#111 Kat Cunning
Host Rae Leigh and featured guest Kat Cunning have a beautiful in-depth chat about art, covid, life, relationships and sex. The two of them share around how often sex is brought up in conversation around the negativity side of sex but often the beautiful spiritually healing side of good sex is not discussed and both connected over the power and experiences they have had getting them to where they are now.
Kat adds soulful grace to anthemic alternative pop. An accomplished screen and stage talent, they appeared on Broadway as Emile in Les Liaison Dangereuses and in Cirque du Soleil in addition to acting alongside James Franco in HBO’s hit The Deuce. 2019 saw Kat make their musical debut with fan favorite singles such "King of Shadow," "Birds," and "For the Love." Not to mention, they supported LP on a sold out U.S. Tour and received praise from Nylon, Teen Vogue, New York Times, Earmilk, and more. Kat currently co-stars in Netflix’s Emmy award winning show “Trinkets,” as Sabine, a musician and also love interest to lead actress, Brianna Hildebrand. Kat, who identifies as non-binary (they/them), recently signed to Lava / Republic Records and released their first single under the new deal, “Supernova (tigers blud).” The single arrived in tandem with the season two premiere of the show where Kat's character, Sabine, performs it in the opening scene. Next up, Kat will also be a principal in the upcoming Jennifer Lopez film, Marry Me.
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Transcript
Rae Leigh: Welcome to a Songwriter Tryst with Kat Cunning. How are you?
Kat Cunning: Hi, I'm so good. It's a pleasure to be on with you.
Rae Leigh: This is a song writing podcast, and we mainly just want to find out more about you and how you got into this crazy industry. But why don't you start by telling us a little bit about who you are and where you come from.
Kat Cunning: I come originally from Oregon. I made a joke the other day, I had to do slates as an actor all the time where I say a short list of things about myself. So I say, I'm Kat Cunning I'm five, six I'm based in New York and LA. And then I started to riff on it and I was like, and I was born under a full moon with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck.
Those things are true. But yeah, I'm from Oregon and I was, I grew up there as a dancer. And then when I was 14, I came to New York to. Continue dancing at the Joffrey ballet. And I think I can segue this into the other question, which is how I got into music. It's a long story and get into it if you want.
Rae Leigh: yeah, go on.
Kat Cunning: I was
just desperate to be a dancer. And I told the first dance
company that hired me. I told them that I could sing in an effort to keep the job as a dancer. And they gave me a solo. After hearing me record a video of myself singing in my house. It was a very like informal, scrappy way to get my first thing gig.
And it just went really well. And I haven't really looked back since then. It's been an interesting transition from a life of being really expressive physically, but not having a voice to.
Finding so much more of a home and being like a communicator as a singer and an actor. Okay.
Rae Leigh: So you're a senior, you're an actor, you're a dancer and you're still dancing because we can tell but So, so songwriting and singing was just like I wanna, you know, I need to sort of stand out from the crowd and I still want to really do this. And I guess he just wanted to
Kat Cunning: Yeah. And I think, you know, it's not because I didn't love singing it. I just absolutely never thought I'd be received positively for how I sing. I, my parents used to tell me to keep my day job when I was. in the car.
Rae Leigh: Thanks, mom and dad.
Kat Cunning: yeah. Well, I mean, I think everybody does really thought dance was the thing.
And so nobody paid any attention to the singing. And then, you know, as I was growing up in New York also I hustled really hard and I think like singing became this really cathartic thing for me. Even just as I commuted, I would sing in the subways when the train was passing so that nobody could hear me.
And just like letting my sound out, felt like a really important thing for me to try to do. I was really afraid to use my voice.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, it's so therapeutic in so many ways, and people are starting to recognize
that I think that singing and chanting and letting your voice out is so good.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. I mean, it's like a, it's an excuse to breeze also.
Rae Leigh: Which we don't do enough of, even though there's really no reason why. No, that's really cool. So I have to say the same thing. Like I I didn't think that anyone would like my voice because I never heard anyone that's had it like me on the radio. So I just didn't think I could sing. It didn't mean I couldn't sing in tune.
