To Addison Rae, fame is a gun. To 26-year-old singer-songwriter Indy Yelich, fame is a bedroom — one she witnessed take shape firsthand from the moment her sister Ella Yelich-O’Connor launched her public career as Lorde with the 2013 “Royals” music video, set in a suburban bedroom.
It’s also the title of Indy Yelich’s latest EP, out August 1: Fame Is a Bedroom. The title is, in part, a reference to “leaving your identity at the door and being blood and being sisters, and everything else kind of falls away,” she tells Teen Vogue. “It's the emotional tug-of-war of loving a sister who belongs to the public, but learning to trust that private relationship when it feels like the world is watching.”
That’s not to say this EP is wholly about Lorde, or even about fame in a literal sense. The intimacy of sisterhood in the public eye carries over into the idea of knowing someone in a deeper way than other people do, whether it’s a friend, a lover, or a famous sibling. Growing up with people watching — and they’re always watching, even if you’re not a celebrity — changes the way you see the world and your relationships. What once felt like true love can eventually be seen for all its flaws, and how you see yourself at 23 can shift totally by 26. On Fame Is a Bedroom, Yelich processes breakups with friends and the ends of romances, but also an end to a past version of herself.
Below, in her own words, Indy Yelich takes us through the making and meaning of her new EP, from the songwriting to the sound to the Sex and the City references.
Track 1: “Savior”
Sample lyric: “You're 35 and you've got a daughter / How would you feel if this happened to her?”
You know the five stages of grief? I wanted to start on this [moment when] it felt like the end of a formative relationship, and it's the first time I started to see it as it really was. I wanted to come in swinging. I wanted to lay the foundation for Fame Is a Bedroom as, not a violence per se, but a cut you open. And then, as the EP kind of goes on, you're starting to understand what's happening.
Each track is an act of departure, and I feel like this one, sonically, is my most jarring, so by the time the song is done, there's some kind of acceptance in the lyrics. You're going to see me everywhere and all the things I do. I'm going to haunt that bar you like on 7th Avenue. A lot of “Savior” was written in a few dive bars. I would write down notes on little pieces of paper.
It's very raw, the strings are very vulnerable, and it's very rich in imagery. The first post chorus —it's like the gold that I can't get back. I'm 26 now; I started writing it at 24, so it's unlocking this part of me that's very, not just Carrie and Big-coded, but a version of myself that I've had to claw back to. I'm single and I'm very kind of happy in that fact, and it brings back a past version of myself I'm very protective of, I think.
The below is an earlier version of the “Savior” chorus, with different lyrics:
Track 2: “Up in Flames (The Wayland)”
Sample lyric: “I saw you on a date, she’s just as young.”
I can only write as much as I know at the time. “Up in Flames” and “Idol” solidified that for me, because those are songs just written for me truly, down to the co-production, down to using a lot of my vocals, turning them into instruments. It was really important as a 26-year-old for this record, [for me] to write songs that I would want to listen to myself, the kind of inspirations that I like. The ability to enunciate — that was really validating for me because I'm realizing that I'm doing this art, yeah, of course to connect with people, but ultimately it's to make sense of my own experience.
I wrote “Up in Flames” in New York, so that was the one record that was actually written in New York, which I feel like you can tell just because it's so me. I knew that I wanted to have this really sad, kind of dirty, jarring electric guitar, a pulsing synth.
The themes — it's a lot of things. It's borrowing someone else's body to get a new one. It's my part in a fling. It's the first time I'm thinking, I'm not perfect here. I'm essentially, maybe subconsciously, using someone to get over somebody else. The outro, for example, relates to another song.
That outro, that bridge outro, is my favorite work. "Where is that world we lived in? I tried to find my way back / You're on a plane to Reno to meet her mom and dad / You're in my blood now / You're in the taste of everything I miss, so I go back to the Wayland." I felt very Ethel Cain-coded in that bridge.
I co-wrote that song with Gaia Menon and then Noise Club, these two producers I really like. I could hear Gaia singing in the room — the “oh oh oh” part — and I was like, "Gaia, it's really important. Can you sing this on the mic?"
“Up in Flames” is not just my debut as a songwriter, in a sense; not a co-producer, because I didn't get those credits, but someone who trusted herself enough to hear those instruments, and I'm carving them out. I felt a little bit like a director. It was incredible.
Sometimes it's not my voice that is most powerful in moments. Sometimes it's an instrument, sometimes it's what someone else can bring out in me. It's funny, because that's the one song that I feel like people have been like, "That's your best one yet." There's actually this playlist where they put “Broken Glass” by Ella and me next to each other on Spotify — I think it was on the “Young and Free” playlist. I thought that was really special, to see us together like that.
Track 3: “Idol”
Sample lyric: “Known you in all your phases / You were 15 when you made it / We’ve got the same hand, but I’ve got my own scars.”
“Idol” is my first time acknowledging [our sisterhood, our past,] in such a public way. I think I first wrote that maybe around our birthday [Editor’s note: The sisters are both Scorpios.] November of last year. It just kind of felt about time. I feel like 26 is a big shift in my life.
