Interview: Ali Barter is Doing Her Best
The Australian pop rock singer-songwriter discusses freeing herself from the pressures of perfection with her latest release, the pointedly titled Hello, I’m Doing My Best.
Written by Annie Lyons
Photo courtesy of Kane Hibberd
Ali Barter revels in blunt honesty with contagious pop rock on her sophomore album, Hello, I’m Doing My Best. With its self-affirming title, the album is Barter’s answer to the anxieties elicited by expectations of success following her 2017 debut album, A Suitable Girl, which gained significant traction in Australia. Released in 2019, Hello, I’m Doing My Best boasts a contagious pop rock that’s nostalgia-infused but not kitschy, and would feel right at home on the soundtrack of an iconic high school movie from the ‘90s or early ‘00s. The record’s guitar-driven production, done by Barter’s husband Oscar Dawson of the band Holy Holy, matches the title’s mindset with a rawer sound than Barter’s previous work.
Hello, I’m Doing My Best sees the sober Barter reflect on her past alcoholism and the chaos of her teens and early ‘20s. She’s sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes droll, but her lyrics have a frankness and punkish attitude that bring a powerful presence to each song. There’s the brutally honest “Cocktail Bar” with its simple plea for someone to hold her hand and the playful “Ur A Piece Of Shit,” where Barter leads a cheerleader-esque chant of teenage traumas: “Put your hands up if your dad had an affair / put your hands up if your mother never cared.”
From its ‘90s singer-songwriter notions to its narrative of past mistakes, Hello, I’m Doing My Best feels like a coming-of-age movie in its own right. It’s a comparison that Barter channels with the pastel-hued music video for “Ur A Piece Of Shit,” in which she depicts different high school stereotypes — the nerd, the popular girl, the princess, the rebel — until her current self takes control by murdering them all at the end. It’s campy and fun and not afraid to get gory, much like Hello, I’m Doing My Best itself.
Barter’s deeply personal lyricism and confident sound earned her a spot as one of the eight artists on Afterglow’s Artists to Watch list from the SXSW 2020 music festival. Ahead of the festival’s cancellation, Afterglow spoke with Barter about Liz Phair, the power of a good movie soundtrack, and self-acceptance.
First of all, I love the title of Hello, I’m Doing My Best — what does that mean for you?
Well, Hello, I’m Doing My Best came to me after I put out my first record a couple years ago, and I just made myself sick with expectations and wanting it to be something and expecting something of myself. And then it also being that time in my life where I was still (feeling) a lot of “shoulds.” You get to those points in life where you’re like, I should be here, I should be doing this, I should feel like that, I should have this. ... I came to a point where I just had to really bring it back to basics.
And that was my little phrase … you just have to do your best. It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your life or your music or your whatever it was. That was my phrase, and then I started writing all these songs for the next record, and I was like, Oh, that’s something. The songs are very about letting go of expectations and sharing f---ed up secrets because I’m not ashamed of them anymore. Just being me, and stripping it all back and being real.
Yeah, I also wanted to know because Hello, I’m Doing My Best doesn’t have as polished a sound as your last record. What made you want to pursue that new and rawer sound?
Yeah, that was intentional. I think the first record I did was more polished. I was still sort of testing things out. So, for this one, it was really the ethos that I had ... I wanted it to sound the way I was going to play it live. I didn’t want there to be too many extra bits that I didn’t understand. Sometimes with a producer, they put more guitars on it … I work with my husband, and he takes a guitar-based approach. So, he’s always doing these guitars, and for this record, I was like I want to know what every guitar is — I want it to have a really specific purpose. I wanted this record to sound raw and imperfect and fleshed with real. We tried to make it sound like a band in the room, and I really used the record Pinkerton by Weezer as a reference. Like I said, with the last record, I made myself sick trying to make something perfect, and it doesn’t exist!
This record does deal with a lot of messed up stuff. There’s some very dark lyrics. I understand that a lot of this record is somewhat autobiographical from before you were sober, but what was it like to write about these really difficult experiences from your past and just to put them out into the world?
I found it incredibly freeing. Everything on the record is completely autobiographical, aside from “Ur A Piece of Shit” where I used stuff that happened to my girl friends that I grew up with. I asked for their permission, and we talked about it. But, nothing is made up or fictionalized. And for me, I found it really freeing — like there’s stuff in there that I held really close, and it was a great source of shame or a darkness that I held inside me. And through the process of getting sober, I wanted to share how my experience can benefit someone else that’s trying to get sober. I think that people who can’t stop drinking hate themselves for doing terrible things, and I’m able to share my experience, and then they don’t feel so alone.
