“It's just a lot of reflection of love and loss and sitting with yourself,” she said of her debut EP, What’s Inside You. “And a lot of desire.” Akira’s distinct vocals, her poetic lyricism, the gut-pulling guitar riffs — they all add up pure palpable desire.
Although What’s Inside You came into the world earlier this year, much of it was written during the height of the pandemic. And while many of us were making sourdough, Akira was falling in love.
“I fell in love with someone through a computer and through my phone,” she told me. “It was really romantic. It reminded me of back when people would send letters to each other and that was your only way of communicating. And that's something that will never fully happen again. It was a point in time where that was the only option to connect with people. This person was across the world, the borders were closed. So we fell in love with each other through our minds.”
Though it wasn’t only this relationship that inspired her EP, the ache for connection reverberates through her music. Inspired by conversations with old friends during lockdown, her hometown of Seattle, and a whole lot of poetry, What’s Inside You is a tapestry threaded together by deep reflection and devastating hooks. It’s vulnerable, but never saccharine. Lyrics like “Give me your impossible devotion” (“Virtual Eyes”) and “No one’s gonna love you like I do,” (“Silver Shoes”) are grounded by poetic details that deftly traverse both the personal and the universal.
Gaining such craft and skill as a songwriter and musician didn’t happen overnight. Or even over the pandemic. Galaxy has spent the past few years honing her craft — polishing her sound and even studying the art of mime (find her in LA mime classes) to bring intention to her performances.
And now, with What’s Inside You, she’s finally arrived. “It’s been such a long time coming,” says Akira. I spoke to her about her sound, her stage presence, and her style at SXSW 2024.
Pet Shop DaysAkira Galaxy
POPDUST: Your debut EP, What’s Inside You, just released. How did you find your sound?
AKIRA: I had just moved to LA and was writing a ton. And then COVID hit so I went home to Seattle. I still hadn't figured out my sound. I hadn't found a song where I was like, this is fully me. I want to share this with the world. When human physical touch and one-on-one connection were stripped away, it really fucked with my hardware, like anyone. It made me look inward and I was scheduling these Zoom meetings with people I went to school with — like first grade. I hadn’t talked to them in like 10 years. I just wanted to get in touch with all these people who had drifted to the back of my mind. I was really able to reflect on another version of myself. So that's when I figured out my sound and then the first song I wrote was “What's Inside You.” And I also bought my first acoustic guitar learned a bunch of Bob Dylan covers like “Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.” That's the first song I learned how to do vibrato with my voice on. So a combination of everything — especially reflection of the past and also accepting this new way of living — blossomed this EP. And that's when I discovered my sound.
POPDUST: Now that physical touch is back, is that yearning still there?
AKIRA: I've been reading a lot of Greek mythology recently. Like Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson. And there are a lot of themes about desire and yearning. Especially when someone's away and how that distance creates desire. I just think it's really interesting to go back in time and see how other people were describing things. That was like their Bible, right? And it's a really romantic way of describing things that we feel today. Like, the bittersweet taste of honey melting on my tongue. Or an ice cube melting the palm of my hand. Or the veil between us while we're sleeping in a bed. I'm really into that kind of stuff. And into the origin of colors, and different ways to really describe the things that we're feeling and try and understand the way we're feeling.
POPDUST: It’s interesting that the details that appeal to you the most are from something so fantastical as mythology.
AKIRA: I feel like maybe I'm just used to picking out that kind of stuff because I read poetry so often to get inspired for my lyrics. So I'll read a poem and see the big picture of it, but a lot of the time, I'm finding words that really stand out to me and make me feel something. So I've learned to look for things like that.
POPDUST: Your songwriting is similar. A lot of your peers are leaning into the confessional style but your lyrics are more abstract.
AKIRA: So it's really interesting that you bring that up because I've kind of been struggling with that myself. Because with so much of the lyric writing today, what you hear is what you get. There's a quote that someone said to me once: The music will make you like an artist, the lyrics will make you fall in love with an artist. I feel that so heavily. For me, if I see lyrics that I love, it's a spiral where I have to look at all their other lyrics. And a lot of the time, maybe I won't fully understand what they're saying at first, but I have to put the puzzle pieces together. And in my own way. I don't know if maybe what I think the song is about will change a year from then. But to me, that's what's really interesting.
POPDUST: The potential for transformation is there.
AKIRA: Totally. Like Bob Dylan. He's very simplistic with his writing in some capacity, but it's a way that the words are formed together. That's what I'm aiming for with my lyric writing in the future — aiming to get somewhere near that guy. You can say the simplest thing, but it can be the most profound thing in the world.
POPDUST: And that's something that comes from poetry, right? Precision and diction and transformation are such poetic features.
AKIRA: Yeah. And I’m struggling with that. Because I really like abstract writing. But sometimes I'm like, I don't know if this is going to make sense to everyone. But it makes so much sense to me in the most profound way. So maybe that's enough. And maybe it becomes a completely different story for another person. And it’s constantly evolving with time.
