In Conversation With Cera Gibson
At the age of seventeen a buoyant Cera Gibson trekked to the famed RCA Studio A, where she recorded her first EP. More recently, Cera pivoted to an independent route in contemplation of artistic license. Her image consists of a dark femininity that is pervasive in her music and at times indistinguishable. Though this type of presentation often reads as ingenuine in the music world, Cera produces an aura surrounding her music that is both sincere and sublime. Her music has an enthralling charm that probes pop textures while ignoring the genre’s bubblegum instincts. With tongue in cheek lyrics juxtaposed by electronic dance beats, Cera’s sound encompasses a type of lulling melancholy prevalent in the likes of contemporaries such as Lana del Rey, Charlie XCX, and Lorde
When did you start playing music?
I started playing music when I was 12. But I started like, songwriting and seriously working towards being a musician in high school. I was surrounded by music pretty much my whole life. My dad's a musician. My mom is an actress, and she would do musical theater and stuff. And my older brother is also a musician. So I was around it and grew up with musicals and loved it. So there came like a certain point where I just wanted to try to write my own music. So my parents taught me guitar when I was 12. And slowly from there, I started to learn how to do it by myself. But it took a while, like, even now, I would say, from teaching myself, my guitar skill plateaued at like, 17.
Who are some of your musical influences?
I have a lot of different influences and honestly it kind of varies from song to song. I'm not gonna lie. Some of it is like Stevie Nicks or Enya. Like Enya who's really dreamy sort of backing vocals and instrumentals inspired me a lot in the way I like to put the synths together and the way I stack my vocals when I'm doing the production and stuff. I would also say things like Type O Negative or Metallica in terms of lyricism, but more modern influences are probably like Lana del Rey and Marina and the Diamonds.
I get a lot of Lana Del Rey vibes from your single ‘Sad Bitch’. I was wondering what the story was behind that song?
Well, if you don't know, I don’t know how much of my music you listen to, but a lot of it is sad, like almost all of it is sad and slow. And so many people were like, you need to write like a hit, you know, like a single-- you need something more or be something people can dance to. I was actually getting really annoyed by that. And it was because I felt like I couldn't do that, like ‘stop telling you to do something I can't do’. Then my producer made that instrumental. That's one of the few instrumentals that I didn't actually create myself. But he made this instrumental and I get it, and I'm like, ‘okay, I feel like this is the one I can write something dope to’. A little earlier that day, I was actually just joking around with one of my friends that I was a savage, but a bad bitch. So in a way that song was like an “F-U” to myself and to everyone
How did you start recording in Nashville and what was that experience like?
I started writing music as a teenager. At first it was like, more of an emotional outlet, I guess. Then I would live stream on YouNow. I ended up becoming like, the number one streamer on like this singing channel. And my parents were like, ‘that's dope’. They felt like it validated my skills. I showed them my repertoire of songs that I'd written. They were like, ‘we should find you a producer’. But we had never done that and had no idea how to even approach that. My dad was actually in Costco and there was this guy demonstrating the pianos in there and my dad talks to him and finds out he's a producer. He's like, ‘you know, I have a daughter, she's a songwriter’ and he's like,’ cool, here is my information like, come over, and I'll check it’. I ended up going over to his place like a few months later with my parents and I show them my music and he was like, ‘Well, if you're up for I'd love to take you to Nashville, we can record in RCA Studio A, assemble some of these Grammy Award-winning musicians - which is insane - ‘and get you an EP recorded’. I mean, we were pretty naive going into this because we did not have experience in the industry really in terms of how it was going to work, monetarily the contracts, or the period of time. A rough contract got put together. We ended up signing it; we went out there. Immediately I was met with so much opposition. Because he had given me so much praise and I was a teenager, so I was a little egotistical, I'm not gonna lie to you. [But] over time, life humbles you quite a bit. But, I had gotten all of this praise, so I was feeling incredibly confident going into this and like, ‘my songs are dope’. We got in there, and he started just ripping apart every single one of my songs, wanting to rewrite them. I met with the head of ASCAP, which is one of the national songwriting associations. He'd worked with The Beatles and stuff, and he was telling me all my songs needed to be switched to the third person. And I'm like, that's weird, but okay, I guess. So, after getting that feedback, you know, we're in the studio, and we're recording and me and my producer, got into this massive argument, where he was pretty much telling me that nothing I felt actually mattered in terms of business. He was like, ‘your feelings mean nothing in this industry’. And I was like,’ well, that means something to me’, because I put so much time into this. I put my heart and my soul into this, and my parents were using what little money they had to try to help facilitate my career, which is something I'm forever grateful for. Despite all of that chaos, when I actually started recording with these musicians, and started, like leading the session, and hearing it come together, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever done. It taught me a lot in terms of the industry being very prejudiced, you know, very sexist, they do not care about you at all. You're definitely a commodity, but just getting to be in that room and hearing those musicians play that we're at that level of skill, in a studio, where the acoustics were immaculate, it was very motivating, and was very inspiring. There was a lot of, there's a mess in terms of the contract and a mess where my relationship with the producer wasn't good. It caused a lot of tension between me and my parents. Despite all that, that one isolated moment of recording and just feeling my music come along, it motivated me to push to have that happen again. Just that one feeling. So it was a really, really incredible experience overall. It taught me so much about myself, and so much about what I wanted to do with music. When I was finally able to get out of that contract, and get out on my own, and start making my own music and doing this digital music, it was like, I had exactly what I wanted. In my mind. I had like this blueprint to follow. I have learned my lessons, I've been humbled. And, you know, that's where all the music that's on Spotify came from.
