Q+A WITH MADDIE KERR: SPITTING PARTS OF MERCURY’S STORY INTO ORBIT

photo by Elizabeth Marsh

Our writer Stella got to talk to Madeline Kerr about her project “mercury” and the three songs she’s put out over the last three months. She tried to keep her cool – she’s been wanting to do this for a long time.

Stella Feinstein:  Do I not have enough storage on my phone for this? Oh, wait. No, we're good. I'm a chronic storage overuser. I literally had to delete my calculator app today because I have no room for anything else and I was like, ‘What do I use the least?’ And it was my calculator. 

Anyway, so the first group of questions is very Maddie specific. And then the second I do rapid fire questions that are usually not rapid fire, but that's where we can just kind of chat.  So, my number one question for Mercury is that I feel like the project Mercury has changed a lot over the last two years. You released “Moment”, and then you kind of took a break after that. A break from releasing at least, I don't know if it was a break from music, but I'm assuming it really wasn't. When you came back, I feel like creatively a switch really flipped in the project. It began to really feel like, real and like you. Is there anything you can say about this time? Or like your artistic process and if that switch feels like it changed within you as well?

Maddie Kerr:  Yeah, I feel like the project started with a completely different group of people when I was in high school. And as it changed through members, and people like branching off, doing their own things, and like me branching off doing my own thing for me, it gave me the opportunity to become more my own project instead of a collective kind of thing. It was more me solely writing songs, and doing everything after “Moment”. I’m trying on one hundred percent a new chapter and a new period of me finding myself and figuring it out.

SF:  I think we can one hundred percent feel that  Even if you're coming [in as a fan] just from the “Trying” era on. I think that really benefited you because it helps people connect to you, more because it just feels like you on the other side, instead of a group.

MK: That's sweet.

SF: This was actually for my partner, Evie, who helps run the mag. What inspired your latest visuals? We absolutely love them. It feels very, like, ethereal. And like I said, it ties back to you instead of a group. It really explores, like, the depths of the project, feels kind of, like, wavy and watery and stuff like that. 

MK:  Yeah, I, so my friend Elizabeth Marsh she takes photos and she came to me so long ago with this concept where she wanted – I already have like really long hair – and she wanted to figure out a way to make it longer. I've always wanted to do something like that just because usually when I do shoots and stuff we don't really do anything to my hair, and I thought it was such a fun idea. I wasn't planning on using them for anything initially, it was just her passion project and her concept, then she sent me the pictures back. I was like, ‘Oh my god this is so so so perfect for the next songs that I just wrote’. It just feels like the visuals and the music went hand in hand, and so we just kind of ran with it. We've had these pictures for so long now, since the beginning, since like March.

For the “Trying” visuals for all that stuff, I remember coming across this video on TikTok. It was one of those carousel videos showcasing a bunch of artists and stuff. It had like three likes on it. There was this one beautiful sculpture, AI manipulated art. I had to figure out who did this. It was this girl, Ida Listener. And so we reached out to her and she did all the cover art for “Trying”, “Wool Gathering”. Then the “We're One Together Photos” and then the music video for “Trying” was definitely very water-like. I love the ocean and water and all things.

SF:  Do you know the metallic nail trend where people have the drippy nails? That's what it reminds me of.

MK: Yeah! That's, that's, that's a really cool connection.

photo by Elizabeth Marsh

SF: I was talking about Evie earlier, I had asked her, she absolutely loves Mercury as well, so I said, ‘Do you have any questions that you want me to ask her?’ We were going through a few questions and she was like, ‘Can you ask her what her hair routine is?’ So the fact that you brought that up was really funny. I'm also staring at us, my hair being at the end of my ears and yours like down to your butt.

MK:  Yeah, I just, I maybe wash it like once a week.

SF:  Don't say that to me. Don't say that. We were making guesses, you know, like the octopus seven in one shampoo. We were like, that's all she uses. Definitely. Okay, I was kind of talking to Peter earlier about this, but is there a reason why these three songs weren't put together for an EP? Did you just kind of want to let them live on their own? 

MK:  I think, with the music I've been making recently, they could go together, but I also feel like  in ways they stand alone for parts of what I'm trying to say. So I kind of like that they're getting  separate little opportunities to be spit out into the world.

SF:  Letting them live their own lives. When you are putting an EP together, do you usually feel that it's like a thematic tie that ties songs together? Or is it sonically or both?

MK: It definitely is a little bit of both. I feel like more it's thematic the “Together We Are One” EP that just came out. All three of those songs were kind of speaking about one part of my life, one struggle in like three different parts of it. They kind of all went hand in hand with a feeling there. So that's why those came out together. I think EPs are so fun. When you're writing music, and then all of a sudden you have four songs that just go so perfectly together, and you can be like, ‘Whoop, there you go’. 

SF:  EPs are my favorite types of music projects. Over the summer, and I know that you're friends with her, I could not stop listening to “Glisten” by Hannah Cole. Just back to back to back, that was my go to.  Two more questions, two more Maddie specific questions. Number one is where do you think the perfect place to listen to your music is?  

MK: I feel like just in my room. In a room. A place that you can sit down and just be creative or be introspective or even just at night in the car driving.  Car music is the best music. 

SF:  Okay, this is our last Maddie specific one, but it might take you a second to think about it. So in “Crick” you say “I wish I had the words to say what I was feeling when I felt it”. What are some things that you find yourself wishing that you said in the moment?

MK:  It it can be a big wide range of things, but I think in the moment, when somebody is asking you how you feel, being able to give them an answer – especially when it's like affecting them or yourself – it's like, oh, I wish I could just put it into words. I wish I could just give you everything that you needed to hear right now, but I, for some reason, can't. And that can be the most frustrating feeling. You learn from the experience, but it can be a scary thing to just tell someone how you're feeling in the moment a lot of times. I have learned that it is beneficial long term to just get it out of the way in the moment, even if you don't have the exact right thing to say. That's what I was going to say.

SF:  Even if you don't know it exactly, it's better to try than to never try.  Okay, fun time!  So, as we're in fall, I've got some fall themed questions. What is your go to fall album, or what has been on repeat for you this fall? 

MK:  Okay, so, this album called East My Love by Current Joys that just came out. I cried like a baby. I love Current Joys, I love his music. Two years ago, we put out an album called Voyager. I fell in love with it and it feels like  it was a reflection of my life at the time. Then he put out East My Love two years later and it feels like another reflection. I just have this like deep, deep, deep love for his music because I feel like it speaks to me in a way that I haven't felt before. It's been very inspiring and special to me, and it's so easy on the ears, and it just makes me feel so good when I'm listening to it.

 SF: You're making me feel seen. Okay, comfort food?

MK: Probably any pasta, or a burrito bowl. 

SF: Favorite Thanksgiving side? 

MK: Mac and cheese.

SF: That's the right answer. 

MK: If you don't say mac and cheese or mashed potatoes, what are you doing? 

SF: I'm vegetarian, so my friends are like, ‘what do you eat on Thanksgiving?’ Every single side. Yeah, literally. Anyway, okay. This one you might need to pause to think about a little bit, but it's always my favorite question that I ask everyone, and it's back into the music a little bit. What do you feel are the most genuine and the least genuine songs in your discography? 

MK:  It's very important to me that I am emotionally connected to the songs that I put out, so I feel like equally at the pinnacle of my life that everything came out. It was very important to me at the moment. I haven't ever put out something that I was just putting out because it was done or because I wanted to get something out. I feel like right now in this, in this moment in my life, the song that I feel least connected to would maybe be “Moment” maybe because it was one of the first that I put out and it's very chaotic. I still very much feel those things sometimes but I think I've, since then, made songs that reflect maybe that feeling a little bit better in a more specific way. 

I think one of my favorites, the most genuine song that I’ve put out, I feel like it's between  anything off the “We Are One” EP. Just any, or trying maybe?  

One of the most recent ones that I've written, which I thought was kind of a cool imagery thing, “Swarm the Hive Mind”, which is a song that just came out this week. I wrote this with my friend, Billy.

And the first line is like, “It's swarm around the bend where the misfit is ripped to shreds” and that's kind of just like the whole premise of the song in the first line. It's like talking about the tendencies of people to like swarm over to  drama or trouble, or whatever. Talking about how people, in groups, tend to prey on, I guess, birds.

It's kind of an interesting way to start off the song. But yeah, I feel like that's a cool one recently.

SF: It very much lets it out raw in the first line. And it's like, if you're gonna listen, you're gonna listen.  And I think that most of your music is that way. Like if you listen, you're going to get it  and like, you're going to feel that emotion. Do you have  anything coming up live after this or just in the Nashville area? 

MK: Not right now. I'm going back to record again in the middle of December. So I'm kind of just recording a bunch of new music right now, which is really exciting, 

SF:  Well, I had a wonderful time talking to you today!

MK: Sweet, can’t wait to read this!

Have a listen to the “Swarm the Hive Mind” project anywhere that you listen to music, and follow along with Maddie’s wonderful journey @thebandmercury.