Q&A: Alt-Pop Princess RAEGAN Talks Performance Art, Spiritually, and the Importance of Never Being Boring
IF THE MOVIE CORALINE WAS RATED R — starred Billie Eilish, and was scored by a twenty-something-year-old queer woman, that twenty-something-year-old would be RAEGAN. The singer-songwriter’s music is atmospheric and immersive, with just the right amount of ominous energy to send heady shivers down your spine — in the best way. Coy, clever, and brutally honest, RAEGAN’s experimental sound has an almost unsettling yet seductive quality that’s impossible to turn away from.
For the alt-pop artist, performance art is a central part of her identity as a musician. “I cannot do boring things,” she says of her style.
Drawing from her musical theater background, RAEGAN is known for using props and costumes on stage; in one viral video on her Instagram, she posted a clip from a show where she tied herself to a chair during a song to visualize the emotions of feeling restrained in a relationship.
In addition to her visual artistry, RAEGAN connects to her music by thinking of it as a kind of spiritual practice, a way to channel emotions that can’t be expressed in other ways. Her latest single, “COINS,” was written as a manifestation for herself as an artist, a projection of her future career.
Confident, vibrant, and badass, it seems inevitable that RAEGAN will continue making waves in the alt-pop music scene. Read on below to hear more about her journey navigating the music world as a young creative.
LUNA: I'd love to hear about your journey with music and how you got into the industry.
RAEGAN: I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid, and then in high school I started writing and producing my music. From the second I started, I realized that was my actual calling, my sole purpose — I felt like I could actually represent what was in my mind. All of my thoughts that I could not even come to sense with myself, all of those could be represented through my music, and I just kind of put my brain into a sonnet form. That's how I got started writing and producing. I started taking it seriously this summer. I started really applying work ethic and thinking, “Okay, talent is never going to be enough. I have to outwork everybody around me” — and that's what I've been doing for the last five months.
LUNA: That's awesome. Would you say music is a spiritual practice for you?
RAEGAN: Yeah, for sure. It’s literally the way I can represent myself. If I'm feeling low in my life, [music] makes me feel confident again, it makes me feel happy. It's literally my therapy — it’s how I communicate my emotions. I feel like as I make music, I just keep going through different eras of RAEGAN and different eras of me. I'm in a pretty cool era right now, I'd say.
LUNA: How would you describe your music sonically to somebody who's never heard it before?
RAEGAN: I would say alternative, alt-pop, to give them a genre. Very experimental, very cinematic; theatrical. Basically if the person knew me, I would say imagine me, in music. It's also very dark in certain aspects.
LUNA: Would you say your musical theater background influences your performance style?
RAEGAN: Yeah, for sure. It literally shaped who I am today as an artist. I cannot do boring things. I can't just stand on stage and sing my songs — I need a storyline going on, I need an immersive experience. It definitely took me into performance art. Doing my own music and performing my own music is a very vulnerable thing, and I feel very comfortable creating characters and being somebody on stage rather than me, per se. All caps RAEGAN is a character I created, a very exaggerated, very confident, and very outspoken version of who I am. I'm definitely the same person, but she’s just a very dramatic and very extravagant and exaggerated [version] of myself.
LUNA: What is your process like for creating music?
RAEGAN: It's always different, but for the most part I usually start with creating the beat and creating how I'm feeling into this atmosphere. From there I go and freestyle flows and melodies. I’ll sit on that sometimes [for] a day, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years, and over time I'll formulate those lyrics. Songwriting is such a secondhand type of thing for me — I feel like my most fun and most focused [part of] the process is creating the beat and creating the melodies and stuff.
Songwriting comes over time as I process those emotions. I write how I'm feeling in that moment, and then having grown from the moment I write through all perspectives, and I feel like it gives me more to write when I sit on it. But sometimes if I have a lot to say at that moment, I will just say it all on the spot. A lot of songs I made in one studio session — beat, lyrics, everything. I try not to give myself rules, and I try not to structure my process because I feel like the more free it is with my life, the more it makes sense to me.
LUNA: I'd love to hear a little bit more about your newest single, “COINS,” and the story process behind it.
RAEGAN: I made that song in high school, and I randomly had the idea to make a beat out of coins. I actually created those lyrics pretty quickly with the song — it wasn't something I necessarily sat with for a long time. I was coming through a perspective of me being a super successful artist, being famous and [projecting] where I saw myself, where I was going to be, but I was not there at all. I hadn't even released a song at that time, and I didn't for years after that. It honestly served for me as a manifestation, and I kind of created it through the first verse. I was like, “Okay, I have literally no money from music in any way, but I'm going to say I do, and I'm going to say that I'm so successful, and I'm making all this money, and I'm just really living out my dreams, and it'll just happen. And when it does happen, then I'll release the song.”
