FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Fifty-Eight: FLETCHER
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IN most of these features…
I focus a female artist who has been around for a while and is shaping up to be a huge name of the future. Whilst FLETCHER has been in the business for a few years now, she has not put out a studio album yet – her most-recent E.P., THE S(EX) TAPES, was released last year. I am keen to introduce you to FLETCHER via interviews. Before then, Wikipedia provide some information about the New Jersey-born artist:
“Cari Elise Fletcher (born March 19, 1994), known mononymously as Fletcher (stylized in all caps), is an American singer and songwriter. Fletcher's breakthrough single "Undrunk" was released in January 2019 and became her first single to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, and reached number one on Spotify's Viral Chart in the United States. "Undrunk" was released on her extended play You Ruined New York City for Me, and according to Mediabase, the song was the fastest-rising song at pop radio for a new artist since 2014. Spotify ranked the song as one of the "Best Pop Songs of 2019”.
There are a lot of interesting and different Pop artist around right now. Seven years since her debut single, War Paint, was released, FLETCHER has amassed a loyal following. I do feel she is going to go on to big things. In the modern age, it is hard to shape idols like we had decades ago. There are certainly artists working right now who you can see going on to be hugely important and inspiring.
I know there are upcoming artists who are compelling and influenced by FLETCHER. The interviews are focused on THE S(EX) TAPES. I want to start with an interview where FLETCHER mentioned the importance of New York and what songwriting means to her. When she spoke with DORK last year, we discover more about a fascinating talent:
“It’ll follow 2019’s ‘you ruined new york city for me’, an EP detailing Cari’s time in the Big Apple – an experience that shaped her as both a person and an artist. Though she frequents it for work nowadays, the memories that made up her last EP are still strong.
“New York City, there’s just something about it. It has a way of just like, ripping you down to absolutely nothing and building you back up again, just to kick you in the ass again. There’s this cycle of life that can happen there, you know?
“I was just in New York yesterday, and I was driving through the East Village and passing my old dorms, and where I went to my first concert in New York, restaurants I used to eat at, and I was just having this flooding flashback of memories – like really good ones, but also really bad ones. There are these places that hold of a piece of you that I feel like I’ll never really get back, and not in a way that’s sad or anything but I feel like there are all these little pieces of Fletcher that have been put all over that city in a way that’s like really nostalgic and sometimes painful but also a reminder of how much growth can happen.”
New York’s influence on Fletcher goes further than her own time there. Most of the artists she cites as her biggest influences have their own experiences with the city; Patti Smith, Madonna, Lady Gaga, David Bowie (of course that’s not the reason she picked them, but it’s a fun connection).
She uses songwriting as a form of therapy, processing her emotions in the studio and putting them out into the world for others to relate to. “We all just want to feel connected and understood and heard,” she says, “and it’s really like the only reason why I make music.” From breakup songs and cheating partners to emotional dedications to the Me Too movement, there’s no bullshit in Fletcher’s discography. Sometimes its stripped back, and sometimes it comes with a SOPHIE remix in tow, but the common thread is always her sincerity.
“I think my humanity is so beyond intertwined with my artistry, and I do what I do because I feel like I needed as a little kid growing up, to see more humanity in artistry, and especially within female artistry and specifically within the female pop space. I grew up with a lot of role models, but I just felt like everything had to look and feel and be a certain way, and I questioned for a long time if I would ever be able to be a pop star, because like I don’t feel represented in what I’m seeing”.
Every interview with FLETCHER reveals something new and really interesting. To me, she is one of the most honest artists around. Not that her previous work was lacking authenticity and spark. I feel THE S(EX) TAPES marked a real high for her career. CLASH profiled FLETCHER last year. Among the topics covered, she discusses being a queer artist and how that has shaped her career. It is clear how much music means to her:
“When asked why she got involved with music, she describes it as a “lifeline”. “Growing up, I was a nervous kid. I didn't have a lot of friends. I kept a lot of things bottled up and I was really scared, but writing songs felt like a way of releasing things,” she explains. The artist went from writing in her diary, standing in as a Disney princess and Hannah Montana impersonator throughout high school, to landing a spot on X Factor USA. “For me, following the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and, and Whitney Houston and telling a story through the art of performance has been something that’s so important to carry through my music.”
Now with a rapidly growing fanbase, FLETCHER’s aspirations with her platform are simple — to keep it honest. “Now people are following me because they give a fuck about what I have to say and what I feel. I think people are craving sincerity and transparency more than ever,” she tells Clash. “I'm so over the bullshit. I'm so over the idea that everything's perfect. Life isn't that way, shit is messy and my life is a hot fucking mess. I have no idea what I'm doing the majority of the time, but things have to feel organic and that's why everything comes from my heart.”
