On the eve of her new album, Galen shares how she uses music to cope with being a creative during a time of economic collapse and queer under a neo-conservative regime
If galen tipton makes music for getting lost in the woods of a dark fairy tale, recovery girl makes music for blasting through the trees with a subatomic cyber pistol. galen tipton’s realm is whimsical, relying heavily on instrumentals, while recovery girl can’t help but be “big, loud, and violent” in her pop vocal protests. These vastly different aesthetics find common ground under the surface, with layers of complicated and sometimes challenging electronic sound design.
But galen tipton and recovery girl have far more in common than just their experimental DAW practices. Earlier this year, Galen created recovery girl as a means of entering the world of pop under a new moniker. The addition of an alter ego allowed Galen to explore these different sides of herself, while also welcoming fans of both the experimental and pop genres. Though Galen describes her music as a means of personal catharsis, she also believes that this feeling should be shared with anyone willing to listen. With a steady stream of projects released under the dichotomy of recovery girl and galen tipton, and her artistry appearing in both election campaign ads and Twitter memes, Galen is presenting her audience with multiple fantasies to choose from while pre-election, pandemic America rages around them.
“It’s kind of been my therapy to get through a lot of bullshit that’s happening,” Galen explains of her production process over the last year. While 2020 saw the release of multiple EPs, including galen tipton’s goddexx and recovery girl’s self-titled first release, a slew of singles, and a 99-song sample pack, Galen remains at the mercy of the American service industry. Throughout the pandemic, Galen worked as a barista in a hospital café in Columbus, Ohio. Here, she fought to temporarily close the café at the first wave of Covid-19, but eventually was forced to return to work as patients stricken with the virus were quietly admitted around her. After a grueling few months, Galen realized that she was met with a common artist’s dilemma: work a job you hate and get paid, or quit your day job and pursue music.
“This isn’t the first time where I’m like, ‘I’m going to try to make it off music.’” Galen admits. “But I don’t need to get famous or anything. I just don’t want to have to go back to a service job.”
As an artist who has been releasing music since 2016, Galen recognizes that in order to find financial sustainability in the arts, one must adapt. This realization was one of the reasons for recovery girl’s emergence in early 2020. With the controversially-named hyperpop genre growing in popularity, Galen figured she could lean into the craze with the help of a pop star alter ego; and so, recovery girl was born. Armed with a dynamite-toting, teeth-baring avatar and a new set of pitched up vocals, Galen was on a mission to make pop. And while interest in her new character grew, Galen realized that recovery girl was more valuable than just her ability to generate streams.
recovery girl is an opportunity for Galen to present herself the way that she wants to be presented. As someone who experiences vocal dysphoria, Galen has always been hesitant to sing on her tracks, but with pitched up vocals in vogue, Galen seized the opportunity to make recovery girl heard. In her latest two-part single “BAD BRAIN / IM UPSET,” recovery girl is, well, upset. Galen sings, “My brain’s a fucking liar / My brain’s a fucking snitch / It tells my heart to quit / My brain’s a fucking bitch.” This lament to her mental health is an emotional expulsion for Galen that might have otherwise only been expressed through aggressive instrumentals, had recovery girl not stepped on the scene. Now, Galen is able to connect to her audience both lyrically and sonically, hoping to find common ground in catharsis as the world, and America in particular, twists in turmoil.
“[The music] I make comes from a very emotional place, especially if I’m living in a very emotionally turbulent state,” Galen says in reference to navigating Trump’s America as a queer person. “There’s a lot of really nasty stuff that’s reaching, like, a fever pitch. I’m hoping [my music] is also catharsis for other people like me to feel okay, or to feel seen.”
This is especially important now as election day in the United States approaches, and young voters like Galen react with frustration towards the electoral system and the results it’s produced over the years. Though Galen considers voting a tool for change, it is often ineffective, and she recognizes that both Republicans and Democrats have failed in many ways to meet the needs of marginalized community members. Despite declaring the election “bullshit,” though, Galen still acknowledges the influence of an artist’s platform, which is why she partnered with local drag king Thrustin Knightley to produce the music for an election ad campaign encouraging Americans to vote early. As queer folk, Thrustin and Galen’s performance is an act of resistance in queerphobic America. However, this is nothing new for Galen, who makes her pro-queer political views known with the help of song titles such as “that girl is my world (you transphobic piece of shit)” and “Girl Dick.” Galen believes that long before scoring an election ad, her music was political, and so is the music of every artist.
