“I Have Something to Live For”: A Conversation With Glüme

With her debut ‘The Internet,’ Glüme explores triumph and loss with incomparable glam, and Atwood Magazine spoke with the artist on how it all came together.

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Self-proclaimed as the Wal-Mart Marilyn Monroe, Glüme has an allure that, even on a label as richly adorned with the spectacular as Italians Do It Better, stands out as an artist with nonpareil sonic presence. Her control over the soundscapes she creates allows for textured experiences that attach themselves to listeners with a striking fervor, Glüme’s dulcet vocals tying it all together. Each single released so far has dazzled in their own way, leading to her anticipated debut, The Internet.

Beyond the artistry she possesses, Glüme has a magnetic warmth that is attached to her own self, her willingness to share her struggles with health and the barriers she’s overcome and the ones still in place. Her history with entertainment extends to her youth, her path a clear one. But as life does, it deviated, and when in her 20’s, she was diagnosed with heart disease. Blood tests, pills, and unceasing pain followed her daily, limiting the life she could live. In theory, at least. Something to know about Glüme is that she is tenacious, a tour de force that does away with “can nots” and opts for the path that she was destined to walk.

Getting to this point, this mindset, wasn’t an overnight occurrence, and the internet’s role was quite an extensive one. With her debut, she explores this journey, inviting listeners into her past, present, and future with a glittery touch that mystifies with each note hit and word sung. “Arthur Miller” takes the lead, a song detailing the personal hardships of dating and a look into Marilyn Monroe’s impact on her life. It’s a slow build; electronics and synth starting with soft swirls that turn into majesty. It’s an exciting start to a much-anticipated debut.

“What Is A Feeling” brings out the beat and pulse of synth to great effect. Her vocals coalesce gorgeously to the glamorous melody – a perfect nighttime track to stare wistfully at the stars to. Then tracks like “Nervous Breakdown” play into a faster approach, creating soundscapes that will leave listeners hard-pressed not to groove to. It’s at “Crushed Velvet” where Glüme goes in a different direction, and she nails it.

The song dives into her past – relationships, odd jobs, and a lack of fulfillment that carried a heavy weight. Done in one take, Glüme created the melody in a late-night stupor, only adding the additional layers at a later date. It’s an honest track, one that carries an almost sensual presence as her vocals glide with a soft touch, the subdued instrumentation only adding to the effect. “Body” is an apt name, telling of the struggles her heart disease has had on her body, all while an intoxicating harmony swarms the senses with uncontrollable dancing as the side effect.

Moving to the song “Don’t @ Me,” there is an ethereal quality to it as Glüme’s incantations are done with a hushed presence. The melody that follows undulates in a hypnotic fashion, listeners easily falling under her spell. “Heatwave” takes things even slower, a gradual build that places a focus on the intoning of Glüme herself. However, it’s not without its synths, this time horns even joining the mix. The finale is an onrush of sounds that envelop the listeners with delightful warmth.

Acting almost like a companion piece to “Arthur Miller,” “Chemicals” is the final layer in a journey so filled with personality, charm, and heart. Calling back to her early days before her diagnosis, Glüme shares the physical and emotional pain she was enduring – the lack of proper medical attention and the constant second-guessing of her actions. The song carries a not so pretty reality, but it’s one that Glüme has been able to look back at and say “I made it. I am alive.”

The Internet might be the best debut from Italians Do It Better, and Glüme has instantly showcased that she is not only an artist to laud, but one whose talent and artistry are of no equal. Writing about pain is a staple in music, and it allows for artists to share with their audience a piece of themselves. But to share that pain, that turmoil, and to then turn it into ecstatic sincerity and beauty is an achievement solely owned by Glüme.

With her album releasing April 30, Atwood Magazine spoke with the artist to discover her process, the role of TikTok in her life, and what an absolute ass Arthur Miller was.