FLETCHER’s latest release ‘If I Hated You’ is out now. Having seen the video, Clash asked her about the inspiration for the track. “'If I Hated You' is the best visual representation of what the whole EP looks and feels like. The EP is called The S(ex) Tapes. All the visuals were shot by my ex and I wanted this EP to just be a really fucking honest representation of what it is like to love somebody, have such a connection, but also have all these questions,” she explains. “From exploring my sexuality to never having been on my own before and having co-dependency issues, or not knowing how to deal with shit by myself; I wanted to sit in that and heal from the things I've been running away from.”
For FLETCHER, this EP ties back into portraying her authentic self. “I wanted to start with 'If I Hated You' because it feels voyeuristic. Everybody's always putting up some kind of front or some kind of filter,” she tells Clash with a sense of frustration at the industry. “Women in the music industry have an expectation to present things in a way that feels relatable. Be funny but don't be too funny, be crazy but not be too crazy because you don't want to think you're off your meds. There's nothing wrong with being on medication, so what's the fucking issue with that?”
“My sexuality has obviously shaped my experience and is a part of who I am. It's something that I will always talk about and I will always be open to talking about. Fighting for and standing with the LGBTQ+ community is something that I will always do, I will always fight for my community and I will always speak up about it,” she begins, “That said, my sexuality is not my headline. It is not the focus of the story. It doesn't matter if I wrote a fucking song about a girl, a boy, a trans or nonbinary person, or if I wrote about a fucking rock.”
Taking a minute to pause, she also throws out the a very relevant off-the-cuff question: "first of all, who the fuck created gender?".
Getting back on track, she picks up where she left off: "My favourite colour is turquoise, and this is also my sexuality; I'm queer. I will always talk about it and it's really important to me, but it's not my headline. My sexuality and the struggle with my sexuality is part of my humanity, but there's also a fuck ton of other things that make me who I am. We should always speak up, we should always tell our truth, but my sexuality is not at the forefront of my personal story”.
That is a really intriguing and memorable interview that I would urge people to read in full. As her new single, Healing, came out very recently, I wonder whether we will get another E.P. from FLETCHER before the end of 2021.
PHOTO CREDIT: Shannon Beveridge
Apologies to play around with chronology and being a bit random in terms of the information sourced. I want to bring in an interview from The Forty-Five, as we find out about the story behind the name, FLETCHER, and why being hopelessly romantic is important to her:
“FLETCHER – real name Cari – calls me from a beach on the Californian coast. She had to get out of her apartment, she explains, because everything around her carried the weight of too many memories about her ex-girlfriend. ‘THE S(EX) TAPES’ might feel like the final word on their relationship, a chapter closed – but of course, it’s complicated. The project was just as much a visual one, following a cinematic arc: seven music videos for seven tracks. And who was behind the camera? FLETCHER’s ex, the lines between artist and muse, as ever, blurred.
And while the story might be a little unfinished, it captures a moment in time while they were in quarantine together, where the world outside was just as confusing as their own, private one. It’s this no holds barred outpouring of feeling that makes FLETCHER a pioneer in a world in which we can be unapologetically ourselves, in all our chaos.
“I’m so interested in this idea of FLETCHER being a persona. Who is she? How is FLETCHER different to Cari, and why is it important to have a separation between the two for you, as an artist?
That’s an idea I’ve been playing with for a really long time – not for anything other than my mental health. From a really young age, I decided that I needed to be the artist who I needed growing up, who I really needed as a little girl, and so like Cari really needed FLETCHER. It’s the thing that keeps me going and reminds me of the reason why I do this. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the connection my music makes with people. Somebody said something the other day: that my music made it easier for them to breathe again. I just broke down crying when I heard that. FLETCHER allows me to step into all my superpowers and my vulnerabilities. At the same time, they’re also the same person. Cari is really sensitive and soft and tender, and FLETCHER is too, but I think… FLETCHER is my highest self – future me – and I’m always trying to step into that. It’s definitely been an interesting journey.
You’re completely unfazed by being direct in your music. Is there any fiction – or artistic license, if you will – involved with the songs you write, or is it all taken entirely from your real experiences?
