A dazzling set of bittersweet enchantments, Babygirl’s stirring third EP ‘Losers Weepers’ dwells in poignant depths while bringing to life all the feelings we tend to bury deep down inside.
“You Were in My Dream Last Night” – Babygirl
The songs on this EP are about disappointment, loneliness, boredom, heartbreak – it just felt like the title had to contain all of that stuff at once.
Life’s lows take the front seat in Babygirl’s latest EP as the Ontario duo weave a stirring tapestry of self-reflection, heartache, sadness, and isolation. A dazzling six-song set of bittersweet enchantments, Losers Weepers dwells in poignant depths while bringing to life all the feelings we tend to bury deep down inside.
You picked me up on Friday night
It was late October
Our faces lit by traffic lights
We were red all over
We hit the hazards, hit the pipe
Pulled off on the shoulder
You played me, wouldn’t it be nice
If we were older?
How can it, how can it be
That you’re not here with me?
How can it, how can it be?
When you were in my dream last night (Ooh)
You were in my dream last night (Ooh)
We took our time, we got it right
We workеd it out by candlelight
When you werе in my dream last night
Released April 16, 2021 via Sandlot Records / AWAL, Babygirl’s third EP Losers Weepers radiates with intimate energy.
The follow-up to 2018’s Lovers Fevers EP finds the Sandlot Records-signed Ontario pairing of Kiki Frances and Cameron Breithaupt reveling in six heart-on-sleeve reckonings – some soft, some loud, all of them churning with vulnerability and passion. Preceded by the singles “Easy,” “You Were In My Dream Last Night” (previously described as “vibrant, slick, and dazzlingly dramatic”), and “Nevermind,” Losers Weepers is a testament to the beauty behind the darkness: Babygirl may seek inspiration from some of life’s harder moments, but their art shines like the sun – evoking layers of feeling far too complex to be summed up in a single sentence.
Speaking to Atwood Magazine, Frances and Breithaupt note all the thought, time, and care that went into their new record. “There wasn’t much of a preconceived vision other than the title,” they explain. “We just started making music and, as the songs were being written and produced, we sort of built the vision around what we had. Once we finished “Easy,” it kind of set the ceiling for how “pop” this project was allowed to get for us. Likewise, with “Nevermind” on the rock side. As soon as we were able to set those boundaries for ourselves, it clarified the vision for the project a lot. Then we could find ways to make other songs sit in the center of that balance – that’s how we ended up with a production like “You Were in My Dream Last Night,” where it starts off more tight, electronic, and poppy, and gradually opens up into more organic band performance stuff. That’s us bridging the gap between the far edges of the project.”
Using the words “bittersweet, bummer, and bliss” to describe the overall EP, the pair note the immediacy and importance of the emotions that went into these songs, and ultimately gave the collection its name.
“The songs on this EP are about disappointment, loneliness, boredom, heartbreak – it just felt like the title had to contain all of that stuff at once. We also liked the connection to the title of our last EP, Lovers Fevers. We aren’t working on a Finders Keepers EP next, though.”
From the poignant alternative confessional “Easy” to the indie rock upheaval “Nevermind,” the cathartic overhaul “You Were in My Dream Last Night,” the tender and immersive “Million Dollar Bed” and beyond, Losers Weepers is feverish and finessed from start to finish: A moving twenty-minute musical journey that digs into the heart and soul with graceful elegance and unapologetic, unabating honesty.
I play the lottery every day since you left with your bag
I know my chances of winning are better than getting you back
Chasing a daydream to forget we
Ever had been
Pretty distractions, I’ll be happy
When I have them
When I’m rich and famous I’ll get faded I will
Own as many puppies as Cruella de Vil
Bentleys and Ferraris, a house on the hill
But in my million dollar bed I’ll dream about you still
‘Bout you still
– “Million Dollar Bed,” Babygirl
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Babygirl’s Losers Weepers EP with Atwood Magazine as Kirsten Clark and Cameron Breithaupt go track-by-track through the music and lyrics of their second EP!
