Georgia Maq: The Biggest Emo in the World
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH LIZ PELLY
⤏ PHOTOS BY PHOEBE VELDHUIZEN
⤏ MAKE-UP BY HELENA LEVIC
⤏ STYLNG BY TORY PRICE | ASSISTED BY SOPHIA CHOWDHURY
Is Georgia Maq rolling a joint or doing a rapid test? It's hard to immediately be sure when we first connect over a video call, but a shriek from my computer speaker eventually delivers a response: "FUUUCK. I THINK I HAVE COVID." As Maq drives to get a PCR test in her hometown, Melbourne, we chat about the pop solo records she’s released since 2015, her self-described “power emo” trio Camp Cope, and working as a nurse in a COVID ward throughout the pandemic.
For the record, Maq says she is feeling better.
LIZ PELLY: I feel like I have been learning a lot about Australian politics and the Green Party from your Instagram stories the past few weeks. Did working as a nurse during the pandemic politically galvanize you?
GEORGIA MAQ: I've always been very, very left. I believe people don't need to die because some other people want money. But it definitely made me even more left and even more radical. We need free universal health care for everybody. The inside of a COVID ward was the most grim shit I've ever seen in my life. I wouldn't want anyone to be there.
LP: Some of your earlier songs have some pretty explicitly political lyrics. Like one where you sing about the Australian Prime Minister: "Scott Morrison's got blood on his hands."
GM: He wasn’t even Prime Minister yet when I wrote that. He was immigration minister. I hate listening to that song. I don't think that it sounds good. But it does bring me back to a very specific point in my life. And it was a time when refugees were dying in offshore detention centers. And our government was just like, “Not our problem! Even though we caused this!”
LP: There's an older Camp Cope song from your first record, "Flesh and Electricity," where you talk about working as a nurse, but it has a somber tone. There’s a line where you’re singing about “pretending to be useful.”
GM: I wrote that when I was in nursing school and on my placements. Sometimes you just feel a bit useless. But now I don't feel useless. Now I feel like I'm doing something and actively contributing to people's recovery, which is good. Especially when there's staff shortages.
Being a nurse is very important to me. Music is also important to me, but mostly being a nurse, which makes me feel like I'm doing things for other people. Whereas music feels like I'm doing something for myself. And it's important to do stuff for yourself—it’s important to care for yourself. But I think music is a form of self-care to me, and nursing is a form of community care, which I think is equally important.
LP: Do you think musicians should also have day jobs?
GM: I mean, no one should do anything. There is a place for it. But I also think musicians, especially white able-bodied musicians, really need to acknowledge their privilege in being able to create art for a living. It's a massive privilege. Especially during a global pandemic. It's a privilege doing art for a living.
LP: On some of those early solo recordings I was sensing folk punk influences. Are you a folk punk fan?
GM: I used to love folk punk. I don't think it's an influence now. But I do love myself a bit of folk punk. It was very formative for me. It's what I listened to in high school. All I can remember, right now, is Against Me and Days N’ Daze. I love the folk punk scene. I think it's cute as hell. I just love punks and I liked folk punk because it was more melodic.
“being a nurse feel[s] like I'm doing things for other people. Whereas music feels like I'm doing something for myself. I think music is a form of self-care to me, and nursing is a form of community care, which I think is equally important.”
LP: I wanted to ask you about your single "Joe Rogan," and if you were nervous to release a song with that title.
GM: I fucking hate Joe Rogan. I think he's very dangerous and annoying. I wrote the song because I went on a Tinder date with this dude. He was a Joe Rogan fan and I was turned off immediately. He had some super problematic ideas. This dude was like, “I literally don't need to ask for consent, blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, “Yeah, you do.” And he was like, “But it kills the vibe.” And I was like, what the fuck are you on about? What planet are you living on bro? No it doesn't! He's like that meme of the neurotypical straight white dude, who just wants to play the devil's advocate because our problems are purely hypothetical to him. And like, has never had real problems.
So I wrote the song. It was a bit of a fuck you. I just wanted to name it "Joe Rogan" because it's funny, and I love a good laugh. I wrote the song in my home during lockdown, and I just wanted to release it straight away because I thought it was really funny. So I did. Making fun of something and laughing at it is a way to make it less scary. I just thought making fun of those kinds of bros and making fun of Joe Rogan could kind of make people take him and them less seriously. And I also was like, fuck you for wasting my time. I'm gonna make money off this song forever now.
LP: The cover is a text message from this person. Did you respond to the text?
GM: You know how you can "react" to things on an iPhone? I just responded with "haha." And that was the end of it.
LP: Joe Rogan sucks and making fun of him is funny but for you, being someone who's literally vaccinating people, I'm sure it also hits home in a different way, seeing the impact that misinformation has caused on efforts to get people vaccinated.