I think every single song that I’ve ever written has come from a real thought or a real feeling, even if it’s just the foundation of the song. One of the most personal songs on it is a song called ‘Sex with my Ex’, and the lyrics were just pulled from a text message exchange with my ex and the conversation we had when we met up. I remembered it really vividly, and I just wanted to put a melody to those words. At the core of every single song, it always stems from a real feeling and a real place.
In a world of ghosting and swiping left and right, why is it important to you to defend being a hopeless romantic?
The desire to have things so quickly is because we’re all just craving connection, and wanting to be loved and seen and held. At the root of that, we all just have this fucking massive fear of loss of connection and loss of belonging. We still need to be talking about what love looks like. I’ve never been on a dating app, so maybe I’m missing the whole point of it – or maybe that’s what makes me a hopeless romantic, because I’m like, ‘No! In person, real feelings!’ I don’t think it’s necessarily lost, but it’s just covered up by a lot of shit, a lot of masking, of people being afraid to admit they want to be loved. That’s what we all want at the end of the day, and I think that’s where so much pain in the world comes from, too.
I’m curious – did you ever fall back in love with New York? You live in LA now, how do those cities differ for you and what effect have the two places had on you and your music?
I’ve definitely fallen back in love with New York City. For a while, when a place or things are so connected with somebody, it’s really hard to feel anything different other than the feelings that the other person left you with in that space. It was hard for me to be in New York, and then after a while I’d gone back and spent time, made new memories, and you know, found new restaurants and new bars, and was in love there again. New York City has become un-ruined for me and made me start feeling all the things that made me think, ‘Yes, this is the reason why I loved this city in the first place’. My family lives in Jersey, and I’m home often – I’m like a real big homebody – and yeah, I think I’m such an east coast girl at heart, you know. I’ve learned to love it again, which is kind of metaphorical for my self-love journey, if you will, that I’m on at the moment. I’m just figuring out how to look at it in a new way and love it again.
Tell me about your choice to stay away from using gendered pronouns in your music.
I’ve never really wanted anybody to feel removed from the story. The important part of a song is the intention and the emotion behind it. When I’m listening to something, I’m immediately trying to relate it to my life in some capacity. The lyrics probably mean something so different to me compared to the person who originally wrote them. The important part about the song is the emotion and the intention behind it. I wanted to give people as much opportunity as possible to immerse themselves in the story. At the end of the day, gender doesn’t have anything to do with it at all. It doesn’t fucking matter. If you got heartbroken, or turned on by, or hooked up with a non-binary person or a trans person or a cis person – male, female, whoever – it doesn’t fucking matter. I put it in the song if it feels necessary for me as part of the story that I feel like sharing, but I am really conscious of it because at the end of the day, what is gender, anyway? It’s just a construct, so who cares?”.
I am going to move on and wrap things up in a moment. Do some digging and listen to FLETCHER’s songs and find as many interviews as you can. This is an artist who is producing some wonderful music and seems determined to endure and keep recording for many years more. I’ll finish up by bringing in LADYGUNN. They explain why THE S(EX) TAPES is so essential and powerful:
“FLETCHER provides an important space in pop by showing that there is room for the LGBTQ+ community in mainstream music today. With “THE S(EX) TAPES,” providing a space of normalcy for those within the community to have relatable art that talks about love, sex, and the struggles of any relationship. She shows that the gender of who you are singing about does not change the emotions behind it. That being said, for those who rarely hear love described with the pronouns that mirror the way they love, it can mean so much to have music that feels like it was from a perspective they know. It can be easy to forget that not so long ago, there wasn’t anybody to look to if you loved in a way that was outside of how you were told you were supposed to.
The songs themselves on “THE S(EX) TAPES” really encapsulate the emotions of meeting someone perfect for you at the wrong time in life. For anyone going through a hard breakup, this album is sure to be a lifesaver to blast in your room late at night. The tracks don’t shy away from the more challenging emotions in a breakup with sorrow, love, bitterness, fantasy, and brutal truth being just a few of the ones running throughout the whole project. FLETCHER vocalizes the things you hear your friends whisper at 3 am when they are curled up next to you on a couch feeling their way through heartbreak.
FLETCHER’S actual vocals are strong and clear while maintaining an emotional tone that only adds to her storytelling lyrics. The base tracks of the songs are synth-heavy with a focus on rhythmic beats that grip your hands as they pull you along for the ride side by side with FLETCHER .
I’ll shall leave it there. The amazing FLETCHER is going from strength to strength. It will be great to see what comes next and how her career progresses. Healing is the latest remarkable track from the American artist. If you have not discovered her yet, then make sure that you…
RIGHT that now.