LINKS

Listen to Fenne Lily's music on Spotify (or elsewhere).

You too can hate on love with Courtney's Love Is No Big Truth playlist on Spotify, and enjoy that Summer Camp song.

TRANSCRIPT

Melissa: Hello, I'm Melissa Locker. 

Courtney: And I'm Courtney E. Smith. 

Melissa: And you are listening to Songs My Ex Ruined, the show where we talk about songs have been ruined by our exes. Fenne Lily, thank you so much for joining us on this show today. We are so excited to have you and to have you tell us about a song that an ex has ruined for you.

Fenne: Thank you for having me. I've been listening to your existing episodes. I really like this. It's a really good idea.

Courtney: Oh, thank you. I listened to your three new songs today, and I really like them. They're very beautiful. 

Fenne: Ooh, thanks.

Melissa: Oh, this is just a mutual appreciation society. 

Fenne: I'm English, so I'm still getting used to people being nice about stuff that I make and me doing the same and it not ending in me having to just leave. It's a British thing to just like, never mention that you like somebody's work and kind of just leave that whole side of things untouched. 

Melissa: Yeah, a good friend of mine is British, grew up in Birmingham, moved to New York, we became friends there. She lived in New York for about 10 years, then moved back to London. And she's really struggling because she has this now like duality where she’s like, “Do I hug them? Do I not hug them? ” And she's, she'll like call her American friends and be. I need to have a feeling for a moment, and no one here can handle it. I'm like, “Please, give me all your feelings.”

Fenne: Truly this, this is the biggest culture difference I've experienced since I've been living here. There's like way more conversation about stuff that is actually relevant emotionally compared to the amount of small talk you have to wade through in the UK. I think it just comes from insecurity and trying not to be embarrassment or something. There's still like a lot of like embarrassment wrapped around speaking about how you feel, just jumping in real deep.

Courtney: Americans love to be embarrassing. It's like our hobby, frankly.

Melissa: National pastime. Move over, baseball. 

Courtney: So, yeah, I mean, seriously, tell us about a song an ex ruined for you? We tend to get right into it, you know?

Fenne: Yeah, I was struggling for a definite answer to this. I had a, a long list, but I settled on Donny Hathaway's cover of “Jealous Guy.” I will preface everything I'm going to say on this episode by saying: I feel like I'm unable to have a song ruined by somebody purely because I am a musician and I have to — I don't have to — but I choose to write about ex's for my job. So, the idea of a song being ruined by an ex is almost impossible for me to accept, but this is definitely a song that I can't really bring myself to listen to anymore.

Melissa: Okay, so I have not actually heard this song before. 

Fenne: I'll sing it for you. No. It's off a live album that he did in 1972, and this, this album was my ex's only vinyl record. 

Courtney: What? I don't even understand, that doesn't compute already.

Fenne: It's sweet. He just didn't really have much stuff, and he gave me this record for my birthday, the first birthday that we spent together as a couple. This was like a very big deal for him to give me this special record, and it was kind of the soundtrack to our relationship for a while, purely because we only had one record to listen to.  

Courtney: Yes, necessity is the mother of invention.  

Fenne: I mean, I didn't know it was a cover because I'm stupid.

Courtney: That's not stupid. Can I tell you that that was me? Like, I didn't know every Linda Ronstadt song was a cover when I was a kid and my mom listened to a lot of Linda Ronstadt. And I found out the hard way, multiple times. 

Fenne: The hard way is the way I learn about most stuff I should know music wise. Being like smug and telling a story about something and someone's like, “None of what you said is true and that's fine.”

Melissa: Okay, but I have a bigger question. Who is Donny Hathaway? 

Fenne: I'll give you some facts, Donny facts.

Courtney: Yes give a little background on him.

