Sasami: “It felt edgy to do something that’s cringy to me”
It’s the early 2000s, and you’ve just started high school in Los Angeles. You need to find your crowd and, more importantly, what sort of music they’re listening to. The skaters with the DC Shoes would be surefire Blink-182 and Green Day fans; the cheerleaders would definitely own Britney Spears CDs. And if you took one look at then-teenage Sasami Ashworth and her heavy eyeliner, you’d quite rightly assume she wouldn’t be caught dead listening to the Billboard Hot 100.
“That didn’t represent me because I didn’t feel like I was like a mainstream person. I was always a very alt kid, you know,” she reflects. “I was a weird jock-band-nerd-goth hybrid.” So it might surprise you to know that Ashworth has pivoted away from the world of nu metal that garnered her critical acclaim on her second album ‘Squeeze’ and into the world of pop. Her latest, ‘Blood On The Silver Screen’, is one where this alt kid teams up with co-producer Jenn Decilveo (Miley Cyrus, Fletcher) and Rostam (Vampire Weekend) to create by far her most accessible record to date.
But then again, perhaps it’s not that surprising anymore. Streaming and playlists have completely rewritten the rules since Ashworth left high school; tribes all blur into each other, and pop has become less of a forbidden territory for everyone. “Now I feel like kids grow up and they dress goth, but they’re a cheerleader and they listen to hip-hop and country,” she observes. “Things in general feel so much less structured than when I was raised, so I think it’s an exciting time – I’m into the lawlessness of every element of human life.”
Pop, it turns out, was exactly what Ashworth spiritually needed after the exhaustion of her previous album. Following her indie rock-inflected singer-songwriter debut back in 2019, 2022’s ‘Squeeze’ was Ashworth’s “anti-toxic positivity” persona who could flip from grinding industrial cuts like ‘Say It’ to more straightforward metal anthems like ‘Skin A Rat’: “Hell-fucked economy / Crisis identity / In a skin-a-rat mood!”.
But touring ‘Squeeze’ started to take its emotional toll on Ashworth. “I got really angry and dark during the ‘Squeeze’ era because that was the character: maniacal, cathartic, almost violent, aggressive energy. At the end of that, I definitely felt battered from that,” she recalls. “So, I wanted to make music that felt really fun and uplifting.”
Though pop might seem to be a hard pivot for the musician, Ashworth openly acknowledges she was “shameless” in stealing her metal sound. “I was like, yes, metal has this reputation for this white supremacist, misogynist, gross rape culture, but there’s a lot of musical elements here that I can use to communicate with my community,” she explains. “There are things that I’m critical about pop culture, but there are musical things that I love.”
“I isolated a lot of people with ‘Squeeze’, but I also really condensed the people that are in my community because they know that I’m here for the art.”
For Ashworth, the value of pop lies in its ability to empower the listener, something she found useful when getting through draining tour bus rides or pushing through a gym session. She deep dove into pop songwriting for ‘Blood’, taking her cues from the likes of Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga. Meanwhile, the reference to Dolly Parton on opener ‘Slugger’ points to Ashworth’s continued interest in country music.
“There’s something so amazing about how country artists can be self-deprecating, horny, hilarious, succinct and vulnerable all at the same time,” she smiles. “Country music is almost like the ultimate pop music because it’s storytelling and funny but sad.”
That’s another element that was unlocked for Ashworth: humour. “I’m actually a very silly person in real life and my music never reflects that. So it was definitely experimental for me to try to imbue some of that into the songs. There’s an earlier version of me that would be like, ‘oh my god, that’s so dumb’ – now, I’m like, ‘yeah, but that’s also so real…’”
To see a grungey rock star like Ashworth dance in a music video or even a TikTok is strange, and it’s a conflict she acknowledges. On the one hand, she thinks “it’s crazy that indie artists are expected to operate in a way that’s in any way analogous to pop culture, it’s a very weird phenomenon. I don’t know [if] that suits the quality of music very well; that people are expected to put as much energy into an album marketing campaign as they are to the music itself.”
And yet, Ashworth also acknowledges that as she’s not a “nepo baby rich kid”, it’s indeed a “privilege” to be able to be a full-time musician. “I’m highly aware of the fact that I have to sell tickets,” she continues. “My label supports me financially and creatively in a lot of ways, so I’m willing to compromise by experimenting with ways to help them market it. But that’s a really unglamorous way of saying I feel like a plumber every time I make a TikTok – it’s laborious to me.
“I’m not a pop star and I was not born with an ounce of that kind of energy,” she adds. “I always thought of myself as the funny, fat sidekick friend, I did not grow up a hot, popular frontperson at all. So it’s all performance to me, and that’s fun.”
“I’m into the lawlessness of every element of human life.”
‘Blood On The Silver Screen’ takes its name from lead single ‘Honeycrash’, which sees Asworth donning double denim and dancing in front of an enormous LED screen, with fire, volcanoes and thunderstorms raging behind her. Instead of a “traditional, straightforward” definition of love, the love in ‘Honeycrash’ is “as extreme as people being slaughtered in a movie. It’s not ‘someone didn’t text me back’, it’s a love that I would die for. That was the kind of histrionic melodrama I wanted to imbue into the album.”
Histrionic melodrama is not the tack you’d expect a cool, disaffected indie musician to take. But after the dramatics of ‘Squeeze’, it was a challenge Ashworth felt was worth taking on. “It felt edgy to do something that’s cringy to me,” she says. “Anything that pushes me outside of my comfort zone is exciting and exhilarating. That means something different to everyone: double kick pedals or metal guitars or whatever, that would feel really shocking and new, but to me, that’s just standard now. Saying something really earnest feels edgy to me.”
Ashworth’s continued dedication to experimentation and challenge has seen her fans stick with her through three very distinct eras, leaving her future wide open for possibilities. “I went so crazy on ‘Squeeze’, I was like, the people who ride for me, ride for me,” she reasons. “They’re here for the visceral experience, no matter what the genre is. And I feel really lucky about that because now I don’t think people expect anything from me.
“It’s liberating to have made that choice – I think I isolated a lot of people with ‘Squeeze’, but I also really condensed the people that are in my community because they know that I’m here for the art.”
Sasami’s new album ‘Blood On The Silver Screen’ is out March 7 via Domino Records.
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Alex Rigotti
NME