What is your regular songwriting process like?
I always start with the instrumental pretty much unless I'm writing a song on the guitar. I'm writing something on the guitar, it tends to all happen simultaneously. But most of the time, I will write off some chords, I will structure like a rough instrumental, and then I will write like the vocal melody and the lyrics on top of that, and then I'll build out the instrumental further. That's how almost all of my songs happen. For me, I just like to be super super structured with it. So I like to work on one thing until it's perfect, and then move on to the next thing. So I might have like 50, half finished songs, but I won't actually move on to trying to finish them until I finish that, that initial one that I was working on before them.
Do you like drawing inspiration from your own life?
Most of the time, it's my life or something societal. The project I'm working on right now is very centric around a recent breakup. I just went through a super long term breakup, at the end of last year, and then we tried to make it work. Then we broke up again. It's very much based around that, and like me, processing my emotions, but we were together for a really long time. The music that's out was all written and put out while we were together. Most of it is more a commentary on like the industry or, like, toxic traits of mine, I have a song that is very much so about, like this weird attachment to social media that I got, when I started to promote myself on Instagram more, just like seeking that validation. So it's definitely based on my life, but I like to frame it in a way where it is more of that third person perspective, like, I'm just narrating a general theme that people can, hopefully relate to.
Is there a certain idea or emotion you want your audience to grasp from your music?
I try to be as authentic as I possibly can. I have this song called ‘Broken Mind’ that I wrote about my mental health. I ended up finding this year in the midst of a pandemic, that I have bipolar disorder. Looking back and listening to that song, it's like, yeah, I'm explaining bipolar disorder, I just didn't know that I had it at that point. If I could have anyone get something from my music, it's just like, I think it's so important to be mindful of yourself and your experiences and to take accountability for yourself. When I say take accountability for yourself, I don't mean like, in terms of l negative things, even necessarily, it's just like taking the reins of your own life and championing yourself to move forward, even when things are really horrible. Just recognizing that, like, we have this one, existence, and you really do create your own reality. And so you know, when I listen to my music, I very much so it's like a way for me to hold myself accountable. It's a way for me to recount experiences where I've made mistakes, or I've learned from someone else's mistakes, and I hope it kind of inspires that same sort of self reflection and other people.
From talking to you I can tell you’re a very intuitive person. Do you think making music helps you be more conscious of your emotions or do you think it helps your music?
It took me a really long time to be a mindful person. Like I said, When I was younger, I was definitely pretty egotistical, and I was more so living in kind of like this fight or flight all the time. And it's hard to be mindful and present and be effective as a human being, when you are so caught up in everything. But like this current moment, you know, it's like I was creating like these narratives in my head. Now it's like, I think music has helped me be more mindful and more intuitive. I can look back on it and see, like this period of my life that's just encapsulated in this song, and understand myself a little bit better. There are also times where I'll be writing a song and like a line will come out and I'm like, “Oh, my God, like, I understand how I feel now,” you know, because there's something about music and that free flow of like cognition and energy, that it's not like these pre meditative thoughts, at least not for me, when I'm writing music. It's not premeditated, and so something so real and authentic comes out from that. And it's like, sometimes I'll be saying things that I didn't even know, I felt and so being able to reflect on that and being able to just be part of that process. Cuz Yes, like, definitely made me a more mindful person. So I would say music is the catalyst for that for sure.
What do you think has changed since you first started writing music?
Mindfulness is a massive thing, dismantling my ego a little bit as a massive thing, because you can see. I was playing some of my older music because I was sorting through some of it to see if I could convert it to the new sound like some of my favorite songs from back in the day, if they would work on this current project, and I can hear in my music, like my ego in the music, you know what I mean, and just my, my self image at the time. I was very much so trying to, like bolster an idea of myself. That's a massive thing in my identity, the way I view my identity in my music has completely shifted, because at first, it's like who I was, was so closely tied to my brand, it's like they were indistinguishable, and it actually held me back massively. When you're a musician, you have to commodify yourself, you have to market yourself and package yourself. And that can be very alienating. When your identity as a human being is so closely tied to your professional identity, or your public persona, it gets really muddy after a while. So it's like when you're writing music, it's like you're not trying to be yourself anymore. It's like you're trying to be this public version of yourself. And it gets confusing and the art doesn't come as naturally and it isn't as good. I had a huge breakthrough a couple of years ago, I was doing a ton of research. I illegally downloaded a class on marketing on the internet. I was looking at artists from their genesis of when they first public to when they were picked up by label and blew up to where they are now. I saw this really distinct character creation. I was like, that's what I need to do. This internal struggle, having such a hard time marketing myself is because I'm trying to market myself as a person. And this person is too complex. There's too much about myself, like if someone says, ‘What's your brand?’ I'm like, Well, I'm this and this, and this. And it's like, that's not a brand, that’s you. So I took my favorite parts of myself, visually, intellectually, whatever, I compiled kind of what my music was saying. And I turned that into, you know, Cera Gibson. But I changed the spelling of my first name to C-E-R-A, I knew I wanted to keep my name, but I wanted a level of separation. I kind of created this person and through that, I can be authentic. It also gives a clear roadmap to how to follow that brand, how to market that person. And then I can just be Sarahin my downtime. I don't have this conflicting issue, like songwriting again. It is super loose, and it's super free because. I'm not trying to match my personal self with my public self. My public self is a totally separate thing. So, that's definitely what has changed over time.
Cera Gibson is expected to release a new album next year. Meanwhile, you can see her perform at Kilby Court on January 9th and check out her Spotify.
