Kit Major’s songs arrive loud and emotionally exposed, with new single ‘Teenage Wannabe’ blurring glamour and crisis. Kit talks from the borderlands between persona and self-preservation, where beauty is something to be twisted rather than obeyed. This is an artist uninterested in being cleanly categorised and unafraid to embrace the unstable.
With ‘Teenage Wannabe’ are you mocking the idea of self-mythologising or admitting you’re addicted to it?
It’s a story of shape-shifting through the years and noting the ways we adapt to the will of those around us without even realizing it. If you’re not careful and don’t practice what you love or what’s important to you, you could end up living as someone else, and for someone else, without even noticing.
Your lyrics often sound self-interrogating but delivered with swagger. Is there a specific emotional zone you find yourself returning to?
A lot of my writing comes from a personal place and sometimes a subconscious flow. Even when I dabble in third-person writing, it’s always from a place of vulnerability stacked on top of itself in a leather trench coat.
Your sound ricochets between Hole, New York Dolls, Blur, and Garbage, yet never feels like pastiche. Who are your biggest influences?
Thank you, that’s incredibly rad to hear. Some of my biggest influences are Iggy Pop, Green Day, Ramones, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, and Lady Gaga.
Is punk still a meaningful word to you or has it become too embalmed to be useful?
For sure. Punk still means something to me, I just don’t like when it’s used as a lazy marketing buzzword. It’s a culture with music, style, and a way of living. In a world of self-made artists, like myself, I think you have to break that “it’s not punk to say you’re punk” rule, because to fight the algorithmic system of labels we live in, you have to play the game a little. I’m a rock girl who happens to love statistics. I’ve connected with more people by straight up saying I’m a punk rock artist than by saying, “yeah, I make music like… rock or whatever.” Putting myself in that space has opened more doors and made me feel like I’m a part of that world instead of outside it.
So many artists today flatten themselves into safe micro-genres. Your songs feel actively unstable by design. Do you think unpredictability is the only real rebellion left?
That’s a cool way to put it. Anytime I write a song and it starts feeling too predictable, I’ll either trash it or find a way to make it different.
Glitter and grime are constant in your work, is beauty something to distort, or something you go to war against?
Beauty isn’t something I fight; it’s something I twist. I fell in love with rock ’n’ roll because of the grit, the rasp, and the way perfection cracks. I love living in that space between the two.
You have already built a strong visual language. How crucial is costume, colour, physical stance in how these songs function?
Those are important to the Kit Major world because it’s another way I communicate. I’m an artist because words alone sometimes aren’t enough. I love pushing my storytelling through music videos, style and how I physically perform my songs. Long answer long, I’m an ex-theater kid.
You’ve lived in a few different places before landing in LA. Which city actually feels like home to you now, and what is the music scene around you really like day to day rather than in the press-release version?
LA is home. I’ve reached a point here where my friends are some of my favorite artists and creatives. When you surround yourself with that, every day becomes part of the scene, even at home. I think we all understand the press release version isn’t the everyday. It’s the hanging out, the supporting, the showing up for each other that truly matters.
The line between persona and survival mechanism seems to get blurry in your world. Have you ever written something and felt uneasy about releasing it because it was too revealing?
Absolutely. Maybe that’s why a lot of my songs sound upbeat. It’s easier to spill my guts when the feelings are hidden behind something danceable.
Do you feel like you’re making music for a culture, or against one?
I think I’m making music for a culture… I’m just not sure what to label it. To me, culture is about bringing people together because they share something. I hope the culture I’m talking to sees that I’m someone who appreciates and nurtures the rock ’n’ roll that came before me, while celebrating fashion, honesty, and being vulnerably human (even when wrapped up in theatrics for forty minutes).
If someone only had three minutes to decide whether to follow you forever, which of your songs should they hear first and why that one, specifically?
Probably ‘I Wish U Didn’t Hate Me So Much’ (bonus points if it’s live). That song has a lot of what makes Kit Major who I am: it’s rock, it’s weird, and when I perform live it turns into a punk go-go dance groove. It’s a song about self observation while mending heartbreak that will make you laugh, cry, and dance.
