Kerli is Walking On Air

Interview with rising Pop Star Kerli

by Jennifer Johnson
The Collegian
Issue date: 7/8/08

She's 21, has a long blonde mane, and was excited about going to see 'Sex And The City' with her girlfriends. She's a first-time dog owner, the proud parent to a Chihuahua whose yaps punctuated some of her sentences at the beginning of a telephone interview in late May, chatting about how strange it is when people come up to you and your dog and start up a conversation out of the blue.

Kerli, whose debut album 'Love Is Dead' arrived in stores July 8, sounds like someone you know. But this self-described "creepy little girl" is shaking things up with her alterna-pop/world music sound and has critics scratching their heads as they try to locate her home country on a map.

The Collegian asked a few questions of Kerli the day after the video for her song 'Walking on Air' debuted on MTV's 'Total Request Live.'

The Collegian: You're from Estonia, and Eastern European country with 1.5 million people. You used to dream of coming to this country. Now that you've recorded your album in New York and Los Angeles, how do you feel about America?

Kerli: Everybody is talking shit about America, because America is the shit. When they say that this is the land of free, it is. It really is. Little kids… their dreams are supported from a very young age. They say Americans are very self-centered and they don't leave the country, don't go [abroad]. Why would you? America, it's like a real melting pot. Different people, people cultures… everybody comes together.

TC: Now you're living in Los Angeles, California.

K: It's a skanky city, but you know, the weather is great… I came here a year and a half ago. My first year, I was lonely. Now I've got a good group of friends and I really love it. But it's different. I really wish I could bring my family here. One day, I will. I will.

TC: You've said that you don't really claim a lot of musical influences because everything influences you. What are you listening to right now?

K: I'm listening to a lot of 'Future Sounds of London'. I don't know if its because of my soul, but it took years for me to name the influences… and its not that I've got a big ego-trip bullshit snob thing… I studied piano for five years and listened to a lot of classical music. But its hard to pick out a few people. Nobody specific has influenced me. There's too many to pick a few.

TC: You wrote the lyrics to your songs on your forthcoming album. What was that process like for you?

K: I wrote this album over the course of five years; I wrote 150 songs for it. They're all from a time [when I was] going through a lot of emotions and depression, because I used to be really depressed. The album is like my diary of the last five years. Some songs that didn't make it to the album I really loved. The album was about finding myself, my imagery, my look….
I'm writing more music on my own, all the time now. [For the next album] I know exactly how it needs to sound, needs to be. I know what kind of producers I want to work with. I'm definitely going to produce myself for my second album. On the first album, there is no song that I wrote completely on my own, even if they [the songs] were my life.

TC: In the video for 'Love Is Dead', your image morphs from old to young before a background which also transforms with you, growing vibrant flowers and butterflies. Is there any significance to the butterflies in this video and the video for 'Walking on Air?'

K: I have a [butterfly] tattoo on my arm that represents living each day as it was your last one, because there are some butterflies that live only one day. It represents that I am never going to leave a person I love without letting them know I love them, because you just never know. You never know. Its me choosing to be the best person that I can be everyday.
In the video for 'Walking on Air', there are glass dots under my eyes that represent tears, and when they fall, they become butterflies. They represent overcoming the obstacles in your life. After the rain, the sun will always come out. 'Walking On Air' is about this little weird girl who nobody understood, who had no support. Its about finding the strength in yourself and becoming what you want to become.

TC: Do you think that your music is reaching young people who might have felt the way you felt?

K: That is pretty much the only reason I'm doing this. Girls are saying to me on MySpace that they felt like they were the only ones who felt this way, and then they heard my songs, and felt not so alone. When I was younger I never felt like I belonged. I was always writing poems, stories and songs. I was always escaping into my dream world.

In Estonia, which was communist when I was a little girl, you couldn't express yourself. That suppression inspired my music more than anything. I was always very dramatic, expressive, and I questioned authority when it didn't make sense to me. We weren't supposed to laugh and cry, or have an opinion. It was like everybody was trying to break your spirit. That's actually what 'Walking On Air' is saying. I grew up a creepy little girl in a creepy little town of 5,000 people in a forest, where it was narrow-minded. I felt like a freak of the town.

TC: One of the most interesting things about your music is that you manage to handle dark subjects like death with a delicate hand.

K: The song 'Death Is In Love With Me', I don't know if it will be on the album. Its supposed to be a hidden track, but I don't know right now. I actually wrote it, kind of produced it… I know that I'm going to die. That's life. I wrote it after a pretty bad car accident I was in. I could have died, but I lived. So I wrote a love song to Death. Its human nature that we're really scared of death, and the song is saying 'I know that you're going to be with me one day, but don't take me away yet; I have so much to do with it.' I'm scared of death, too, but the world constantly is dying and being reborn again. Like flowers, they only die to bloom again. Because of all the big cities, the pavement on mother earth, the houses-we're getting so far from the nature, which was a totally natural thing for ancient cultures. With all the internet and MySpace, everyone is the center of their own universe. Death is natural.

TC: What do you hope to accomplish in the next few years?

K: I… I don't really like to answer questions like, where do you see yourself in five or ten years. I don't really like to know. Life is so much about finding yourself and creating your own reality. I only have one big dream, and that is to be happy. If in two years, I decide I want to live in a mountain and grow herbs and have seven kids, that's what I'm going to do. I want to be happy.