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:: stream/purchase Losers Weepers EP here ::
Stream: ‘Losers Weepers’ – Babygirl
:: Inside Losers Weepers ::
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“Easy”
Kiki Frances: The first thing that comes to mind for me with “Easy” is that we wrote it with our friend who’s also an artist, erth2emily. She’s a great writer, great artist, and she’s kind of what inspired it. She had brought in the initial concept of “you make it look so easy,” and we had always liked that turn of phrase. I think we kind of just felt like, “yeah, let’s do that” and it ended up being something that felt right for us despite it being a little bit different from what we would normally do. We had a lot of fun with the lyrics. For me, the “do you take it over easy?” line is one of my favorite lines. I just like lyrics that are fun, as well as lyrics that are more, you know, thought provoking.
Cam Breithaupt: Sometimes whimsical stuff can be thought provoking. As Canadians, we grew up with the Barenaked Ladies as part of our musical landscape, and, you know, they’ll have a sad and serious song that will say, “I just made you say underwear.” We love people who can be tongue-in-cheek and not too serious, but still drive home the emotional message of a piece of writing. I’d like to think that we did that on “Easy.” Sonically, it was a really interesting process as well, because the instrumental was originally pure electro pop. When we decided, “hey, we want to take a swing of doing the song for Babygirl,” it was about paring that down and finding the holes where guitars can live and finding a way to make it sit cohesively with the rest of the stuff on the project, which is significantly more rock leaning and band-driven in its production. The trumpets at the end of the song were tracked the same day that we were co-producing a Lauv song called “Canada” and we were doing some additional production on that. At the end of the session, we had an extra 20 minutes, so I just pulled up this beat, which, at the time did not even have a song over it. I just sang on the line off the top of my head. He did like two takes of it, then maybe a year later it came out, which was cool. It was a very spur of the moment thing.
Kiki Frances: The trumpets are one of my favorite moments because you aren’t necessarily expecting it. It’s something that if you’re a Babygirl fan you maybe wouldn’t expect to hear.
Cam Breithaupt: I don’t know that we’ve ever used a brass instrument before, but there’s two on this project. I also like it because it has this kind of marching band and fanfare thing to it, which I think is in line with the visual identity of the project. We’ve got all this varsity imagery of the cheerleader and the football players and I imagine those are like the trumpets at halftime while the game is going very poorly.
“Nevermind”
Kiki Frances: Nevermind. I mean… Nirvana. Let’s say that first because you can’t say nevermind without saying Nirvana and we know that. I think, beyond the Nirvana connotation, which, obviously-
Cam Breithaupt: The Nirvana-tation?
Kiki Frances: The Nirvana-tation. Beyond that, we have immense respect for that music and love that music. That’s certainly a part of it, but it was more just the literal meaning of the word that I really liked. The word “nevermind” just feels like a very Babygirl word… It’s like when you’ve said something stupid, and then you’re like, “nevermind, forget what I said.” It’s often said in a kind of defensive way.
Cam Breithaupt: It’s dismissive. I think we’re attracted to disappointment. Resignation. “Nevermind” is definitely a key word in that thematic color collage of words.
Kiki Frances: That’s what inspired us. We wanted to do something that was just a really simple, sing-songy chorus that just opened and felt very plain – in a way that let us have the verses and the pre-chrous tell a bit more of a story. And then the chorus opens up to being more of a pure feeling.
Cam Breithaupt: I think also part of what interests me about that arrangement is that the chorus gets so big, and the guitars come in, and the drums hit harder, and the vocals go up in range. And it’s saying this quiet, disappointed word, you know? And those things are kind of at odds: the tone of the lyrical content of the chorus and the tone of the presentation of the chords. It’s what we like to do. I think that’s a big part of our MO, is finding the way to say the saddest thing in the most triumphant way or the most triumphant thing in the saddest way.
Kiki Frances: We wrote “Nevermind” with Marshall Vore and Steph Jones and had a blast. We love writing with other writers because songwriting is our favorite thing ever. So, when you get in a room with someone else who also loves songwriting, you learn so much and the mutual passion is just really inspiring to be around. We work together so much and feed off of each other so much that it’s nice when we can get it a different energy to enter our bubble.
Cam Breithaupt: I think it might be a Tom Waits quote that I throw around a lot. I’m paraphrasing, and maybe misattributing, but writing songs with the same person over and over again is like two people borrowing the same $5 from each other. You know, it gets to a point where we’ve written together so much that we know each other’s tricks, we know each other’s tendencies. So, when you can throw another person into that chemistry, it kind of redefines the dynamic, and that’s really healthy creatively. It opens doors that we wouldn’t normally open, just the two of us.
