to

think.

Because it's not coming from that place.

I think people are overwhelmed.

Yeah, you go online and everybody is saying a million things all the time or living oversaturated by a million people telling us how to feel and think and what to say and what way and all that kind of stuff.

you know, songwriting for a lot of us is, you know, speaking from the heart and not from a podium, you know, like it's not like, you know, I'm not, um, I've, I've been really, really shit at, at ever trying to sit down and write a song about anything.

And even honey, I wouldn't say is, you know, if I'm honest, it's not explicitly just to, you know, uh, a song specifically about, um, uh solidarity with trans women although that's that's a big part of it um it's uh you know it's i'd say it's uh you know it's for it's a song about anybody that's um kind of caught in, in a, or vulnerable to people with this very kind of fascist sort of vitriol or rhetoric that says that somehow that somebody else living differently from you is causing, you know, harm or that you can control, like, who somebody's identity should be, you know, like, um, that you have, like, some kind of moral truth that, um, uh, to, to control someone else's body, you know, like we all have like body autonomy is so important.

What makes this project distinct from your previous projects?

Well, let her rip.

All right.

Yes, boss.

[singing] Look at me.

I want you to.

Answer me.

When I'm talking to you.

It's Ora Cogan live on KEXP.

How do you think about contributors and collaborators? Do you write for individual people and their sound? Or are you saying, oh, I need this type of, you know, how do you think about collaborators? What do you look for in collaborators?

It's nebulous.

It can be a lot of different things.

What I mostly, you know, look for is to make sure that those relationships are good, that the communication is good, that there's respect.

Musicians that do support work in somebody else's vision need to be given a lot more money and respect and attention because there are a lot of really fabulous artists that lend themselves to somebody else's vision in a certain project and they're giving a lot, you know.

It's cool to look at that through that lens and go back in the history of music and see like big artists that made a huge name for themselves and think about all the artists that they played with and how they wrote those bass lines or those drum lines and all that kind of stuff.

You know, I don't think that the work that I'm doing now would feel as meaningful without all the awesome people that I'm playing with and I feel really lucky, you know, like I'm getting to work with such awesome people.

Maybe

Mm.

And it's really easy to get suckered, and it's really easy to fall into a lot of traps, you know? It's, it's m- yeah, music, which is, I feel, is really sacred and, you know, this living thing that has to do with community and culture and all sorts of beauty.

And then it's business, and that's, that's the opposite.

It's capitalism.

It doesn't do good things for people's brains or their hearts.

I've been, you know, relatively for the past 20 years playing music and working day jobs and just not really, uh, worried about it too much because it was just like, well, this is just a part of my practice of being a human.

And now that I'm getting more attention as an artist, it feels a little bit different.

For tales like these of the hits from coast to coast, follow Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts.

Like, c- can you talk to me a little bit about writing this song? Uh, what, what you were writing it about? What, maybe what you were seeing in the news that was inspiring it?

Um, yeah.

Well, I mean, I was sitting at my kitchen counter listening to all of this really hate-filled, anti-trans legislation coming through in the States, and talking to friends and thinking about girlfriends of mine who are trans women and, you know, having conversations with friends and just thinking like, "Oh yeah," like, what, what is the sentiment of, of just, you know, hate and, and, uh, cruelty that you look at another human being that, uh, who's different from you, and you're so threatened and so angry that you need to take away their human rights.

I mean, a- and it's, it's, uh, it was like a facetious line of like, "Oh, such a hard-hearted woman for just existing," you know, for just being.

Like, I feel like that too, you know, even being a cis woman, you know, not to...

It's, you can't compare the experience at all, but, like, the feeling of, you know, sometimes men are just so angry at you just for nothing, just for existing, just because they're angry at women.And this, this, whatever, wherever it started, you know, with, uh, with some kind of patriarchal violence, you know, colonial violence, uh, that, that there is this kind of sentiment and this, this real pushback from, against liberation and, like, nobody's taking anything away from you by just existing and being human in their own way.

And that's, that's really where the song came from.

Would you mind introducing yourself and, and maybe introducing the song?