“Everybody’s work is political, whether they think about it or not,” Galen says. “It’s kind of just, like, how much you want to actively engage with it. And if you’re not engaged in a political stance in your work, then that’s also political.”
Galen is a firm believer that audiences should “interrogate” the music that they consume because there is always context below the surface. But this interrogation should go beyond merely analyzing lyrics or scrolling through an artist’s Twitter for problematic personal beliefs. Practices and trends within the music industry have been a point of concern for Galen as she grows older and becomes more aware of “the fetishization of youth culture.” As a 27-year-old producer surrounded by successful teens, Galen is not bitter of her contemporaries’ accolades, but she does wonder why older artists seem to be getting less recognition for creating similar music. She believes that the music industry puts “a lot of focus on someone being a young prodigy,” and wonders if artists like Billie Eilish would have been praised as highly had they been in their 30s, 40s, or even in their late 20s. Galen believes that there should be no glass ceiling for older artists creating “boundary pushing shit” within the context of “youth culture,” and she actively utilizes one of Gen Z’s most obvious tools to prove that: memes.
“I think memes right now are a subversion of self-promo,” Galen says, referring to the recovery girl and galen tipton-related memes she creates for social media. By editing pre-existing memes with captions like “galen tipton in the studio like / yeah this sounds like a sample pack in under 10 secs drop it” and “galen tipton and recovery girl are the same person / Sure grandma now let’s get you to bed,” Galen is proving her self awareness. She is able to poke fun at herself while also promoting her music in an accessible and modern fashion. While memes may seem like low hanging fruit in the world of culture, they are undeniably endemic tools of communication throughout social media, making them easy to digest while scrolling through one’s feed. And though subversive memes can be an effective marketing tool, Galen does not limit herself to meme representation alone.
Beyond the realm of social media memedom, Galen has branded her work within the realms of fantasy and sci-fi. Growing up in a small farm town, Galen was “one of the weird kids” who spent a lot of time immersed in the world of fiction novels and video games. A lot of this formative influence can be seen in her experimental work, particularly under the galen tipton moniker. Galen says that some of her work is like a “ soundtrack with all of the effects happening at once.” While this may mentally conjure up the sounds of swords clashing, lasers blasting, and menu items being equipped, much of Galen’s soundscape is unapologetically organic underneath layers of manmade synths and modifications.
Galen’s latest single, “urskeks,” off of her upcoming album ungoliant, is a prime example of the sometimes challenging marriage of organic and inorganic material. The track opens with what sounds like trees creaking in the wind as a creature treks through thick mud. This visceral backdrop is overlaid with electronic synth and followed by ethereal vocals that transition into those of a mid-2000’s pop star. By the end of the track, the vocals are reduced to psychotic laughter accompanied by a frenzied, glitching—the mud and filth from the track’s beginning no longer sticking to our traveller’s shoes. This journey between the ethereal and the futuristic can be jarring, but the listener’s joy lies within distinguishing the contrasting elements that make the piece whole—this is experimental music after all.
With ungoliant slated to release on October 30, Galen is excited to unleash her brand of experimental, dark fantasy into the world. ungoliant is a byproduct of Galen’s 2019 EP fake meat, and is composed of tracks that were too ominous to adhere to fake meat’s more whimsical overtones. But Galen assures listeners that there’s “a lot of the same connective tissue between both [albums].” This connectivity, however, is more at risk when bridging the gaps of Galen’s two audiences: fans of galen tipton’s experimental work and recovery girl’s pop. With many listeners discovering Galen’s work over the last year through recovery girl, ungoliant may be a challenge. However, Galen explains that her latest EP, goddexx, released in the summer, combines the sonic elements of pop with the dark visuals of her more experimental side to create a bridge for fans of both recovery girl and galen tipton.
“At any given point I just have so many demos that I don’t know what to do with them,” Galen laughs. “It’s kind of a problem.”
As Galen is posed on the verge of another major 2020 release, she has no intention of slowing down. Her work ethic and her ability to create for multiple characters and genres in tandem would be admirable on its own, but it is her fortitude for creating art in the current socio-political climate that proves the strength of artists in a time when little support is being offered. As the election draws near, and the pandemic’s end remains out of sight, galen tipton will continue to create art, music, and memes as a means of catharsis.
“I’m doing this for me, and for the people who really fuck with where I’m going,” Galen says. “Even if it just reaches one person, that’s enough for me.”
Listening below to Galen’s latest single, “urskeks,” off of her upcoming album ungoliant, releasing October 30.