Watch:  “What Is A Feeling” – Glüme

A CONVERSATION WITH GLÜME

Glüme: I’ve been so busy that I don’t know… we decided to make a music video last minute for the single coming out on the day of the album that we’re pushing. And so I’ve just been going from shooting the editing. I know, we’ve been talking about the process and they ask “Where do you want to get a billboard” and I’m like “a billboard? I’m a peasant.” But yeah, it’s really exciting getting to talk about it actually existing because it’s been with me for a while. And so just like to have it be free in the world is exciting and to have Italians [Do It Better] put it out is a total dream come true. I wanted to be with them for years. I finally pushed a submit demo button on their website and it worked.

Glüme: I’ve been hunting down Johnny Jewel for years through doctors and lawyers and trying to… he’s not a normal… it’s not like going to Atlantic or Warner Brothers or whatever. A lot of people are like, “I don’t know how to get ahold of him” and so when I saw a submit demo and I pressed it and they called me in about a half-hour from me pressing that and I was just nervous. They’re like, “we want to offer you a deal.” And so what happened was I had made the album – some things I had produced and then some things like my friend had – and then we just kind of gave it to Johnny.

And then he basically tries to beat it [laughs]. Some things produced we just ended up leaving with me producing (he added a really nice close up of the chorus for a few songs but anyway) so it’s been this big collaboration between the three of us. Johnny took control overall a couple of the songs which is an honor to have. It’s a fun process and everyone just wants the best music and so it’s fun to see. And now it’s all done and it’s crazy.

Glüme: I did lots of stuff growing up, I love performing. And I love doing acting and dance. And I did a lot of theater off and on Broadway. I love the feeling of it. But the thing with music is that you get to tell stories and you get to I feel like… I’ve been able to express myself in a way that I haven’t known how to in my life. I used to be really shy (now I’m really, really not shy) but growing up, I was really shy. And so it was an outlet for me to say what I was actually thinking and feeling. And now there are things I like to write about.

I try to write a little bit about health and stuff because I feel there’s not really much of that out there for people and I’m now friends with so many people who are chronically ill and I’m in a support group of people with my disease and there’s just so many people. I ended up finding a lot of people on TikTok after I made a video called “chronically ill pitches” and it exploded. The comment section was insane. You forget how many people… I was talking to my doctor and I said, “are more people sick than not?” And he said yeah which was weird to me. You don’t think of it that way. You think of “oh, that sick friend I have” but it’s actually that more people have a problem than not.

I never hear about it. And it’s just as emotional to me as a breakup because the heartbreak is you lose things that you could do before like with your body. It’s the “I can’t see the guy anymore” or “you can’t drive by that coffee shop.” You can’t do this thing that you love. It stops you. And so, there’s a lot of almost weird heartbreak there, and I hadn’t heard that in music. When I got sick, I didn’t have a cathartic thing to listen to. I tried to include some of that in there because there are so many people going through that and I’ve enjoyed that in the last couple of years of just hoping that it might help people. It’s definitely helped me processing it that way.

I feel like it makes me feel healthier when I’m creating rather than just laying around giving up, so I am always pushing myself to keep going and doing and making things. It’s definitely a different year this year than the year before. I was like in bed all year last year, so other than the fact that I switched from some medications, it’s mostly actually because I have something to live for and really push through for. Storytelling and stuff is my favorite thing about music for me personally, and I can produce but I generally leave that to…I don’t know, either my friend or Johnny because I feel like the thing I like to focus so much on is the story. Not to be Taylor Swift but whatever.

Glüme: As a musician, you’re supposed to be super healthy and go on tour and do a bunch of monkey tricks. You’re not supposed to be sick. That’s not… if you’re sick, people tell you to go get disability, crochet, and I’m like “No, like, I’m still gonna do exactly what I was gonna do.” And I figured it out, I found a team that’s been supportive about it. I don’t want people to feel when they get a diagnosis, that they’re feeling like they can’t do what they love anymore. Don’t think that way.

