Not long after the release of her most recent project, ‘Girl of Your Dreams,’ rising NY-based pop singer Maddie Regent is beginning the process of rolling out her next body of work. Lead single “Sleeptalking,” produced by Cade Hoppe and Harper James, sets the tone, leaning into both the experimental and the tried and true aspects of Regent’s artistry.
Stream: “Sleeptalking” – Maddie Regent
In a relatively uncommon scenario, the muse of one of 2023’s best songs, one not written or performed by her, sits on the other end of a Zoom call on a Wednesday afternoon, ready and prepped to speak about HER music.
The song in question is “Only Human,” magnum opus of NYC-based singer/songwriter Cade Hoppe. Included on his most recent project, Just Look at the Moon, it is, simply, a musical vehicle for his sprawling thoughts and insecurities. The subject is NYC-based singer/songwriter Maddie Regent.
Regent, at that time of this interview, had traded the hustle and bustle of NYC for a vacation at her family’s home in quiet northern Canada. Despite her refuge, she was still working, eager to dive into with her latest single, “Sleeptalking” and most recent EP, Girl of Your Dreams. Most of which was cowritten and/or produced by Hoppe, her boyfriend and collaborative partner.
Following an initial session during which the pair wrote Regent’s sentimental tune “Heavy Little Things,” Hoppe committed to taking on additional projects with his girlfriend, developing a knack for hyper-pop-like production in the process. “Working on GoYD and my new stuff… it all just happened naturally,” she says.
“It’s sometimes hard working with your partner, especially when you’re talking about emotionally charged things… but I think I’m uniquely lucky to be a pop artist trying to write clever and emotionally deep songs with someone who isn’t just a ‘co-writer.’ It’s someone who, in my opinion, has such a way with words. If I’m venting to him… he’s like, ‘How can we make this into something profound?’ and then he does it so easily. Then it’s a collaborative experience. It has made what we can do together kind of limitless.”
Despite Hoppe’s prowess, this is, of course, Regent’s story, as her musical abilities stand on their own.
Her latest, “Sleeptalking,” is out now.
“EGO,” released at an opportune time in 2022, is, undoubtedly, a well-produced, and incredibly hooky, though slightly unadorned, electro-pop song. At over a million streams, it is Regent’s ‘most popular’ song to date. “To me, ‘EGO’ is just kind of undeniable,” she says. “When I put it out, I knew immediately that it would connect with a ‘TikTok audience.’ I had a viral moment… more people were on TikTok, and it was easier to reach people. I’m an independent artist, and it’s tough out here. You just want to keep making your best stuff. Every song, you hope, is the one.”
Fast forward to GoYD, released in 2023, and songs like “Prettiest please” and “Can’t pretend,” even solely in audio form, arrive with an enhanced auditory element. They, though most specifically the former, the most dynamic of Regent’s’ catalog thus far, evoke colors, pictures, flashes of dopamine and bright, static light. However, post-“EGO,” these songs fell victim to the post-pandemic streaming plunge experienced by nearly every artist outside of the top 0.01%.
Aware of their quality, she disregards these uncontrollable factors of the industry, instead choosing to prioritize the responses from real, and sometimes only virtually-tangible, people. “I get the occasional DM from someone who heard ‘ruining,’ or ‘Heavy Little Things,’ songs that might not have streamed like crazy, but I got more personal messages about those than I did from ‘EGO,’” she explains. “So, maybe the difference is that I’m reaching more individual people that are connecting more, and I feel like that may be more important at this stage.”
Inspired by the likes of MUNA, Lana Del Rey, and Phoebe Bridgers, Regent enveloped the poetic nature of those songwriters, and combined orthodox, diaristic pop lyricism with the nuanced yet frenzied world of sad-girl electro-pop club-style production.
Vocally, her tone is both distinctive and habitual. With a theatrical background, both her straight head voice and head mix are sturdy, resulting in placement that, even as she nears her break, declines to shift. This is displayed repeatedly in “Prettiest please.”