We got really close [over the past couple years], and we spent a lot of time kind of walking around New York together when it was cold with these big scarves on, AirPods, holding hands. It was really cold, really late at night, and I would hear the dah-na-dah-dah-dah-na over and over. That's why in verse one, it's like, "I'm the moon to your sunlight / I only shine in the nighttime / I say your name in a hushed tone, but I've idolized you for my whole life." It talks about this omnipresence of her alongside being my sister, and it's the development of the intimacy of sisters and the distance of fame.
Even though writing about your life is very public, there's a catharsis, and in “Idol,” I said everything I wanted to say about that topic. Every word there is there for a reason.
No, it wasn't, but maybe subconsciously my love for her did slip out a little there because I'm really proud of, specifically, those two lines. "Knowing you in all your phases," like the phases of the moon or the sun. The "All the late night talks / I know they healed us" — a lot of that was in reference to sharing a house when she was in studio and just that moral support, hearing different versions of Virgin, playing her my stuff and feeling like there's something about having a sister, especially in a niche job in the industry when you're two years apart. You're both Scorpios. You're realizing, “Wait, actually, you're my best mate. You are my best mate.” To me, it's the evolution of a relationship, the idolization of an older sister to the relationship of being friends.
I've heard “Favorite Daughter” in quite a few forms. I heard it without a chorus. I heard it when she was mumbling. There was no chorus. I mean, I love it. Obviously, I have my own version of how I feel, but I feel that it's really amazing seeing my two biggest influences — my mother and my sister — kind of live in that world together. It's really cathartic, and I feel like it inspires me to be brave with my own record. It's not always easy having your family being the subject matter, but if that's what you know, then it inspires me to have my truth.
Track 4: “Grace”
Sample lyric: “Cause the cab went past and your light was on / And she was outside waiting for you all night long / When a man is ready, give him what he wants.”
I can't remember when I wrote “Grace.” It wasn't that long ago, but I saw that someone I dated for a very long time had a new partner. You do spiraling, you do the stalking, you do the whole shebang. You get in the pool, you're crying. I called my sister crying. Of course, of course. Oh my God. But that song was always like, “Look at the mess we made, you deserve love.” There was never an inch in my body that wanted to be malicious, ever. It was always like, “Look, it's an ode to a very toxic, flawed, beautiful love story.” New York's crying. We were twin flames. We spent years together.
It's loving someone enough to leave them, and knowing that you're both kind of to blame. How it ends is, I think, it's some of my best writing. It's that bridge. The taxicab theory [from Sex and the City]! Miranda’s taxicab theory is exactly what I wanted to say.
For the name “Grace,” I loved the idea of putting a female name next to mine, so it references a name and the phrase “Go with grace.” There's two elements. You can leave with a woman and I'll sit here, but we can also leave the situation with class. I really liked seeing kind of an ambiguous name next to mine, so it looks like two lovers, two women who look similar that have dated a man.
Lately I've come to the realization that this record is not about men, it's about women. I didn't realize that until I was mixing it, because there were a few versions of “Grace,” and “Idol” was so hard to get right in the mixing.
[This EP as a whole,] it's actually an ode to the women in my life. It's an ode to my sister. It's an ode to a past version of myself. It's an ode to an ex's new partner, it's an ode to a very, very painful queer friendship. It's all female subjects. It's really interesting when I think about that and all past versions of myself.
Track 5: “Sail Away”
Sample lyric: “So if you end up on the bottom / oh my God, it’s not my problem.”
The most painful subject of all, really, is the emotional limbo of queer friendship. I mean, just holy heck. I wanted it to be very punchy and vengeful and kind of sassy. In verse one it's, "She's got a white fence to run around," as in playing house with a man that is not serving her needs. And verse two is, "You live your life like a good wife." It starts as “she,” and then verse two is addressing the subject [directly].
The way women love each other, it’s just so primal, and it's so not like a man. The lines get blurry. You lose your best friend, you also lose your confidant, you lose emotional intimacy; you lose what could have been.
I was really fed up with feeling like someone's emotional soundboard. I wanted it to be the final song on the EP. I want it to be like, I'm sailing away, off in the distance without this, because I don't really believe in closure. I don't think that closure exists. So whilst I can have endings and poetry in some ways, sometimes the things that hurt you most, you can't really make it right. It just is.
There's a lot of clarity and safety in who I am now. A lot of it is because I feel so loved by my family and my friends, that I am not really searching for someone to complete me.
I care less about how others perceive me. I care more about how I feel and how I feel in my body and how I perceive me and how my work feels. Do I like these songs? Are they right? Do they sonically fit? Have I done the best with what I could at the time?
I think I'm always changing, but I think I've been in a pretty good place for a little while because I'm really protective of myself. You have to be. No one's going to do it for you. No one's going to call you up and make you a star. You have to claw for these things, and I think that I'm trying to give this record what I think it needs.
My relationship with fame is very open-ended. I don't have any desire to be necessarily famous. I’ve had fame by association since I was young. I think that I have a desire to be understood. I think fame influences my desire to be understood, and I think that that occurs through creative expression. So however that looks, I'm open to that. If a song blows up, whatever, amazing. I love that. But I think it's just realizing that fame is a bedroom. It's private. You sometimes have to leave your identity at the door. You really have to have a sense of self.