You’ll have to rearrange how it works and you have to look at it from a new angle, and that’ll take time. The irony is I’m doing more of it now than I was doing before I got sick, so it’s just being careful. I did a shoot the other night, we had a lot of breaks, and… before 12 pm, I’m on a lot of blood pressure medication, and so I get lightheaded and have weird heart pain. So I have this heating pad on which that’s my beautiful and glamorous look today, but I’m still here, I can still hold an interview, I can still do all the stuff.  It’s just different. It doesn’t mean if someone’s sick they have less of a story. They probably have more of a story. And it doesn’t mean that they have less to offer on whatever they were passionate about.

I think that’s a weird misconception with our culture where once you get chronically ill or sick or get cancer or something that suddenly you’re in sweats, you wear a hat, and you don’t do anything, and everyone just brings you dinner. Hopefully, people still bring you dinner, but there’s still so much life to live, you still just live. It may hurt, your body may hurt, start hurting, but that doesn’t mean that the park looks any different. It doesn’t mean that the pool is not a great place to be, it doesn’t… I feel like people feel there’s a rule when they get sick that you’re put in a box. Just because your body is malfunctioning doesn’t mean you’re a different person.

Watch:  “Body” – Glüme

Glüme: The internet is a great place to put the idea of what I was going to be before I got sick. Any time I’m having a good day or a moment, I make sure I post that day and feel good. I put it up because that way I still see myself living and that provides kind of a loop for me that is healthier than “oh, I don’t know, I can’t do anything anymore.” When I post stuff, even if it’s kind of fake or maybe I felt like total shit, it’s like… I had a really clear picture of what my life was gonna look like when I was six.

I had it planned out and I did all the right things that Judy Garland did and I went to all of the dance classes and all the voice lessons at all the acting classes, bulked up my resume with theater and different parts and started writing music, got a publishing deal at 19. I was trying to do all the right stuff to have the life that I wanted, and the internet… I download TikTok one day when I wasn’t feeling good and I felt like an intruder. There are so many teenagers. Some of them thought I was a teenager which that’s fine.

So I started making and learning TikToks and it was kind of funny because I felt like I was just living this regular life. Anyone could be doing this, any kid.  It just looks like a normal kid. Seeing myself like that I think made me feel less terrified of what I had because I see myself in such not normal situations. I pictured myself so often in the cardiac ICU and at the hospital and a doctor’s appointments. There’s always some sort of blood work getting taken to the point where I got anemic, and it was just… that was all that was in my head.

I was talking with a therapist and they told me I have medical trauma, that’s in your existence now. I wanted to put back the life that I liked. I couldn’t maintain it for 12 hours of a day, I could do it for a half-hour, post it, and then when I woke up in the bed the next morning feeling like total shit, I could look at it and be like “I’m still here” and not feel like the tree that fell in the forest.

The internet is usually considered problematic, and I get comments like “this girl isn’t real. This is all fake.” But it’s not photoshopped – It’s a real decent moment for five minutes and it makes it feel like I can still have them. I can still have my own moments, I guess. The internet just captures the quick ones that I have. And making music videos has been really crazy because if you told me that a year ago when I couldn’t walk that I’d be like handling choreography, I’d be laughing and calling bullshit.

To look back at these music videos, I don’t look terribly ill or like something’s wrong with me. It’s exciting to see that I can still do stuff. And I always show my cardiologist the videos because I’m all “look what I did!” He’s always saying I can’t believe you pulled that off. it’s like a parallel universe of what I was expecting, what I want to see of myself on the internet.

Glüme: I’m really proud I got Johnny on TikTok. I felt I did something weird in the universe [laughs]. The president of the label, Megan from Desire, was also super into it. At first, they were like “oh cool we signed a TikTok star” and I kept thinking, “oh, do they hate it?” But she was very into it and tells me to keep doing it because they love them. So I still try to keep doing it but it’s like a full-time job, it’s tough.

