On “Dog”, COBRAH sings “I wanna die” over and over. She also sings “I want a dog”. Both make sense once you’ve seen the video, where she sinks into a mud bath between two Dobermans, a picture of someone so low she’s burying herself alive.
Torn marks a turn from the sexy, sing-speak club tracks that made her name, but the provocation hasn’t gone anywhere. Her debut album, released in March via Atlantic, swaps talking for melody and gets far more personal. She has called it “way more ‘me’ as a person”, with songs pulled from her real life while she still plays a character. She wrote every track and art directed every visual, then put it out through GAGBALL, her own label, so the rights stay hers. Along the way she played her first Coachella, finally released her long-teased Grimes collaboration “Sign From God” and kept her place on the soundtrack to fashion, with past campaigns for Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier.
On 24 October she brings it all to False Idols, the queer party from Broadwick Live, Little Gay Brother and Percolate, which takes over the 15,000-capacity Drumsheds for a Halloween all-dayer alongside Kim Petras, Rose Gray and Meg Stalter.
Ahead of the party, we caught up with COBRAH to talk about owning her music and why she never really clocks off.
The Cold Magazine (CM): You’ve said Torn is the most ‘you’ you’ve ever been on record, while still playing a character. Where does the real you end and COBRAH begin?
COBRAH (C): I think they’re forever intertwined. I live my life as an artist and never really separate or make the distinction that there’s a “real me” and an “artist me”. I am the artist at all times.
CM: Your vocals on Torn are much more melodic than the sing-speak of your earlier tracks. What made you want to really sing on this record?
C: I had an urge to evolve and work with melodies, which was very challenging for me. “Torn” was the first song I started to experiment with my singing voice on.
CM: What can people expect from your False Idols set?
C: My shows are always sweaty, intense and a big party. I really bring the club to the stage together with my fans!
CM: ‘Sign From God’ debuted at your Gag Ball and at Coachella months before release, and Grimes has said it’ll have two lives. How did the collaboration start, and how does it feel to share a song like that?
C: We met at a party many years ago and have always talked about doing a song. I was in LA last year and reached out about doing a collab, and she sent me the instrumental to “Sign From God”. The track had already been written on, but I’ve never heard that version to this day (super curious to hear what it sounds like). I took the track back to Sweden and started to record on it from there, and we just really hit it off! We started writing it together remotely, doing loads of FaceTime calls.
CM: The ‘Dog’ video has you in a mud bath with two Dobermans. Talk us through how that idea came about.
C: I sing “I wanna die” in “Dog” quite a lot of times (and “I want a dog” too), and I really got inspired by that feeling of being so sad you just want to die. From there I thought of the mud bath and wanted it to be a symbol of burying myself, to emphasise the desperation that the song is about.
CM: Your music has soundtracked Mugler, Gaultier and a Yorgos Lanthimos film. Why do you think your world translates so well into fashion and film?
C: I just love fashion, and fashion loves me! The universe just works like that. What inspires me inspires them, and then inspires me back. We’re in this circle of art.
CM: You run your own label, GAGBALL, as well as making the music. What does having that control mean to you?
C: I’m obsessed with owning my own music and creativity. Creating GAGBALL was a way for me to own the rights to my own music, and that is a fundamental key in my artistry. I write everything, I art direct, do my glam. I really bring the music and art that I love and have created myself.
CM: I read that before music you worked as a primary school music teacher. Does any of that version of you survive in COBRAH?
C: Haha, no. I mean, I still go through life pretty organised and I love when things are in order like in a school, but otherwise I’ve left that life behind me.
CM: What’s next after Torn?
C: I think Torn has a little more life left to give…