Fenne: I don't that much about him. I just know like the, probably all of what I'm about to say is not true and someone will sweetly correctly in the future. He was born in 1945, so he was 27 when he made this live record. Which is unbelievable to me, cause if you hear it, it's so good. Because I'm 26, I think I just turned 26. I'm getting to that point where I'm like, ‘What is my age? I'll have to Google it later.” But yeah, he was 27 when he made this record, about a year after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizophrenia. And he was on a bunch of meds and then he stopped taking his meds and then jumped out of a window when he was in his thirties. But he made like so many records in that time. He was so prolific and he was married to or with, I'm gonna get this person wrong, I think it was Roberta Flack. I am unclear about that. 

Courtney: As an aside, listeners, they were not married — or romantically involved, for that matter. This has been fact checked by Courtney. 

Fenne: So those are all the Donny facts I know. 

Courtney: He's just a really great soul singer…  and I love “This Christmas” — which he’s one of the co-writers of. 

Melissa: So how did this person you were dating end up with just this one album?

Fenne: He was kind of a, a minimal person. He had like two pairs of trousers and a cup. This kind of thing, kind of monk-y. Not monkey, like monk-esque. 

Melissa: Okay.

Courtney: That's an important delineation. 

Fenne: Monk-like. 

Melissa: I have dated people like that before. It's so weird where it's like you just go to their house and they're like, “Oh, I, I only have this one chair. And this one table and this one album and this one fork.” And you're just like, “Cool, so if we get delivery, you have to, can we get chopsticks delivered or something? Are we sharing the fork? I don't understand.” 

Fenne: It's kind of sweet though ‘cause I like to think that that extends to like, “I'm not gonna be sleeping with a bunch of people. I, I pick you, I have one spoon, one pillowcase, and one person that I love.” But that can also be kind of intense cause you're like, the only thing, I feel like I'm guardedly giving a lot of information about why this relationship ended. 

Courtney: Yeah, I was gonna say, is that the thing that pulled you into the relationship, that sort of energy, or was there something else about him that was the draw?

Fenne:  He listened to me and wasn't scary and I had dated a string of people that were the opposite. 

Melissa: God, we have such a low bar for men sometimes. Sorry. 

Fenne: Dude, I mean, just people in general. Like maybe this is another English-ism, but wanting to be listened to seemed to me for a long time like a bonus thing that special people earned. But now I see that it's just something that we all deserve and should be happening all the time. But I, yeah, I was with a lot of people that were actively trying to keep me quiet and to the side. And then this person came along and made me feel important and seen and cool. I think he had this one record ‘cause he had more, and then he did that thing where he like left a house and just left all his stuff in the house. It's coming back to me now. Which I don't understand. Cause I'm very attached to my things. Like I showed you my coasters that look like a chest of drawers. I like my weird little things. But yeah, he was attractive to me for that reason. 

Melissa: So it's interesting when you named the title of the song, I was like, “Oh was he a jealous guy?” Like I realized it was very, very literal, but it seemed like such a great reason to dump somebody or you know, just to have a song ruined as somebody, like jealousy. And so I feel like “Jealous Guy” could be sort of a red flag, but apparently it had nothing to do with that.

Fenne: Well, this is one of the reasons why it was top of my list. There's another side to this person and this song, which is that we started out very smooth and then it got to a point where the pressure of being each other's only thing ‘cause we were dating through lockdown and covid. 

Courtney: Oh, okay, okay. That's a new…

 Fenne: It's fresh.

Courtney: …That's an important aspect of the dynamic.

Fenne: Definitely. So, we became each other's only thing and we started fighting all the time. Like it was almost like an activity. It would be like, cook, have sex, have a fight, all over again. It was bizarre. But one time we had such a big fight that he went and stayed with somebody else for a few nights. And I follow him on Spotify, I still follow him on Spotify. I didn't know you could follow people, so I followed him and then I couldn't figure out how to change it. So while we were in this fight, I went on Spotify and I saw that he was listening to two songs on repeat. The first was “Evil Woman.” 

Courtney: No.

Fenne: And the second was “Jealous Guy,” and I was like, “Oh my, my God.” 

Melissa: Wow, he has really literal music taste. 

Fenne: We talked about it after and he was like, “That wasn't a conscious thing.” It's an, “Evil Woman” is such a tune. But there was definitely something subconscious there.