Initially, I had projected to release the song at a way higher point in my career. But as I said, I made that in high school, literally years ago, and that song and even that era of music that's releasing now with this EP that's coming up is old me, it’s high school Raegan. So I can't even imagine clinging on to that song and releasing it later, when I'm going to be a whole different version of me. The music I'm making now in my mind does not even compete with this. It's like I said, a manifestation, so might as well release this now to build my career.
LUNA: I also loved the music video — I thought it was gorgeous. I’m curious about how it visually connected to the song for you?
RAEGAN: I came across the director — she’s an NYU student [like] me. I thought she did some cool stuff, and I needed a low budget video, so [I said,] “Let's see what we can do as two students working together.” I wanted something abstract that played off the idea of coins. We just kept jumping off each other — it was so collaborative and so fun. The original idea that we had was going to be me coming out of the water into this huge auditorium and me performing, but we were like, that's been done before — it's cheesy, what else can we do? So I thought, I'm planting my seed and watching it grow, I'm watching my dreams come true. So what if it's an actual tree? And we just kept building off that, and it honestly just came out great. Everything we had hoped for came to life.
LUNA: I heard that your song “WALTZ” is a queer retelling of Romeo and Juliet, and I wanted to ask you about that, and also about how your identity as a queer person influences your music.
RAEGAN: I'm gonna answer your second question first because me being queer is literally who I am, and I am my music. So I feel like it just comes along with me the same way that I have freckles, or that I have blue eyes: it's just who I am. So that's just what's going to represent me as an artist.
I actually created [“WALTZ”] completely about myself … It was never [intentionally] about a queer Romeo and Juliet — it was literally just me in my life. I referenced [the play] because I was getting that vibe from the waltz itself, because like I said, I started with the beat. I just started playing around with that through the flows and through the freestyling, and I actually said the Romeo and Juliet line through freestyling. At the time, it was such a coincidence — I was cast in Romeo and Juliet at school a week after I made that song. The more that I really went in depth with that script as I was in that production, I was like, “Wow, I truly [relate] to this story.” I see a parallel line just aligning with this story, like a lot of things in common. So that's where I went through that narrative of creating a video with a lesbian Romeo and Juliet, or what I call “Raegan and Juliet.”
LUNA: Who are some of your big musical influences?
RAEGAN: My go-to to say is always Marina and the Diamonds. I grew up listening to her, and she definitely shaped my taste in music and honestly my writing style as well. I also grew up listening to Melanie Martinez, Tyler, the Creator, Rex Orange County, Jhené Aiko — I could go on for days. I also have to say Ariana Grande, she's my guilty pleasure. A combination of all of that I think subconsciously motivates my music. But also I'm always creating out of my mind and my emotions and exactly how I'm feeling. I like to hear how I'm feeling through the instrumentals, through the flows, through the lyrics. It's always a reflection of who I am at that moment.
LUNA: Would you say you have any really prominent muses? Either people, experiences, or emotions?
RAEGAN: I'm gonna be a crazy bitch and just say what I always think, which is literally me (laughs). I know that sounds insane, but just who I am at that time and how I'm feeling. I do have muses and inspirations, but I would say all of that is purely subconscious. It's always just in the back of my mind, probably motivating the intentions, but it's always I'm always focused on me when I'm creating.
LUNA: I heard that you're going on tour — I'd love to hear more about that!
RAEGAN: Yes, I go on tour in March! I'm opening up for Autoheart, a band from the UK. I'm extremely excited — I’ve been starting to prep because I'm three months away. I'm in game mode, getting everything done. It's going to be an immersive experience. It's going to be as if you're going to a Broadway show. I'm just gonna create something unique, something elevated, the best version of me, and something people have never seen before, I can assure that. I'm so excited. This is literally a dream come true.
LUNA: Where do you see your career going in the next couple years?
RAEGAN: In a couple years I definitely see myself as being established as an artist, and it's more of a feeling than I can put it into words. I'm always in the mentality of “I can do better, I can do better, I can do better.” I just want, in five years, to be in a place where I can do things that I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to score a movie and create a musical and perform on Broadway eventually, and get into acting and film. Also collaborating more with other artists, just doing things better than I did the week before, always being an elevated version of myself and always working harder than I did last year. I just see myself growing as a person every year.
