Pitchfork: Did the highly personal nature of the songs on Jaime make you want to release the album as a solo project?

Brittany Howard: Yeah, and just… everything needed to be centered around me: the vision, the music, the arrangements, the sounds. Not in a selfish way, but in a completely-taking-your-power-and-owning-it way. It is strange being in the center, but I’m getting used to it.

Do you see your solo career changing things with the Alabama Shakes moving forward?

I can’t possibly know that, really. I just go where creativity wants to take me. I was trying to write with the Shakes, and it wasn’t working. For a whole year we tried rehearsing, getting together. Nothing was happening. It was really torturous, because we’re usually really good at that. I thought, Whoa, I got to take some time from this. We all sat and talked about it for a few hours, then came out the other side. It wasn’t bitter or anything, just like, “I’m going to go my own way.”

You wrote some of Jaime in Topanga, California, in the middle of a heatwave. What was your setup like there?

I was trying so hard to write stuff in this beautiful place, and it wasn’t coming. I was working in a fucking greenhouse. It was converted into a bedroom, but no one expected it to be 104 degrees. So I bought a real small air conditioner off of Amazon dot com, and I had to turn it off every time I recorded, because of the sound.

Inspiration hits at the funniest moments: I was sitting in there just like, fuck this, too hot. Then I went back in and made lunch, which was just a ham sandwich. I’m eating it and scrolling on my phone, and I’m reading this article about the producer Georgia Anne Muldrow. Man, I thought, I wish Georgia would notice me. Everybody she works with is dope, so I figured if she notices me, that means I’m dope. And I was just walking around eating my sandwich and I started singing. The song [“Georgia,” which includes the hook, “I just want Georgia to notice me”] is not really about her, but it was inspired by her name for sure.

You know how, in movies and shit, there’s always like that little boy who has a crush on his older sister’s friends? That’s kind of what I was going for with that song, except it’s this little girl who has a crush on an older girl. It’s so innocent. I’ve never heard a song like that, and I was really excited to write it.

On the flip side, “Short and Sweet” strikes me as a mature love song, the work of someone who has been burned before and is trying to stave off romantic fatalism. Where did it come from?

“Fatalism” is definitely the right word. I wrote that song when I just started dating my partner, about three years ago. I thought, Oh God, here we go again, this is probably not going to work out in my favor. I had these expectations like, “This isn’t going to last very long, but it’ll probably be nice. How about we just have this beginning part and we’ll skip the end?” It’s a song full of expectations.

You have amazing vocal control on that song in particular, and such an expressive voice in general. Do you have any rituals as far as keeping it in shape?

I don’t do anything special. In fact, I probably need to do things. I don’t warm up, I just open up my mouth and sing. I trained myself by just singing along with records until my note would be right in the same wavelength with whoever was singing. A lot of Freddie Mercury, some Journey, and oddly enough, a lot of Anthony Kiedis. By the way, I love [Red Hot Chili Peppers’] records. Now I realize he had Auto-Tune on his voice, but it helped me practice.

Who’s a frontperson whose magnetism is inspiring to you?

Prince. And actually, Matt Schulz from Cage the Elephant. He’s just very good at being confident, I really respect that. Who else? Sharon Jones. I hate that she passed away. She was a hero in my eyes, I really looked up to her.

Speaking of heroes, you played “Get Back” with Paul McCartney at Lollapalooza in 2015. What was that like?

It was cool, man. Paul’s a really fucking nice guy, he’s got great energy. But I was really nervous so I practiced the guitar solo all day long, until my fingers were raw. I had it memorized deep inside my spine. I could probably still play it. So I go up there in front of like 80,000 people, and we’re doing the song, and I go into the solo—and I hear somebody else playing it. I was like, Who the fuck’s playing that? His guitar player was still playing the solo! I walked up to him and I was like, “Hey stop, stop, I got it.”