Juliet Ivy is high on life

14 October, 2024

Juliet Ivy. Photo by Marisa Bazan for NME

“How high should I go?” Juliet Ivy calls as she scales a water tower on a graffiti-covered rooftop in East Williamsburg. Dressed in a pink puff-sleeve mini dress, her chestnut plaits tied with ribbons, she stands out like a pink cloud against the industrial Brooklyn skyline.

This wasn’t planned – but nothing with Ivy ever is. The 23-year-old spotted the water tower and climbed it, thinking it would make a cool shot for her NME cover. A native New Yorker, Ivy loves an impromptu adventure; this isn’t even the first water tower she’s ascended.

“I felt alive up there,” she says when her black combat boots finally touch the concrete. Her face is flushed with adrenaline, or maybe it’s the rosy blush on her cheeks. The moment feels fitting for someone who often finds herself caught between the thrill of the present and the weight of pondering her own existence. Ivy’s music reflects that tension, grappling with existential themes while unpacking the disorienting experience of coming of age. There’s a playful curiosity to how she confronts these amorphous ideas, as if inviting you to embrace the chaos with a wink.

It’s a quality especially evident in her 2023 breakout track, ‘We’re All Eating Each Other’, which she’s previously described as “nihilism but make it girly pop”.

This bright blend of opposing forces – deep reflection and girlish whimsy – captures the complete spectrum of Ivy’s artistry, thriving in the liminal space between the two. For her NME shoot, she pairs a 1940s pink tutu sourced from a vintage shop in Los Angeles with her combat boots and heavier makeup. The contrast is striking, like her music: her voice is sweet, almost delicate, yet her lyrics dig into thornier, more complicated subjects. “But we’re all gonna die / Decompose into daffodils and dandelions,” she muses on ‘We’re All Eating Each Other’. It went viral on TikTok, racking up nearly 20 million streams.

“That song is literally about dying,” she tells NME, sitting at a table in a small Japanese cafe a few blocks from where she chased the skyline just an hour ago. “I was like, ‘Are people gonna like this?’ And the fact that so many did was so gratifying because it felt like that was so me to want to write that and put it out.”

This fascination with the metaphysical has been with Ivy since childhood. Born and raised in Forest Hills, Queens – a quieter, more residential neighbourhood in New York City with tree-lined streets and Tudor-style homes – she naturally became curious about the world around her. Her father, a psychologist, was her sounding board for these ruminations. “Ever since I was little, we would have conversations about the human brain and behaviour,” she explains. “He shows me articles, videos, research he’s done… If I wasn’t writing music, I’d want to be a psychologist because I just find it so interesting how everyone’s so different and how the brain responds to different stimuli.”

Her father’s background gave her the intellectual foundation that underpins her songwriting, fueling her hyper-fixation on life’s biggest mysteries. “I can’t believe I’m on this earth,” she says, “It gives me chills when I think about it.” Her Chinese and Colombian heritage also informs her creative expression: “My two cultures are so different, but they’re both equally me.” This duality shapes how she approaches every facet of her art, from her sound to her style. She’s not one to choose – she wants it all. “I want to do whatever feels true to me, whether it’s folky or poppy, or something else entirely… I try to bring that spirit into everything – how I dress, my branding, my music, my performances.”

When Ivy first began writing music, she thought she had to follow the typical singer-songwriter formula of penning love songs. But that changed with ‘Breakfast Song’, an early track she credits as a turning point in her process. “I remember feeling stuck, unsure of what to write about,” she says, reflecting on a conversation with her best friend. “He reminded me of this realisation I had, where I was ranting about how advice doesn’t really make sense because it’s so contradictory – like, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ but also ‘trust your gut,’ or ‘slow and steady wins the race,’ but you also have to ‘go after what you want.’ None of it actually lines up, and I started thinking, ‘What are we supposed to do?’ Nobody really knows, we’re all just floating, trying to figure it out.” When he suggested turning this epiphany into a song, she took the idea into a Los Angeles session with songwriter Madeline Boreham and producer Jack Kleinick – two friends she met while attending NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music – and everything clicked.

“It was my favourite song ever. It felt so real and so me,” she says. That song opened the floodgates for Ivy to explore more unconventional themes in her music – streams of consciousness, random thought spirals, and internal conflicts. Tracks like ‘We’re All Eating Each Other’ and ‘Wet Nose’ became a reflection of her inner world. “I love when people tell me my songs tap into feelings they didn’t even realise they had. It’s about these fleeting thoughts that we all experience but rarely acknowledge. That’s what I want to write about.” As she puts it, “Everyone’s going to die, but not everyone’s going to fall in love.”

