There’s a self-absorbed part of fame where you have to always be on watch. I spend so much time looking at myself it’s really boring – in the mirror, approving promo photos, making things on social media. And I don’t like how narcissistic fame is. “The expectation of always having to look like a pop star is exhausting. I don’t like having to uphold a fantasy all the time. “I don’t like the transactional part of fame, where I exist to be an accessory for your Instagram photo,” she says. Gotye, Kimbra and Prince onstage during the 55th Grammy awards in 2013 in Los Angeles. “She laid that vocal down in her bedroom with Wally and the rest is history,” Richardson remembers. The pair asked Kimbra if she would be interested in singing on an offbeat, spacey Gotye song that they were trying to find the right guest vocalist for – Somebody That I Used to Know. At the time, Tétaz was also working on the next album from singer-songwriter Wally de Backer, AKA Gotye. Richardson had put her in the studio with a producer, François Tétaz, to work on the album. The deal was brokered by her then-manager Mark Richardson, an industry veteran who had flown to Auckland to meet Kimbra and her parents after hearing a demo on her MySpace page. It was a difficult transition but in 2010 the hard work paid off and she signed with Warner. Suddenly she went from a “pretty normal” teenager with lots of friends and hobbies to being alone in a new city, her life revolving around work. At 17, as soon as she finished high school, she moved from New Zealand to Melbourne to begin work on her debut album, expanding on tracks she wrote when she was 15, including Settle Down and The Build Up. Of course, Kimbra couldn’t have known what she was signing up for when this all began. ” I don’t like the transactional part of fame, where I exist to be an accessory for your Instagram photo Kimbra When you’re lonely, then you get more in your head and then your mental health goes out. And I think loneliness is responsible for a lot of things. “Not a lot of people can really understand the pressures that you’re under. “It’s a pretty lonely life,” Kimbra says, before sitting in one of the many long pauses she will take during our conversation, choosing her words carefully. Photograph: Cybele Malinowski/The Guardian I spend so much time looking at myself it’s really boring’ … Kimbra. Her debut album, released soon after, went platinum in Australia and New Zealand and proved her flair for creating interesting, left-of-centre pop songs that are more Björk than Britney Spears. By the time she was 21, she had achieved the sort of success most musicians can only dream of when she appeared on the 2011 Gotye hit Somebody That I Used to Know, which topped the charts in 23 countries, was awarded two Grammys and now ranks among the bestselling digital singles of all time. At 17 she signed a management deal with financing, part of a long game plan to get her ready to launch as an artist, “which is a huge privilege but fucking pressure as well”. She began performing and making music at 11 (see the adorable clip of her declaring “one day, I’d love to be a pop star” on a New Zealand children’s show). Kimbra Lee Johnson, who you probably know mononymously, has been in the public eye for most of her life. “Any young woman who was thrown into the spotlight young, who has to think every day about how they appear, to be scrutinised, and has a lot of people putting money into their career – obviously, I’m going to be susceptible to anxiety.” “I have a really challenging career, so sometimes I, why me? Then I’m like, well, it makes sense,” she says, her native Kiwi accent dulled by years of living in the US. It’s something she’s long struggled with but has begun to take more seriously as an adult. L ately, Kimbra has been thinking about her anxiety.
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