Eighty explains how she is challenging industry boundaries by being part electronic vocaloid, part human poet
Long before she had a following, 8485 was a pop star—all it took was a little presumptuous branding to create her celebrity persona. As her first venture into solo artistry, she was struck with the realization that she could be whoever she wanted to be. So why not declare “Eighty is a pop star!” until it becomes true? Now that Eighty is emerging as one of the quintessential vocalists in her musical sphere, it seems obvious to canonize her achievements in the halls of underground pop stardom. But Eighty doesn’t want to keep up with her fabricated pop star persona forever, especially now that it’s manifesting into reality. Instead, she escapes into the prospective realm of pop’s future, embracing the manufactured style of a computerized “vocaloid” with the consciousness of a poet who is very much human.
“There’s this idea that pop stars are a very manufactured, industry concept,” Eighty says. “The difference with SoundCloud is that we’re all very self-made. So I decided to do all this weird stuff and call myself a pop star anyway.”
With little industry to govern the role of the DIY pop star, Eighty’s artistry is forced to speak for itself. Her vocals are discernible, having achieved an honest balance between emo lyricism and cutesy digitized delivery that she presents with each collaboration. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Eighty is focused more on performance than production. This allows her to concentrate on creating effortlessly catchy melodies to house relatable lyrics, which are the core of her artistry. In her latest single “DURESS (dyzphoria),” when Eighty sings, “Letting my ship get lost again / screaming so catch me if you can,” she is vulnerable, but not without confidence. It is her ability to express her insecurities without appearing meek that makes her a compelling lead singer amidst a sea of accompanying vocalists. However, Eighty admits that her relationship with pop stardom has recently changed.
“When I created the pop star tagline, I wasn’t one.” Eighty explains. “But I thought it was exciting to look at something traditionally unobtainable, or only obtainable through an industry, and go, ‘Actually, no. I’m going to do this all by myself.’”
Now, Eighty is a pop star who has bypassed traditional industry support in favor of the support of her peers. After her first collaboration with producer blackwinterwells on their track “CTRL” just nine months ago, Eighty’s star began to rise. Since then, she has collaborated with producers and collectives like FROMTHEHEART, umru, and Alice Gas, whose pitched-up vocal techniques have come to define Eighty’s emo crooning. She describes this collaborative process as “magic,” acknowledging that there is no shame in relying on a producer (or two, or ten) to polish her work. But as an artist whose vocals are in high demand, Eighty is starting to feel the pressure to deliver.
“I’ve had to step back.” Eighty admits. “I was experiencing a lot of burnout over the last few months because I wanted to do everything, and it made it hard to do anything.”
Emerging in an online scene that is reliant on constant collaboration as a means of promotion, Eighty is struggling to maintain momentum without losing her sense of self. She believes that despite her genre being largely undefined, there are still many stylistic expectations from her audience and peers. Alongside main collaborative partner blackwinterwells, Eighty has worked her way into the emo niche of the scene as exemplified by their collective, Helix Tears. While the support is integral to the success of many emerging artists, it can also come with some unwritten expectations to perform at a certain caliber or within certain genre restraints. Now that Eighty has established herself within a collective, she needs to figure out how to grow as an individual.
As an indie singer/guitarist whose career began in Toronto, Eighty’s musical routine has changed drastically over the course of the last year. She’s since dropped her guitar in favor of synths and taken on the role of vocaloid—a position that is traditionally ascribed to less conscious beings and more to anthropomorphized computer software. But this switch from live audiences and instrumentation to streaming services and MIDIs has left Eighty wondering how to reconcile her musical past with the fast-approaching musical future.
“One of the overall themes I see in our scene is ‘how do real people exist in this very futuristic space?’” Eighty muses from behind her webcam. As of right now, her artistry operates entirely online, but that is not the only futuristic aspect among her contemporaries. While Eighty is a human being who sounds like a vocaloid thanks to heavy production techniques, she is beginning to encounter musicians who actually are vocaloids, like Six Impala’s latest member, Neutra.
While the other five members of Six Impala are flesh and blood, their sixth member is composed of code. Neutra is a traditional vocaloid in the sense that her voice hasn’t been modified from human to machine, but has been a machine all along. As Neutra’s human counterpart, Eighty says that she’s had text conversations with Neutra and is flattered to learn that she is a fan of 8485. Though this may sound dystopian, Eighty finds comfort in the robotizing of performers like Neutra since it takes some of the pressure off of being imperfectly human. But Eighty is also aware that without her bandmates, Neutra would not exist, and so, the human musician is far from obsolete.
“To have somebody like [Neutra] exist in the same space as flesh and blood people, and know that both have a place [in the scene] is really reassuring,” Eighty says. “But it’s the same rocks and sticks that we’ve been working with forever—they’re just getting more complicated. And someone has to pick them up and bang them together.”
Now, Eighty is hoping to apply the digital skills she’s developed over the last few months to a real-world setting whenever possible. As an artist accustomed to live performance, Eighty believes that performing on stage allows her to communicate ideas that she might not be able to communicate through recorded music. However, now that she is working with computers rather than a traditional band, Eighty says that she needs to push her artistic persona even further so that her performance doesn’t boil down to karaoke. Eighty wants her music and her performances to get “weirder, noisier, more aggressive, and more out there.” She wants to scream more, and feel the catharsis that a traditional vocaloid could never truly miss. Nevertheless, Eighty also wants to write indie tracks in her bedroom, and explore the softer, more ethereal side of her songwriting.
“I like to sing, but writing the songs is kind of everything for me,” Eighty says. “I really like the idea of living in your own world and having a fantasy that your music operates inside.”
By writing her own narrative, Eighty is bridging the gaps of juxtaposition that permeate her identity. Be it the marriage of human and machine or nostalgia and future, Eighty proves that the next generation of pop stars need not be constrained by the standards of the past. With a first album in the works, Eighty wants to “make stuff that will surprise people.” But for now, she is setting the groundwork for change. In the first 8485 release, Eighty laments that “it’s so safe underground / but it’s cold and I’m just getting old / yeah, I’m just getting older.” Now, a little older and definitely more befitting of the pop star label, Eighty is ready to continue evolving and conquering the underground until she reaches the surface, singing, “I swear to God I am not like the kid / who did all of the things that I did.”
Listen to 8485’s latest single “DURESS (dyzphoria)” below.