I loved it, but it was not a belief in, you know? Yeah. It wasn't like a, yeah, this is a thing that you can go and have a career out of. Yes, go and be a singer. It's like someone saying they want to be an astronaut. You know, it's not something that's a viable option. As a reality, when you're going through high school and you go to your careers counselor even with Dan.
So that's it's a creative thing. Do you know when like arts and dance and acting kind of started for you and music kind of, is there a moment in your life? Yeah,
Kat Cunning: I
Rae Leigh: the beginning.
Kat Cunning: mom used to talk to me about how I would just cry and tell she put a ballet video on as a toddler. She finally discovered that after renting a library video of the ballet, I think it was the Bolshoi that I would stop crying when she put those on. And so she put me in dance classes when I was three.
And obviously nobody is very serious about anything at age three, but I just like never left. I started lying to my parents about what time my dance classes started. So I can just be at the studio all day and yeah, I Really love.
Rae Leigh: That's beautiful. I have a
Kat Cunning: Yeah. The arts have definitely.
Rae Leigh: tried. And we, you like cause yeah, I've seen like toddler ballet classes with my daughter and she is not a light footed girl.
She loves dancing, but it's not ballet.
It's, she's more of a tumbler and gymnastics type person, which is great.
Like I love it. She's only six and I'll just. You know, she's definitely got the moves, but I remember seeing her in the class and they were all these little girls and they would go on their tippy toes and they would do the whole ballet thing. Like just, she stuck out like a sore thumb.
What were you like that we like really serious about it really young you reckon?
Did you take it seriously?
Kat Cunning: Yeah. And I definitely always stuck out like a sore thumb. I have Like, a. Yeah. And I think that's so exciting that she has a different movement. Quality. I feel you know, ballet is like super important for structure and for taking care of your body and being stable, it's like technique. But so cool if she has an instinct to move a certain type of way to like hone that I have a long speaking of sticking out, like a sore thumb, I have a long history of things go horribly wrong onstage.
But it was, it's kind of like my charm and my luck. Like I remember when I was like five, my mom wanted, allowed me to wear this ring. That was like a family ring and she taped it so much. So it would stay on. Cause I wanted to feel fancy for the show and at the very beginning I lose the ring and I spend the whole time looking for the ring,
Rae Leigh: No,
Kat Cunning: And as I get older, no, but it's like funny. I like made it work and I still danced or something. I dunno. I thrive in a crisis.
Rae Leigh: That's amazing.
Kat Cunning: But yeah, I have always I don't know. I remember one of my college dance teachers said to me,
Like early on and in my time there, he stopped the class and was like this watch them.
This person is a mess, but they're dancing. I think that's so valuable. Like you can always learn how to ground yourself, but I definitely moved passionately and messy messily, and I feel like that's really similar to how I sing still. And I think it makes me an exciting performer.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Cool. So you're a dancer, you're an AXA. And now you're a singer because you kind of fell into it. And what about songwriting? How did that start for you
Kat Cunning: songwriting? actually felt like more approachable to me than even singing did because the one other thing that I did my whole life growing up was write poetry. And I took writing very seriously. Like I think, you know, as a dancer, you?
sort of think your career is going to end at 30. So I still was like, I'll be a writer.
I was a talented writer and had teachers want me to go to school for writing instead of dance. And I didn't. So by the time the opportunity to zinc came along, I was like, cool. I can make my poems in Disney songs. And that's proven to be like a really cool and. Interesting journey because I'm like unlearning the cleverness of poetry when I write pop songs.
And I'm really passionate About that.
Rae Leigh: About unlearning?
Kat Cunning: cleverness.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Kat Cunning: Even the poems that I love are poems that are not too smart for the reader. Because I think you can be so like subtle with what is smart or like things that poems that focus on. Not. Being exclusionary to the smartest person in the room.
I'm like, I need to look up who wrote this, but one of my favorite poems is called the iceberg theory and it's just an ode to why iceberg lettuce is good enough. And everybody who hates all these hates on iceberg lettuce is just a snob, but they're missing out on all the glimpse. Bye it about bringing what is amazing about fine art to the mainstream. And that's why trying to write pop music is so exciting to me because that's the music that's for everybody. And I have lived at like niche, fine art, like queer culture life. But I also know that as a person from a small talent, I really gravitated towards.
