Suki Waterhouse is the perfect pop star for these bewildering and melancholy times – a beacon for sad girls everywhere, singing nostalgically about love, loss and heartbreak. She’s a Mazzy Star for the TikTok generation, with a bit of Lana and Stevie thrown into her mix of syrupy vocals and mournful melodies. There’s also the white witch wardrobe, full of new-season Chloé – diaphanous drapery that chimes perfectly with her ethereal aesthetic. Not to mention the beautifully bonkers music videos in which she inhabits an array of colourful characters, from a horse-riding, Regency-period heroine to a widowed 1930s starlet. It’s all very whimsical and romantic. In fact, so detailed and succinct is the world Suki has built, it’s hard to believe she only started performing music two years ago.
Before that, she was known as an actress (see: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and A Rainy Day in New York), a model (she was a big-time Burberry girlie in the early 2010s), an indie-sleaze It girl, and somewhat of an entrepreneur, having launched a now-defunct bag brand with her best friend called Pop & Suki. She’s also one of only a few Brits (she grew up in Chiswick) of that era who actually managed to crack America. When she launched her first album, I Can’t Let Go, in 2022, there was some trepidation; did people want to hear what she had to say? Would she be taken seriously as a musician? The answer was a resounding yes to both.
Fast forward to this summer and not only did she perform at Coachella, she also opened for one Taylor Swift at Wembley stadium. And now she’s about to embark on a US tour to promote her sophomore album, Memoirs of a Sparklemuffin. A departure from I Can’t Let Go, the album is less maudlin in both theme and sound (‘My Fun’ has a girls’ road trip energy, while ‘To Love’ is about having hope for the future). It’s a reflection of where Suki is in her life, which is happy in her relationship with actor Robert Pattinson, entering a new era as a mother of one, and – after a long battle with imposter syndrome – confident in herself as a musician. As she sees it: “You can’t really get away from what’s actually going on in your interior.”
BEAT caught up with Suki to talk motherhood, Taylor Swift and her pre-show rituals.
The last time we did this, two years ago, you were about to put out I Can’t Let Go,and we spoke about imposter syndrome and your worries about how the album would be received. Cut to today, and you’re every bit a fully formed musician. How has that evolution felt for you?
It takes a long time to find your sense of belonging and not feel like a complete mug. In comparison to where we were when we spoke two years ago, I feel like I’ve carved out whatever little Suki space I’ve been able to occupy. Even compared to my first tour with Father John Misty – where we’d never played as a band – how I feel on stage now has changed so dramatically.
Are you aware the public perception of you has shifted?
Yeah. I definitely feel like my life is very different. If I’m walking around, someone might come up to me and say that they love a song, and they want to say hi because they’re connected to the music. So that’s changed. I feel like there’s a much wider connection to people. I feel less isolated.
You posted a picture the other day of a young Suki wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt at a 1989 concert, being like, “Someone go tell this girl she’s opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras tour.” That’s quite a full-circle moment.
Yeah. Someone showed me that picture on Twitter. I’d kind of forgotten about it. I think I said on stage, “I’d say this is a dream come true, but I never would’ve dreamed that big.” You’re in Wembley, in your hometown. Your parents are there, so are all the people you grew up with. That was definitely one of those experiences where I was like, “Oh, life, like.”
How did the whole thing come about?
Well, she said something to me at dinner a year ago, but it was very casual and then I didn’t hear about it again. But then I got the call right after Coachella. I had just had the baby and was blown away.
It’s a lot to process, particularly postpartum, when you already feel insane. Were you nervous about performing on that scale – and for Taylor?
I didn’t think about it too much. You’re just busy with the baby. I had a week before [in London], just introducing her to everyone, the family she hadn’t met. Actually pulling up to the stadium is when my heart started to get butterflies. I would almost say the sound check was more nerve-wracking than the actual show, because it was just completely unbelievable – like, the most breathtaking scene of an empty Wembley stadium. I didn’t know if I would freak out or not. But I was like, “OK, I actually really enjoy this.” On the morning of the show, I woke up in a panic, being like, “I have to get a trumpet player today.” I don’t usually have one, but I needed a trumpet player to bring that celebratory vibe. I found someone in two hours, and that made my show.
Do you have any rituals before going on stage?
The morning of Wembley, I just went and sat in the grass for a second. There is a little thing we have. I’ll always look at my guitarist and be like, “Raj, what kind of show are we gonna have?” And he’ll just say a couple of words, like “forthcoming and reserved” or “confident and collected”, and everyone will nod and be like, “OK, yeah, we got it.”
So tell me about the new album. WTF is a sparklemuffin?
I was scrolling late one night and I basically came across this very strange, colourful spider called the sparklemuffin, who I thought was kind of cute. It had only been discovered a couple of years ago. I was midway through the album and I knew I wanted to have the word memoir in the title, just because of my own obsession with reading other people’s. The sparklemuffin does this ‘razzle-dazzle’ mating dance and then gets eaten by its partner if it doesn’t like the dance. I started imagining myself in that way – dancing through life and just hoping not to get eaten.
What is life but a dance and a desperate attempt to not be eaten?
Exactly. So, I started to think of the album as the spider’s journey. It’s all quite toxic and dangerous. There are all these webs. The beginning songs represent that initial enchantment and then the subsequent entrapment. And then, as the narrative progresses through the album, it’s the sparklemuffin’s struggle to break free from these consequences. And then it goes much more into this self-reflection that I’ve been having in these last years, and I guess, the quest for redemption.
Were there any surprises along the way? New feelings or sounds that you unlocked?
Yeah. When I spoke to you the first time, I felt quite boxed in. I think I’d been quite depressed for a couple of years. And with this one, when I started making it, I definitely noticed that the palette was different. I went to Devon and recorded a couple of songs. I thought I wouldn’t be able to make an upbeat song. I was scared. I thought I had to stay as this moody Cat Power type. So, I guess that was a challenge for myself – to make something that I still resonated with but was also upbeat. And so, I made ‘My Fun’. After that, a different palette emerged, and I was much freer on this record to explore different genres. ‘Think Twice’ has an American, country sound.
What do you hope people will take away from the album?
I hope that anyone else feeling any of the things I’ve sung about have some sort of connection to it. Or that the right song finds them at the right time.
At what point in the album-making process did you find out you were pregnant? And how did that change your approach to the music? There are clear themes of metamorphosis in the album.
I think I found out in June or July, and I was still touring. When you’re pregnant, it’s all you can think about – especially with the first one. It’s just like you can’t stop talking about it, you can’t believe it’s happening, you can’t believe the changes that are happening to your body, and just the anticipation of this new life in front of you. I was writing a lot of music about her, a lot of songs for her, but I still hadn’t met her yet. And I had to turn in the record before I was going to meet her – like, the week before. I had these senses of her; I felt like she was going to have these big blue eyes, and I wrote a song called ‘Blue Eyes’. But I didn’t actually put them on in the end. I wanted to have them as sacred.
What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced since having a baby?
I feel more confident and grounded to the earth. It’s inspiring. It makes me want to work hard and have her think that I’m great when she grows up, and that I don’t make sucky art. The fact that you have this love in your life, and something more important than everything else, is kind of like a superpower.
Going back to those feelings we were talking about last time – the imposter syndrome and all of that – do you feel like you’ve conquered those? Do you now feel like a legitimate artist with something to say, and that people should listen?
The fact there are people listening and enjoying my music was never even on the cards for me. So much of it has been unexpected. I just feel completely charmed by the whole thing. There’s this sense of freedom now; I believe there are other places that I can go with this. Life has surprised me big time, and I hope it will do so again.
