The term “girlboss” has many definitions, but it’s most commonly associated with the satisfaction one gets from being a woman in charge of your own destiny. At least that’s how the term was being used when New Zealand musician Lucy Botting first came across it. “My friend was working for an established Wellington fashion label — the kind where you get an apprenticeship and you work for free for three years, but you feel really blessed because you’ve got a foot in the door,” she says over Skype from her home in Wellington. “She got sick of doing the dishes and taking out the rubbish, so she quit and started her own label. Then she started posting photos with the hashtag #girlboss. I thought she was amazing, and I liked how powerful that hashtag was.”
Botting had just begun writing music again after a lengthy hiatus — her previous band, Wet Wings, ended in 2014 when her bandmate received a scholarship to attend UC Berkeley. But this time, Botting was in charge. She decided to teach herself to play the guitar and began writing songs in the evening after her day job working as a teacher at a community preschool ended for the day.
After a year of messing around in her bedroom, Botting decided to form a band and record the first girlboss EP. Joined by Darian Woods (guitar), Douglas Kelly (bass) and Olivia Campion (drums), the songs are flush with bright melodies and groovy rhythms that twist together like a corkscrew. There’s echoes of late-aughts Chillwave (Puro Instinct, Beach Fossils) and the tenets of teenies jangle-pop (Real Estate, Wild Nothing). It sounds retro now, but it fulfills a craving many of us have for sweet, sunlit guitar music.
Do you find people confuse your band with the US fashion and media brand ?
Sometimes. One time this promoter dude was like, ‘you realize it’s also a fashion label, right?’ And I was like, ‘yeah’. I also see tea towels and mugs that say girlboss on them. The name has been appropriated in lots of different ways, so it’s not super connected to Nasty Gal.
The term girlboss is also interesting for me because in terms of music, I’ve always taken a back seat and not really been in charge. So I saw it and was like, I want to do music again and I want to be in charge, and that name sums it up.
In the past you’ve spoken about being self-conscious of your own ability as a songwriter. What gave you the confidence to share these songs?
I think it’s just age and maturity. In Wet Wings I’d write half a song and decide it was shit, and then give up. I didn’t even feel like I was capable of finishing a song, let alone showing it to anyone. I had a big break from making music and during that time I lay in bed and listened to music for hours and hours. I call it my homework period, because I was getting quite inspired by everything I was hearing. I’d never really laid down and absorbed music before. I was listening to bands like Chastity Belt and TOPS, all these cool women, and I was like, yeah, I can make this happen.
“Body Con” refers to a type of dress, but it’s also short for ‘body conscious.’ Can you explain what that song is about?
The song is about how most women go between feeling confident and feeling self-conscious all the time. For me anyway, it can change ten times in a day. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how women think about that stuff more than men. Especially in terms of the history of women in music, women are hypersexualized, so I think women in the music industry have to think about that stuff a lot.
You have another song called “Summer Goth”. What can you tell us about that?
It’s about a girl who I admired one summer, maybe two years ago. I was going swimming every day after work and she would rollerblade past me. She was this fully kitted-out goth girl with a Siouxsie Sioux tee, black hair and all this makeup. It was super hot and she was all in black, head to toe, with rollerblades, and I thought she was incredible. I guess it’s a similar theme. I was thinking about wearing makeup, and how you practically deal with that in the sun.
You’ve said that your music is influenced by TV shows and movies that you watched as a child. Do you remember what some of those shows were?
As a child and into my teens, I would watch the same movies and TV shows over and over. I’d watch The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz probably once a week, to the point where I knew all the words. Then, as a teenager, I had a TV in my bedroom and I’d come home from school and watch TV for hours and hours with my best friend on the phone. She would watch the same show as me. We’d watch Sensing Murder, New Zealand reality TV shows, and other things like Rock of Love. I don’t know why, but I used to find them so entertaining and thrilling. All of that stuff was done in isolation, and what makes music easier for me is sitting down and being isolated for hours and hours.
Do you think as well, that you grow out of liking reality TV, whereas you never grow out of loving music?
Oh, totally. TV was my way of coping with being a loner. With music it’s different, everyone loves music. When you’re in the womb you hear you mom’s heartbeat, it’s got a rhythm, and I think music’s a universal language, of sorts. Music is also repetitive and it sticks in your head, whereas a TV show is a just a fleeting experience. I think that’s also why I loved musicals, you remember every bit so well, because it’s got music. Also, I think why I got so fixated on The Sound of Music video tape is because my dad had recorded it in the 80s and it had all of the original ads. I loved the ads, I thought they were so cool and exciting. I was also obsessed with watching my parents’ wedding video, which is mostly silent. It’s kind of creepy and it’s super 80s, my mom’s wearing this big poofy dress and I would make my friends watch it whenever they came over.
Girlboss’s debut EP is available now via Ball Of Wax .