The stories of those artists and there's gotta be some somebody who's the liaison between that life and the people who want
to dream about it.
Rae Leigh: I love it. I think that's absolutely beautiful. My grandmother kind of came from her dad was a politician and they kind of had this upper-class family life and she was a lady and she used to always tell me that a ladies one job is to make sure that everyone in the room is comfortable. And that means, you know, sometimes simplifying things.
And that's okay. If it makes someone's comfortable, that's a really important thing to consider because how, you know, you probably know how it feels to be uncomfortable, what a great gift to be able to make someone comfortable if you can. Yeah.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. I'm definitely like
I lean towards making everyone comfortable to an extent that I'm just like, not cool. Sometimes if there's somebody in the room, who's cool. And there's if like Bella Thorn's in the room, but also like my cousins in the room that I've never met before, I'll make a fool of myself to make them laugh.
Like I always lean toward like to my own demise sometimes I don't know. I can be adjuster for the people in the room who are uncomfortable for sure. But I'm passionate about making everybody feel welcome and like I'm passionate about like encouraging people to use their voices or their skills at whatever level they're at, because I just feel really connected to trying things throughout my life that I didn't know how to do and how much I was missing out on.
If I got shut down at every turn, you know?
Rae Leigh: that's beautiful. I love, I think that's a really good attitude to have and with your music now that you're releasing and you've got some really cool stuff out there, what is it in your music that you want your audience to connect to?
Kat Cunning: I want, I think the hardest part is to make songs that are just catchy, that they like to hear
Rae Leigh: Yeah, that
Kat Cunning: and the message. It's hard. Hooks are so elusive to me. I could write poems all day, but the melodies are hard. And then the other thing I think overall, I think there's two sides. Like when I first started writing, I was definitely just I want to remind people there's a place for them and sort of that same attitude that I just spoke about, like welcoming the lowest common denominator to rise up.
But. I feel like now after writing for that for awhile, I felt like there was a whole half of my personality missing and that half is I don't really know how to describe it. Well, when I first started singing the city, I was singing a lot of Delray songs while staring people down without ever smiling and hardly trying.
And I have a, like a very mean disaffected, like confident as fuck persona as well. That's. Very inspired by like the genre of pop music cockiness. And so I think I also want to be an example of strength in expressing that side of myself too. And that was the thing that when I looked at my IEP last year, I was like, these are all sappy ballots and they're great.
They're valuable. But like I have this whole other side of my personality that I love performing in, and I love challenging people to get with. And. So I wanna make people feel welcome and I also want to make people feel sexy and I want to challenge them. And I want to be an example.
Competence.
Rae Leigh: I love that. I loved your confidence song as well. It's very cool. But it, I like your dancing is incredible in that music video as well, but I love that because I think confidence is something that is unfortunately not. Hugely common. It's something that some people really struggle with and suffer with that insecurity.
It's like a disease. And we all have,
Yeah, we all have a level of insight security, but some people it's it really holds them back. And I've definitely had that in certain areas of my life. And I think it's good once you recognize it to be able to deal with it. But we need people around us to inspire us and show us that we can, and you're doing a good job of that.
Kat Cunning: thank you. Yeah, And I think it's also Yeah, can just say what you're feeling. And there are a million songs already out there called confident, and I was like, I want to add one to the loo because I also think like when I think of a song called confident, I think of Demi Lovato and I'm not sure exactly what that song is about, but I mean, I know what it's about.
It's about competence, but think it's there is. I don't know if this falls into this category, but when I think of confident in the main stream, I think of like a Maybelline ad, I think about what it makes me confident wearing this. What makes me confident is, you know, it just feels like a commercial.
And so I just I really enjoyed writing confident because it was actually about it was a demand for the person I was with to be confident enough to be with me. It's not about am I confident to step into the world and be my sexy self it's? Are you confident in the way you love?
