Like many of us, Georgia Nott knows what it's like to be the only woman in the room, especially at work. "I think there comes a point where you stop just thinking it's normal and you start to realize that, actually, this is kind of f*cked that I'm the odd one out all the time," says the singer, who makes up half of the indie-pop sibling duo, Broods.

Though she operates in the male-dominated music world, Nott knows this problem is universal. "It's any industry," she adds. "I feel like women have had to really push to get their voices heard."

So the New Zealand native came up with her own solution: The Venus Project, her solo album created completely by women. Nott recruited under-the-radar collaborators (and now good friends) for the endeavor: Broods keyboardist and producer Camila Mora, project manager Sherry Elbe, mix engineer Adrianne "AG" Gonzalez, mastering engineer Emily Lazar, producer Ceci Gomez, photographer Catie Laffoon and illustrator Ashley Lukashevsky. "Even though it's been quite hard to finish, it's been so rewarding and exciting. I'm so proud of everyone involved," Nott says.

The Venus Project couldn't arrive at a better time, in the wake of the Time's Up movement and as more women are standing up for the pay and respect they deserve. The full album will be just as timely—it releases on March 8, International Women's Day.

"It feels awesome to be surrounded by really super strong women that are changing how they present themselves to the world to bring about change and saying what they want to say," she adds.

Days before dropping her solo single, "Won't Hurt," today, Nott talked to BAZAAR.COM about The Venus Project and making music as a woman in 2018.



Although the music world has some powerhouse women, ladies are lacking behind the scenes, Nott says.

“From an outside perspective, the music industry seems to have a lot of strong and powerful women in it, which is totally true, but then you look behind the scenes and everybody there has worked on these albums with men, and there's hardly any female producers getting recognized, there's not a lot of female engineers, mixers, masterers and artists getting the recognition they deserve. I know that there are women out there that do this. I know for a fact, and I know that they're good. There's been a ridiculous amount of albums that have been made fully by men, so why can't we just do one that's all f*cking women?”

Catie Laffoon

Nott was inspired by motivated creatives she met.

"I had a lot of songs that I was writing by myself, and I really liked a lot of them and I didn't really know what to do with them because they weren't exactly fitting to projects that I usually work on with Broods. And then I was questioning a lot of the reasons why I wasn't seeing a lot of women around and when I did see a woman, it was so exciting and so surprising, I was kind of angry that I was surprised.

"I just started meeting a lot of people that inspired me when we moved to LA. I think I saw so many people doing what they said they were going to do. So when I said I've got this idea—to make an album that's completely, from start to finish, created by women—after telling people about it, I was like, 'Well, sh*t. I'm actually gonna do it. I'm actually gonna make this happen.' It was pretty hard, because women in this industry, especially behind the scenes, are few and far between and when you have to get a project done, it's actually quite hard to find women in the same place at the same time for the right vibe. The more that I was doing the project, the more I realized this project needs to be done because it's so hard for me to get a team of women around me right now."

She was "a lot more invested on an emotional level" with her solo music.

"This is about art, it's not about business or making money. Other experiences I've had in making music have always had the undertone of, 'It's great but, it's probably not going to get played on the radio.' And with this project, we're just like, 'F*ck the radio, f*ck what people think, we're gonna do what we want to do and we're not gonna apologize for what we create, because we're not going try and prove anything because we're women. We’re just going to celebrate what we do because we are artists.' That makes me so much more invested in what I'm going to show, and it makes me a lot more nervous. The music itself is very personal and super emotional and super exposing, to me and to the people I've worked with. Every time an artist makes something from a personal place, you're exposing a piece of yourself and I think that's been the beauty of this project—that every single artist that's been involved has been able to express themselves through it.”

"We're gonna do what we want to do and we're not gonna apologize for what we create"

She wrote "Won't Hurt" in a green room while was touring with Ellie Goulding about two years ago. But after performing it at a Broods acoustic section, she decided it needed more work.