Glüme: When I was in the good grace of TikTok, I was spending the majority of the day trying to appease the algorithm by posting at the right time, quickly editing, filming, and so on. I was doing that every day, and I was getting 200K plus views, but now I rarely post, so when I do, I don’t get any views [laughs]. Maybe I’ll have a month where I start and just redeem myself.

Glüme: [Laughs] I used to like doing voice over challenges where I’d do old-timey voices like Marilyn [Monroe] or Audrey [Hepburn] and people would argue in the comments “oh she’s lip-syncing” so now I try to actually post videos on purpose where people argue just so the algorithm can see all the comments and get me more views.

Watch:  “Get Low” – Glüme

Glüme: Actually, yeah! When I wrote the song, I really wanted it to be the first song on the album because it explains the rest of the story. You know when you get in a relationship and you already think “shit, this is maybe gonna be bad,” but you still like them and then you continue dating them and then two years later it turns bad and you think “yeah I saw that coming” but you just lied to yourself? “Arthur Miller” is that song.

I was dating this guy when I was 20 or 21… Well first I watched My Week with Marilyn and I remember the scene where Arthur Miller writes something crappy about Marilyn in his journal like “I wish I’d never married her” and he just leaves it out on his desk for her to find. Weird games like that. The guy I was dating was like that, I totally dated guys like that a lot. Guys in bands who would write songs with this weird undertone on the bridge that makes you think “are you breaking up with me?”

I remember I dated a guy who would leave lyrics out and they would read like “she’s great but I just can’t” kind of vibe. It just left me super anxious, and I don’t know if that’s just writers but anyway I watched the movie and I cried. I was so sad because it felt like my daily life. I’ve always related to Marilyn because of how similar our upbrings were and of the problems we faced. I didn’t have many female role models growing up and was unsure how women were supposed to do this industry, so my therapist gave me the Marilyn biography and she said, “Well, this is the most iconic woman known for being the most womanly woman of all time, and she had no female figure growing up to look up to.”

I was so thankful for it and so I really looked up to her but then I realized we also had the same dating problems thought it must come from that upbringing. I then started looking into her partners, and Arthur Miller I really homed in on because I was like, “I’ve dated this guy five times.” I was annoyed by Arthur Miller. I know he’s a great playwright but I would pick him apart like an ex-boyfriend and so I wrote the song as a joke because I was dating someone and they were doing that thing.

What happens a lot now because of the internet, and I’m sure a lot of girls experienced this, is that a guy will find you on Instagram or whatever and think you’re pretty and start creating this fantasy of who you are based on your photos. And then they meet the human who gets colds, gets periods, and then they are like, “Oh my god, I human I didn’t want to human.” I feel like so many girls get in relationships where guys are just in shock that they’re with a human and that they have to deal with inconvenience. And then I think the most common thing to do is then you villainize whatever you’re hurting, so that you don’t feel like the villain. That is what Arthur Miller did really hard with Marilyn and then he was going to “save her.” He was going to rewrite her story, which is so fucked up. You get what you signed up for, this is Marilyn, if you like her, take her, if not leave her alone. And don’t make a project out of her.

I’ve run into that a lot, and I just saw that so much in Arthur Miller and so much of how he handled her. After she died, he made this play – I forget what it’s called right now – but it was like, it was just this takedown of her of legacy. I’ve dated this. My boyfriend was acting this way a bit at the time so I jokingly wrote that chorus because he knew my feelings about all of this. He actually thought it was a really good song and that it should be used. So I fleshed it out.

Glüme: Yeah, exactly! Welcome to Earth. Pick what problems you can handle or deal with and love the person.

Glüme: That’s a good question, and very perceptive because it was indeed made differently than the other tracks. I had just bribed six people to get a crappy grand piano that was slightly out of tune but enough to still be charming into my apartment and so I’d spend every day sitting there playing it. I wrote this descending chord line with a nice melody over it and… my life was also weird at this time.