Rae Leigh: I love that. That's such an important thing because I think confidence, like for me, Some people out there struggled to really be alone. And having sort of done the whole single thing. I don't know if you know anyone like that, they kind of go from relationship to relationship. They can't be single
Kat Cunning: it's me.
Rae Leigh: that's here. Yeah.
It's look, I think it's, I think it's really healthy for everyone to have a couple of years in their life where they are single, so that you learn who you are without someone else. And I think it does bring another level of confidence that you know, that once you've been alone for at least a little while you then have that foundation of, I am okay on my own and I will be, and then life can be enhanced
Kat Cunning: did it without mine.
Rae Leigh: Yeah exactly. But I think everyone
Kat Cunning: I'm mostly, I feel like they've been alone ish, But I just can’t stop dating. I just love sex and sharing life with a person I'm a very intimate one-on-one type of person. So I always am an interest if you will.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, no, that's I love that. I mean, I think sexuality is something that's beautiful and we should embrace it, however it comes into our lives. But unfortunately there, you know, there are people that struggle with trauma around sexuality as well. And it's not something that we should be ashamed of. Yeah, we should totally embrace it. And I love how music
Kat Cunning: at all.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, that's
Kat Cunning: Yeah, I'm very passionate actually about how sexuality can, like the culture of sex could improve to make trauma, like something that gets to be addressed in sex and cared for. I'm really passionate about BDSM and fetish and creating safe spaces for exploring the things that you're scared of, or even revisiting trauma with a partner that you trust.
I think that good sex is very mental and emotional and I'm, yeah. I'm passionate about people who feel like they've had a hard go of it, myself included finding their way back in that's genuine and not just like sex in the city, you know?
Rae Leigh: absolutely. Yeah. Like more deeper. And there is. There is so healing and sex. And if you'll have me to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it because I come from like a child actually abuse history. I had eight years of my childhood where I was in this relationship with an older man.
And then I didn't deal with it. I had that shame around sexuality throughout my entire high school age until I had kids at 24. I had my first child, I've got three kids now and I went on that healing journey. Thank you. And there was like a lot of clinical stuff that I did that was healing. And I had to like, just learn about emotional intelligence and learn about what I'd been through.
And there was a court case and lots of stuff, but it wasn't until a couple of years ago where I started doing tantra and embodiment workshops and, you know, female empowerment self-pleasure work and that sort of stuff that. Oh, like everything, like it was about healing, the spiritual body through sex.
And that's not something that you can talk to people about very often. And I think that that's actually, when I started singing, which is really, I mean, I've been singing my whole life, but I'll do my bedroom because I didn't have the confidence as we talked about. And it was like, oh, was in this embodiment workshop.
And we were practicing like self-pleasure with a circle of women in a safe, controlled environment. And. The instructor was like, you know, just let your body do whatever it needs to do. And my body just needed to sing. And it was like, you know, everything just came into alignment in that moment. And I was like, ah, you know, and I've never shared that story because it's not something that a lot of women understand. Yeah.
So that's kind of my I love it. And this is that's so part of the healing journey. Yeah. What about you? How did you get into that?
Kat Cunning: I can really, I also experienced sexual abuse as a child. And it didn't come out until Yeah. Did it's the worst? I had to say the least but I, my actual first use of my voice was spoken word. When I went to college at the first time, I really addressed it. How to space to explore that was like a safe room.
And I started writing, spoken word poetry about it. I think like a lot of college kids, I like. Got exposed to the vagina monologues and everything came out.
And so, Yeah.that was the beginning of using my voice. And I feel like singing for me also was really cathartic for that same reason. But I also have a very sexual tendency as a Scorpio.
I think my nature is just I express a lot of what I'm going through sexually anyway, but on the topic of having experienced Something that could easily make you feel shameful. I feel like a lot of my life has been like a radical opposition to shame because it just eats you alive. And when I was little I also feel like the chaos of experiencing that and keeping it to myself, manifested really young. Like I was anorexic and I thought that had to do with dance, but it had to do with controlling my body. Instead of letting somebody else control my body, you know, and I dealt with that so early and then coming out of like that eating disorder had an awareness of not being sick. So I feel like I started healing also really young and started opposing shame, really radically and genuine love connections with people who I felt safe to explore.