I feel that’s what I’ve gotten from music as well. I remember listening to Liz Phair and hearing her talk in songs like “F--k and Run” and being like, I feel like that! And then I felt less alone. That’s why I love women singer-songwriters, like Courtney Love. They sing about having bad skin and hating themselves and unhealthy relationships ... like I can identify with that. And so, writing about that stuff wasn’t hard. I’ve put out enough music now that this sort of stuff just fell out of me. It was the time for it to be spoken about.
The record as a whole to me felt like a coming-of-age movie in some ways. There’s a lot of lyrics about experiences you’ve had a while ago, but now there’s some wisdom as you’re looking back on those moments. What would you say to the Ali of 10 years ago?
Aww, the Ali of 10 years ago. Just that you’re okay. You don’t need to hate yourself so much. That’s something that I’ve had (felt) since I was a kid, and that’s why I think I’ve used things outside of myself — whether it be drugs or alcohol, whether it be a man to make me feel better or what I look like or eating or stuff like that. But you’re not as bad as you think you are. The thing that I went through getting sober is just one day at a time. One foot in front of the other, and things will get better. You don’t have to “fix” anything, you don’t have to “change” anything, you just do the next right thing that comes up and let go.
I think that’s something when you’re younger. I cared so much, and it made me destructive. I didn’t know how to accept myself. So I would just say … you’re okay.
I really love the music video that you did for “Ur A Piece Of Shit” with the coming-of-age movie aesthetics. What inspired the story and that bloody ending?
I’m a massive soundtrack fan. All my favorite albums are soundtracks: “Stealing Beauty,” “Reality Bites,” “High Fidelity.” I could name a bunch ... I’m a child of the ‘90s. And so, I had written the song, and it wasn’t time for the video yet, but I was on a plane and I watched “Heathers” and I was like … that is it! It’s all these characters, and I could identify with the kitschy girl but also the dead girl but also the nerdy one and the one that had f---ed up problems.
When I thought back to the song and the women that I know — women, but we were girls — like we all had those traits. And I thought wouldn’t it be cool to play all those characters — because all those characters are in me — and then kill them all? Because that’s essentially what I’ve tried to do. And people do. They’ve had a bad feeling or do something bad or feel shame over something and they try to squash it, they try to hide it, they try to kill it. And these things are all part of me, and that’s why I wanted to put that metaphor out there — and kill them all! You’ve heard my lyrics; I like violence in a way, I guess. I see things from a darker perspective.
You mentioned “High Fidelity” — have you seen the new “High Fidelity” remake?
No, but I’ve seen all the billboards around and I love Zoe Kravitz and I love that it’s a girl! And the aesthetic of that film … all I wanted to do when I was younger was move to Chicago and have boyfriends and work in a record store. So I cannot wait to watch that … and ‘cuz her mum was in the original! That’s such a trip.
So sticking with that theme of reflection and looking back — a few years ago, you wrote that one really powerful op-ed in Junkee called “It’s About F---ing Time We Gave Female Musicians The Credit They Deserve.” With everything that’s been happening in the world lately, do you think there has been any type of change in that conversation with how women are discussed in music? Do you think it’s improving?
I definitely think it’s improving, but I still think we have a long way to go though. I think there’s a lot more consciousness — not everyone, but in certain communities. I think it’s more speaking about just generalizing people. I think of it in terms of music, but just like why we describe people certain ways and why we put people in certain categories.
When it comes to women in music ... I think having a certain amount of women on festival line-ups is important. I think about things like why it took me so long to start writing songs or play the guitar. I think that’s definitely due to the fact that mainly what we saw were men dominating the space, and women who were in the space were (seen as) like “crazy,” “drug-addicts,” “psychos,” like wayward women. It wasn’t seen as living the same life. Men are always canonized and held up, whereas women have been torn down and ridiculed — always pegged against each other. But I think we definitely speak about these things now, we’re conscious of it — but there’s a long way to go.
So our publication is called Afterglow, and we first got that name from the feeling you get whenever there’s a piece of music that feels right or it clicks. What’s a memory that you have from when you first realized your love for music or your love for playing music?
Well, I loved music as a child. It was the first thing that I loved and I connected with. I was thinking about this — I did a show recently where we had to pick seven songs that meant something to us and perform them. It was in a beautiful theater, and it was a lovely show. But one song I didn’t pick that I really think was the first song that I truly connected with was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “Wizard of Oz.” When I was a little girl, I remember watching that film and being enamored with it. The first performance I ever did was at church, and I sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” when I was in grade three. It’s such a special song and probably my first song.
This interview has been condensed and minimally edited for clarity.
Listen to more Ali Barter on her website and Spotify, and find her on Twitter and Instagram.