"I was like, 'Yeah, actually I'm going to work on the song bit more. It's not exactly where I want it to be.' Then I met this girl, [producer] Ceci Gomez, at a party and we both got very involved in the whole issue of women in the music industry and in general in the world. Then we worked on the song and it fell together perfectly. She just brought exactly what it was missing. It was actually so relaxing and therapeutic working on that song with her. It's just about accepting your vulnerable side and it's something that leads to more strength, empowerment, openness, and more opportunities. I think a lot of people spend their whole lives not even knowing what their personal truth is, and if you actually find that freedom, the difference in your quality of life is completely different when you actually accept your flaws and love them and let them be."

She didn’t want to name The Venus Project after herself.

"I didn't want to call it 'By Georgia Nott' or whatever because I don't feel like it was about me and I wanted to call it something that was a project that was a collective of women from the beautiful planet of Venus, the first light of each night. It's about women in general."

Nott performing with Broods in September 2017. Getty Images

Georgia hopes to to have an all-women crew when she performs the songs too.

"F*ck yeah. One of my main goals this year is to do at least a few shows where I can gather together this incredible female crew—backstage, onstage, organizing—and to see that come to fruition, oh my God, I'll just cry for like three days of happiness. That would be incredible.”

Her older brother, Caleb, the other half of Broods, is also working on solo music (which she loves).

"I think we just felt like it was the right time to actually explore what we could do other areas. We both love making music together, but we also like making a lot of different types of music. So for us to be able to go away and explore and make a different type of music that we don't make in our project together is so rewarding and so awesome, because we both like showing each other our music and have very much been supporting each other along the way. It definitely hasn't been an awkward, weird thing. It’s been more of something that we both decided that we needed do before another album, to just completely go off track and find a different vibe and then come back."

But don’t worry, they’re still making music together.

"Oh yeah. We’re always writing together as well. I think we've learned a lot from doing these different projects, and our music that we're starting to write now is a little bit more evolved and it sounds like what we truly love about music and we've gone back to why we started to do this in the first place. I think that's really come through in the stuff that we've been writing together, which is awesome because it feels like a really fresh new chapter for us in 2018. It’s going to be nice to give all this music that we've made after figuring all of our stuff out. It's really special."

"I want to do stuff that celebrates the people that haven't been celebrated."

She has high hopes for music, and all art, after 2017.

“I think people are really excited about what about these new projects that are coming from feeling like you've been oppressed. You can see it around all the time at the moment. There's so many amazing artists coming out with like this beautiful political artwork that is the result of feeling like you have to finally f*cking wake up and like stand up for yourself. Man, there's going to be so much beauty in the world in 2018 because people are going to be trying to make up for the f*cking weird stuff that's been happening.

"I want to be a part of that and I want to do stuff that it makes a difference in people's lives and I want to do stuff that celebrates the people that haven't been celebrated. And I want to do stuff that actually raises awareness about things that I believe are unfair.”

Her dream is that The Venus Project becomes an expansive, ongoing movement; not just an album.

“I do hope that The Venus Project will branch out and reach more people and get more collaborative development. I want to make different kinds of music in the future and have other curators; that's my big dream. Pretty ambitious, but I'm not afraid.

“It would be quite nice to find other women to do what I've done and curate the kind of music that they personally feel expresses themselves as women, and find new people, like a whole different class that just like keeps expanding so it's not just me.



"I want to get as many people involved. It'll be something that can continue to uplift women that are trying to make a difference in their communities, who are actually going out and getting the things that they truly want, and not feeling like they have to do something because they've got a vagina, or that they can't do something because they don't have a penis. It's just a little bit f*cked that this is still going on. But we're all working together and the unity that's going to come out of it is actually so beautiful."

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Erica Gonzales Erica Gonzales is the Culture and Content Strategy Editor for BAZAAR.com, where she oversees news and culture coverage, including celebrity, music, TV, movies, and more.

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