BDSM and fetish, we're just lucky matches that I was able to like, just have really deep relationships with people. Obviously it helped that when I went to college, I realized I was gay. It was pretty like women tend to have a lot more chatting about all things when it around sex. So it came up, you know? Yeah. Like freedom and intimacy and just you know, tending to each other and creating safe spaces is more common for sure.
Rae Leigh: That's some incredible.
Kat Cunning: yeah, so I feel like I would have come to, Like sex as sex therapy one way or another but yeah, it's, there's a survival tactic. I just I, think my body loves sex enough to not let it be horrible or shameful, you know,
Rae Leigh: I, think that's beautiful. I wish everyone could be there, you know?
Kat Cunning: and I feel like being exposed to good sex is the key, and good sex, meaning being connected to yourself, connected to your partner and afraid of whatever weird fantasies you have that may or may not be related to trauma. Like it's really hard because our culture is based around like looking hot and fucking when it comes to sex.
And that's just not the whole thing. It's not even the doorway in
Rae Leigh: It's a connection to me anyway.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. And I think, I believe that it is for everyone. Like you can fuck, you know, that's just fine, but it gets better if you're connected mentally to this something. Yeah.
Rae Leigh: I love that. My daughter is 25th of November and I think that's Scorpio. Isn't it.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. I believe
Rae Leigh: Yeah. And I'm just seeing so many, like I see her and for me having a daughter, I think was really like, I was never going to have kids because of what happened to me. And when I found out when I was having a daughter, like that was even scarier, I think being a female in the world that we grew up in is just like horrifying.
And that was challenging. But I see the way that she is. And she is so inherently, naturally sexual and connected, and she loves touch and she loves movement. And I can see myself in her and I go. Okay. I can totally understand how if this girl was not protected and neglected and in, in an environment where someone could take advantage of her, how that would so happen.
And it would, it was squash that spirit that is inside of her. That is so beautiful because she jumps on everyone because she, you know, that's what, but some people whose love language is touch do, and their
kids And it's so beautiful watch, but then it's like, there's this whole I've had to relearn how to act with my children as well around like not creating shame around their bodies and touch.
And like I've learned so much around the way as parents that we can nurture them to not feel shame around their sexuality and around their cause. Toddlers are so sexual which can be shocking when you're a parent and you've experienced hormones. You're like, ah, how do I deal with this? But,
Kat Cunning: Yeah, no. And what I like conflicting and powerful position for you to be in, to be able to like, take better care of someone, not to say anything about your parents, but because of your perspective, you know, what to look out for, you know, and also, but also the conflict is the fear of knowing what could come, but it's so great that you have that super conscious perspective. Like
Rae Leigh: work though, right?
Kat Cunning: you know? Yeah, for
Rae Leigh: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. I really do appreciate it because it's not often I get to have that sort of raw conversation with someone around sexuality and the healing aspect of it. Cause yeah, there's we talk a lot about the bad stuff and yes, like that needs to be talked about.
I'm a big believer in that so that people who've been through it. Yeah. Can recognize that there is shame and that's okay. And well, it's not the shame's not okay. And that's the problem, but it's also good to talk about the healing side of sex and that good sex can also connect us to ourselves and to like the consciousness and other people.
And we need that.
Kat Cunning: Yeah, I think, I mean, it was nice to talk to about it too, because I feel like I don't speak on it much either because there's such a culture that is like the me too culture while I'm so grateful for what it has produced in terms of putting some true monsters away and making it easier for women to speak.
All right. Any buddy to speak.
I also feel like it can just like, I personally experienced really early on with my poems about my own sexual violence, that at a certain point it feels exploitative or performative or moved from actually healing for me. Like it started as a story I needed to tell and connect with people on and then it gets weirdly popular because other people are receiving it.