Melissa: That is definitely an unconscious like, “Hmm, what song do I wanna listen to right now? I know, ‘Evil Woman.’” 

Courtney: It's just for the baselines though. It's not anything to do with the lyrics.

Fenne: Yeah, yeah. It's just for the backing vocals, guys. 

Melissa: I don’t listen to lyrics. It's cool. Yeah, sure.

Fenne: I wish I could remember what I was listening to. Probably like, “I'm With You,” Avril Lavigne. 

Courtney: That's like sad Avril Lavigne, wow. 

Fenne: I'm standing on a bridge, I'm waiting in the dark. That's my angry music. 

Melissa: Wow, that's your angry music? You need to listen to more PJ Harvey. 

Courtney: Have you heard of the ‘90s? Just a quick question.

Fenne: Um, PJ Harvey actually went to my school. Fun fact. Endorse it. I know. 

Melissa: Do they have at least a plaque in her honor?

Fenne: I should make one next time I go home.

Melissa: Because Elliot Smith went to my high school, and there was actually a plaque. 

Courtney: Oh wow, that's cool. 

Fenne: That is very cool. Didn't someone paint over the Elliott Smith wall? 

Melissa: The mural in LA? I think they were one too and they painted over a chunk of it, but I think there's still a part left.

Fenne: Oof. 

Courtney: So can we talk just a little bit about how this sort of digital being able to see what people are doing has changed the way that we interact with music and with people and it can ruin songs for us? Um, cause I also have an experience like that with an ex, where I saw something that they were listening to and it made me very annoyed.

Melissa: Was it just Maroon 5? 

Courtney: No. 

Melissa: You're like, “Damn, they listen to Maroon 5? I'm out.” I mean, fair.

Courtney: This is an ex, actually, who's British, and we were in a long distance thing and I made a playlist, um, one of the times we broke up. I like to date people who I break up with a lot and then get back together with. That's my, that's vibe.

Fenne: That’s fun, yeah, it's good.

Melissa: I've literally never done that. 

Courtney: Keeps everything exciting for us all. I made a playlist that was very like, “fuck, love, love is no big truth” kind of vibes, and one of the songs on it was Summer Camp’s, “Better Off Without You.” And it's just this really cute sing-songy song about, you know, like, “It's great that we broke up and here's all the things I'm doing now that are, you know, making me happy and please don't call me anymore.” And, I listened to that playlist so much, so much, when that ended. And we were friends on Spotify, we'd done collaborative playlists together, like all the things you can do to share music on that platform, we did. So of course he saw what I was listening to, and then I saw that he started listening to it. And it started being on playlists of his. And I was like, “Look, no, this is my song. This is my song that's about this breakup with you. You cannot get involved in it. I don't wanna see it in your feed. This is not for you. This is mine. Back off.”

Fenne: That's like the music streaming equivalent of you guys having a like friends, like combining your friend groups, and then you realized that he started hanging out with all your friends without you. That's not cool.

Courtney: Totally. I'm like, go find your own songs about this breakup, you asshole. 

Fenne: There's famously so many songs. 

Courtney: There's so many! It's very inspirational for songwriters, I'm told.

Fenne: Yeah, option anxiety, though. It's almost too many. 

Courtney: It's true. 

Melissa: So, if you were dating through lockdown, when did it end? And also, can I just mention that you say you were dating during like, hardcore lockdown, so if you went to stay with somebody else, that’s like suddenly there's someone else in the bubble. Suddenly there's more germs exposure. Like that's terrifying, in a weird way. 

Fenne: Yeah, this was, um, in the UK we had three lockdowns. So we had like a very intense chunk, and then it ended. And there was a few months where restrictions were lifted and you could see people. And then that didn't work and everyone started getting COVID again, so it flipped back. I don’t how it was here, but yeah, that kind of coincided with the summer where everyone was marginally free for a while. But yeah, for the vast majority of it, if we had an argument, we would just be, we were sharing my one bedroom flat. So one of us would just sleep in the living room, and one of us would have the bedroom and there was never really any space.

