Incoming! The zestful Remi Wolf is bringing her wild charisma and charm to our shores next January for the first time ever, gracing us with two headline shows that'll no doubt radiate absolute star power.
Interview by Oli Spencer
Remi Wolf is the musical embodiment of sprinkles on top - colourful, joy-inducing, and you can never have too much. Since her debut in 2019, she has steadily become a household name, and your favourite musician’s favourite musician - working alongside the likes of Dominic Fike, Kimbra, Wallows, Still Woozy and Kenny Beats to name a handful.
Blending genres like it was a sport, her one of a kind artistry is evident on her charisma-fuelled debut album Juno - a dazzling display of her heavenly vocals, witty lyricism, and forever expanding sonic palette. Each track from Remi feels like it has its own world, and the absolute bangers like ‘Sexy Villain’, ‘Front Tooth’ and ‘Grumpy Old Man’ charm us over and over again with each listen.
The star’s most recent release is a live collection recorded at Electric Lady in New York, where her dynamic arrangements and striking vocals shine on a whole other level - our excitement bubbling in anticipation for her debut New Zealand tour.
We were fortunate enough to catch up with Remi Wolf for her first ever NZ interview, and spoke about her favourite songs to perform live, John Mayer becoming a fan, and what the tour’s movie tagline would be.
Remi Wolf is playing in Auckland on January 10th, and Wellington on January 11th!
I'd love to know what your favourite lyric you've ever written is?
I like a lot of my lyrics, so it’s really hard to pick a favourite, but I was having a conversation the other day with my friend about this song that I wrote with Kenny Beats. I don’t even know if it’s a song but it’s a song called ‘Last Words’ and the last line of my little part… I literally sing three lines, but it’s “I say goodbye just to miss you” which I think is a nice little sentiment. So I like that lyric, but that’s just like my favourite lyric of maybe today. I also like all the lyrics in the chorus of ‘Sexy Villain’, I think those are really fun. Like “Cheat on Chester, fuck with fredos” is pretty fire. There’s a lot though. It’s hard to pick favourite things of mine but yeah, there you go.
I’ve spoken to a few musicians who have said they are huge fans of your music, and praised their time collaborating with you. In saying that, who became a Remi Wolf fan, that made you go “no way”?
John Mayer was a pretty big one for me. That was last year, I released ‘Liz’ as a single and the day after I released it he posted it on his story and I was just like what the fuck! Continuum came out when I was like ten, which is the perfect time. My brain is soaking up everything so I know that album front to back, it was a pretty influential album in my life - at least when I was really young. So yeah, that was really crazy. There’s a couple other ones, but he’s probably the biggest that was like mind-blowing.
I'm so excited to hear you are heading over to Aotearoa next year!
Yeah! I’m feeling so excited, I’ve never been to that half of the world… your guys’ half… so yeah I’m excited to get over there. Plus, I’m coming over in January and I think it’s gonna be summer, so it’s like summer 2.0 for me. Whenever I go to a new place that I haven’t been to on tour, it’s always such a shock to me that people come to the shows. Cause I’m like how do you know this, like how do you know!? But it’s cool because I get to meet a bunch of new people in a new place. I’m really excited to eat some seafood, I’ve heard seafood is pretty good over there. I love sushi and I love fish so I’m ready to go on that. and yeah ready to see a bunch of sheep, and maybe hold a koala in Australia, it’ll be fun!
"If people are coming to my show they have to be ready to go hard, to get dirty and scream. Just be ready for an experience, cause we bring the energy hard."
What's your absolute favourite song to play live?
I really love playing ‘Quiet On Set’, it’s really fun, on the record it’s a little more like a early 2000s throwback, Timbaland production kind of beat… but when we play it live we kind of make it more into a Limp Bizkit, kind of Rage Against The Machine, which I love doing. The whole outro section is really fun. I also love playing ‘Liquor Store’ because I feel like I really connect to the audience during that song, it is a really personal song to me and a lot of my fans connect to it as well - it’s fun to scream that and for all of us to be screaming it together. Plus I love singing ‘Liz’ because I’m a singer and it’s such a singer’s song. I’ve made it fun for myself. But yeah, the whole show is really fun - it’s a huge workout for me too, cause I’m just running back and forth, jumping around everywhere. If people are coming to my show they have to be ready to go hard, to get dirty and scream. Just be ready for an experience, cause we bring the energy hard. Hopefully it’s not too hot and people start passing out, we’ve had that as an issue at like every show we’ll have like three people pass out I don’t know why. But I tell them all to drink water, hopefully they do it but some of them aren’t.
Have you learnt anything new about your songs since playing them live?
Yeah, they’re really hard! They’re pretty hard songs to execute live, every song of mine is in a really high register and pretty vocally challenging. In the studio that’s great cause you know, you’re warmed up and you can take breaks, and you’re not sprinting. But during a show it’s a feat - and then on top of it you’ve gotta engage everybody. It’s hard but I’ve found joy in the challenge of it. Because it has been challenging, I’ve played like 130 shows this year I think now. So at this point I’m pretty well adjusted to what I need to do, but yeah the songs are tough, it is a workout in all senses of the word.
Do you have any deep cuts that you miss performing?
We’re trying to bring some of the deep cuts back! For three years I didn’t play ‘Down the Line’ which is from ‘I’m allergic to dogs’ I’m pretty sure… my EP. We finally brought it back this year on this past tour I just did in South America and it’s so fun. I always get so surprised that people know that song because it is from earlier. But yeah, people like that one so I’m excited to play that one.
If the tour poster was a movie poster, what would that little tagline be?
What a crazy question…. oh this is hard dude. I don’t know, I guess 'put your whole pussy into it' or something? Yeah, can we say pussy? I don’t know… I’m just thinking of pussy cause I just went to the gynecologist so that’s probably why. Yeah, maybe something like that, let’s just go with that one!