Musician Chloë Black has come a long way since the release of her 2015 debut single, “27 Club.” And the artist has never felt more prepared and ready to gift the world with a new project, starting with her freshly dropped single, “Strange Little Bird.” Here, the songstress gives a look into her evolved creative process, discussing the complexities of narcissism and what V can expect from her forthcoming EP.

V: What is ‘Strange Little Bird’ about?

Chloe Black: “Strange Little Bird” is ostensibly about self-acceptance and the psychological idea of re-integration of self after long-term trauma. There’s a complicated internal struggle that comes with a lifetime of having received messages from people close to you or society at large that your true nature is shameful and something to be hidden. I only just recently got an ADHD diagnosis so I have a long history of blaming myself for things that aren’t my fault and being told by others that I’m weird or lazy.

When I wrote the verses I was struggling with really severe clinical PTSD and I was unable to leave the house for long periods of time. There were times I would call crisis helplines and the person on the other end of the phone would try to get me to breathe deeply and that just felt like an absolute impossibility to me. I was in so much distress that everything felt incredibly difficult including something as simple as breathing. But then little by little, with time and therapy, I came to work through all of the shame I’d been carrying and started to allow myself to be loved for who I truly am, and to accept and love myself more fully. I process emotions through my music and singing is one thing that has always soothed me even when breathing felt too hard. 

V: How do you decide between what you want to keep to yourself and what you want to put out into the world with your art?

CB: Nowadays, I choose what to release based on how deeply I resonate with it and how true or authentic it feels to me. Often, I don’t finish songs I start writing if I’m not connecting deeply enough with the lyrics or melody. It’s a bit like relationships—you tend to know deep down when it’s right and when it’s not. You might engage with it a little longer than you should because you don’t want to admit to yourself that it isn’t right. But if a song can still strike a chord with me emotionally past the honeymoon phase and after the months or years it can take to actually release it, then I know it’s right. And if lyrically it feels a bit raw, vulnerable, or uncomfortable, then I really know it’s something.

V: I know you are tackling the topic of narcissism on this EP (in a really real way). I think it’s a word that gets thrown around too easily. What does this word actually mean to you? 

CB: When I talk about narcissism, I want to be clear that I mean it in the clinical sense, as a disorder, not just a personality trait. I’m referring to individuals with very low empathy and narcissistic abuse that causes serious long-term harm. We all have a certain level of narcissism as a personality trait, and our individualistic, capitalist, social media-obsessed society creates a culture that nurtures and rewards this trait. Children need to be narcissistic for their survival. Artists like myself often have to promote their own work in ways that can feel uncomfortably ego-based at times. The problem is that many people don’t know the difference between the innocuous self-involvement of youth and the often invisible reality of narcissistic abuse. People definitely use this word incorrectly and irresponsibly and I also really wish that people didn’t use the terms PTSD (or other disorders like OCD) colloquially because not only is it offensive but it can make it difficult to get the accommodations you need when people don’t understand that you’re serious. It doesn’t help that the stereotype is that PTSD only affects people in the military even though a large-scale study showed 45% of women and 65% of men who experienced SA met the criteria for diagnosis compared to 7% of war veterans. (ptsd.va.gov) Also, only 50% of people recover within 2 years. It’s life-threatening. 

For me, the word “narcissism” carries a huge weight because it’s the reason for almost all the suffering I’ve experienced. It’s the reason I am who I am, and the reason I write music. This EP wouldn’t exist without that word. For as long as I can remember, I was subjected to frequent criticism and unhealthy patterns of behavior, which meant that when I encountered people with NPD as an adult, I found myself drawn to what felt comfortingly familiar. What should have been obvious red flags sometimes looked very normal to me. When I met and began dating a sadistic malignant narcissist, I didn’t have the tools to see things for what they were. I was desperate for the love and approval of these people who put me through the confusing cycle of love bombing and devaluation. The hardest part is that when you try to talk about it, people often defend and enable the abuser. They tell you, ‘Oh, that person does love you, that’s just their way of showing it,’ or they accuse you of wanting attention which is bullshit. 

The desire not to rock the boat or see all people as well-intentioned means that when you find the courage to speak up, people are quicker to victim-blame or disbelieve than to accept a difficult truth. People do mental gymnastics to believe they couldn’t be a victim, including denying the simple reality that people don’t willingly choose to bear such a stigmatized label. 

This EP and these songs are so important to me because I was able to express that pain and expose the vulnerability and difficulty of healing. I want to put to bed the misnomer that ‘hurt people hurt people,’ because the reality is the vast majority of hurt people don’t. Knowing the ‘why’ doesn’t excuse the ‘what’. The fact that people are quicker to condemn the use of the word than abusive behavior itself is mind-blowing to me. I’m so tired of seeing TV characters who are blatantly narcissistic and mistreat everyone around them get away with it and be turned into a light-hearted joke or a fun main character who deep down is not so bad. I want to talk openly about the reality of insidious psychological abuse and the lifelong battle of overcoming it. The ‘sticks and stones’ line has gotta go. Words matter. Also, Marge Simpson deserved better! 

(If anyone reading this is questioning whether or not they’ve encountered a person like this Dr Ramani Durvasula has good information and resources.)

V: How did you approach this track lyrically or sonically in a way that was new or challenging for you? 

CB: For this track I really just followed my intuition regardless of whether or not I was making traditional choices. A lot of producers in the past have told me to use fewer chords or not overdo it on vocal riffs and runs, but I just sang without overthinking. This is the first song that I co-produced (with the talented Jeff Shum) and that too was pretty accidental. I was just trying to convey ideas of what the production could be and didn’t think it would be used but we ended up keeping it. I never thought to attempt production in the past because I had such low confidence thanks to industry misogyny. I wish I’d tried it sooner!

V: If you had to pick an older song of yours that this song is somehow an answer to or continuation of, which song would you pick and why? 

CB: My first song ’27 Club’ was about this idea of having to suffer for your art no matter the cost and desperately wanting to be a ‘great artist’. I was constantly wondering what I had to do and how I could become good enough to get into that club of ‘greats’. “Strange Little Bird” is me maturing into the realization that you can’t really change who you are at your core, there is no recipe for greatness or success, and no you absolutely don’t have to die of a drug overdose to create good art. 

I stopped looking at it in terms of ‘Am I good enough?’ and started being more in service to the songs, the truth, and connecting with other people through music and shared experiences. Maybe that sounds like really lame lip service but I mean it. I’m not trying to get put on a pedestal to prove my worth as a person or musician. External validation won’t rid you of insecurity and I think geniuses are a myth. Elon clearly disagrees with me though!

V: What can we expect in terms of visuals?

CB: Lots of color and a slightly surreal alien vibe! Each song has a dominant color in my mind, which informs the visuals. A lot of the songs are dark and painful, so I thought the contrast of technicolor was interesting. I also wanted to keep things a little simpler for myself, and so, for the first time, these visuals are performance-based instead of narrative-driven. I’d like to say that was purely an artistic choice, but the reality is that I wanted to take some pressure off myself because I realized earlier this year that being on camera had become a phobia for me. I’m conquering the fear by taking a leaf out of Miss Angeria’s (Paris VanMichaels) book and doing the ‘park and bark.’