So I was never… I was homeschooled, so I never really went out or rebelled or felt the need to stick it to my parents. I never got into that kind of fun, and by the time I reached a certain age I thought “oh no, I need to have fun before it’s too late and can’t be fun.” So I pulled an anthropology experiment by going out to clubs, getting bottle service, the whole thing, and I felt like an alien. People were all excited and I didn’t know why. I felt like I was at a sports game and didn’t know who won.

I then started hanging out with a guy I ended up dating and we went to this crazy LA penthouse where we’d go to these wild parties. It was a weird time, but people then started hiring me to fill up tables at clubs because I knew all these people, which is the oddest job for someone like who growing up thought I had too many stuffed animals [laughs]. I wasn’t a promoter. So I did it because it gave me extra cash but I didn’t feel good. I’d fake party and fake pour vodka in my drinks and cheers with everyone and then just leave with my paycheck [laughs].

I just found it all really boring. I’m glad I did it and it was fun but it was all surface level. I wanted something with depth and I was sad about that because I also knew something wrong was going on with my body. When you have something like that, you feel panicked into checking all the boxes while you’re still on the planet like finding real love before something bad happens with my body. I still feel quite panicked by that’s okay [laughs].

I was really falling for that guy I was with, so I sat at my out-of-tune piano and just wrote it all in one take, it was all completely improvised, which I’ve never done. Normally I stop and edit but this song just fell out. It was five in the morning and I improved a song. The chorus was left the same, the melody, the chords. I went to a friend and we made it fuller, and then Johnny added a sick beat to the choruses that really made the song. This one is special to me because I don’t know where it came from [laughs]. One of those alien moments where I don’t feel I consciously made that. So that’s what that one is all about.

Glüme: We thought those would sandwich well and when I finished writing it I thought “yeah that’ll be the close.” Before I was diagnosed with heart disease, and this is a call to “Nervous Breakdown” earlier in the album, my cardiologist said I was having a nervous breakdown. I thought it was a strange diagnosis based on my lack of nervous breakdowns and she said that it was all this chest pain. I went with it because I thought she was the best in town. I saw a lot of therapists and thought I must have crazy trauma that I need to unearth before my body will feel normal again. I thought this was the magic thing at the end of the rainbow. I ended up just getting worse but I was just getting medically gaslit.

I was just in a lot of pain physically and was also dating a guy who was causing me a lot of stress cause they were very angry. I wanted him to just be softer. I was having a mental breakdown and it was scary, that’s why that last line “I wish I could convince you to play nice” is there. With the diseases I have – mixed connective tissue disease and Prinzmetal – they are all linked to PTSD and trauma. When you get saddled with the diagnosis, you start to think about where it came from. Should I have hung out with this person, did I pick the right people to be around, should I have avoided them? You start to second guess everything you did because I thought I was invincible and wanted to adventure, but then I got sick.

So I wrote that song thinking that my brain chemistry was just creating all that pain in my body because I didn’t have good support at the time. I would try to talk to my partner about it who would just say weird shit and was not helpful. Before I figured out what was going on with my body, I knew something was bad, and I knew the person I was with was making it worse. I wrote that song as a desperate communication to them and also to myself. Turns out my brain chemistry was normal and that it wasn’t a nervous breakdown, it was heart disease.

So that was disappointing. I was really gunning for just the nervous breakdown because you can get over that. I just needed the right doctor and it was scary to me because… cardiology is just a weird thing. It’s not something where you get blood work and they go “oh you have this.” You had to get a lawyer. I’d bring my whole family to the appointments I’d set up because a young woman going to a cardiologist saying “I have chest pain” will be met with “you have anxiety, bye.” I’d ask all of these questions and they never had an answer. Can we find out because all of my tests are not normal? They’d tell me it’s not my heart because I’m too young but all my heart tests were not good. It’d turn into arguments and they’d just get frustrated with you. Six cardiologists and seven years later I found out I had Prinzmetal.