And I just like there, the movements. Then there's the whole like spooky movement of people, just not really knowing what they're talking about and canceling men in situations like it gets witch on sometimes. So I haven't really jumped on any of those trains. Cause it's important to me that I don't feel like I'm reopening my own wounds over and over again for definitely not ever exploiting myself.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Well done. Oh,
Kat Cunning: Yeah, but it takes learning. And I feel for people when I see like young people who are eager to talk like the internet, being their platform, It's sometimes so scary. Cause like for me, I, at least within a room of 12 people and then actually ironically, it was like sort of YouTube, wasn't that big of a thing, but somebody uploaded a poem to YouTube and that's how my family found out.
It was like horrible, but to use the internet as your diary, as a young person right now, for
stuff that, that is that, Intimate and you have to be so careful with wounds like that
Rae Leigh: yeah. Protect
Kat Cunning: oftentimes, the trauma makes you like shut down so that you don't even really know how much you're sharing. You know, it's like process of healing is, should be intimate and just really safe and not published right
Rae Leigh: You need a safe space. Absolutely. You have to feel safe. And that's a big issue as well. And that's another podcast. So
Kat Cunning: Yeah.
Rae Leigh: tell me about co-writing. Have you done much co-writing with your music?
Kat Cunning: Yeah. All of my songs are co-written because I dance my whole life and don't know how to play an instrument.
Rae Leigh: Okay, cool. Yep.
Kat Cunning: I mean, there are a couple of songs that I actually, at the beginning of my career, just improv into a camera and then took to a pianist. So they would be like, yeah, these seem like the chords underneath this song.
But from jump, I was in studios with writers and,
I've been really lucky to go right with beat writers off the bat. I just wrote my latest single could be good with Amy wodge who's like very well-known, especially for writing with ed Sheeran.
Rae Leigh: Wow.
Kat Cunning: And I wrote with a lot of cool people in the UK.
I always think of them as odd Jim, but like odd per phone and gym do good. They're really great writers that I wrote birds with. Martin Terefe. Helped me produce birds. And I wrote a couple of other songs with him. He's an incredible writer. So Yeah.
I've had a lot of co-writes mostly with writers versus producers.
Most of my songs have been produced afterwards because at the beginning of writing, hearing a track was really distracting to me. And I wanted to learn my voice as more of a poem with just like the bones of the chords under
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Cool. And how did you get your writing opportunities?
Cause these are some big ones. Did you sign up to a publishing agency or?
Kat Cunning: I Did Yeah, because of the show I was performing in I did one like YouTube session called rec room sessions and coming to Shelly from Vail publishing, found it, brought me into his office, asked me to play him some songs. And I had written a couple of songs at that point with. One person who I wrote wild poppies with his name's Chris coy. And basically he was like, you're talented and you need to own this and sign me and sent me on my first writing truck, which was so special.
Rae Leigh: That's incredible. Oh, I'm so glad that I think that the right people come into our lives at the right time. And it sounds like that was exactly what you needed. I'm so glad because yeah, like even could be good, like that's such a beautiful song and that CA is that's a COVID song. Isn't it?
Kat Cunning: It's a COVID song.
Rae Leigh: What sort of, what inspired this one?
Kat Cunning: I had been in a five-year relationship with. My drummer and it was very, it was an incredible relationship, very codependent teammates for life. And that was like, COVID happening. We both got COVID at the beginning of COVID and and in spending all that time, quarantine in the house, we both just kind of looked at each other and we're like, we're not really partner love anymore.
And we broke up and. While we were in the house together still. A friend of mine suggested basically was like, she didn't tell me that she did this, but she told the person in question that I would be a good hookup for them, no strings hookup. Cause I've also been open in my relationships and I love sex and I'm very open about all that.
So she was like, you want to have a hookup, this is a person you should talk to in the future. And then we just started chatting on audio message and never stopped.
Rae Leigh: yeah.
Kat Cunning: and so basically the person I started fall for over quarantine over three months of not even having met her. Once I finally did meet her, I wrote this on pretty much immediately after, because our chemistry was amazing and the night was like something I hadn't felt in a long time, because in my relationship I was very it was a very best friend love at a certain point.
