Harmony Tells Us All the ‘Gossip’
Harmony Tividad’s new project is pop experimentation at its most absurd. The Los Angeles artist (and former Girlpool member) has delivered a full-length album following her 2023 debut EP, Dystopia Girl. Titled Gossip, it’s just as knowingly superficial as dropping her last name would imply (“Harmony,” like Madonna), packed top to bottom with lyrical ideas that feel distinctly Hollywood and developed for the clickbait generation.
She creates fictional scenarios that push character tropes to new extremes, on one song dreaming up a girl who frequents the Chateau Marmont and looks down on a rockstar lover (“You’re crying about how your mom just died from lipo,” she sings). On another, she introduces a religious teenager from Orange County who steals lipstick, eventually kills her parents and then lies about everything in confession.
Elsewhere, Harmony tackles the boredom that pervades American society, her own warped relationship with self-image and partying through feelings of loneliness. These plagues of LA life are wrapped up in bold electro-pop tracks, some of which are labeled as demos, that sound like spontaneous, albeit studied, reactions to the genre rather than anything too polished. Its rough edges are what make Gossip special, though, with blown-out vocals and hair-raising synths.
“Overall, this album is about exploring being the ‘wrong way’ and not doing things the way others want you to or expect you to,” Harmony says of the solo effort. “It’s mirrored even in the creation of this work itself.” Below, she breaks down Gossip, track by track, exclusively for PAPER.
“No Romeo”
This was written after I was passively told the plot of Baby Reindeer a few days after it came out and I was doing sessions in London. I went in to work with [Bamster] and I was like, “I feel like a song about this type of obsession and projection would be fun.” The leading theme I was interested in throughout this project was complicated characters and how we all have parts of ourselves that are in people we reject or try to push to the outside of society. I was interested in finding compassion for my own shortcomings through creating these extreme characters.
“Miss America”
I feel like I’ve been trying to write this song my whole life. The complacency and sedation of American culture has always been such an interesting theme for me since I started writing as a teenager. Growing up in LA, I had such a complex relationship with femininity and being the “ideal” woman. Between people around me and what I saw on TV, I was perturbed but also empathetic for what women were willing to sacrifice to access comfort and security. My whole life I felt I didn’t have the ability to reap certain rewards just based off my appearance. I wanted this song to represent both the resentment of that, but also the complicated desire of but what if?
“Coke and Mentos”
This is probably one of the most autobiographical songs on the album. It’s really tapping into a version of myself that used to rule my life: being explosive, unpredictable, always out looking for anything to happen just for the feeling. I wanted to advocate for my past self in this song because it can feel so reductive and boring to just be perceived as a party animal (which I have been), and I thought it was a fun polarity against the hecticness of this character for her to be a “girl of principle” (which I identify as.)
In a very image-driven world we make a lot of perceptions and decisions based on what is directly and most obviously in front of us, which literally makes sense, but when I was my worst self (this version, allegedly) I was also my most vulnerable, wounded and available. I was searching for something from life that I didn’t know how to give myself yet. And in the times of being absolutely stupid I was finding information on how to live my life. So this song is about the juxtaposition of what sometimes needs to happen outside of ourselves that can seem insane or questionable to get us to a place of self-realization.
“Thot Daughter”
This song was never supposed to be serious, obviously. It’s very clickbait, ironic, tongue-in-cheek, blah blah. It literally just came to me, the opening line, and then I wrote it off of that. My futch anthem.
“Rockstar”
This song is about the joy of being a hypocrite. I imagined a girl that hangs out at the Chateau Marmont all the time, and the judgements she makes of this nepo-esque rock man who does a bunch of drugs and how she feels morally above him in some capacity or like he’s “bad” (he is). However, the fun of the song is really about the irony that comes forth in the second verse after she has made all these judgments of him. We can see she is also being very calloused and sociopathic. (“You’re not the man I thought no/ You’re crying about how your mom just died from lipo/ So you’re from LA, but on the westside.”) This absurdity is an underlying energy in so many modern situationships or relationships where we make a judgement about someone for one thing and deem them bad, but often we usually lack perspective on some of our own shortcomings or questionable behaviors.
“Sinner”
This one is about a Catholic teenager in Orange County that takes advantage of her parents’ kindness, and exploits them and then murders them. This one was presented to me in a vision that was me processing some family trauma (it’s not this situation), but this song helped me process some grief and pain surrounding something that happened so long ago.
“Your Girl”
I wanted this song to explore the desire to not only belong to someone, but also the longing for the ability to destroy them because of how much you mean to them. To just be so close, but also with awareness that you are a ticking time bomb. You never know when your demons will become bigger than you.
“Boys”
This one is self-explanatory, I think.
“Technologique”
An extension on my exploration of the ideal Los Angeles housewife: the bliss, dullness and serenity. In all of my songs there’s a lot of absurdity and it’s because that tension lives within me. I grew up being raised by artists in Los Angeles in tumultuous circumstances. I was surrounded by people with more stable and glamorous lives in school, and felt like an outlier. There’s resentment and longing and confusion because there is so much I do not know about how people make sense of the way they choose to live their lives. And there’s a lot of questions I have about what makes someone’s life meaningful or satisfying or ideal. I am curious about the emotional cost of this air of perfection that seems palpable to others but invisible to ourselves.
“Stereo”
This one and “Coke and Mentos” feel tied together for me. It’s like when I would go home in that era of my life and feel that pounding loneliness — that post-party I’ve-just-been-surrounded-by-100-people-who-don’t-care-about-me feeling.
Photography: Walker Bunting
Harmony Tividad’s new project is pop experimentation at its most absurd. The Los Angeles artist (and former Girlpool member) has delivered a full-length album following her 2023 debut EP, Dystopia Girl. Titled Gossip, it’s just as knowingly superficial as dropping her last name would imply (“Harmony,” like Madonna), packed top to bottom with lyrical ideas…