MARVIN x Blondshell: A lesson in how to keep your shit together
Photo by Matt Salacuse
“Don’t get me wrong, I have a sense of humour,” Sabrina Teitelbaum says with deadpan affectation as she stares into her webcam and sips her iced latte on a March morning in her bedroom in LA. Teitelbaum, better known as her stage name Blondshell, is known for her candid, terse, and often dark-humoured lyrics which dare to explore the oft-less-discussed corners of female experience. Her social media posts do the same (“this and telling you i’m free bleeding,” reads a recent TikTok of hers.) It can seem that free things are off limits for the LA-based musician, so it’s a surprise when she tells me that a recent collaboration threw her for a loop.
Earlier this year, Teitelbaum teamed up with The Sims for a full Simlish cover of her track “What’s Fair” from her forthcoming second album If You Asked For A Picture. “I’m like, so deeply not a silly or goofy person, so making it was a very humbling experience,” she jokes of having to sing and record the words “Soxeeb stookin dook emba blekoom,” which roughly translates to “Sixteen suckin’ dick in the bathroom.” “I am funny,” she clarifies. “I’m just not goofy.”
When we chat, Teitelbaum is in the middle of doing the intricate and often seemingly never-ending juggle of back-to-back album promo for If You Asked For A Picture, which sharpens both her wit and songwriting nous, and comes out in May. In a few days she’ll fly back to her native of New York City where she’ll do even more promo, including a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Over the next few months she’ll hit the road across North America and Europe, though the scale these activities has nothing on the 150+ show dates – around 90 in 2023 alone – she has done since her self-titled debut release in 2023, in a peek into the cruel reality that most musicians hoping to have an actually financially sustainable career in the music industry face.
Really, Teitelbaum has not had much of a break at all over the past couple of years. How does she keep her sanity? “Well, sometimes I don’t,” she admits. Getting enough sleep, she notes, is the most crucial thing, as is buying her snacks from Whole Foods, ordering the same egg, feta, and spinach breakfast wrap from Starbucks, and stopping at literally any Sweetgreen they can find: “I try to do my LA shit while we’re on the road.”
Talking with Teitelbaum is a lesson in how to keep your shit together, a 3D manifestation of a Girl Who Is Going To Be Okay. At one point during our discussion she tells me about her huge need for to-do lists and going to bed at “a reasonable hour.” She even enthusiastically shows me an app on her phone that displays a llama-shaped gauge which tracks the amount of water she drinks in a day. “So boring,” we both agree. But, as anyone with complex life experiences knows, a regimented structure and routine of extremely thankless yet essential tasks is unfortunately a very necessary part of keeping your head above water.
It often takes years in recovery to get to the point that Teitelbaum’s at now, one that involves plenty of trial and error. This personal growth shines brightly in If You Asked For A Picture, an album which feels primed to be played at top volume while you scream-sing Teitelbaum’s sucker punch lyrics at the top of your lungs. Her debut delved into subject matter such as heartbreak, relationships, sexual assault, substance abuse, and sobriety with the clarity and conviction of someone who has lived a thousand lives – or, someone in their early 20s who’s had a lot of therapy and at least feels as if they have.
Photo by Matt Salacuse
If You Asked For A Picture is no different, lamenting on those same topics as well as complex familial relationships, saviour complexes, self-reliance, growing up, getting older, and existing within uncomfortable emotional gradients.
Where the two albums differ, however, is in the latter’s emotional maturity in its reluctance to come to any concrete conclusions. Picture’s lyrics are not afraid to linger in uncertainty, something one can only come to be truly at peace with with age. “On the last album, everything felt really black and white to me,” she says. “Like: You’re a bad person. I’m not a bad person. I hate you. I love you. It was all these really stark contrasting opinions about people and experiences.” On Picture, however, Teitelbaum finds herself steering away from her previous comfort zone of absolutes, instead wanting to exist in the world of “gray areas” that many of her favourite authors operate within – Rachel Cusk, namely. “I just felt like, I’m an adult,” she says. “I’m allowed to speak in nuance.”
Still, despite the album’s ambiguity, Picture feels even more honest than her debut. It’s brutal, blunt, and absolutely huge. All in, it feels like the perfect continuation from her previous record, one that feels genuinely rewarding to listen to, like watching yourself grow up while flicking through an old photo album. Teitelbaum’s vision is clear and she’s undoubtedly found a way of living that works for her. “My goal is to be 60, and, like, just solid and able to impart wisdom and know good peace,” she says, smiling just before we sign off. “That’s just like my life goal…and to look like Carole King. She’s just writing songs and hanging, so that’s the goal.”
