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What happens when The Texas Primadonna wraps her starring role, comes off set, and takes a look behind her own curtain? That’s the very question shooting starlet Tiffany Stringer pondered once the dust settled on her first EP last year. Being truthful in song brought up two contrasting emotions: the strength that comes with baring your soul and the hesitancy of sharing so much with the world, especially on the people caught up in its wake. We spoke with The Lone Starlet on everything from the EP’s remarkable visual story to not letting the past stop herself from what she deserves; having meaningful, protected relationships that compliment her (in our eyes) inevitable stardom. 

OnesToWatch: We have to start with the classic Hollywood theme. Tell me how you came up with that. Were you always into movies?

Tiffany Stringer: I've always loved Hollywood. I love movie magic, when things are larger than life. And the hacks, taking what you have available to you and making something magnificent. Before this era, I was writing songs for other artists that felt, genre wise, very different from each other. When it came to putting the next project together, I was just writing what felt true for me at that moment. I had a country song, a theatrical closer and a folk song. I wondered, how did these go together? It all changed when I watched Singin’ In The Rain for the first time. I’m an AMC Stubs Member, so I am up to date with newer movies, but there's a lot of classics I haven’t seen. No one was showing me those growing up. I was watching Disney Channel, you know? In Singin’ In The Rain, they go on set. Gene Kelly gets thrown in a Western scene and just kills it. It's fun to watch who they are on set, and then off set. I felt that way in my music. There was a dichotomy between how I'm presenting myself online and who I am when I'm at home. That movie unlocked it for me. It's still me, it's still true, but when you have to keep portraying it over and over again, it can start to feel like a performance. 

I love practical effects and sets. And Technicolor, which is somehow gone?

I know. There was a point where I was like “How do I get Techincolor?” 

Have you seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? I thought of it while watching the “Bullet” music video. 

It was unintentional, but that is a movie I love! I consider myself a culmination of everything I love and, against my will, hate. We become those things. I'm just absorbing it all. 

It's such a great way to set up your discography. When you're an actress, you get to change. 

Exactly! I wanted to set myself up for the freedom to change. When you're a musician, or a pop star, people fall in love with the character that you play. I wanted to build something for myself that was sustainable, allowing me to grow. I don't know if I would be happy pretending to be the same person over and over again.

I love that you’re going from The Texas Primadonna to The Lone Starlet. What did you learn from the first EP?

When I wrote The Texas Primadonna, I was writing from my alter ego. I talk about it in “The National Anthem (Of Independence)". There were a lot of changes happening in my life. I noticed I tend to write songs about who I want to be in the future, which is what I was embodying in the first EP. While all of that is very true to me, I was in a very chaotic time of my life. I was very reactive and I don't always want to be that way. I was getting to be a younger version of myself that I never really got to live out, so I was kicking and screaming.

You had to get it out of your system. 

Then the dust settles a bit, and I'm like, ‘Would I have made that decision if I had thought about it a little more?’ Funny enough, one of the songs on The Lone Starlet was written the same week as “Oh My God”, which is a very reactive song. 

Which one?

“Casualty.” 

I was gonna ask if it’s that one!

It’s my most internal, reflective song. It’s interesting that I was feeling both of those things simultaneously. But at the time, it didn't fit the character. Now I’m on the other side of the coin. This is what happens when The Texas Primadonna goes to Hollywood!

That's what I love about it. It doesn’t feel like a reinvention, but a continuation.

It’s always me, it’s just a dramatized version. In a way, all of these songs are about songwriting and the pursuit of fame. They’re asking if I'm happy with the path that I'm going down and keeping myself in check, to make sure that I am proud of who I am. 

I love songs about fame, which is crazy. It’s not like I've ever been famous, but I’ve loved them since I was a kid. 

Being adored and perceived is something we can all relate to, fame is just the magnified version. We're all seeking that in our own ways. 

Both of your projects have started with a spoken word intro, which I love. 

I love setting the scene. It’s funny because both of them are from a person with a transatlantic accent. [Laughs] I just love the theatrics. I'm either gonna choose a string intro or a person talking. I just think it's fun! I love the idea of walking people into what they're about to experience. In a film, you set the tone before you give them the dilemma. Even when I'm writing songs, I'm writing spoken intros for myself. I'm like, ‘Girl, just sing the words.’

No, I love it. It’s giving Lana Del Rey “Ride”, which is the blueprint. I have to ask about some of the production elements in “Damn Good Actress” that are so Lana. 

I'm in a period of my life where I’m changing a lot and there are so many things I'm influenced by. For that song, I really love the percussive elements. Lana's so cinematic and I was super inspired by that! There’s a real beauty to the balance of grit and perfection. She does a really good job in balancing it, which I'm super inspired by. I’m always dancing the line of fame, perfection, glitz and glamor, mixed with a gritty realness. To me, the perfect combination is wearing a boa and glitter then rolling around in the mud. 

What was the story of writing that song?

“Damn Good Actress” was the last one I wrote for the EP, when I was already clear on the direction. I had a whole deck written out with the storyline narrative, the visuals, everything. I was in the studio with Sammy Witte, Solly, and Victoria when I told them this whole pitch. They were like, ‘Have you written a song about this yet?’ “Damn Good Actress” is how I feel about songwriting. I mentioned being reactive in the past, then looking back and wondering if I would have done that if I thought about it more. I wanted to write a song encompassing that emotion. Am I a bitch, or am I good at pretending I'm not a bitch? It's funny how I gave myself no option for the fact that I'm just human. But, that's how I felt at the moment. It definitely tied the ribbon on the whole EP.

It’s interesting that you wrote it after coming up with the Hollywood concept. I love the video so much. It felt like I was watching a movie. 