“You Were In My Dream Last Night”
Kiki Frances: This is one of the most meaningful songs to us on the EP. I think that’s a fair thing to say for both of us.
Cam Breithaupt: It’s something that we treated very practically. We really took our time. We had that idea kicking around for a long time prior to finishing it and getting it out into the world. We wrote a million different verses for it and had different endings to the song, plot twists, and all this stuff that we really had to let incubate to decide what we wanted the final statement to be. And I think that we landed on something that’s sad and sweet and hopefully catchy.
Kiki Frances: This is one of the songs that took the longest on the EP, and the lyrics that took the longest. We wrote the first verse first, but it took us a long time to write a second verse that felt up to par with it or felt like it matched. We had quite a few different versions of the second verse and we tried a few different choruses that didn’t feel right. I think that getting to know ourselves more over the past few years helped because the song was started almost three years ago. I think that there’s a power to an idea sitting for that long and growing and changing and still loving it and still knowing that it’s something that you want to finish and put out.
Cam Breithaupt: That’s how we know if something’s going to have replay value for us, or if something’s going to be a flash-in-the-pan type of song; if we sit with it for a long period of time and we still like it after all that time. Tonally, I think the song has this kind of cinematic, 2000s teen romance thing going. You know, you’re in a borrowed car, discovering the Beach Boys. It’s like this first love story and there’s a lot of exhilaration and a lot of new territory there, which is what makes that first let down really hard. I think that’s what makes it something good to write about because everyone’s had that first heartbreak that’s way fucking worse than all the others because you have no frame of reference for how bad it’s about to be.
Kiki Frances: Everyone tells you how bad it can be and then it happens and you’re like, “oh, my life is over!” It’s just sad. You can’t control your dreams and your subconscious is going to make you see some things in your dreams that maybe you wouldn’t necessarily want to see. I think an ex is definitely a part of that, especially an ex that you miss or that you wish wasn’t an ex. So, that just felt sad too… that you don’t have any control over still having this person with you even though they’re not there physically.
“Today Just Isn’t My Day”
Kiki Frances: This might be my favorite one on the EP, but my favorite one changes every day. I tend to feel pretty depressed a lot of the time – especially over the past year which I think has had a lot of people feeling sadder than they’ve ever felt. This song feels a bit like a friend to me in that sometimes when you’re feeling like shit, it can really be helpful, in a weird way, to know that other people feel like shit too. That you’re not alone and there are other people that feel sad… and there are other people that feel like their day isn’t going right, or maybe their month, or even their year… (laughs)
Cam Breithaupt: I think that super depressing songs have the ability to harness a feeling that you feel very out of control of and, sort of, isolate it into this pocket. For us as writers, this is like a place where we can store all of these feelings and experiences in a way where can harness them. We have agency over these feelings now because we’ve turned them into a little sound sculpture that that we can hold in our hands and go, “there’s this thing, it’s part of me, but it’s not all of me.” We hope that we can give that experience to our listeners, where if you’re choosing to hit play on this song, you’re able to actively take control over those feelings. You’re deciding to wallow in your misery with us.
Kiki Frances: Sometimes there is something to just be like, “Oh, I’m just having a bad day today” – and when you just accept that and don’t fight it, it almost helps you turn it around more because you don’t feel guilty or bad about it. You’re just like, “okay, that’s what’s happening. That happens sometimes.” It happens more often for some people than others and if you can just wake up and just be like, “Okay, I’m not my best today. I’m not going to expect that, I’m going to be gentle with myself and I’m going to try and accept that I’m having a bad day and not beat myself up about it” then it has less of a hold on you.
Cam Breithaupt: There’s a light at the end of the tunnel and only tomorrow can say if I’m going to get out of this cycle. I think that’s really important too. That it’s not just like a purely “fuck life” song. It’s just “fuck this particular day.” Musically, we were listening to like a lot of 60s country and I think this kind of downtrodden miserable waltz thing definitely came from that. The form and lyrics of the song were definitely informed by jazz standards. This is like an “everything happens to me” type of song, which is a great standard.
Kiki Frances: We were like, “what if Babygirl wrote a Chet Baker song?”