“I think being able to be flexible with… being able to go to those places is really fun,” she says, on her vast range. “There IS benefit to, what we say, screlting. Some people can really do it. I’m just not that. I know where I feel most confident, the most control, in my voice, and it is in that higher range.”
Other tracks on GoYD, like “Buy her a drink,” with its pitch-shifted vocal motifs, the Echosmith-coded “Hiding place,” and all-around highlight “Deadweight,” with an undeniable mid-tempo club groove, near droning vocals reminiscent of witch house, and a sax solo so form-fitting within the production that it almost falls into obscurity, round out the project considerably. Feminine, queer-coded in sound, and efficiently experimental, Regent was able to impressively steer her collaborators to, at nine songs, complete a tight, concise body of work:
I think I’m deadweight
Oh, you think I’m so great
I’m thinking ‘Just wait’
Oh, let’s skip to heartbreak
But you never seem to figure it out
Produced by Hoppe and Harper James of indie-pop duo Eighty Ninety, Regent’s latest release, “Sleeptalking,” which contains similar vocal and production elements of songs from GoYD, maximizes its runtime of nearly four-and-a-half minutes, smoothly shifting from erratic house-like sections to more linear singer-songwriter passages. The chopped-up vocal effects in the pre-chorus represent the former. Vocally, she appears to be more fixated on maintaining a more restrained, contemplative tone, and does so without sacrificing her signature vocal flavors.
In press materials for the tune, Regent states, “’Sleeptalking’ is about wanting to be happy about something you know you should be happy about, but you aren’t. The longer you avoid confrontation, the more you wish for things to go south so that your unhappiness feels justified.”
When questioned on the ramifications of this quote, she shrugs, smiles, and outwardly admits, “I’m the most therapized person you’ll ever meet.”
Then, when asked if this idea of constant dissatisfaction with even the most triumphant moments is a result of the millennial complex of working until the wheels fall of, she concurs.
“I’m a Virgo through and through,” she says with a smirk. “A recovering overachiever. My idea of success has totally changed, but it’s hard. You have that voice in your head saying, ‘You’re not doing enough.’ ‘You need to do something new.’ ‘What’s great? Oh, THIS is great? Ok, I’m gonna put it out now.’ That can all sabotage my perspective sometimes, but… I never feel more joy, more like myself, and safe with myself, than I do making music. It’s the other stuff, when you start measuring it against other people, personal accomplishments, and comparing them to other songs. That wears me out.”
I’m just your tourniquet
Finally, I’m sure of it
Maybe it’s better to let it all out
Tell me it’s all a dream
Would you pinch me until I bleed?
I’m sleeptalking about a girl in the wild west
You can’t understand, but you try your best
In preparation for this upcoming string of releases, Regent was presented with a wider selection of resources, resulting in what could be perceived as a more hyper-musical project. “I say organic, but I mean, like, the studio we’re making stuff in has a higher number of instruments in it,” she explains. “We have sax, violin, mellotron. We used the JUNO. We used whatever gear that we have, compared to GoYD, which was made in a studio in an actual studio apartment. That’s probably the biggest difference.”
She is also doubling down on her evident attempt in “Sleeptalking” to highlight the lyrical content, and the textures of her voice. “It’s definitely more about storytelling, more confessional,” she says. “The music will work to support that, while still having fun moments, like with this song.”
Of course, Regent has never truly neglected the basics, but is keen on ensuring that this next batch of material allows her to enjoy a happy medium between her natural talent and experimentation.
“Because I made ‘EGO,’ and ‘SALT,’ and a bunch of my earliest stuff… I knew it was my story, my voice, and I was more malleable in terms of like, that shein that is maybe more commercial that I felt like I needed, that I love,” she says.
“I love pop music, and I was like, ‘That’s what I should do.’ As I started writing more, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can honestly sell this stuff.’ Back then… I feel like I needed something more true to who I actually am, which I feel this more artistically fulfilling, but more honest, unpolished, real, stuff is. It means so much to me… because of who I’m making it with, what I’m writing it about. The most important thing to me is that I just want to make stuff that I like, that I’m proud of, that feels real to me, and that scares me. And that’s what I’m doing.”
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