That makes me so happy. It's such an accomplishment. I really wanted to swing big, because no one owes me anything. At the end of the day, I'm just some random girl singing about my life. If I'm gonna tell the story of my life, I want to make sure that people resonate with it. I want to meet them where they're at, to give them the full story. 

“Casualty” is so good. I noticed it was placed in the tracklist like a turning point. 

I appreciate you noticing that. 

I'm a tracklist girl. I'm a front to back listener.

I've noticed that you really pay attention to things. I learn a lot from your perspective. You're highlighting things that sometimes I don't catch. 

That makes me so happy. Sometimes people ask “Do you make playlists?” and I'm like, “Girl, the album is the playlist.”

I really appreciate that. Admittedly, I grew up strictly listening to pop radio. I didn't grow up with albums in my home. 

I love hits, don’t get me wrong. But as someone who talks to artists all the time, I like hearing it the way they intended it to be heard. 

I've grown a new appreciation through this process, in a way that makes me appreciate albums so much more. I debated the order of it a lot, because I wanted to tell a story. “Casualty” definitely felt like a turning point. “Bullet” is still tapping into the energy of The Texas Primadonna, which is the movie. “Damn Good Actress” is the premiere of the movie and in the visual for “Casualty”, I'm inside the theater watching the movie, crying. It's me being like, ‘Am I proud of this?’ This might be my Texas woman guilt…[laughs], but I was asking, ‘Am I a bad person for expressing myself?’ It’s something that I will probably unpack for years to come. There are definitely worse ways of expressing pain. I've chosen art, which I'm grateful for.

The fact that you're conscious of it means that you're already giving more thought than the average person. Men aren’t sitting around thinking ‘Did my lyrics hurt someone today?’

And it's funny because the action that caused me to write the song is clearly so much worse than me writing a song about it. 

Exactly. Like, why do you feel bad? 

It’s the voice inside your head. This whole EP is essentially reflecting after a reaction. I think my life’s work will be a dance between the initial reaction and the looking back. 

There's so much in there. You get more from it because you’re writing about things that people are always thinking about, but don't vocalize. 

I'm not literally breaking the fourth wall, but I’m stepping out of the reality that you've seen in the film and showing more to it. I think that every album I make will be another iteration of that. I'm so excited for it to keep going forever.

“Supernova” is so good. Is there a music video for that one too? 

Yes! It’s so exciting because my actual boyfriend is in the video with me. The concept for this one is me actually coming home from set. I know I have fully signed up for people to know the intricacies of my life, which is a vulnerable state to be in. But the people around me that I write songs about, I don't think they understand the full extent of what I'm signing up for and how it can affect them. When I started dating my boyfriend, I had to ask, ‘If I’m gonna be a star, are you gonna love me when I become that?’ That's what “Supernova” is. It’s about wanting to protect the people around me. There's a lyric in there, “Do you only love me because it's easy?” It’s easy right now when I'm being the version of myself that'll make you love me, but what about when I'm difficult? When I'm singing a song about my ex? Are you still gonna love that version of me? We dance in the video and it's so cute.

The whispering is so good. It's definitely such a capital P Pop Song. It’s crazy how many different genres you’re touching in this EP. 

I wanted to put elements in each song so that they connect since the first iterations were very contrasting. There are things like pedal steel and strings that overlap in all of them, but they were born from different emotions and parts of my heart.

“The Encore” at the end is heavy, but also gives me a sense of freedom. 

I was ecstatic when I finally wrote this song. It was an emotion that I couldn't quite nail, because I was experiencing grief in a new way. When I write a song and I nail it on the head, it’s like I’m free. When you put something in a box, it's no longer too big to handle. It's not necessarily about a relationship with my ex, but about losing friendships. There's a lot of aftermath with a life change that big and losing friends was actually a bigger heartbreak than my actual relationship. It's a really hard thing when something fades away as opposed to a cold ending. This song is from a desperate state of, ‘Why don't you love me?’. It’s me standing there, begging to be loved. I was performing for attention, to receive love from these people and the world, because I wasn’t giving that to myself. I wanted to write a song as a way to set myself free.

I love how you’re using the concept of "waiting for the encore” to describe that. 

Maybe this is a bad thing, but if a friend from my past came back and said, “Hey, I messed up,” I would be like, “I love you so much” and let them back in. That's a hard reality to face. It's a desperate place that I would love to say I haven’t been in. I’m not there anymore, but “The Encore” tied everything together so perfectly. 

If you were to star in a movie, what genre would it be? I could totally see you as a scream queen, but that’s just because I'm a horror fan.

A cult classic, for sure. I love A24. One of my favorite movies is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which is very camp and committed to the bit. I love when someone takes a risk and it pays off. I love Eternal Sunshine (Of The Spotless Mind) as well. I also love Soul, the animated film. Babylon, too! Oh, and randomly Ready Player One.

There’s this Tarantino movie called Death Proof. Have you heard of it? 

I don't think so.

It’s about stunt girls, which is so on theme.

Okay, I'm gonna watch it. 

Who are your OnesToWatch?

Obviously Slayyyter! I'm excited to see her exponentially grow. girlsweetvoiced is so good. Eli, obviously. Addison Rae's already on the up, but I feel like she's only scratching the surface.

There have been so many artists who have shared your music, is there a specific person whose support stands out? 

The coolest support, which has changed my career in a lot of ways, has been from Halsey. Also Slayyyter just followed me, which I'm so excited about. It’s from beautiful, wonderful women who care so much about people, which you can tell in the art they make and the way they communicate with people. I'm hoping to be that person myself, so it feels really wonderful to have moments with artists I look up to and admire in so many ways.

Listen to The Lone Starlet below: