SIR BABYGIRL
ON HIS FALL TOUR, BEING A REFORMED THEATER KID, AND MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Kelsie Hogue started putting out music as Sir Babygirl just over a year ago. Since then, she’s delivered a string of exciting alt-pop singles and the album Crush On Me, one of the most fully realized debuts from the queer pop underground this year. I met up with Kelsie in the green room of The Empty Bottle during the Chicago stop of their fall tour.
What are some of the most important moments in your life that contributed to the creation of Sir Babygirl?
I’m gonna do Top 5. First, when my mom introduced me to Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey and at the same time I was learning about Christina and Britney. My mom was like, “The divas are to be respected and revered. I was like, five years old. She taught me that these were important women in music and I grew up with a sense that vocalists were important and valued.
Next, when I started watching The Simpsons. I saw Lisa playing the saxophone and she was just super androgynous and not really a girl, like her skin is her hair. I wanted to be just like that. I badgered my parents for years until I was physically big enough to play a the saxophone. They traded my brother’s old trumpet for someone’s saxophone and it was the first musical instrument I formally took lessons on. Then in 5th grade I started playing bass and taught myself every other instrument after that. I was definitely the kid sitting alone in my room teaching myself how to play instruments and being a virgin forever. Never had sex, that’s at the crux of my work.
Number three…I wanna give a shoutout to Kate Nash. I love Kate Nash, she doesn’t get enough credit. Her album Made of Bricks really fucked me up and was the first confessional album I ever listened to. It kind of established the idea of lyrical playfulness for me.
Number four is Kathleen Hanna. I found out about her and I found out about feminism in junior year of college. I watched The Punk Singer and it shook me to my core. It definitely took me in the direction of like “Riot grrrl changed my life” and I got into learning more about that and third wave feminism. But of course I realized third wave needs examining so it became a question of “How do we take the really cool tenets of riot grrrl and third wave and bring them into t he present day and be more inclusive?”
And then number five, for Sir Babygirl, would be when I graduated college and got into My Chemical Romance. I hated them in middle school, I thought it was so stupid. I would hate-watch the “Ghost of You” video like “Fuck you.” And then post-grad when I lost my mind and had vocal damage I revisited them and thought “Yes, this is emo but it’s also glam rock.” It’s kinda drag and he’s kinda androgynous and fluid. I don’t know if he’s actually fluid but he presented fluidity. And then I kind of realized Gerard Way is the pinnacle of everything I found attractive? In that level of theatricality I found permission again to bring everything back in from my theater days, to be theatrical in a way that felt good to me and not in a way that felt prescribed to me.
Speaking of theatricality, how does your background in theater inform your music?
Honestly, it comes out in how I take care of myself, how I operate in a business sense and how I collaborate with others. Theater school is super traumatic and I’m coming to terms with the fact that I liked a lot of what I learned but not how it was taught or enforced and what it did to us all psychologically. And then there is a theatricality in the sense that my album - Crush On Me - is a concept album. There is a chronological order to the songs but I decided to mix them up because trauma messes with your timeline. So originally I wanted to open the album with “Haunted House” because I wanted to start with the trauma. But instead it comes halfway through and it’s like the re-triggering and how that messes with your sense of time. And “Heels” is the first song on the album but it’s the end of the story. I wanted to start with the end.
How much of the album was pre-visualized and how much of it came to you along the way?
I actually thought of the title four years ago. From an acting standpoint I’m a very “outside-in” actor. I love having the costume - that informs the character to me. I love leading with the visual, leading with an image and filling it in as I go. Like, the reason I started playing bass was that I saw a Fender with flowers on it and thought “That’s pretty. I want to play that.” Then I got really good at bass! I love just following my gut, following what I’m drawn to and then trying to figure out why I was drawn to it. So I came up with the title Crush On Me and the melody that’s like - “I’ve got a crush on me” - when I was living in Chicago in 2016. So I’ve had the title and general concept since 2016 and I slowly filled in the blanks. For a while, I was gonna call it Makeup Aisle and have it be a super concept album and highly literal where it was gonna be about being in the makeup aisle at CVS. Every song was gonna be like “Lipstick!” or “Mascara!”, all that…I love structure. I’m a slut for structure, but then I have to know when to let it breathe a little bit.