Courtney: So, then this is a song you consider ruined or, if not ruined I'd love to know what word you would use, by association? By like, knowing, kind of seeing what he was doing and you're like, “Ooh, you took this thing that's from the good times of our relationship and really inserted it right into the bad time.”

Fenne: Yeah, I mean it's more just really loaded for me now. He listened to a lot of good music and actually, during the beginning of lockdown, I didn't want to listen to any music. I had released an album in the first month of COVID, meaning I felt like I was releasing it into a void. I couldn't tour. I felt like by the time everything opened up again, I wouldn't have a job anymore. It was really strange. So, I didn't really want to remind myself that music is my reason for being here. And that changed because he introduced me to music that didn't have really any connection to my music or my music taste, necessarily. He listened to a lot of soul, and I had never really explored that. So, now almost the whole genre, but I don't want to make a blanket statement about soul, but it's just kind of, it's heavy with these contrasting feelings of getting something really great from this person and having somebody that kept me sane and reinvigorated a really dwindling feeling of connection to music. But also on the other hand, the time that I spent with him was really up and down and we hurt each other a lot. So it's, I don't know, it falls in between those two extreme feelings where it now just- it does transport me back to a time, but maybe at some point it, it won't, but it just makes me feel like I'm back in, in that one bedroom house feeling angry and stuck.

Melissa: Is this a relationship that you think would've lasted longer without lockdown? Like I feel like so many people who had these sort of lockdown relationships just got this really intense, really fast-paced version. And some people are like, “This is great. It's gonna last forever.” And other people are like, “Wow, that was an experiment that didn't work out.”

Fenne: Yeah, I actually think that it wouldn't have happened without lockdown because I was booked to be playing shows for at least like six months of that year. So, we wouldn't have really seen each other. It may have lasted for that length of time. We were dating for two years, maybe it would've lasted for two years, but it would've been very long distance-based and sporadic intensity. So, I'm actually kind of grateful for being able to, I don't want to say it's an experiment, but it almost felt like an experiment. Like, can I be in the same space with somebody and try and grow a relationship and like stay in love with someone? Without the chance of going off for a couple of months or opening up to see other people. It was like domesticity was forced on us, but it almost felt like we were playing house, like we were playing some kind of long game. 

Courtney: How do you feel about that domesticity now, looking back? 

Fenne: The lasting piece of damage for me from lockdown and from that whole period of time, I think is gonna be my inability to be able to fully relax in a domestic setting. Even if it's just watching a movie with somebody, or having like a duvet day when you feel a bit crap and you just want to watch movies. As soon as I start doing that, I feel guilty and stressed and like I need to be a moving part of the world. It's stupid. Like, even like shopping for groceries now I'm like, “I'm an idiot. Why am I here? Why am I doing this stuff? I feel like I'm old before my time.” But I'm just like looking to cook myself a meal. Like it's given me this manic association with just doing regular person stuff that is gonna be hard to shake.

Courtney: That's so interesting. I mean, they keep saying that in the next four years we'll really understand the mental health ramifications of COVID, and that time period. So, I'm always curious, like I don't even understand what they're gonna be for me. I think your analysis of yourself is really impressive because I'm afraid to look at what I might have learned during COVID.  

Fenne: I was gonna ask you, but I realize that I'm not the interviewer, but I am interested to know this about people because… 

Courtney: You're welcome to ask us anything, yeah.

Fenne: Okay, your question back at you, what do you think, well, you're doing this podcast about songs that were ruined by people. Is there anything that COVID ruined? Like anything you overdid during lockdown that now you just like don't wanna do anymore. 

Melissa: Oh, I have something. I was at the grocery store. By the way, I do have to say grocery stores make all of us feel stupid, just in general. They’re just designed to make you feel dumb. Like you're like swearing at a box of Fruit Loops for 20 minutes being like, “Do I like Fruit Loops? I do.” 

Courtney: It's truly like a maze of trying to find things to make a meal, but also make it cost effective, but also get out of there quickly.

Fenne: And why are there so many different types of rice? That kind of thing. 

