© Etienne Baret
Thunder Bae is a Düsseldorf-based singer, songwriter, and producer blending electronic music, indie rock, alternative pop, and trap into an atmospheric, genre-defying sound. Her debut album A WOMAN examines the contradictions of womanhood, exploring identity, desire, vulnerability, and power through cinematic production and deeply personal songwriting. We spoke to her about creating the album on her own terms, building its immersive world, and confronting the expectations placed on women.
The B-Side Hour: Your debut album is called A WOMAN. It's a title that feels both incredibly universal and deeply personal at the same time. What made those two words the right way to introduce this record?
Thunder Bae: The title A WOMAN reflects the core of the album. Women are constantly expected to be soft but strong, desirable but not provocative, independent but still accommodating, successful but never intimidating, emotional but never difficult. We are asked to be beautiful without appearing vain, sexual without being judged, nurturing without losing ourselves, and resilient without ever showing the cost of that resilience. I just wanted to strip all of those contradictions away and reduce the title to the simplest possible statement... The album does not ask what kind of woman I am supposed to be. It asks what remains when a woman stops becoming what other people expect from her. To me, nothing needs to come before, between, or after those words. No adjective, no explanation, no qualification. A WOMAN already contains everything.
The B-Side Hour: Vulnerability, power, desire and rage all coexist throughout the album. Was embracing those contradictions more important to you than offering one definition of womanhood itself?
Thunder Bae: Well, a woman's vulnerability does not cancel out her power, and her desire does not make her rage less legitimate... I answer yes, because womanhood is not one identity, emotion, or experience, and those qualities are not actually contradictions.
"I think it is somehow my calling to bring what I feel into a medium like music"
The B-Side Hour: You wrote and co-produced the entire record yourself. How important was it that an album about finding your own voice was also created entirely on your own terms?
Thunder Bae: It was one of the most frightening and rewarding things I have ever done, mentally. Creating the album on my own terms forced me to trust my instincts in a way I had never done before. I tend to doubt myself, especially while I am still in the middle of making something, so finishing the record gave me a new sense of confidence. It felt like I had forged another blade for my sword, a new part of myself that only revealed itself once the album was complete. At the same time, I was not alone in the process. Etienne [Baret] supported me enormously, also mentally, and I think it is crucial to have people around you who ask the right questions rather than give you all the answers. Sometimes another person can help you find the path back to your own voice or save you from overthinking or abandoning a song. For the future, though, I am looking forward to collaborating more with other musicians. I missed that exchange throughout the making of this album. Creating it independently taught me that I can trust my own vision, but it also made me realize how much I value the energy, unpredictability and inspiration that come from making music with other people.
The B-Side Hour: One of the things that stands out on A WOMAN is how immersive it feels. Every production choice seems to pull the listener further into its world. What was your approach to creating that atmosphere?
Thunder Bae: I guess my approach was just trying to make it sound the way it felt in my head. Sometimes I would go out into a field and record textures or cows haha, then blend them with something heavy like a Reese bass to create contrast, or put 4 pedals on a guitar... I think we all carry a lot of contrasts inside of us. I can feel like a thunderstorm, but I can also be very gentle and soft. Both can exist at the same time. I think it is somehow my calling to bring what I feel into a medium like music. So I just keep shaping the sound until it feels as close as possible to what I hear and feel in my mind.
The B-Side Hour: You've said you don't think in genres. If genre isn't the starting point, what usually is? A lyric, an image, an emotion, a sound...?
Thunder Bae: A person, a conversation, a thought, an object, rain, the night, the morning, a cross made out of burned wood, the name of a French apéritif, the story of a town, history, walking... Everything can be a starting point if you allow it to be one. You just have to catch the magic. It is everywhere. You have to listen, look, experience things and let them move something inside of you. I don't know, I think inspiration is constantly surrounding us. You just have to be open enough to notice it.
"Sometimes you just have to do things before deciding if they are good, bad, right or wrong"
The B-Side Hour: Your music feels emotionally rich while constantly shifting between genres and moods. Were there any particular artists, records, films or other works that shaped the emotional world of A WOMAN?
Thunder Bae: There were a lot of different references shaping the emotional world of A WOMAN. Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, Jeanne d'Arc, The Addams Family, and David Lynch's Mulholand Drive and Blue Velvet were all somewhere in my mind. I was drawn to the beauty, darkness, strangeness and tragedy within those worlds.