POPDUST: That timelessness is present in “Virtual Eyes.” It has the echoes of COVID and falling in love virtually. But it’s so rooted in the sensation of desire that it transcends the literal meaning and feels like its own thing.
AKIRA: I wrote that in a day. Actually, I wrote the chorus lyrics about six months prior and then everything else was written in the span of a day. I just remember being in tears. Like, tears on the— on the like, page.
I was going through one of the most painful times in my life and it was the only thing I could do to feel okay. And I think that's a really beautiful thing about being a creative person or being an artist is you can pull life out of anything. And you can actually benefit other people too by doing that. So it's funny because the easiest moments for me to write in are, I think a perfect combination of feeling really happy about a situation — but there being a bit of a tragedy in it as well. In the sense of, like, things are so bad that I have no other choice but to write. Because it's the only way that I am going to not feel like everything's in black and white.
POPDUST: Do you think that’s the only way to write? With — or within — that extreme emotion?
AKIRA: I think there's something to be said about just constantly being aware of the smallest little romantic thing. Picking up on little romantic gestures or moments that can easily make their way into a song if you're seeing all these things all the time. And for me, a really good way to be in tune is constantly like keeping the wheels turning. With everything. Watching films, reading, listening to music, hearing little weird sounds, and new songs, and constantly having that creative flow. And being around other creative people and talking about this stuff.
POPDUST: I think that’s also what makes your persona — Akira Galaxy, the artist — seem so strong. It’s made up of so many details, from how you show up on stage to lyrics to your visuals. How did you carve that out?
AKIRA: It's gonna sound so simple and boring, but it's just what I like. And it’s just what feels right. Like when I was creating visuals, I mean, the people I was working with were a huge part of it. But when I started thinking about visuals for the song, I just wanted really hyper-realistic landscapes. So I pulled from all the films that I like and, you know, Pinterest was a really good source for me.
POPDUST: What were the inspirations for the “Virtual Eyes” video?
AKIRA: I wanted to go to France and I found a bunch of locations in Europe, mostly in France, and in Italy. So I was like, Do you guys want to come to France with me? I need to do this. I need the first visuals to be amazing. And I think a lot of the reason why I felt that way was because it had been such a long time coming. I've been wanting to release something since I was like 16 years old. And then I wrote a lot of this EP when I was 20 and 21. So it had been a year or two in the making, and I was like, alright, well, because it's been so long it has to be exactly the way I want it to be. And it has to be a full representation of myself.
POPDUST: Many young artists, especially with the immediacy of TikTok, feel pressure to release music as fast and as often as possible. Do you ever feel that pressure?
AKIRA: Right. If I had released the song that I wrote when I was 16 years old, I probably would have had a really different trajectory. So there's some beauty in really making sure that it was the right moment. Because there's that saying that you have your whole life to make your first album. But also, at some point, you gotta let it out and, like, let go of shit a bit.
POPDUST: Do you have a sense of what the first album is going to be?
AKIRA: I'm figuring that out in real-time. I have a good chunk of songs that I definitely want to go on an album or an EP and one of them's my favorite I've written — even over “Virtual Eyes.” So I'm pretty excited. But I think it might sound a little more minimal or spacey. I love that, tied in with visuals like Sofia Coppola's stuff. I mean The Virgin Suicides soundtrack is one of my favorite records of all time.
POPDUST: And will you draw from all those little moments you’re always cataloging?
AKIRA: For sure. Yeah. And it's, interesting, a lot of this newer stuff is gonna be in real time. The past EP was a lot of reflecting and now it's present Akira. A lot of it has to do with picking up on the little romantic details and life and just being consumed with what's going on. I mean, I find it really interesting when artists write about things in the third person or from a weird perspective. I think a lot of artists today are like — and I think this is appropriate in some moments — but are only saying “me,” “you,” “I.” I'm trying to refrain from that and get more into the abstract.
POPDUST: Speaking of doing the unexpected, I heard you studied mime for your performances. How did you get into that?
AKIRA: It was around the time I wrote “Virtual Eyes.” It was during that period when I was in a really dark time. And I was like, Okay, I need to perform and I need to be intentional about it. So I looked at mime classes in LA and found this guy, Lorin Eric Salm, who's part of this thing called Mime Theater and he was taught by Marcel Marceau for years in Paris. So he's the real deal. Initially, we started by just doing core mime stuff. A lot of it was kind of just the way that you stand. It's called suspension. It's about how you hold your placement of every part of your body. I think a striking performance can be in the subtlest details, like the way that you look at the audience. It can be in your eyes. It can be in just the way you stand there. But it's important to have intention. People want to come to a show and see something interesting, They want to try and understand what you're trying to convey to the audience, even more so than just the song. So, I think that's what I wanted. How do I express what I'm trying to say to the audience in the most real way?
Watch the “Virtual Eyes” video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvp5nShIJXU
Stream What’s Inside You HERE:
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MuLsccIzQmcny5aMtpNM3?si=tr66ELGXSwK6tVZiwbWWsg
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