Kali Uchis Reflects on the Real Stories Behind Her Albums | For the Record | Marie Claire - video Dailymotion

Marie Claire

In our inaugural episode of For the Record, Kali Uchis takes us all the way back to Isolation, diving into everything that sparked her iconic career. (And don’t get it twisted—the men recorded their parts in separate studios!) From there to Sincerely, a tribute to her mom and her own journey into motherhood, Kali unpacks the raw, emotional, and sonic elements that defined each era.

Transcript

00:00Dead To Me definitely should have been a single and it wasn't.

00:04Hi Marie Claire, I'm Kaliuchis and this is For The Record.

00:10Isolation. Isolated. Young. Confident.

00:15I think probably what resonated most with my fans about isolation was

00:19nobody was making music that sounded like that.

00:22And that's kind of what I always try to do is just not go with what's on trend for the moment.

00:27If everyone's making dance music, I want to make ballads.

00:30I always want to just make music that's timeless and of the moment for me,

00:34not necessarily of the moment for what's on trend.

00:37I didn't feel any pressure making isolation, especially at that time period in my career.

00:42I was just happy to be doing what I love every day, making art, creating,

00:46and that's the most important thing for me.

00:48If anything, probably the most pressure I felt making isolation was just making sure,

00:53since it was my first album, that I could garner as much iconic collaborations as possible.

00:58And that's why I really took my time with it.

01:00It took me three years to make that album because I really traveled the world,

01:03going to work with Bootsie Collins and Tame Impala, Kevin Parker, and Damon Albarn, and Tyler,

01:10and all these different people.

01:11I just wanted to incorporate so many different walks of life into the album since it was my first one.

01:16Dead to Me definitely should have been a single, and it wasn't.

01:21I really wanted it to be a single, and so what I was given was like,

01:24oh, we'll just do like a live performance video, whatever.

01:26So we did like a little video, but it wasn't to the actual song.

01:28It was to a live performance, and that was the best I could get,

01:31because nobody really wanted to get behind that song.

01:34And then it ended up being one of the biggest songs on the album.

01:37Sin Miedo.

01:38Can't see it's very juicy, succulent, perhaps.

01:43I still remember that the first time I realized that it was going viral,

01:48it was Valentine's Day, 2020.

01:50I had never been a charts girl before.

01:52I just had to keep up with it.

01:53Like, I was like, okay, we have to go shoot a music video.

01:55And I just went straight to Colombia, shot a music video,

01:58just went to my hometown, did it in my neighborhood.

02:01And I think I'm a lot more mature, not even just as an artist,

02:06but as a woman, as a person, as a human being, as an individual,

02:09having such a deeper interconnectedness with myself.

02:13I just used to put everything on the internet,

02:15so it's been very much growing in the public eye.

02:18You know, people that can say that they've been with me from the beginning,

02:21they really have seen me come so far and been with me on the journey,

02:26and that's part of what has made it really special for me.

02:29Red Moon and Venus.

02:30Red Moon and Venus.

02:31Dark, steamy, wet.

02:33I would say my visual references for Red Moon and Venus,

02:37it was very iridescent.

02:40I was imagining a lot of translucent imagery of just, like,

02:44being see-through, being sexy, very red.

02:50It has astrological references in it,

02:52but I think the underlying theme was definitely that sexiness

02:57just kind of creating a world of its own, in a sense.

03:01I think it would smell musky.

03:04I think it would have a musk scent to it, but also floral.

03:07Very mature, because when I think of musk,

03:10I just think of sexy, dark, and that's kind of the way that I view the album.

03:15I would say Wishy Roses was the most special to me of the album.

03:18It really felt that I was speaking for my highest self,

03:21and I think it's hard to do that on a song,

03:23and I think a lot of the other songs on the album are very human,

03:26and they are coming from the human perspective, which is beautiful as well.

03:30But to be able to really make a whole song coming from your highest self

03:34is not something that happens often,

03:36so it was always special to me for that reason.

03:38I don't put a whole lot of thought into the titles.

03:42Usually they kind of just come to me, and when I feel like they stick

03:45and that they embody the work, if it sounds right and it feels right,

03:48I kind of just go with it.

03:49Sometimes they just happen intuitively, and I just run with it.

03:52Orquidias. Floral, fertile, mother.

03:57At the end of the day, that album in particular, it was really, really special for me

04:01because I've never, you know, experienced a pregnancy before.

04:05I've never had a baby before, and the entire role that I was pregnant.

04:08So it was really different. It was different.

04:10Definitely one to remember.

04:12I was really excited in particular about working with Caron

04:15just because we're both, you know, Colombian. We're both women.

04:18I love working with women. It's just really fun for me,

04:21and it's something that I had wanted to do for so long

04:24because of our shared background, and I have a lot of respect for her

04:27and how long she's been able to keep her career going.

04:30Probably the only other person that I got in the studio with was JT, another girl.

04:34So I'm just that way. With girls, I feel really comfortable to just express myself,

04:39and it felt like a fun little slumber party. Like, JT came to my house,

04:42and we were just bouncing ideas off each other,

04:45and I was telling her what to say.

04:47And I really don't care to work with guys too much.

04:50The guys who were on the album did a great job too,

04:52but respectively in their own studios, you know, with distance between us.

05:00But the girls, it was like, ooh, girly time. Like, it was fun.

05:03Sincerely, Silky, Mermaid, Kitty Cat, Meow.

05:08Becoming a mom and losing my mom in the same year was, like,

05:13two very strong life-altering events to happen.

05:17I was postpartum, like, fresh postpartum when I made a lot of this music,

05:20and I was also pregnant when I made a lot of this music.

05:23So I was very vulnerable and raw already, kind of just like knowing, you know,

05:27the inevitable that my mom wasn't going to be around much longer.

05:30So I think that's why a lot of my headspace was very much in that world.

05:34You know, I was just going through a lot and feeling everything a lot deeper than I ever had before.

05:39The album is dedicated to my mom, and my mom left me a lot of letters,

05:44which is kind of really all I have to remember her by now.

05:46Each song is like my letter to different aspects of my life.

05:50And then afterwards, I felt like I really had made the right decision with the title,

05:53because when I was reading back the things that my mom left me,

05:56I felt 100% confident with the title.

05:58I feel like once you become a mom,

06:00everybody has so many questions about what it's like to be a mom.

06:03My personal experience, I really love it.

06:06I genuinely am way happier now than I was before I had my baby.

06:10I always kind of feel like people think that I'm lying when I say that,

06:13because there's so many other women that have a different experience.

06:17I genuinely feel it was what my life was missing.

06:20You know, life gets really hard.

06:21And just to be able to look at him and wake up and see his smiles and play with him,

06:26it's like nothing else in the world matters.

06:28So it makes you appreciate life in a different way.

06:30It makes you be more present.

06:32I guess in a way that has affected my art,

06:35because I've been able to be more present as an artist in general

06:38and feel a lot deeper than I ever have.

Kali Uchis Reflects on the Real Stories Behind Her Albums | For the Record | Marie Claire

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