Melissa: Or just yogurt. You can just stare at the yogurt for like 20 minutes and like, I don't even eat yogurt. And I'll still just be like,” no, there's this one like coconut yogurt that's like good. And then it's like plain. But it's also…” I cannot tell you how many times I've had this conversation with myself in my head at the grocery store and then just walk away and being like, “I don't actually even like yogurt. Why am I here?”

Fenne: Yeah. You don't like a useless character from like a, from a video game or just like kinda standing and moving and standing and moving.

Melissa:Yeah, like a Sim.Just like…  But, um, . Anyway, so going back to your question about, uh, lockdown. Yes, I do. There's like, I think it's not so much like the lockdown is like the weird shortages that kept happening.And I figured this is like what our grandparents or whatever we're doing during the depression or like the wars or whatever I was at the store the other day and I couldn't find sriracha and suddenly the grocery person was just like, “There's a couple bottles over here.” And I just grabbed both of them, even though I didn't actually need both of them, but I was just like, “But what if in four months there's no sriracha? Then what?” 

Fenne: Like stockpiling. I remember things being like so in demand that the supermarkets were kind of privately hoarding items for loyal customers. like my bodega on my street, I went in and asked for flour and they said they didn't have any but they did for me. And they got some outta a secret part of the shop and I was like, “Wow, I'm in the inner circle. I can bake. Most people can't.” Yeah.

Melissa: Lucky you.

Fenne: That is an insidious feeling, like survival mode, in strange ways.

Melissa:  Yes, I'm just going to say, when the apocalypse comes and someone wants to trade me for some sriracha, I'm gonna be a barter power. 

Courtney: I think my lockdown was probably a little different, um, than you guys. I had broken up with my most recent ex for the first time. There will, there would be two more breakups in the future, like right before the month before lockdown happened. And  then in May, I got laid off from my job. And I'd started going to therapy after our breakup, and I quickly got diagnosed with PTSD. And so, I was going to therapy and like really for me it was like, “Oh, well I don't have a relationship, I don't have a job, I've watched all of the Married at First Sight that I can possibly handle for one lifetime. I might as well work on myself?” And so I started like, really getting into reading books about, PTSD and learning about who I was and why I'd made the decisions I made to that point. And doing a lot of cooking at home like everybody else. Also, you know, the normal hobbies, but it was less of a like, repetitive life for me, I think, because I was like discovering this person inside of me that I hadn't understood was there for a long time. 

Fenne: Wow. 

Courtney: I think maybe like the worst thing was all the texting with various exes, including that, one that happened. That's the relationship that I also wouldn't have had, like we would've stayed broken up and I would've dated other people if not for lockdown. But then we would go on to get back together a few times.

Fenne: Yeah, damn. 

Melissa: But did you try sriracha? Did you have any? 

Courtney: I did, there was constantly both red and green sriracha in the house. 

Fenne: There we go. 

Courtney: So, it was okay. There was a lot going on that first year of lockdown for me,  It was just different. It hit different as the kids say.

Fenne: Yeah, I don't know if I'm a kid anymore ‘cause I, I said that the other day and felt immediately so weird. I felt like when you, sometimes when you see like an elderly man wearing like a skinny jean and you're like, “He doesn't know what that means.” Like, we don't, we don't do that anymore. It's like, it's like using an old word. 

Courtney: He does. Okay, here's maybe the best theory about that that I've ever heard. My friend, shout out to Shawn Francis, came up with this theory, and I think it's true. That men stop their look at whatever year was their best year. They're just gonna dress like that for the rest of their life. Like that's the vibe forever. 

Melissa: Wow, that's interesting. 

Courtney: There's a whole bunch of guys who like, hit their peak in the early 2000s and they'll be wearing those clothes forever. That's the vibe. 

Fenne: It's like Brett Michaels. 

Courtney: Exactly! The bandana forever.

Melissa: That's ‘cause he is balding.

