Q&A: Andie Mechanic Returns to “Clinton,” Taking Back What She Lost
WELCOME TO “CLINTON” — a sonic world full of discomfort and matter-of-fact truths. Singer-songwriter Andie Mechanic brings us her newest single today in an effort to excavate the mind-muddling trauma of the past, a time rife with regret and overwhelming waves of confusion.
A senior at Berklee School of Music in Boston, Mechanic defines herself as someone who was “born with the inexplicable need to call out every elephant in the room.” Her discography comes wholly unafraid to delve into the most painful of emotions and circumstances; Mechanic is fearless in her artistry, prepared to uncover dark truths with every lyric and melody she creates.
“Clinton” is perhaps the best example yet of the musician’s authentic and raw songwriting prowess, as the track ushers in nearly three minutes of cathartic inner-reckoning.
Releasing music of her own was never really on Mechanic’s bingo card. She has successfully avoided going autobiographical with her work for the majority of her career, spending most of her time in co-writing sessions supporting other musicians with their songwriting endeavors. To Mechanic, centering herself in her music felt foreign and self-absorbed — that was, until she sat down alone for a session one day, with only a guitar as company. Words and melodies began to flow over the course of a year, and Mechanic immediately knew that she would be putting these newfound tracks into an upcoming record.
“I work with artists every day,” Mechanic points out. “I'm constantly surrounded by people putting stuff out about themselves, and I love that for them. It shouldn't be any different from me, but it took me a while to even have anything worth putting out that is about me. Now that there is, it doesn't feel bad.”
Mechanic asserts that this musical project is her Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moment. Even after one short chat with her, you can clearly pick up on her contagiously positive and bubbly personality — every encounter is abundant with witty sarcasm and warm bouts of shared laughter. Having Andie Mechanic as a musical project independent from her actual being allows her to express a different side of herself that the singer-songwriter is not so apt to reveal in the casualness of everyday conversation.
“My artistry is where I get to [express everything that I think about],” she affirms. “Putting out music that is completely and utterly honest, raw, and dark.”
Throughout “Clinton,” Mechanic becomes increasingly unhinged — its eerie acoustic folk melody crescendos into a powerful symphony of rock-tinged anguish before returning to soft melancholic whisperings. The accompanying music video directed by Amaliya Rakhmatullina provides the track with the perfect home for the grotesque feelings encapsulated within the melody, with an aesthetic resembling that of The Blair Witch Project.
“This song is written about a time in my life where everything was horrible and I wasn't even me,” Mechanic shares. “At that time, there was no getting out of the feelings — it was the entire world I lived in. It has been coming up on three years now exactly to when this time was, and I'm so far removed from it now.”
Finding catharsis within the sonic landscape of “Clinton,” Mechanic looks back upon that painful time with a wizened mind, extending gestures of kindness and understanding to the Andie Mechanic who once was, and in turn to those who might be experiencing those same feelings in the present moment.
With the release of “Clinton,” Mechanic encourages listeners “to not be afraid of fucking up; to not be afraid of showing that you've fucked up and made mistakes and done wrong things.” “We all are wrong in some way,” she says. “So let's talk about it.”
Fostering conversations around these incredibly complicated emotions, Mechanic confidently illuminates the way for others to persevere through life’s toughest moments, guiding them so that they too can get through their own “Clinton.”
Read on below to learn more about Mechanic’s experiences working within the Boston music scene, her love for all things “weird, creepy, distorted, and gross,” and to learn more about the experiences behind “Clinton.”
LUNA: Before we dive in, I want to get a sense of your origin story as a musician. How did you get started?
MECHANIC: When I was a kid, I did acting — I was a theater kid, and I lived an hour away from [New York City]. I started to act professionally, and my mom took me in for auditions every day. That's how I fell in love with music — it was through musical theater and performing on stage, all of that. On the side, I always had the songwriting bug from the time I was born; my mom wrote songs for little kids, and she was always encouraging me to record a little melody idea I had, or a title idea. It was in me from the beginning. I was writing songs through middle school [and] through high school. I went to college originally at this place called Hamilton College, where I was studying psychology and sneaking away to the practice rooms to write a song and then go back to psychology class.
It was over COVID [that] I found out that being a songwriter was a job — a legit “you can get paid for this, this is the thing you've been doing your whole life” job. I was like, "Oh shit, that's what I need to be doing." I have voice memos from when I was 11 years old on my iPhone now that I can go back and listen to. It's little 11-year-old me singing a stupid little song she wrote.
