Is it punk? Is it rap? No, it’s carolesdaughter!
You needn’t shift your gaze to the sky to behold this phenomenon – it’s most likely happening in one, if not many, of your favourite playlists. It’s certainly happening on TikTok, where the rising star turned countless heads her way.
At 18 years of age, there’s certainly no rush for carolesdaughter to do anything, but no one told that to the universe, which appears to be conspiring in her favour at a head-spinning pace. Clearly, this is something that’s meant to be happening, and we’re meant to take notice.
“I feel like it did happen really fast,” Thea Taylor, carolesdaughter’s alterego, tells Blunt Magazine of her ascension to the public eye. “I worked at Del Taco like three months ago.”
This rapid escalation of things from a bedroom studio dweller to international acclaimed recording artist would have given most mere mortals an oxygen bubble in their brain, but not Taylor. After all, she, more than anyone else, understands her potential. And she’s far too busy to be modest. “I always have the utmost confidence in my music. I think that’s just the type of mentality you need to have as an artist.”
If you didn’t get a chance to hitch your wagon before the carolesdaughter horse bolted, allow us to bring you up to speed. carolesdaughter first emerged in just 2020, with a swag full of original material, strewn throughout the platforms of social media and streaming services. In no time at all, Taylor had attracted the interest of a major label.
The tenets of Taylor’s creative process become immediately clear perusing her catalogue, given that no two songs are the same. The rigid concept of ‘genre’ is cast aside, allowing for an explosion of creative chaos. But this isn’t some flippant display of hyperactive tendencies. There’s a point to this, forming the connective tissue between all of carolesdaughter’s releases.
“The thing that stays consistent for me is my writing. I can really take that and put it to any genre. If I’m feeling angry I want to write a punk song. If I’m feeling sad, I want to write an emo/pop song. And if I’m feeling crazy, like some weird experimental, trap-weird-stuff.”
It’s her own superpower; the ability to shapeshift her writing and stories to blend with whichever genre she chooses to plant it in. It’s a power that even Taylor hasn’t quite extrapolated the data on, but the motifs are recurring.
“What I noticed is [that] it depends on where I’m at in life and what I’m experiencing at the moment. Right now and in the past year there’s been a lot of really hard lessons that I’ve learned and I’ve put that on paper.”
All of Taylor’s grinding is now coming to a head, with word spreading that work on a debut full-length album is well underway. Looking at what we’ve heard already from carolesdaughter, it’s impossible to gauge what comes next. “Honestly I don’t really like to overthink things,” Taylor admits.
“I mean, I have tons of songs. I think because my writing is really consistent and all these songs that I want to put in the album are from a certain period in my life, I think it’s just going to flow together naturally.”
Details are scarce on the debut album – which has no release date or official title. We can be confident it will feature break-out single, the blood-dripping and brutally honest ‘Violent’, but that’s about it. Taylor keeps her cards close to her chest when describing the release, but does offer one scrap: “You can just really tell where I was at in life.”
“I have one song that’s going to be on the album and it’s called ‘Please Put Me In A Medically Induced Coma’ and that song is super, super close to me. I wrote it in rehab and they actually still sing it there to this day. Knowing that has had a lasting effect on those people and it’s everyone’s favourite song when I show them, that makes me love it.”
Just as well-recorded as her genre shapeshifting abilities is Taylor’s personal history with rehab. Spending a considerable amount of her formative years in and out of therapy will no doubt be a key reference point for the stories told within her debut album. “It was pretty much like all of my teen years was just in and out of treatment.”
“It’s a very, very big part of my life. The album is going to include a lot of the songs that I’ve written in rehab that I’ve been waiting to release.”
Taylor admits 99% of her songs were written sober, but that 1% certainly left a mark. “I definitely noticed [sobriety] really affects my creativity but the thing is it’s also a kind of a double-edged sword.”
“The thing that makes a good song or what helps me write is inner turmoil in my head. So it’s like, if I’m doing too good almost, what is there to write about?”
Taylor won’t reveal too much more, nor do we want her to. There’s an inherent mystery with carolesdaughter, despite the incredibly vulnerable subject matter.
And that’s objectively cool. So, rather than pushing for some equation, or for her to show her working for the debut album, we’re happy to get lost in the whimsical mystique: “It’s just emotions.” she surmises of the album’s overall concept. “My brain really does feel music in emotions and so it just translates into music for me. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
It shouldn’t, but it does.
