Clairo On Her First Grammy Nomination, “Clairo Shade," and the Song Her Mom Wasn't Sure About

Last November, on the morning this year’s Grammy nominations were announced, Clairo was recovering from a night out enjoying the finer things in life. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter and her band had just wrapped up the American leg of a 21-city tour in support of Clairo’s third album Charm with a show at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, after which they’d celebrated by checking out the city’s after-hours performing-arts offerings.

“We went to a strip club, and we were out very late,” she says during a Zoom call from her home in Brooklyn. “We weren't talking about the Grammys at all. I really didn't think it was going to happen—maybe that's why I kept drinking. I woke up with smeared mascara, watching the nominations roll in. I didn’t see my name, actually, so I didn’t think it’d happened.”

Eventually, she received a message from her manager: Charm had been nominated for Best Alternative Music Album. It was Clairo’s first-ever Grammy nod. Her parents live in Atlanta, and by the time the news arrived, she’d holed up at their house to recuperate; the familial response, she says, involved “lots of screaming. It was really sweet.”

Charm’s folky, jazz-inflected grooves represented a significant departure from the lo-fi pop that brought Clairo instant critical and cool-kid acclaim when she burst onto the scene in the 2010s; Clairo says even her mom wasn’t fully on board with her daughter’s new sound when she first heard it. During the album’s gestation period, Clairo played her “Second Nature”—a song with abrupt changes that she describes as “silly,” which would become the third track on Charm—and was met with a furrowed brow.

“She gave me a look,” Clairo recalls, “that was like, Whatever makes you happy is the right thing.”

Mom has since grown to love Charm, like any fan acclimating to a favorite artist's new direction. Every Clairo release has tacked away from what she’s done before—the largely acoustic Sling, recorded on vintage equipment and inspired by the Carpenters and Pet Sounds, was entirely unlike her 2019 debut Immunity, the sound of a teenager with a MacBook grappling with her identity and processing the emotional swells of adolescence. Charm, released this past July, was an even bigger departure. Recorded mostly live—with help from Leon Michels, a founding member of the Dap-Kings who Clairo hit up on Instagram—it takes cues from Harry Nilsson and ‘70s soul music. The Beach Boys, whose Pet Sounds was among the touchstones for Sling, are still on the moodboard, but this time the specific references were the band’s more singer-songwriterly mid-period albums Smiley Smile and Sunflower.

“I don't want to get bored, for sure,” Clairo says. “It's like a fun exercise or challenge as well, to see what else you're capable of. If you're a lover of music like I am, there's so many different types of music that influence you, and it's fun to tap into different parts of that inspiration.”

Even the cover reflects the internal progress she’s made and the maturation—both personal and artistic—she’s undergone. While her face has appeared on the cover of every Clairo release since her first EP, diary 001, this is the first time she’s used a photograph of herself staring directly at the camera, as if to say, Here I am. This is me.

“You let life breathe a little bit, and then you just find yourself listening to X, Y, or Z, and now you want to make something that feels like that,” she says. “The goal is to paint a large picture of the person I am, the things that ground me, and the songs that inspire me. I'm only three albums in, so it's sort of hard for me to fill an entire painting of who I am, what makes sense to me, what was intentional, and what I'm capable of. That's hard to fully express in a few albums. I'm going to need a lifetime! But it is fun to see now that Charm is out, that I am capable of new things. It provides this bigger picture for me, and maybe listeners, that I have many sides to myself.”

To that chameleonic point, Clairo popped up in a somewhat unlikely place this autumn and adapted seamlessly. In October, she joined Freddie Gibbs on stage for the rapper’s ten-year anniversary performance of his beloved album Piñata, lending her voice to songs like “Crime Pays” and "Robes” at the Greek Theater. “They asked me to play. I was like, 'Oh, I'd love to play tambourine.’ I wasn’t too bad at it,” she shrugs. “That kind of morphed into background vocals. It was hilarious and maybe unexpected to some, but I love rap music, and it was a really fun time. I am really happy it happened.”

It’s harder to imagine the Clairo of yesteryear—younger, more timid, known for a delivery often described as whispery, and for being a bit of a shrinking violet at her own concerts—in that situation. But with more spins on the Ferris wheel of fame also comes a greater understanding of your platform. In 2023, Clairo released a song called “For Now” and donated the proceeds to two organizations—Everytown for Gun Safety, America’s largest gun-violence prevention advocacy group, and For the Gworls, which provides funds to support Black transgender people with things like gender reaffirming surgeries and rent assistance. This summer, she proudly said “Free Palestine” into the mic at a benefit show in London. In a world where so many of her contemporaries are conspicuously silent on all real-world issues, Clairo is making her stances clear as day. Why?

