s in a meat sauce, maybe once a month, I can try to eat it. I need the iron. I eat a lot of fish, though.”
The Goal of Crying On Stage
Teitelbaum is a huge fan of Mitski and her ability to cry during performances. “It is a big goal of mine to let the walls down enough that I can perform, and actually cry on stage, because of watching Mitski,” she says. When she has almost cried on stage before, it has always been during a cover. “Every time that I have almost cried on stage, it’s been a cover,” she says. “I don’t know why. I think when it’s your music, you’re so deep in the process of making it, and recording it, and all that stuff. And when it’s a cover, you just kind of pick it up that night, and you have your whole life’s relationship with it.”
What the Interview Covers
Teitelbaum also shared her thoughts on a few other topics during a round of “fuck, marry, kill”:
- Her relationship with nostalgia
These are the kinds of personal details that make a musician feel human rather than a brand.
The Takeaway
Violins is out in a little over a week. The record juxtaposes beauty and horror, as Teitelbaum puts it. The title track opens with the line “I hope heads don’t roll,” and she follows it with “They rest lightly on your shoulder.” That tension is the point.
Teitelbaum is a prolific songwriter who does not wait around. She records quickly and releases albums without hesitation.
Source material: “Blondshell Wants to Cry Onstage,” Rolling Stone.
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