Cam Breithaupt: There’s a line in that song that says, “I make a date for golf and you can bet your life it rains. I try to give a party and the guy upstairs complains” and it feels like those lyrics could easily transplant into this song. That’s definitely what we’re trying to do.
Kiki Frances: I think it can be comforting to feel sad when you’re not alone. If you’re feeling sad and share it, there’s still a togetherness and it can feel a little less overwhelming.
Cam Breithaupt: That’s a big part of just what songs are for in general: to make people feel reflected and make people feel seen. I think a song like this can be really affirming for someone who’s going through it.
“Million Dollar Bed”
Cam Breithaupt: We wrote this song with our friends Andy Seltzer and Victoria Zaro. It was the first day we met Victoria, who has a hit song now which is amazing – “you broke me first” by Tate McRae. We’re very excited for her having that success as a writer and honored that she would be a part of our project as well. We wrote that song in one sitting and it was after a week of continuous writing sessions. We were just putting ourselves through boot camp.
Kiki Frances: We were pretty tired that day. I think both of us were like, “I don’t know if we can do this today.”
Cam Breithaupt: I think we were on the verge of canceling that day and partway through the session. I was like, “we have to stop. I don’t know if I have it in me to write a song.” We went for a walk and did other things, which was a very good decision because then we ended up writing this awesome song. It came pretty easily and quickly, but for the first couple hours of the session I was just sitting there tired and stressed out. I had just laid down the drum loop and I was like “I want to do one of these beats because this beat was such a popular thing.” I banged it out on a little MIDI drum kit and then Kiki was like, “hey, like, let’s do a song like Lorde’s ‘Royals.’” We’d been talking about it for a while… something that skewered the whole conspicuous consumption thing while being a vehicle to list expensive things because you know, you’re saying “oh, fuck Bentleys and Ferraris” – but getting to sing “Bentleys and Ferraris” is the thing that makes the chorus catchy.
Kiki Frances: That’s the same thing with “Royals,” Lorde is saying all this fancy shit that’s fun to say. It’s fun to sing along to and have those words in your mouth, but you’re not necessarily advocating for them.
Cam Breithaupt: Kiki freestyled the first couple of lines and said that Cruella de Vil bit and we were off to the races. It’s got a lot of character. It’s funny and cheeky, like something you’d expect of Barenaked Ladies or Fountains of Wayne, but we had to figure out how to get the heart and soul into it. We were like, “How do we make sure that there’s still a twist of the knife?” The theme connects well to “You Were in My Dream Last Night” and helps tie the EP together in a really meaningful way. I’m really glad that we were able to take all that aspirational imagery and admit that it’s super ego driven, and it comes from a place of hurt and trying to fill a hole that you’re never going to fill. That’s very personal for me. I have a tendency to bury myself in my work and my goals in order to avoid confronting my emotions, so it felt really good to harness that and put it into sharp focus and point at it and go, “this is a part of me, but it’s not all. And I bet a lot of other people are feeling this too.”
Kiki Frances: It wasn’t exactly intentional but, upon reflecting on the song, it’s a bit of a Gatsby thing as well. It’s this narrator singing about having all these riches, essentially, just to get the love their love back or to try and make up for lost love. I love that book, so it makes sense in my brain in that way, as well.
“A Little Bit Closer”
Kiki Frances: “A Little Bit Closer” is probably the most romantic song on the EP, but there’s still some implied distance in the main repeating lyric being “I need to get a little bit closer to you.” During a pandemic, there’s another layer there, but it certainly wasn’t intentional.
Cam Breithaupt: It was completed pre-pandemic. We’ve had this song finished for maybe the longest of anything on the project. It has been cast in new light given the fact that everyone has to stay away from each other. This one has the least of an eye roll of any of the lyrics on the EP. It’s just a sincere song of pining for someone with no twist. No frills. Just “I want to be near to you.”
Kiki Frances: I think the production at the end, and the way that the guitars come in, there’s this kind of build. It felt like the way that we wanted to close the EP. Sonically, it felt like the end of the sentence. It all of came together in a way that just made it feel obvious that it should be the closer of the EP. We liked ending on a sincere note. We love love songs, and we love writing love songs, so it felt right to have this one be a part of it and balance out some of the breakup songs.
Cam Breithaupt: It was more just “let’s write pretty poetry with no eyeroll.” We love an eyeroll, but we also love no eyeroll when they’re not necessary.
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