Velvet Kove on making her audience feel
Recording artist Velvet Kove isn’t interested in just telling her listeners what she thinks—she wants to make them feel. The lyrics to her latest single, “Watermelon Lemonade,” are heartfelt, but the real driving forces of the track are the smooth flow of her vocals and the mellow electronic beat. She repeats, “Should’ve kissed you sooner,” and the song’s sound alone communicates the same feeling: bittersweet nostalgia, perhaps more for what could have been than what was.
The accompanying video game-inspired music video—designed by Velvet Kove and Toby Bluntz and animated by Cil Franklin—furthers the artist’s emphasis on sensation over words, creating an atmospheric world for viewers to get lost in.
GIRL GANG caught up with Velvet Kove in advance of the release of “Watermelon Lemonade” to learn more about what inspires the up-and-coming artist.
This interview is edited for length and clarity.
Taylor Stout: Let’s start with a little background. Where did you grow up and how did you get to where you are now?
Velvet Kove: I am a Richmond, Virginia native and I went to VCU, where I got my BFA in Theater Performance. Right out of school, I moved to New York and I had auditions for Broadway. I started seeing what the industry was really like, and I did not have confidence in my image or sense of self at the time. I had just started getting into music in 2017, and I had thought of the name Velvet Kove—it kind of sounds like a euphemism for a vagina and also my initials are K. O. E. I U-Hauled with my then-girlfriend really quickly, and the guys living above us were producers. I had played around with Logic a little bit, and I knew guitar from being gay in high school—it’s like a rite of passage—so I started working for them. I decided to play an open mic, and somebody scouted me. After that, I was booking Pete’s Candy Store, The Delancey, and I happened to meet the girl who “Watermelon Lemonade” is about. She went to NYU for Producing and was going to study abroad in Berlin. I had never gone abroad or been on a plane, and I was like, “What if I went to see you in Berlin?” I thought I was going to have this gorgeous love story. But when I showed up, her friends were like, “How do you guys know each other?” I was over there for a month and a half, and on the first day I knew it was not a good idea. So I was alone and one of my homies from Richmond sent me the beat for “Watermelon Lemonade.” I was depressed but also at peak knowledge for song arrangement and writing, so I wrote it in 2019, and then the next summer I sent it back to my homies in New York. We got it mixed and mastered. My brother is a video game collector, and I was sitting at home looking at his NES and thought, “What if a music video played when he played a video game?” I got to sketching, and my friend and I played around with green screens and animation for the music video. And then finally, the time came to promote it all. I’m very good at the first part of it, making things happen, and then it comes to fruition and I'm embarrassed. I'm like, “Oh my god, I have to send this to people and they have to say it’s good.”
TS: Yeah, sharing stuff with people once you’ve finished it feels like a huge leap of faith. You mentioned a lot of people who have been a part of your process in various ways, and you’re part of the artist collective goodstuff. What role does community play in your music and your identity as an artist?
VK: I was working at Cha Cha Matcha and one of my homies told me about these cool artists that turned out to be goodstuff. The LLC was started in 2019 by Adam Ginsberg, Andrew Ellis, and Avery Martinez. They’re very good about being inclusive and I really like that, and the person I collaborate with the most is Toby Bluntz. As far as the community, when I first started writing songs, I was nervous about writing about women. Even my parents were like, “What if it was open-ended and nobody knew who you were talking about? What if it wasn’t a girl?” And I was like, “Okay but what if it was?” Queerness in music has always been there, but right now it’s pretty front and center. I like that that’s a tag for me, but I don’t feel like it defines me. I come from the self. I was in very religious groups growing up, and I had to be pretty closeted until I was 18. Then I went into a theater program and they were like, “It’s okay if you’re gay, just don’t let anybody know.” I was like, “Oh my god, I fucking just did this.” If you’re going into acting, the male gaze of the arts isn’t gone. We’re chipping away at it, but the motherfucker is like the iceberg that the Titanic hit. So when I’m doing my own thing I make it a point to produce my own shit. I want it to be more widely known that people can produce on their own. It gets to this point because producing is so expensive. Everybody is saying to make your art in quarantine. Okay, but where am I getting this money from?
TS: There are so many factors, even just having the time to devote to that creative project.
VK: Yup. Right now, being able to do art in quarantine is an absolute privilege. That’s the community. I think goodstuff is really cool because we’re making galleries for people who are less known, and then they’re sponsoring me and putting money into me. They’re also doing food pantries and things like that. I think when you have the ability to do art, you should recognize the privilege and then give back. Making music, you realize so quickly how much of it’s a money game and you just have to figure out how you can reach out to people. So I think it’s sick that your group is talking to me, and we’re making those connections. Even after this interview, I’m like, “Yeah, Taylor, that’s community.”
TS: Yeah. I totally agree. Do your own thing and do what you can to uplift the people around you. You mentioned moving from place to place, from growing up in the South and then moving to New York, and then your time in Berlin, and I’m curious if you find that these changes in setting influence your creativity at all, or the way that you go about making music.
