To celebrate the release of her debut album ‘SEXY, INSANE, MIGHT RUIN YOUR LIFE’, we had the pleasure of speaking with Stella Scholaja to gain an in-depth insight on her inspirations for the album, aspirations for her future in the music industry and much more.
1. Have you always known you were born to be a musician or was this a talent you discovered later in life?
It’s definitely something that I have always done. I started writing songs when I was eight years old and it was just a way for me to cope with my feelings and the things I was going through and I think, even though I wrote an album about the insanity of where life can take you, songwriting is something that has kept me quite sane.
I just purely love music. I love listening to music. I love writing music. I love writing the strings and the synthesizers and the melodies and the lyrics of a song. I love compressing and EQ-ing tracks. I love everything that goes into making a record and making music and that’s why I do it. I don’t know if I was born to do it, but I don’t really care even if I was born to do something else, I’m doing this and that might be as close as you can come to find your calling.
2. Which song sparked the creation of your debut album ‘SEXY, INSANE, MIGHT RUIN YOUR LIFE’ and why?
“Siren Of The Night“ was the first song I wrote for the record, but I think what really sparked the creation of the album was „Arcade“, which is the final song on the record. „Arcade“ is a song I wrote years ago and I waited for the right time to put it in a context that would give life to the story.
3. How long did the album take to create, like did all the songs flow out at once like a creative whirlwind or was it part of a longer process to create your art and perfect your own personal sound?
Once I had a clear vision of where the story was going, the album and the songs itself happened pretty fast. Except for „Arcade”, I wrote all of the songs on the record in quick succession to each other. The recording and production process took about eight months. Elliott and I really wanted to make sure that every single detail was sitting right in the mixes.
4. Who are your biggest inspirations in life and art, and did they have an impact on the album’s creation?
I’ve always loved Fleetwood Mac and I think they inspired this album in many ways. I wanted the songwriting to be very honest and vulnerable but also playful at the same time, that when you listen to it, you are transported into another time and really feel all the elements of the ocean breeze, the drought and the disco fever while listening to these tracks.
5. Do you have a favourite lyric that you’ve written for the album and what does it mean to you?
Lyrically, I’ve had a lot of fun with these songs, so this is a tough question to answer. However, I’d say „Blackthorn“ is one of my favorite songs on the album because it really reveals the heart of the story. It’s the tragedy of things turning out way differently to how you planned.
One of my favorite lyrics in the song is: „It was a thought, just a seed in a fever dream but you’re tangled in the weeds… what if the love of my life is waiting on the other side of that screen?“
In the context of the song, this lyric appears because the character of the Sailor (what I call him) or the Siren’s love interest is seeing her on a movie screen at the theater of the mall that he works at. The love story on the album happens over a longer period of time, so if you listen to the record front to back, you realize that it starts out in the late 70s and then they don’t see each other for a couple of years. They meet again in the 80s and then everything gets messed up and by the 90s they are still going back and forth. So technically, during that time, there was no such thing as texting and social media to influence your ability to move on, but through that lyric I snuck in this irony of modern times, where you meet somebody online and you know you’ve never met them, but still, you often wonder if you could just be with that person, if that is someone you could love.
6. Did you go into the album knowing that the themes of astrology, mythology and the ocean would be part of the main concept, or were these themes something that happened as sort of an organic coincidence in your writing process?
Definitely. I wanted it to be mystical. I wanted the words to transport you into a world where you feel like you’re watching white horses by the coastal line, where you’re lost in the woods and where you feel the drought of the city in the lyrics and the instrumentals. Also, since I think of the main character as a siren from the actual mythology and lore, I wanted to incorporate those elements into the story.
7. How do you cope with being so vulnerable within your art like sharing the heartbreaking lyrics of ‘Lost In The Dunes’, ‘White Horses By The Ocean’ and ‘Lone Wolf’ to name a few examples, is this something that you find very natural and healing or is this something you struggle with as an artist?
I do find it natural because it’s also the music that I resonate with the most and it’s a way for me to understand what I’m actually feeling. If I weren’t willing to put it all out there, then what would I be doing it for anyways? I think you do need to leave your comfort zone to grow and when I’m writing and it starts feeling a little uncomfortable I start questioning whether this is too much or too insane, that is when I keep going and when I know I’m on the right track.
8. On the other hand, a lot of your songs are laced with a delicious confidence like within my personal favourite song ‘She’s Wild, So Wild’ and of course the title track, have you always been able to write these girlpower anthems or is this something you’ve had to work on?
Thank you so much! I’d say that even for it „She’s Wild, So Wild“, the song is a journey because it starts out with a very conflicted mindset. You’re questioning whether you did everything wrong, whether you have the strength to leave a situation that you know is not good for you and it’s really a self reflection of things that you yourself have done that you regret. Throughout the song, you slowly come to the realization that all the things you’ve been through make you who you are, and that, even though you made mistakes, and sometimes you accepted things that were not within your boundaries, you took the low, you took the defeat and you came out on the other side. When we get to the final chorus, we can confidently say I’m better than I was before. I have realized who I am. I have realized the integrity of my character and no one has the ability to taint that anymore. I think it’s rare to start out with complete confidence and always make the right decisions, especially when you’re young and you’re just learning to navigate the world. However, there will come the day when you can look in the mirror and say that you love yourself and actually believe it.
9. What is the dream for your career in the music industry, like do you have a dream venue to play or a dream audience to reach?
I try to dream, but I also try not to dream because I personally have a tendency to put so much pressure on myself to the point where it’s crushing me. So I try to set goals and accomplish those one by one. My goal for this year was to make this album and make it something that I purely wrote out of love for the craft and all the things that make me who I am.
10. Do you have a message for your listeners regarding your upcoming debut album?
I hope anyone who listens to it, enjoys the songs and the story and can take something away from it. If anything, I don’t think that your life is only a life if it has a tight little bow wrapped around it in the sense that you need to find a love that will make you worthy, a job that will make you worthy and then have a family by a certain time and have experienced things by a certain time and think that you have to have it all figured out by a certain age.
That’s not the case. We learn our whole lives and we change and we become better and sometimes we become worse and then ideally we become better again. The journey and living itself are the only things that make your life a life, and that make it worth living. The only thing you really need to do is to keep going towards the things that you think you want and see where it gets you and then readjust. Just get out of bed if you can, and it’s okay if some days you can’t, and see where you’re being led, who you meet, who you talk to and who you can become. I’m sure that it’s someone great even if you think that you’re insane. I promise you’re just the right amount of insane.
Bacchanalia Magazine 
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