LUNA: That's so awesome. There's such a theater-kid-to-music-industry pipeline. I know so many songwriters at Berklee who originally went to school for musical theater and then were like, “Wait... musical theater isn't for me.” And then they're like, “I'm gonna go write some songs and do that because that feels more authentic.” I love seeing that common thread.
MECHANIC: It's hilarious when someone calls you out on it. They're like, “Oh, yeah, I could see that.” It's like, fuck you!
LUNA: It's a gift and a curse. I always find my way back to the theater kids.
MECHANIC: Same. We're super fucking weird, and we all just get each other. No matter how far away you get from it, you are a theater kid at heart, sadly.
LUNA: You mentioned that you were first a student at Hamilton, and now you're at Berklee. How has being here in Boston helped you develop as an artist? There's a huge DIY scene here and the whole community of Berklee is so musical. How has being here helped you?
MECHANIC: It has changed the game for me. I had never co-written before I came to Berklee, and I knew that I was going to and that I had to. In fact, the reason that I even knew being a songwriter was a job was because I watched the show Songland on NBC. They were doing co-writing sessions and I was like, "Holy shit, that's so fucking cool." So when I came to Berklee, I threw myself into it. I started writing with literally anyone I possibly could. Now I try to do one to two sessions every day because at the core of who I am, I am a songwriter. My love is songwriting for other people and getting in a room and having the artist come to me and be like, "This is the story I want to tell — help me." Berklee was perfect for that because everyone here wants to fucking say something about themselves, and it's my job to help them do that. I'm gonna miss it a ton — I graduate this may. But I'm really lucky because everyone at Berklee and their mom is moving to LA. That's where I'm moving, and so hopefully there'll be a really nice community there for people like me who are trying to break into the scene.
LUNA: That's so exciting. LA is always this place where all the artists convene, and there can be a magical community there. There's definitely competition, but there's so much love out there to be found.
MECHANIC: I'll let you know in, like, a year how much love and how much competition we're talking about!
LUNA: Yeah, there's two sides to the coin. I wish you love and hopefully only love. If it's alright with you, could we switch topics and talk a little bit about "Clinton"?
MECHANIC: Totally, yeah!
LUNA: What is your typical songwriting process? Especially with this song, it seems like it was not a premeditated thing. Is it more like, "I'm gonna write a song now," or is it something that just comes out of your mind?
MECHANIC: It seems like you totally got what the song was, which wasn't premeditated at all. When I write for myself — because I've been doing it for so long — it's not like I'm planning a session with myself. I sit down at my guitar, I strum a few things, I mumble a few things, and then I'm like, "Holy shit, what did I just say? Why do I like that? Why did that just come out of my mouth? What does that mean?" That's what the song was. It's a song about looking back and remembering your past and remembering your mistakes. What's so funny is that three days later, I realized that the day that I had written it was Yom Kippur, which is a Jewish holiday; I'm Jewish. That holiday is specifically all about looking back on your past and your mistakes. I sound like I celebrated the holiday, [but] I didn't know that it was that day. I thought that was funny. I'm not religious, but you get the point!
But the song that flew out of me that day is not the song that is coming out [now]. It took a really long time and a lot of chipping away. One of my professors at Berklee, Ben Camp, pushed me really, really hard on this song, and I can't thank them enough for that because it got it to where it is now. All of this rambling aside and talking about Judaism, the song was probably the most natural song [I've written]. Two minutes into it I was like, "Oh, this is the next single." I knew it immediately. And it was!
LUNA: I'm really drawn to folk sensibilities but also that big indie rock sound, and you tap into both sides of the coin well. Can you tell me a little bit about developing that soundscape — the eerie indie folk into this loud expression of big sound? What inspired and influenced it?
MECHANIC: I could talk about this forever. My favorite artist in the entire world is Holly Humberstone. Listening to her was when I realized people want this — people want to feel things intensely and they want to be challenged, and they want to be made to feel raw and uncomfortable emotions. I was like, "Bingo, I can fucking do that!"
I produced an outline of the song. It definitely had some of those weirder, haunting, ear candy things that got my point across, but I took the song to my friend and producer Andrew Brinkman, who's an amazing producer here at Berklee. I made my reference playlist with artists like Holly Humberstone, Phoebe Bridgers, Searows, Alix Page, and even some of The 1975 — all of these people [who] aren't afraid to go dark and do it without any shame. Andrew and I sat together, him at the computer and me right behind him, and went through the entire song chronologically and built it up. It was really about making the song feel as much of a nightmare as what I was talking about was.