Fenne: I've been watching a lot of Rock of Love. He's such an interesting person to me because he is on one hand, the horniest, most simple mind. Like literally everything on the show, “He's like, and she cut up her knees really bad on the football challenge, and honestly, that was an enormous turn on.” Like, everything to him is arousing. But then on the other hand, I can see why people think he's sweet. He's emotionally intelligent in a, in a very simple, childlike way that I think is- he doesn't really mean harm. He definitely doesn't know that some things that he does are unacceptable. Like, he tried to get a girl to get his name tattooed on her skin. I feel like that was definitely a low point for him, that he didn't realize he was participating in, in a bad way. But he, yeah, he's- I mean, I could talk about Brett Michaels a lot more, but I won't. 

Courtney: That's the thing about the hair metal era is all those guys were kind of like that. Like doofy idiots, except Motley Crue who were maybe a little more nefarious, but everybody that came after them, it was like, “Yeah, let's just like, be pretty and we'll put on makeup and dance around and sing stupid songs. And it's like fun.” And I was like, “I feel like you missed the point of glam rock, but okay. Cool.”

Fenne: Yeah. It's kind of sweet. They're all like, “I'm gonna take you to my favorite ever shop.” And it's like a shop where they only sell like, jean jackets with jewels on? And you're like, “That was me when I was seven. And you're like a grown man and you love twinkly sparkly jackets.” It's kind of sweet.

Melissa: That is exactly what glam rock and hair metal was all about. It's like, let's put on spandex and glitter paint and sparkles and a lot of hairspray. It's gonna be so great. 

Fenne: Yeah, and alcohol problem. They drink so much on Rock of Love. Frankly though, that's a lot like my lockdown period. I wrote the album I'm about to release fully drunk. Like I was so… 

Courtney: Yeah, hey, that's the thing I did too much of in lockdown drink wine. Too much. 

Fenne: But are you still doing it? Yes. 

Courtney: No, actually. 

Fenne: Really? Amazing. 

Courtney: I just this year gave up drinking at home. 

Fenne: That's a really good rule.

Courtney: And it’s weird.

Fenne: That’s a really good rule.

Courtney: I do drink when I'm out - like it's a nice treat. 

Fenne: Are you out right now? I haven't been home in five days. Yeah, I had loads of Zooms in the first couple of weeks with my friends, and then they started happening at like two, and then it would be like as soon as I woke up it would be a Zoom. So, the whole day had shifted by about six hours. So, drinking started way earlier. And I don't know, I, I wrote a record though. But this is the weird thing when I keep being asked about like, “the process,” I think people are looking for a really insightful, like, artistic, uh, list of kind of tips, like process tips. But I don't really remember any of it. 

Melissa: So, what were you drinking at home? Were you like making yourself glamorous cocktails with little like, umbrellas and carving out pineapples? Or were you like…? 

Courtney: Or just G&Ts? Constant G & T’s?

Fenne: Just straight G - G, hold the T. No, my, my ex is, is and was a really good chef and a really good- what do you call someone who makes drinks? 

Melissa: Mixologist. 

Fenne: Yeah, so they were experimenting a lot with different things, and I would be the Guinea pig. It was a good, good deal.

Courtney: That’s fun.

Melissa: True. But I'm curious about this album that you wrote completely drunk. Do you think that helped make the songwriting easier or do you think, is this a process you're going to repeat in the future? 

Fenne: I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I was finding the pressure of this global disaster difficult in a lot of ways, including, but not limited to being able to feel my own stuff. I didn't know whether what I was feeling belonged to me, or whether it was a reaction to everyone else's fear, everyone else's stress, the pandemic in general. I just didn't really feel like anything that I was feeling belonged to me. I didn't think I was having any original thoughts, necessarily. So, I mean, I joke about writing it drunk, but I feel like that tapping into something subconscious is, is really hard, especially when there's a lot of background noise emotionally. And we all went through two years of, like the entire world was traumatized. And every day felt like both a struggle and like a good thing cause we weren't sick and we weren't having to work in a hospital or we weren't dying. Like it was crazy. Thinking about it now, like the amount of stressors through that time. Like you say that you lost your job. I didn't know if I would lose- like money was weird. Everything was so weird. So… 

Courtney: I had to explain things on my taxes to my accountant that he didn't realize were like things that were changed because of the pandemic, because everything was so weird.

