Since then, Bird has written and recorded her first studio album and toured and performed with Renée Rapp. (Though she piqued a lot of public interest when photographed with Rapp on the red carpet of the Vanity Fair Oscars party, Bird isn’t commenting on her personal life right now.)
“Such a wonderful thing about [Rodgrigo] was she was down to use her platform to highlight other female musicians that she talked with and that she liked,” says Bird, noting that the collaboration helped open a lot of doors for her. That said, it never would have worked if she and Rodrigo had not also connected stylistically. “I think she saw that I used a lot of rock and indie as part of my influence, and I think she also feels similarly. I think she saw that in me and was like, ‘Oh, we could connect here on this.’”
Rodrigo’s music has drawn comparisons to Paramore and Bikini Kill, and Bird’s music has a similar, punk-inflected edge. Also like Rodrigo, Bird borrows from her own life when songwriting, which she says can be a form of emotional catharsis. One of Bird’s favorite tracks from American Hero is “Sorry, Sorry,” about developing romantic feelings for a friend. Bird says the song, written with her friend Luke Wild, came together in “about an hour.”
“I think those emotions were really high,” says Bird. “Like, I could feel it kind of rise all the way to the top and it just needed to come out. Almost like when you feel like you need to cry and then you cry and you’re like, okay, that was good.”
But unlike Rodrigo, Bird wasn’t exposed to the riot grrrl scene, or any women-led bands really, until adulthood, which she finds, “really unfortunate.” Cut to today, when she herself is part of a growing, female-fronted queer music scene. On the other members of this elite group, Bird says, “I mean, I’m biased because I’m gay, so I think all gay artists are amazing. But I really think that all of them are really special musicians and I think they’ve certainly carved out space for themselves in an industry that is pretty homogenous and can feel very daunting for a queer person or a person of color.”
Bird hopes that one day, culture won’t need to separate “lesbian music” and just “music.” But for now, “Feeling like I’m kind of on the party bus is really exciting.”