GM: Absolutely. It's so fucking annoying. It's such an insult. You're not a scientist. Not even just Joe Rogan, but all of these bros. It's not about whether you understand vaccines and how they work. It's about listening to people who do. Listening to people who are more educated rather than being like, “Oh, well I did my own research.” It's just arrogant because you are going to have confirmation bias and you're just going to see information that you want to see. Joe Rogan feeds into that confirmation bias.
LP: How did you feel at the beginning of the year when everyone in the music industry decided that they were going to protest Spotify for platforming him?
GM: Yeah, I loved that. But also fuck Spotify. With all of the money they paid Joe Rogan, they could have given musicians a bit more money. He's made jokes about sexual assault. He's just a fucking cunt. Why did they give him so much money? It's fucked.
LP: Was this your first self-produced single? How was that?
GM: Yeah. In lockdown in 2020 is when I learned how to do all that shit. Because there was literally nothing else to do, I taught myself how to produce music, which was very liberating. It felt like, "I can fucking do anything!" The first entirely self-produced song that I put out was a cover of Gordi's "Extraordinary Life." And then "Joe Rogan" was the second one. It feels nice. I feel pretty proud of it.
LP: Which program did you teach yourself?
GM: Ableton. With YouTube, and trial and error. I love production. I very much have a vision of how I want things to be and how I want them to sound. And it's very liberating being able to do that yourself and also being able to communicate that with the people that you're working with.
“Making fun of something and laughing at it is a way to make it less scary. And I also was like, fuck you for wasting my time. I'm gonna make money off this song forever now."
— on her song, Joe Rogan
LP: I also thought it was so cool when I read that you collaborated with Katie Dey on your solo album from 2019, Pleaser. Her new album Forever Music is one of my favorites of this year. How was that collaboration?
GM: It was good. I love working with Katie. She's got some absolutely wild ideas. It was funny, because we're very close. We used to live together when we were in our early 20s.
LP: I like how the title of the album, Pleaser, comes from this lyric, "I'm doomed to be a pleaser for you." I was wondering what that title means to you.
GM: I was just at a point in my life where I was living for attention from people who would give me none, you know? That was my vibe at the time. I just always had crushes. You know when you have crushes on people who are just so ambivalent towards you? Like they don't give a fuck. That's how it felt.
LP: I also wanted to talk about Camp Cope. Over the years, within emo and pop punk, I have encountered bands that are all dudes plus one woman, or like, maybe a female solo artist. But I really think it's rare for there to be emo bands comprised entirely of women. I went back and looked through the entire Run for Cover roster, and in the whole 18-year history of the label, it looks like Camp Cope is the only band of all women that's ever been on the label. It seems significant to me that the band is on Run For Cover for that reason. I was wondering if it's important to you that your band exists within that discography, or within that sort of like, emo canon.
GM: Yeah, I guess you're right. I really like Run for Cover, and they've done a lot for us. I think we're here to take up space. I feel like a lot of labels are the same way, not really having any bands with all women. Especially in the early 2000s, I literally can't think of any. I like taking up the space that I take up.
Camp Cope just happened very naturally. I was friends with Thomo, and then I met Kelly. And it was just like, well okay, we're a band now. It came about very naturally. Every time I tried to play with men it just didn't really work. That was when I was very young. Since then, I have played with men, and it's fine. But when I was young and wanting to beef up my solo music, nothing really fit until Camp Cope happened.
LP: I was wondering what your relationship with emo, in general, as a concept is like. What does that even mean to you in the year 2022?
GM: I'm the biggest emo in the world. No one has ever been more emo than me. I'm just a gigantic emo. I feel like emo is a genre where none of the music sounds the same, because emotions are so vast and varied. I think Camp Cope is an emo band because all I sing about is my emotions. I love emo.
LP: I feel like, if the last Camp Cope record was about kind of asserting the right of the members of Camp Cope to be women playing in this scene, this one feels celebratory in that you're actually just doing that. It's funny to me seeing people be like, "Oh, this album is gentler." It's like, that's literally what emo is. I was reading this old interview with Ian MacKaye recently about the roots of emo where he talks about how important it was to create bands that were very “wimpy” as an alternative to aggression and violence.
GM: And there's something so brave in that. I feel like being emo is a very brave thing to do in a world where emotions are kind of shunned upon, and not taken for what they are, which is a very normal and beautiful part of the human experience. I think emo music is very much a display of control. Like you're able to control your emotions enough to think about them, and verbalize them in a beautiful way rather than with aggression. There's still emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, and obviously it can still be terrible and bad. But for the most part, I just love it, especially when it's women singing.