Fenne: You're like, “Yeah, I sell foot pics now. I had to, I didn't have a choice.”

Courtney: I meant more like things around like health insurance and like the way the marketplace worked that he just wasn't aware of, during the pandemic only.

Fenne: Yeah, it was like a microclimate, emotionally and financially everything was so turned on its side. So I think, I mean, being drunk is just a way of switching off the part of your brain that, well, it's, you’re uninhibited. So, I guess it kind of helped with songwriting ‘cause I was able to tap into stuff that I wasn't when I was sober and freaking out. 

Courtney: Did it also give you a feeling of like, being more comfortable with being vulnerable in your songwriting?

Fenne: Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff that I was writing about at the time was, I mean, I didn't want the person I was sharing my life with to know everything I was feeling because I didn't want to rock the lifeboat. We were each other's only good thing for a long time. But obviously it wasn't perfect, and I didn't wanna lie to myself and I didn't wanna lie in songs.So a lot of what I was writing had to be kept private or had to be kind of written under the guise of being a character. I remember showing him a few songs and being like, “This was inspired by a short story that I read in the New York Times.” But it wasn't. 

Melissa: A Rose for Emily. So I'm a notorious lightweight when it comes to drinking and have done things like drunk dialed literally every single person on my contact list while walking home from a bar. It was only two blocks. It's not a very large contact list. My point is, there are certain things I wake up the next day and regret doing. So, when you're listening to this album or when you're going through sort of like the song recording process, are there certain songs you're like, “No, this song can never see the light of day?”

Courtney: Or is it only when you're talking to journalists after the fact that you're like, “Jesus Christ, I do not want to talk about this.” 

Fenne: Well, that's a really good add-on cause I think in talking, I am an accidental oversharer, constantly. But when it comes to writing, I'm very purposeful and I'm, I'm not very good at editing, but I find that I don't often need to edit because I'm already editing as I'm writing. I'm like processing as I'm writing. I'm not really processing or editing when I speak. I, I guess what I'm saying is I don't think before I speak, which is, uh, unhealthy and probably something I should work on. 

Courtney: But great for podcasts.

Fenne: Great for the press. But yeah, no, I think there's nothing I regret saying in a song. There's things I regret not saying to the person I was with before I put them in a song or felt like the last resort was to put it in a song cause I couldn't say it. I think the thing that I keep circling back to when I'm talking about the record is, it's kind of a record about a lot of unsaid stuff that would've been more beneficial, um, in a conversation rather than on an album.

Courtney: Well, do you have that conversation with your pandemic lockdown relationship person after the fact? Or will an album just come out and maybe they'll see this and maybe they won't kinda thing? 

Fenne: Yeah, I mean, we're not, we're not, not speaking, but we're not speaking. 

Courtney: Yeah, understood.

Fenne: Yeah, this was a healing decision for them to be with somebody who- I've never dated a musician before in a serious way. And I think being with somebody who is almost definitely mining situations that you share to work on later? That's a weird thing, and that was definitely a point of contention. So, my ex will probably hear the record in some capacity, or curiously start listening to it and furiously stop. I hope they listen to it because it's mainly a reaction to the best parts of that time. I'd never written about somebody in the present tense before, so I really tried to kind of, uh, preserve the, the falling in love rather than the falling apart this time. So, I hope they hear it for that reason, but I understand if they don't really want to do that. 

 

Melissa: I personally hope that they hear it in the cereal aisle of the grocery store.

Courtney: Ah, that's the worst. 

Fenne: Yeah, somebody messaged me earlier and said, “They're playing your music in Tesco.” which is interesting. 

Melissa: Oh wow, congratulations. 

Courtney: How do you feel about that? 

Fenne: I mean, any, any publicity is good publicity when it comes to supermarket playlists.

Melissa: Amazing, yeah. But I hope your ex someday is shopping for groceries and suddenly perks up his ears and is like, “Wait, is this song up about me?”