“I want to spend this existence exactly how I want because it’s just crazy to be here at all”

Her mother – a former editor-in-chief of a magazine – on the other hand, nurtured Ivy’s aesthetic sensibilities, introducing her to the world of fashion and design. “I would go into the [fashion] closet and play dress-up,” she recalls. That early exposure left a lasting mark on her personal style – an eclectic mix of vintage finds and “girly things” – which she now uses to shape her artistic identity. Ivy styles herself, and the pink bows aren’t just a passing trend; they’ve become a signature part of her brand. So has the vintage Daisy Rock butterfly guitar, an early 2000s alt-girl essential, gifted to her by her parents for Christmas two years ago.

While her debut project, ‘Playpen,’ explored how she saw the world, her latest EP, ‘Tiny But Scary,’ turns the lens inward. “I want people to get to know me and how I feel about myself in a more introspective way,” Ivy explains. The EP delves into themes of reconnecting with her inner child (‘4 Foot 2’) and confronting her need for validation (‘Is It My Face?’), capturing the push-and-pull between holding onto youth and embracing adulthood. “Over the past year, I’ve started becoming myself,” she reflects on her post-college journey and the doubts that have surfaced. “I love being youthful, and growing older is scary. I think about my parents a lot – there’s a song about them on the EP [‘Kid’] – and all the thoughts I have as time passes.” This fear of change and the emotional baggage of growing up play a central role on tracks like ‘Girl Talk’, in which she tunes into her intuition to help her through a particularly difficult period where she was struggling with her mental health.

“It presents like this sweet-sounding music, but then I feel like, if you listen to the lyrics, I am really trying to be vulnerable about hard times and scary thoughts,” she says. “That’s all part of what being a girl or being a human is. I find a lot of beauty in that.”

If her music delves into the quiet corners of existence, Ivy herself is far from quiet. “I literally have not changed. It’s so funny,” she laughs. She’s always been this way – bubbly, excitable, and eager to live in the moment. “Having fun is probably one of the top three priorities in my life,” she says. “I’m extremely extroverted. I need to be around people. As a New Yorker, I just love the hustle. I’ve always been like that.”

In a pop landscape full of “lowercase girl” archetypes – those quiet observers who craft introspective, understated songs – Ivy somehow fits in and stands out simultaneously. Her music fits neatly into that tradition (her song titles are, after all, purposefully stylised in lowercase), but Ivy herself is all caps. “I used to only text in capitals,” she says. “Everyone who knows me, from when I got a phone to mid-high school, knows I only texted in all caps because I was just excited about life.”

Looking ahead, Ivy’s intuition is guiding her to a new chapter, one where she embraces change and self-compassion. “My gut is telling me to be kind to myself and breathe a little bit,” she says. “It used to be go, go, go. And I love that mentality – like, next thing, next song, just keep pushing. But I feel like ‘Playpen’ and ‘Tiny But Scary’ were [the] A and B sides of something. Now, I’m entering something new, getting to know myself again.”

She pauses to consider the shift. “I’ve been feeling different for the past couple of months. Change is happening, but I’m not scared of it.” Energetically, something feels new. “Summer is usually my favourite season, but weirdly, I’m excited for the fall this year.” Just the other day, she found herself writing a holiday song – just her and her guitar in her childhood bedroom. “It’s not the most natural thing for me, honestly,” she says of writing solo. “I’m more comfortable in social situations. I like to bounce off someone. But my intuition has been telling me recently that I should try it more… There are emotions you can only access by yourself, and something is calling me to do that, to do some real inner digging.”

Yet, that mindset of seizing every opportunity has deep roots. “When I was about nine, my parents and I were boarding a plane… The cockpit door was open, and [the pilot] was like, ‘Hey, do you want to make an announcement on the speaker?’ But I was too scared, and I said no. I’ve regretted that decision for my entire life.”

She laughs, acknowledging how random it might sound, but the regret is real. “I still think about it. It was such a cool opportunity, and I was too afraid to take it. I cried about it, and I told myself I’d never miss out on something like that again.”

That moment, however small, shaped her philosophy: say yes. “Whenever someone asks, ’Do you want to try this?’ – even if it’s something weird or out of the ordinary – I always do it. I don’t want to live with that feeling of regret again. I will climb the water tower because I want to do it. I don’t want to be bound by anything. I want to spend this existence exactly how I want because it’s just crazy to be here at all.”

Juliet Ivy’s ‘Tiny But Scary’ EP is out now via AWAL

Listen to Juliet Ivy’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music