LUNA: Definitely. It has this really sudden moment where it becomes, not overbearing, but your mind is, like, exploding. I feel that pressure that you put on yourself and all of these swirling thoughts that are overwhelming you. You've captured that really well. You mentioned that “Clinton” is about a bunch of different themes: regret, shame, failure, etc. What purpose does songwriting in general play in regard to expressing these feelings or making sense of these feelings?
MECHANIC: It's a great question, and it's a question that I ask myself and [that] I get asked a lot by people who know me. Anyone who meets me as “Andie Mechanic me” is like, "You are such a bubbly and positive person," and then they see my artist project, and are like, "What fucking demon came and possessed you?" It made me ask myself why I go dark with my artistry. When you've gone through dark things, particularly as a child, and when you've had really serious battles with mental health as a child and you [couldn’t] make sense of them at the time, you start to make sense of them as you get older.
I write about the most honest things that I can because that's what I want to do all the time. I want to say how I feel about any given situation, and you can't do that because you have to be nice. You have to care about people. But if I could, I would say everything I thought. My artistry is where I get to do that, putting out music that is completely and utterly honest, raw, and dark. You get praised for it in a way that you don't in conversation. That is why I love it so much, because this is where I finally get to show the darkness that you don't get to show in everyday human conversation.
LUNA: It's this really powerful outlet for you to not separate yourself — it's not like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but–
MECHANIC: It is, dude! Especially as a songwriter for others, which really is my job. This artist project is for me, but it's also for people to see me for my songs too. All that to say, as a songwriter, I have to play the role of therapist, and I have to listen, understand, empathize, and show kindness — which is easy for me; that's what I love to do. Then when I sit down with myself and I'm like, "Okay, how fucked up can we get right now?" And the only person that has to sign off on it is me — that's so fun. It's totally Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
LUNA: Especially when you're riding by yourself, you can be unlimited in how fucked up you want to make things, because when you're writing with someone else it's like, "Do I want this person to know everything about me?"
MECHANIC: Right! And is this person willing to go there? Oftentimes not. But when it's just me, then I get to, which is so fun.
LUNA: That's so awesome. Can we explore your relationship with songwriting as a whole? I know that a lot of times Berklee's curriculum says you have to write when you're not feeling like writing songs. How do you reconcile with that? Do you write when you're not feeling like writing, or do you only write when you feel compelled to? What is your relationship with songwriting?
MECHANIC: That's a great question. When it comes to writing for other people, it really is my job, so my calendar is 100% stacked all the time with chunks of sessions. That to me is like any other job — I find the time to do it because I want to do it, and the only way I'm going to make it as a songwriter is if I grind my ass off. When it comes to writing songs, for me it's much more fluid. I spend so much time writing for other people so it's very hard to find a chunk of time nowadays to sit down with myself and write for me. When I do, there's no pressure, especially because the only things that I'm ever going to want to put out are the most honest things I could possibly say. I'm not going to put something out if I'm not like, "Fuck, I can't believe I said that." So I let it come out of me. And if it comes out of me that day, if I have something to say, if I have something dark to process, then it will be easy. If not, I trust that I've been a songwriter my whole life and it's not going to end.
LUNA: That's such a good instinct to have because I know it can be really stressful to have to churn out content, be on social media, have this presence, and be active. So I'm glad that you have that foundation of being confident, because songwriting is something you've done for forever.
MECHANIC: Definitely! Thank you, I appreciate that.
LUNA: Going back to the track and the feelings in it, you focus a lot on regret and reminiscing upon these memories. Even if a moment is overwritten by regret, how do you shift focus onto the good? How do you get out of those really stuck moments?
MECHANIC: I'm really lucky because this song is written about a time in my life where everything was horrible and I wasn't even me. At that time, there was no getting out of the feelings — it was the entire world I lived in. It has been coming up on three years now exactly to when this time was, and I'm so far removed from it now. I've really come to the other side. It's why I'm able to write a song like this. You can't really write a song about a time in your life if you're in that time. Maybe you can write a song, but you'll be lying your fucking ass off. It's really easy for me — I've done the hard work, I've pulled myself out from the bottom. When I was writing the song, it felt sad. It felt like I was talking to this younger version of me, empathizing with her, sympathizing with her, and feeling her again.
LUNA: I love that. It's really awesome to see how songwriting can show you how much you've grown. It's two periods of time in one.
MECHANIC: I love that you said that because it really did connect me to that person. You're right, because it's the current you writing about the past you. It's totally bridging these two people together, which is so cool.
LUNA: That can be so healing!