Fenne: I would love to be a person that was in touch with their exes. I think it's a really, it's a healthy fact to learn about someone when they're friends with the people that they used to share their life with. I think that's really cool. I don't really know why I'm not one of those people. I guess I'm not putting effort into being one of those people. Are you guys those people? 

Melissa: Absolutely not.

Courtney: I struggle with it. There are some exes who I would like to be in touch with and I consider us on friendly terms, but are we truly in touch? I don't know. It's hard to keep those people in your life, in a sincere and like any kind of way that has depth.

Fenne: Once you go 100, it's hard to go back to like 20 or whatever. 

Melissa: So when is the new album coming out? 

Fenne: April 14th.

Courtney: So tell everybody where they can find you and find your new album. And what is the title of your new album, by the way, for the people out at home listening?

Fenne: Great questions. It's called Big Picture. I guess it'll be on every type of streaming. I personally use Spotify. We're gonna be touring America and shit. It'll be on vinyl and CD. 

Melissa: So, great - people can go to their favorite local record store and buy your album on vinyl. 

Fenne: There we go.

Courtney: And where can they find you on the old social medias, or should they? 

Fenne: Yes. I mean, if they want, I'm not particularly good at keeping it up. It's just @fennelily on everything. I did just get a Tumblr account today, like 20 years later.

Courtney: What?!

Melissa: Amazing.

Courtney: You should make yours whatever your most obscure interest is and like really dive into it. 

Fenne: Cutlery, I love utensils. I recently just moved into this new place and I had it in my head that I didn't want any of the stuff to match, like any of the kitchen stuff. So, I went to this church that has now become a junk shop, and I bought so many mismatched things. 

Melissa: I love that church. It's like a great allegory for Christianity.

Fenne: So weird for me moving here and realizing that religion is a big part of the way that things work here. In England, really not a thing in a big way. 

Courtney: That's because England kicked all the crazy religious nuts out and they started this country. 

Fenne:  Yeah, it's wild. I have so much learning to do. 

Courtney: All my unbearable ancestors who are British, uh, were part of that revolution.

Fenne: All My Unbearable Ancestors is another great album title.

Courtney: It's yours, anytime you want it. 

Fenne: You should start a spinoff podcast called Songs My Unbearable Ancestors Ruined or something. You could have a whole series of them.

Melissa: Oh, that would be a great opportunity. It's not really a song, but I would love for somebody to explain why my grandmother ran with this story that one of her relatives invented Clamato juice — the clam and tomato juice. It is not true and none of us know why this was the lie she was like going to carry with her forever. 

Fenne: That's an incredible lie. Also so easy to disprove though. 

Courtney: Yeah, seriously. 

Melissa:  I know, I’m like… google dot com?

Fenne: I feel like the spreading of misinformation is like the theme of this episode of your podcast. So, I want to say a fact that my mom has been telling people for her entire life until maybe three years ago. She heard from somebody, didn't check it, and then told at least 50 other people that marmalade contains the highest percentage of protein you can get in a food. 

Courtney: That seems instantly incorrect. Immediately no. 

Melissa: That's like such an incredibly British factoid. I mean that's, it's kind of nice to think that Paddington was like jacked from all the protein.

Fenne: So, so ripped. 

Melissa: Yeah, he just like takes off his little duffle coat and is all like abs. 

Fenne: Yeah. It's like 85% pure sugar. I just love that she never checked. I love/hate that she never checked it. I think we should, we should be more careful with what we're saying in general. But I, but it's cute. 

Melissa: Well, on that note, I think we can wrap this show up because we have spread all the misinformation that could possibly be spread. 

Fenne: Yeah, sorry if this is made to you frantically Google everything you've heard. 

Melissa: No, just Courtney as the resident fact checker is just going to be tearing her hair out later, but I'm all for it. 

Courtney: This has been the episode that's made me laugh the most during recording so far. So, thanks for being on the show. That was great.

Fenne: Thank you so much for having me. 

Courtney: Thank you.