And so by the time that I like met the girl I was falling for, I was like, wow, I haven't felt like. Like a connection of romance and also a connect, like physical connection in a long time. And it just was very explosive and I was nervous and it was just like the whole, the way that the day made me feel was obviously not like I'm going to marry you after one day of meeting you, but this could be good.
And I was so hell bent on writing a darker song. Like I was saying, I wanted to round out the other side of my personality and the EAP, but then I met her and I was just, I got onto the first zoom session with Amy watch and I was like, honestly, I'm just so happy. I just want to write something happy.
Let's write something happy that we get. And I basically just wrote the exact details of the night that I
met her.
Rae Leigh: Wow. And does she know, but what did she think of the song?
Kat Cunning: Oh, Yeah.she knows. Yeah.
I'm kind of I'm sensitive about putting music out about people because I've been in a couple of songs by other people and most people think it's like an incredible honor to be. Immortalized in music. I feel kind of like, why didn't I get a cut? Like I inspired you could pay me 10%.
So, I asked her about it and I played it for her and made sure that it didn't make her feel too exposed. And Got her permission. If you see the video she's in it. As long as dedicated to all the time we spend in the pandemic on road trips and just she's also an artist. So the pandemic was a really was a really special opportunity for both of us to slow down that would never have happened otherwise.
And we were lucky to have each other as company in like enjoying the quietness
of the world for a little while.
Rae Leigh: that's beautiful. And I think that a lot of people experienced the BD and quietness of the world for a little while. And I think we maybe all needed it because gosh, the pressure and the rat race. Like compared to what happened when everyone just stopped, stop and breathe for a second, you know, and check, what are you doing with your life?
Are you happy? Yeah. That's such a beautiful story. And you kind of give me chills. I'm so happy for you. It's I love that. I love it. When people find that connection. And I think, yeah, it's not like I'm a believer that you can have that connection with multiple people. I don't think it's one of those things where you just find one person, but yeah, those moments when you do connect in, just take you to a whole nother level of consciousness, which is beautiful.
Tell me what the best IXyear. Tell me what the best advice is you've ever been given around music.
Kat Cunning: Around music.
I mean, this one's hard to take because I feel like I never anticipated music being one of my outlets or my whole career, but just be yourself and don't compromise. I feel like everyday I'm learning what I like. And so sometimes I go back and forth on the way it makes, sounds like way longer than I'm allowed to.
And I'm like, well, what is me? And so sometimes it's a panic inducing thought. Cause like you also are writing down the process of who you are and at a certain point it's worth releasing the process. But I do still think that to not compromise who you are as an artist is the valuable thing.
I don't know a part of me, like really just wanted to be a Backstreet boy when I was little. That's the only time that I dreamed of doing music. Yeah. But that's as much as they are all individual, they also are like cogs in a machine that worked together that everybody else tells him what to do.
And that's one route. And I'm like, I'm an adult with a lot of life experience that I'm going to write down. And that makes me an artist. And so I have to honor. What I mean, not to say the Backstreet boys, aren't artists, but it's just a different approach, you know, to a certain package versus what I do definitely feels more like my responsibility at this point is to tell my life story in a way that is generous and real.
And so it, it gets difficult to not compromise. That when music is so exciting and there's so many options. So I guess like in not compromising myself, the struggle is like, Analyzing yourself all the time. What is myself with all of these options and music. And when I could just have fun being like chameleon Anik, and I sometimes want to put a song from every genre on my record, I also want to create a package that will succeed, you know,
Rae Leigh: To support you and be a business and be commercially viable, but at the same time, be honest.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. and also more so than anything, I want it to get to the world. So I, it's easy for me to indulge in the RD or niche side of things and just say that is cool. I like that's a vibe, but I also know that the songs that I want to sing at karaoke. Are just like copyrights that are life changing that are in our heads forever and are singular and they're daring and not a vibe.
So figuring out who I am. So I don't compromise who I am.
Rae Leigh: I think there's space for all music and there's that space where. And like you've obviously felt this too, whether there's a healing process in music, especially when we're writing and that can be so connected and beautiful and it can help other people as well when they hear it and there's a time and a space for it.