MECHANIC: I hope that it heals somebody else and doesn't drag them to where they were before. That would be the worst thing to come out of it. Hopefully it's the opposite!
LUNA: It's a nice balance between healing and also being in that state of grieving for the past. I don't think it's going to altogether wreck someone's life path. I think it's gonna be great and so exciting, especially with the music video. Can you spill any details on that?
MECHANIC: Yes! We went to Clinton, [NY]. My best friend, her name is Amaliya [Rakhmatullina] — she did all the videography and the photography, and we took a three and a half hour drive up to Clinton, NY and we filmed all around the Hamilton campus. What's really cool is that I didn't know what the aesthetic for the song was really going to look like, obviously because I hadn't seen the videos and the photos yet. But when we got back, we looked through all of them and I was like, "Holy shit, dude, you made it look like The Blair Witch Project!" And she was like, "What's The Blair Witch Project?" She made The Blair Witch Project without even knowing what The Blair Witch Project was? Yeah, cool. The music video was a fucking horror movie. That is what this whole thing is gonna look and feel like, and it all just came together so naturally. Thank god for her because I never would have been able to do that without her. This music video is my Blair Witch Project, essentially.
LUNA: We love a good horror movie-esque music video. I'm excited to see it.
MECHANIC: The next one that I'm filming is even fucking weirder. Do you know the production company A24? I'm obsessed with A24. I mean, obviously — I'm obsessed with anything weird, creepy, distorted, and gross. But that's something that I'm taking huge inspiration from for the next one.
LUNA: That's so exciting. I'm going off something you said in your email to me — that this track marks the beginning of a new frontier for your artist project. How so? What differentiates it from Andie Mechanic of the past?
MECHANIC: So here's the deal. Last year, I was writing for other people and for myself. I got to the end of the year and I looked back at the songs that I wrote and I was like [...]; “Let's make an artist project that feels like what [my upcoming album] feels like; let's do the artist thing.” I'm a songwriter, so part of that is developing other artists and teaching them how to develop their artist careers. I was like, alright, let's do it for me now. I had to start putting out singles even before [my upcoming] album so that I could start gaining any sort of traction as an artist whatsoever. So all of these singles that aren't part of the album are looking forward to the album, and this glitchy, electronic, haunting world that I'm creating. That's the new frontier that I was referring to.
LUNA: I'm excited for the new Andy Mechanic era. You've discussed in a past interview that you've previously felt afraid to center yourself in your music, as it might be perceived as selfish by others. How did you arrive upon the conclusion that sharing your artist project and these pieces of your life would instead be a good thing? Are you still arriving upon that conclusion?
MECHANIC: That is the best question ever. I wrote the songs [of my upcoming record] over the course of a year with zero intention of anyone ever hearing them. If you told me anyone was going to hear the songs that I was writing, I would have spit in your face — not actually. I wrote the album and once I knew I was gonna put it out, it all came together very naturally. Of course, I'm gonna put this out.
Honestly, it shouldn't ever feel wrong, especially because I work with artists every day. I'm constantly surrounded by people putting stuff out about themselves, and I love that for them. It shouldn't be any different from me, but it took me a while to even have anything worth putting out that is about me. Now that there is, it doesn't feel bad.
LUNA: There's always going to be someone out there who will relate to your work in some capacity.
MECHANIC: That's the hope, and if there isn't, then I am excited to be the first person to ever experience the things that I'm talking about on this album.
LUNA: There's nothing better than being proud of your work. So I'm so happy that you have this addition to your discography that you can hold up as a champion of your work.
MECHANIC: Yes, me too!
LUNA: What do you want listeners to get out of "Clinton" in particular?
MECHANIC: I want them to not be afraid of fucking up, to not be afraid of showing that you've fucked up and made mistakes and done wrong things. That's the whole point of all my music: we all are wrong in some way, so let's talk about it. If people can relate to that, then they're really going to love the music.
LUNA: It's definitely something that many people need to hear. There's a lot of advantages in messing up and learning from that. It's beautiful, although it might hurt.
MECHANIC: Right? It might hurt, but future you is gonna fucking love you for it.
LUNA: We're at my last question, and I like to end my interviews on a happy note so I wanted to ask: What has been giving you joy lately? It can be music-related or literally anything.
MECHANIC: Oh my god. My brothers! I have two older brothers and they're literally my best friends in the whole world. They are literally the point of living. I love them so much. They bring me the most joy! I was like, "Guys, I'm doing an interview for ‘Clinton’ in 30 minutes, wish me luck!" and they were like, "Can't wait!"
LUNA: That’s so sweet!
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