“These are things I care about, and these are things that I want people to know about me: that I care. It's kind of a no-brainer to me.”

The title and overall vibe of the new record came from the sensation of having a big fat crush on someone. Butterflies throwing a rave in your stomach every time you think of them, melting every time you see them, but not knowing whether those feelings are reciprocated. Lyrics like “We could drive a mile down the road/To get a drink or two, you know/Simple thing, I don't need much to like, I find,” and “You make me wanna go buy a new dress/You make me wanna slip off a new dress” tap into the universal power—and relatability—of being down bad for someone who might not even know you exist.

“It was really more so about the understanding of flirting and relationships in general,” she explains. “Looking back at my life or my friends’ lives in those situations and remembering moments of being giddy about a new person, or exchanging eye contact with a stranger that you never see again. Everyone experiences all these touches of whimsy in their love lives, whether it becomes something or not. It's kind of fun to take those moments and materialize them into songs, and then make up the rest of the story however you see fit.”

Sonically, the most notable thing about Charm is the undeniable bounce of songs like “Sexy to Someone” and “Add Up My Love.” When discussing the latter and its infectious piano melody, I feel compelled to tell her that it’s become an instant classic clean-the-house song. “That means a lot to me,” she responds. “I'm always soundtracking my life—traveling or walking or doing dishes, whatever—with music. If it makes your life more enjoyable, then I find that to be a really high compliment.”

Although the lines between genres are fuzzier than ever, it’s still surprising that the Grammys heard this particular collection of songs and decided it belonged in the Alternative Music Album category, nominating it alongside the likes of Nick Cave, Kim Gordon, Brittany Howard and St. Vincent. Clairo calls it a “major trip” to share a category with these artists, and says each of them has influenced her in some way or another. But to my ears, Charm has more kinship to the work of an artist like Norah Jones, who’s nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album this year. In other words, I’ve always viewed Clairo as a pop star.

“That's exactly what I want,” she smiles. “To make alternative music where someone could also think I'm a pop star. I like toeing the line.”

Steve Jennings/Getty Images

As one of the handful of artists leading the charge in Gen Z’s breakthrough to mainstream stardom, Clairo’s career has also been inextricably linked with the internet. On the afternoon of our interview, the imminent (and, as it turns out, short-lived) TikTok ban is the topic of the day. Clairo brushes off the severity of its potential impact, pointing out that any social media platform can be amazing and evil at the same time. Her life upstate in the woods, where she splits her time with the city, provides natural breaks from being online—but rest assured, Clairo stans, she still sees your posts. “I'm too tapped in,” she laments. “I think it's really funny, but I try to maybe be a little bit less online than most.”

Among the things she can’t escape from: Sally, the character from the Cars movie franchise that bears a resemblance to her. (A fan even delivered her a Sally toy on stage.) “I definitely do look like the car,” she says, revealing that she also kept the gift. The jazziness of Charm inspired people on Twitter to coin the nickname Clairykah Badu. Asked if she was aware of that, she giggles and coyly replies “Maybe?” After the internet discovered Luigi Mangione, a playlist of Clairo songs attributed to him began circulating. She did clock that, and is quick to point out that it turned out to be fake.

But nothing will ever top the online phenomenon known as “Clairo shade,” the winking, hyper-online meme that essentially describes any instance of someone not explicitly mentioning Clairo—e.g., Barack Obama not including any songs from Charm on his summer playlist—as a deliberate slight, aka throwing shade. “I don't really know where it came from,” she begins. “Well, I guess I do know where it came from.”

The Cliff's Notes version: It began with several jokey tweets and quickly became a common response to any major celebrity event that didn’t seem to involve Clairo, like Jennifer Lopez filing for divorce. The whole thing broke containment after someone fell through a skylight at a now-infamous Brooklyn party that also featured a Clairo shade cake, which brought the incident to Clairo’s attention on Twitter.

“I don't really think it's that deep," Clairo says now. "I don't know.”

If the trophy doesn’t come home with her on Sunday, you can bank on an army of fans crying “Clairo shade” on social media. While she can’t reveal what she’s wearing to the Grammys, she’s had it all picked out and ready to go weeks before the ceremony, in anticipation of what she expects will be a weird and dizzying night. No matter what happens, she’s checked off a major milestone in the arc of any ascending artist. And who knows? Maybe she’ll hit the strip club afterwards.