Is there anything you think listeners or other press have gotten wrong about the Sir Babygirl project?
I would say I don’t get production credit most of the time. I’m pretty overt about it and it just doesn’t get talked about. It might be mentioned, but most of the time it’s not.
Do you think people tend to focus more on the aesthetics?
Yes, which is great because I don’t have a trust fund or a major label backing me. I had to create a strong marketing strategy to get my name and face out there and that’s great, I love doing that part of it. It’s funny to me when people ask “Is this music or is this comedy?” But no one questions men like that! No one ever questions Mac DeMarco when he shoves a drumstick up his ass. No one is like “Is that really a standup routine?” We never want to let anyone who’s not a cis man have a self-aware sense of humor. It’s always like “Britney’s just a product” but when you watch behind-the-scenes stuff, she’s so funny. Britney is fucking hilarious. I don’t know, I’m very floored by the amount of supportive press I’ve gotten. I don’t think it would have happened a few years ago. I think PC music opened a lot of doors for weird cool queer music and weird pop so I’m glad we’re living in that space now. It’s just funny to me, all that binary shit. “Are you a comedian or musician? Are you a boy or a girl?”
You’ve said you feel most seen when people use she/he pronouns for you. How did you come to that?
I thought I was cis for a long time. I mean, I didn’t know what that meant, but whatever. Then I started realizing I definitely was not, and I started using “she/they” but of course people only ever used she. So then I felt pressured to only use “they/them”, but when people used it I would feel nothing. I didn’t feel neutral, I didn’t feel agender…those words just didn’t feel like home to me. I never felt misgendered when people used “she”, I just felt like it wasn’t everything. In the last couple of years I realized “I really feel like a girl and I really feel like a boy” so I started playing around that. For a while I was doing “any pronoun” but again, people would only use she or they. And I really like being called “he”! I don’t mind people using they, but it doesn’t feel specifically me. So I started enforcing “she/he” more and that could change but it feels really good and feels like the most accurate representation of my gender. And I like challenging people, but I’m not trying to cause any distress and if people just use “she”, then whatever. Everyone deserves to be called the pronoun they want to be called, and my pronouns are important to me but they’re not everything. Nothing will ever totally capture how I feel, but it’s like…close enough!
So, we saw you at Schubas in January…
Oh my god…WHEN I HAD FOOD POISONING!
You still did a great job. I wanted to ask how the live show has evolved since then?
I’m definitely more comfortable with my guitar. I’ve played guitar since sixth grade but only acoustic and I started learning more electric techniques recently. On this tour I feel I have less sexual tension with the electric guitar. And then I had food poisoning my whole first tour. This tour is really my first time performing as Sir Babygirl where I haven’t been sick and it’s cool actually having the energy to be Sir Babygirl. Because he is very demanding.
I wrote this album and didn’t think it was gonna see the light of day, so I didn’t think I was gonna tour at all. I had no connection to the industry, no ins…Father/Daughter picked me up because some random person was following me for my memes, and they were friends with Tyler at Father/Daughter and was like “Hey, check out this girl, she has a cute pug.” Sir Babygirl is truly grassroots. Even when I was with Father/Daughter I would keep asking when I could tour, and they couldn’t say because they didn’t know if people would listen to it or if press would pick me up. They told me to keep my expectations low, so I didn’t think I was gonna tour at all.
One more question: Number 1 Angel or Pop 2.
One hundred percent Number 1 Angel. People missed the boat on Number 1 Angel. They didn’t see the gold when it was there. Everything she makes is amazing but to me, that is her masterpiece. Hearing that reminded me of when I first heard “When I Rule the World” and was like, “Wow. I didn’t know I could do something like that.”
by Stevie Logan
Photos by Shea Petersen for Bops & Flops
