Muna on Harry Styles, imposter syndrome and Trump-baiting

The trio talk about difficult second albums and why their new single is the ‘head of the baby’

What’s a band to do when, after an arduous two years of studio-based creative excavation, they finally complete their anticipated second album? All-night drug binge? Alcohol-fuelled rampage? A nice holiday somewhere with a pool? Well, if you’re emo-pop trio Muna, AKA Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson, you go for something a little more holistic. “We’re getting massages tonight to celebrate the fact that we’re done and to decompress a little bit,” says McPherson on an occasionally hard-to-follow three-way conference call from Los Angeles that often carries the incense-coated whiff of group therapy.

Muna, it turns out, deserve that well-earned R&R. Their new single, Number One Fan – the first to be taken from the forthcoming Saves the World album – may swap the indie-leaning goth-pop of 2017’s About U in favour of 80s Madonna-meets-Carly Rae Jepsen kitsch, but it’s a glittering Trojan horse hiding a song about struggling to find your self-worth when the external adulation suddenly stops. “No matter how many times someone tells you you’re amazing, you have to learn to believe that yourself,” says McPherson. “It’s hard when you come home [from touring] and you’re like: ‘Well I knew I was a piece of shit and this proves it!’ It’s easy to get depressed.”

Gone too is the all-black Matrix cosplay look of that first album, replaced by a softer mix of My So-Called Life and Monica from Friends, all high-waisted mom jeans and vest tops. While it may seem like a simple case of “new era, new look”, the band’s singer and lyricist Gavin insists it’s a much fairer reflection of who they actually are this time around.

“This is what we do everyday and we just want to wear our everyday clothes,” she explains. “We don’t need to dress it up any more because what we do is cool enough.” For perpetual over-thinker Gavin, who has a habit of ending her sentences with “if that makes any sense”, it’s partly about letting her defences down. “I loved my old haircut but I think it did a lot of work in terms of protecting me,” she says of her previous ’do, which involved a blunt fringe, pointed “bangs” and a severe undercut. “If I hadn’t had that as a natural defence and a way of keeping people from seeing into me, I don’t know if I would have been able to handle the amount of attention.”

While About U didn’t exactly make Muna household names, it pushed them into the public eye as a queer and deeply politicised pop act at a time when that still felt out of the ordinary. During one memorable Jimmy Kimmel performance of the album’s totemic single I Know a Place – transformed into an anthem of resistance following the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting – Gavin changed the lyrics in the song’s middle eight to include the line “he’s not my leader even if he’s my president”, with the band having previously sported homemade “Fuck Trump” T-shirts. Their willingness to be outspoken, mixed with their sexual identity, leads to them repeatedly being asked for quotes on topics that could weigh down lesser bands.

“It’s validating that people care about our brains and not just our beauty,” laughs Gavin, before turning deadly serious. “I think there were times on the first album where we all struggled with imposter syndrome in our own way. Sometimes you would feel like a politician because you’re preaching certain principles when you’re speaking publicly, and then you’re having these failures in your private life where you’re not living out those values.”

Touring with silk-suited Mick Jagger impersonator Harry Styles in 2017 offered another opportunity for the band to feel as if they had stumbled into a world they weren’t quite ready for. “That was the height of imposter syndrome, like: ‘Harry Styles is in my green room, what is going on?’” laughs McPherson. “Just full body disassociation.” We talk about Styles’s own queering of the mainstream, which led to criticism from some as “gay-baiting”, and also the idea of queerness in general being subsumed into the mainstream.

“If it gets absorbed then at least its in there,” says Maskin. “I would rather different performances of gender or different performances of sexuality be normalised. Growing up and feeling different was not a very pleasant experience and at least [now] kids can grow up thinking: ‘It’s OK to be whatever I am.’” There’s a ripple of agreement down the line. “I can be gay as fuck and really do anything I want and exist and have a life where I can love and be happy,” she continues. “Things will get better because we will continue to push forward and we’re resilient. We’re here, we’re queer.”

It was after the Styles tour, and the imposing silence of being back home, that they rushed into writing what would become album two. It was tricky at first. “I don’t think we allowed ourselves the opportunity to change and grow as musicians,” sighs Maskin. Six months in, Number One Fan came along and kickstarted a newfound creative bravery. “It started out being a bit more brooding and then it shifted into the electro club banger that it is today because we decided not to get in the way of what the song wanted to be,” explains McPherson, who co-produced the album. Was it always going to be the lead single?

“I think if it was an album track it would be the weirdest thing,” she continues. Gavin, meanwhile, is more graphic, conjuring up images of crowning vaginas. “It’s the head of the baby, basically,” she says before collapsing into hysterics.

A lot of Gavin’s lyrics were written following a period of “heartbreak and withdrawal”, during which time she purposefully steered clear of romantic relationships, with one song, the near six-minute-long It’s Gonna Be Okay, Baby, a latter period Alanis-esque journal-entry-as-song, touching on communism, suicide and home haircuts (“with those scissors from the desk in your dorm room”). “Shit just gets weird when you realise the person you’re in love with is a symbol of the type of love you’re not willing to give yourself,” Gavin says, apparently warming to the Morissette connection.

On paper, Muna sound as if they’re high on LA’s finest Kool Aid. In fact, one comment from Gavin about the dangers of living in a bubble features the words “seedling stage”, “unmet needs” and “nutrients”. But their infectious friendship-as-therapy mannerisms mixed with an earnestness that creeps under your skin means at one point I find myself asking: “Are you still hopeful about America?” It is a ridiculous question but it’s testament to their big ideas that they don’t flinch. “I have to have some degree of hope or what’s the point?” says McPherson.

“We have hope for the world,” Gavin continues. “I don’t know if I can speak to the future of the nation but that’s also because there’s a question mark around the concept of nations and borders, but I think on this record we’re saying we have hope for humanity.” The album title, Maskin says, represents the fact that they “do genuinely believe that saving yourself is the key to saving the world”. Cynicism takes over, however, when I question how they can sustain so much faith when, let’s be honest, a lot of people are awful. There’s silence. “Wow, you’re that bitch!” laughs Gavin, proving, perhaps, that some people can’t be saved.

Number One Fan is out now

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKWlqLake5FpaHJnmqq7cHyXaKSuppFivK95x5qpq7FdqMG6uMSsZKKloKTAtbHRZqqyppSnvK6xjJqlnWWkp8KuvIybmKKsmaO0