I found a cardiologist without any ego who started asking different questions I’d never heard. “Do you wake up in the middle night?” and I did. He told me it could be spasms where my arteries close and it feels like a heart attack, and if not treated, it can be a heart attack. He also said it can be brought on by stress and anxiety and so it generally gets misdiagnosed because of that. If someone has anxiety, they may also be sick

Glüme: The irony is after it all, I’m really happy, and not in an ignorance is bliss kind of way. When I was little, I wanted to be dumb because I thought I’d be happier in this industry. I struggled a lot with that but then ironically after I got sick – I was a real hypochondriac before I got sick, so this was a real blow – I got a lot happier than I ever was as a kid because there are not many points in your life when you get wheeled out of cardiac ICU alive after being unsure if you’d make. So then it’s just “fuck yeah! What will I do now?”

The stupid thing is I decided to go to a Daiso after to get a bunch of tiny cute shit [laughs] but I wanted to do something really normal. I was still really drugged up and kept saying to my roommate “I want to go to Daiso” and she was just confused and asking “can you even walk?” I didn’t know if I could, but we ended up there and I was looking at little erasers in the shape of strawberries and kept thinking “I’m alive.”

After that, I wake up and… I oftentimes feel the worse in the morning, so when that passes, I’m just relieved. I’m excited to go outside, to see the sun, smell the flowers, smell the roses. I’m excited to do anything normal, but beyond that, I get to do music for a living and get to make music videos. I went from a real rock bottom to exactly what I wanted. I’m so grateful. Not to sound like an inspirational Instagram post but I just have gratitude and relief every day that I feel okay because it’s your heart. When it doesn’t feel okay it’s dangerous, so the relief is immense.

I can kind of date again, which is weird having to explain so many things. Like, I have to bring over 12 pill bottles, I’m bringing a heating pad, an ice pack, if this thing happens call 911, and then you try to be sexy too. It’s fucking hard [laugh] but I can because I’m alive. I was rolled out of the ICU and was sent back to the world and my arteries opened back up. I write so much more now because you don’t know much you get to do that because I get a lot more tired now. It just made me happy, and I was a bitter youth but this made me grow up a bit and have a better attitude.

I would have already been grateful to be signed to Italians [Do It Better] but now I’m really grateful I even could. Weird order to life because you don’t expect to get heart disease and then get a record deal. That’s supposed to happen the other way and way later. You’re supposed to get the record deal, be stupid, and that at 60 have a heart attack because you were bad on tour. But we’re doing it the other way, and I’m just lucky to get to do it at all.

Watch:  “Don’t @ Me” – Glüme

Glüme: Nah [laughs]. I’m already working on my second album. I’m sure it won’t come out for a year but I write constantly so they’re plagued with my demos. We’re going to be doing a lot of music videos, as if we already haven’t been doing that, but we are planning on doing it for every song. We can’t tour right now and I have access to video…

At this moment in time, Glüme’s cat Norma Jean, who was craving for a brief spotlight, joined us for the remainder of our conversation

Glüme: I feel like a villain right now just stroking the cat while in this chair [laugh]. She’s really working it for this interview. But yeah music videos are the next best way to get the music around. I live with a cinematographer and they hired him to do everything and I also have my go-to Nikki. After the album comes out, we have this massive and epic video we’re shooting where we’re flying people out, and… well I can’t give too much away but it’s going to be great.

We’ll be doing this until things open back up and when we can tour. If we can tour, we’ll tour and then at some point get in the studio to roundup album two. Hopefully, we get to tour this year, and maybe it’s possible now with more vaccines out. Touring will still be hard with my heart disease, though. I asked my cardiologist about it actually and he kept saying I can do it. I’d ask “is it safe?” and he’d go “I don’t know, but you have to right?” I like your attitude, not totally comforting, but rock on. So I’m going to do it.

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