What is happening to women in our worlds also influenced the album deeply, especially the stories of women who are unheard, silenced or never given the space to speak for themselves. My own teenage years became a big reference too, because so many of the emotions on the album come from memories and things I was still trying to understand.
Musically, Bach influenced me a lot, as well as Lament by Invadable Harmony. I also made a playlist while creating the album and listened to it constantly. It became almost like an emotional map of the world I was trying to build. It's this one. And so many other films, and works that I just don't have coming to my mind right now...
The B-Side Hour: Religious symbols, mythology and fairy tales run throughout the album, from Archangel and Godswork to Gay Alice In Wonderland and Crystal Ball. What draws you to those worlds as a way of telling deeply personal stories?
Thunder Bae: I think everything we create is based on references, mostly subconsciously. Religious symbols, mythology and fairy tales already live somewhere inside our collective memory, so I tried to bring some of those references into the album because they allow people to connect to a feeling without necessarily knowing me or my story. Archangel, crystal ball, Alice in Wonderland, Godswork... you already associate something to those images before I even explain what they mean to me. They become a shared language. I can use something ancient, sacred or familiar and place my own experience inside of it. I think it also makes deeply personal things feel less isolated. The story may be mine, but the symbols open a door for someone else to their own story in it too.
The B-Side Hour: On A Better Me, you sing "If I become your dream, who buries the girl that I was?" The lyric raises the question of what we lose when we try to become someone else's ideal. What led you to explore that idea?
Thunder Bae: That lyric was partly inspired by Lacan's idea of the objet petit a, which is not the thing we subconsciously desire, but the hidden cause that makes something desirable to us in the first place. I think we often create an entire universe around a person and then mistake that universe for who they actually are. The grass only looks greener because we have imagined a whole world around it. Otherwise, it is just grass. In the song, I am asking what happens when someone no longer loves you as a person, but loves the idea of what you could become for them. "You want a better me" sounds almost caring, but it can also be violent. At some point, fixing me became more important than seeing me. I became a project, a dream, an object of desire. So when I sing "If I become your dream, who buries the girl that I was?", I mean that becoming someone else's ideal can slowly kill the person you were before. You may finally become what they wanted, but something real had to disappear for that fantasy to survive.
"I hate admitting it, but I am also a victim of my own expectations"
The B-Side Hour: On Dead End Girls, you sing "I worship what is killing me." It's a striking way of describing many women's relationship with beauty standards and self-image. Why did you want to confront that contradiction and its consequences so directly?
Thunder Bae: Because I carry misogyny inside of me too. It was given to me from birth, through everything I saw, heard and learned about what a woman is supposed to be. I hate admitting it, but I am also a victim of my own expectations. How my body should look, how my personality should be, what I should wear, how I should move through the world. Everything.
The idea for the song came to me while I was walking through West Hollywood and saw a billboard with an incredibly thin, naturally beautiful model on it ("Palm trees stole my self-control"). I immediately caught myself comparing my body to hers and genuinely suffering because of it. I realized how cruel it is that we can understand these standards are harming us and still continue to worship them. We keep chasing the very thing that makes us feel inadequate. Almost every human I know has experienced some version of that hopelessness. I do not necessarily mean literally wanting to die, but feeling as though the pressure, shame or self-hatred is destroying something inside of you. At some point, many of us have felt like we might not survive the problems we were carrying. That is why I wanted to say it so directly. "I worship what is killing me" is the contradiction. You can hate the system, understand exactly what it is doing to you and still find yourself obeying it.
The B-Side Hour: Throughout the record, you repeatedly return to the idea of becoming rather than simply being. Looking back now, what has making A WOMAN taught you about yourself?
Thunder Bae: I think A WOMAN taught me that staying in motion is better than constantly judging yourself. Sometimes you just have to do things before deciding if they are good, bad, right or wrong. You have to let yourself move, try, change and become. For me, becoming is almost like building an avatar of yourself in your mind. You imagine who you could be, and somehow your mind starts creating your reality around that image. So, I think I learned to embrace transformation more. I am not supposed to stay the same, and I do not want to be a finished person. I want to keep becoming.