VK: I am obsessed with sight, and I am obsessed with sensations. Yes, the message is there, but what is a message if it doesn’t make you feel something? When I hear music, I see it. And so when I go to New York, and it’s the flashing lights, and it’s the style and the fashion, seeing the huge wealth gaps and juxtapositions in the blink of an eye has been really jarring. And then in Berlin, when I looked up things to do there, a lot of it was Holocaust-based. And when you look at the Berlin Wall, it’s not like that was forever ago. Things like that are jarring. You know when you’re looking at something really vibrant and you blink and you can kind of see the outline of it?
TS: Yeah!
VK: It’s not perfect, but you blink and it’s there in those weird shapes. That’s what I’m trying to make in music. It’s not like I’m just trying to be like, “Accept gay people,” though of course I want that, but it’s not the point. What do you feel? Because if you feel what I feel, then me being gay doesn’t matter. Everybody thinks music is so auditory, but it’s also a sight. That’s what I’m always after: how can I make you see a story and forget that you’re listening to music?
TS: Totally. I think the connection between music and images is strong, and I think music is felt in the body—it’s not just a listening experience.
VK: Absolutely.
TS: Do you find there are constant themes you return to in your work, or is it more about creating a sensory experience?
VK: I think when I first started music, it was very message-based because I didn’t have all the tools available to me. But one of my songs, “Hazel Green,” which I released in 2019, has the line, “Words don’t mean a single thing,” which has become my mantra. Say what you wanna say, but at the end of the day, somebody’s gonna perceive that how they want. The only thing you can do is control the notes that they hear. I think a great example of somebody who does that is Dua Lipa. When the beat drops, I’m not even thinking of her lyrics, and it’s about that production sound. Or when St. Vincent plays her guitar, I think that’s the most I ever connect with her. She’s definitely one of those people whose lyrics hit me when they hit me, which is why I love her, because you’re attracted to her sound, and you’re attracted to her visuals, and then you listen to her songs like three times and all of a sudden you hear the lyrics, and you’re like, “Oh my god.”
TS: Do you know the song “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode?
VK: Yes!
TS: What you said reminded me of the part of the chorus that goes, “Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.” You’re sort of pointing to this limitlessness of sound versus the specificity of lyrics.
VK: Yeah, words are so limiting. I was driving with my girlfriend recently and the moon was so gorgeous, but when we tried to take a picture it didn’t look the same, and I was like, “Fuck it what’s the point? I’m just gonna look at it.”
TS: That’s the magic of the moment.
VK: Yeah exactly, and I feel like words are like that. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the message is to me, it doesn’t matter how many times I say it. I go to take a picture of it, which is how I’m communicating it, and it doesn’t look like the moon I just saw in my head. I feel like sound is forever and words are transient. I’m so far removed from “Watermelon Lemonade,” which I wrote about an ex who I thought I was gonna marry. It’s a sad but also proud moment for me to realize I’m my own independent person. When I go back to work on songs that I wrote when I’m in such a different place right now, I’m more proud of the synth line I put in than the fact I said something really cool. it’s just it doesn’t mean the same. But the sounds will stay the same.
TS: This past year has been very transformative—good and bad, mostly bad. What role has music, either your own or that of artists you admire, played for you during this time?
VK: Oddly enough, I think this is the least I’ve listened to music. During quarantine, I’ve been asking, “How do I sit with myself? What does silence look like when I blink? How do I actually feel?” I’m a huge advocate of therapy, and I minored in psychology. I like DBT therapy and things that are about appreciating what your body does for you and what your mind is going through, and not trying to change it but just recognizing it. When I do listen to music now it’s because I’m enjoying something, not running away from myself. Sometimes if I hear a song and I’m upset I’m like, “I wish I could go out dancing and like get hammered.” And then all the sudden I realize it’s just that I’m sad because I miss my mom, or I didn’t feel productive today, or I didn’t like myself today. Being able to recognize myself in music and how I use other people’s music is really interesting and I think it’s been a good diagnostic tool for my own psyche.
TS: That’s an interesting progression, from using it as a mask to as a more reflective tool. As a young musician, what impact do you aim to have through your music, either focusing on the music world or on culture at large?
VK: In terms of culture at large, I would say making mental health a priority. I definitely want to start places to go that offer actual therapy and are funding therapy specifically for women, LGBTQIA+ obviously included. I think women are at the point now where we’re starting to get fed up with how we’re treated in the industry. When I was working in the theater scene, there was a union, but you see some shit happen—you see people get mistreated, you see people get touched. But who do you call when you’re doing local theater? Who’s gonna care? Who’s gonna believe you? I want to create a safe space you can call, where if something like that happened to you, we’ll help you connect with resources and talk about what you’re going through.
On a music scale, I want to make production tools more available. Maybe instead of having a $900 production app, you can go online and get some free sounds, get some explanatory material. I definitely want to have a tutorial of how to make a beat, how to take a song and then chop it up, how to understand what time signatures are. These are things people assume you know, and then you’re too embarrassed to ask. I just want to make things accessible. When you work with men, a lot of the times they’ll make you feel stupid if you ask. But I think it’s starting to open up. We just lost such a real one, SOPHIE—I was destroyed. But the amount of work she was able to do, it makes me wonder how many SOPHIEs are out there and they don’t even know it. Maybe they just don’t have the tools, and they don’t have anybody to tell them that you can make your own beat, you can produce it, you can mix it, you can master it, and you can learn what all of these things are.
“Watermelon Lemonade” is out February 14th and available to stream on all platforms.
