3. “royal screw up”

You refer to yourself as “the princess of screwing up” here. Is that a badge you are comfortable wearing?

I was just shitting on myself for fun—I wrote this one in 20 minutes—but I was also really harshly confronting all these little problems. I wanted it to have this sense of comic relief, like when you joke with your friend about your unhealthy habits. It goes through all of these recurring problems that I’ve had, whether it’s trying to love somebody for the wrong reasons, trying to look for something in someone else that you want in yourself, or trying to present yourself in a way that’s not what you are because you’re a little bit of a monster.

Has becoming a more public figure exacerbated those feelings of self-loathing?

I tend to be critical and I also have a deep-seated need for self-reflection. I feel like if I’m not harsh and honest about the things that are flaws, then I can’t try to better them. I dig into myself through writing to be able to fully realize the flaws that are causing problems in my life.

On each of these first three songs from the album, you sing the word “calm” as an aspirational state of being.

Really? I didn’t realize I was doing that so much. I constantly feel a lot of turmoil—especially when I was writing this record and I wasn’t on a little thing called mood stabilizers. Part of that is because I’m a Gemini: I can’t escape it. There was a long stretch of time where I was not sleeping very much. I was paranoid and anxious and hallucinating, just constantly on edge. I wanted a feeling of rest that I wasn’t getting. I haven’t had a real period of calm in so long. I’m obviously longing for it if I keep saying it in the songs I write!

4. “night swimming”

There are a lot of blurry samples in this song, like the sound of people murmuring in the distance. Why did you include them?

With this song, I wanted to grab that sense of laziness and haze that comes from these weird drones. It pulls from multiple relationships, romantic and non-romantic, reiterating this sense of loneliness and separation. There’s a sample of people walking around a busy street that comes in at certain parts, which makes the song feel all the more lonely: There could be these people around you, the bustling of the world, and you’re just alone still.

5. “crawling in my skin”

Where were you at emotionally when you were writing this song?

This one was the first time that I sat down and wrote about something other than sadness or heartbreak. It’s about me having sleep paralysis and hallucinating around my house, feeling this constant anxiety that a demon was watching me in the night. It felt good to write it because I had never really gotten those feelings in words before. I’ve always focused on some other emotions that were a little bit easier for me to address because I understood them more. It was a really poignant moment in my life.

When do you feel most content with yourself?

The best part of my day is when, at the end of the night, I turn off all the lights in my bathroom, light candles, and play Tibetan bowl and rain sounds on a speaker. I turn the shower on really hot and I just lay in the tub with the water hitting my face. That’s one of the few times where I feel like I can let go and be calm.

6. “yellow is the color of her eyes”

At more than seven minutes, this is by far the longest song on the album. How does its length correspond with its subject matter?

It’s about feeling like you’re losing time with someone you care about, and not wanting to wake up in a couple of years and feel like you wasted the time that you had. My mom has had a terminal illness for the last 10 years, since I was 12. It was something that I always pushed to the back of my mind, but when I started traveling a lot around Clean, I ended up spending a lot of time worrying about the fact that time is slipping away.

How is your mom doing now?

She’s doing good. That’s the thing, she’s been doing pretty good for a long time. But she is old, and you never know when it will start getting bad.

Did you listen to this song with your mom?

God, no. I gave her the album and I was like, “Just don’t talk to me about it.”

Do you think there will be a point when you’ll feel comfortable talking about it with her?

I don’t think so. I don’t feel comfortable very often with open, emotional, gushy discussions. It’s very hard for me to not feel extremely awkward doing that. The song is what I needed to say.