And then there's times when you just want to go to the club and you want to dance and you want to forget about all your problems and you want that music to kind of just make you feel good and I think that there's a time and a space for that. I was in a body of the night and I'm talking to someone and I'm like, oh, I'm an artist.
And they're like, oh, we'll put on some of your music. And I'm like no, you don't put my music on, in a place like this because we just make everyone cry and then it'd be bad for business.
Kat Cunning: Yeah,
Rae Leigh: But then.
Kat Cunning: there as well, or sometimes they do put it on and I'm like, see, I told you listen to this.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, but then it kind of made me want to go. It's well, I do love that music that makes you feel good as well. I just, hadn't got to that point where I had written and released that at that stage of my career, it was very early on. I mean, I'm still an early singer songwriter. But. It's. Yeah, I think it's good to have all aspects as an artist because that's how people get to know you and all the sides of who you are.
So that's really good.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. And they're, they are all valid. What's the Rihanna diamond song by it. And I even low key when that comes on in the club, I cry. I'm like, why? I don't know. But Yeah. Who knows like music so fun, whether it's happy or sad, depending on the context of you're putting it in. It morphs, you know, cause you're all day.
Rae Leigh: All right. So if you could give. One piece of advice to your younger self or you know, any teenagers or people who are out there who were just starting out in their music
Kat Cunning: well, I'll take it as two questions. Advice for my younger self would be like, just go on the journey of your body. Developing. It's terrifying. When I first got my boobs, I was just like, these are so hard and huge and in the way, and like they change over
Rae Leigh: Spoken like a true dancer.
Kat Cunning: Yeah.
It's was like your body changes over time.
So just rock with it and get through it and don't overthink it and don't try to change it. Cause I mean, you can try to stay healthy or whatever, but don't try it, but Morphett because you're just fucking not the work in progress. Just ride the wave of your situation and you'll end up where you're supposed to be and eat a sandwich in the meantime.
And for people starting to write music, I think If you want to figure out what, I think it would come at it from a poetry place and say really literally observed the details of your life. I think sometimes the most exciting, juicy sentences are just like things you accidentally said or things you see in the room.
I think like putting down the nuances of the human experience in a poem or in music is what. Makes something exciting to me. Like when I read a poem, that's very specific about what someone else is going through. Even if I'm not in a room with a blue countertop, it lights my brain up and makes me see it around countertop in my room.
You know, like those little details, I think, put people in a place and even if they're really specific, they can take you away.
I am that like, I'm interested in that kind of tactile writing versus super like for example, I have a song that's not out yet. It's called plant and a terrarium and it's all of, it's a space metaphor.
and I feel like we hear like about the stars and the moon and the sun and music all the time, because they're these like gigantic universal. Concepts that are dreamy and they feel expansive. Well, supernovas is another example of a song that's like references space, but like just really eat the shit out of the metaphor that you're attacking.
And don't be afraid to do that. And also take real life really explicitly.
Rae Leigh: I love that. That's so good. Good advice.
Kat Cunning: Thanks.
Rae Leigh: I'm going to use that myself. If you could co-write with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would you want to ride with and why?
Kat Cunning: At this moment I'm alive. I would say Rosalia. Because I'm so inspired by her dance career and her, the passion she puts into the work. And I don't know. I relate to the character of that has manifested from the human she is. And I love love, love the music. And then dead. I would say Freddie mercury,
Rae Leigh: Yeah,
Kat Cunning: What a fucking writer like, oh, I don’t know. Just what a
Rae Leigh: He was So poetic though,as well.
Kat Cunning: So poetic while somehow keeping it really fucking universal when it counted. Like we are, the champions is not an obscure lyric,
Rae Leigh: no.
Kat Cunning: but yeah, the lyrics surrounding were so theatrical and like somehow as a queer as fuck, we are the bar song, all the douchebags, you know,
Like he's written all those hits that like.
Embody like masculine Gusto somehow. Like
Rae Leigh: yeah.
Kat Cunning: I'm that those lyrics are just so inspiring and like the, to write from such a
like breakthrough open place of dreaming is really inspiring to me.
Rae Leigh: yeah, he was just such an inspirational person and just seem to do it unimportant unapologetically in a time that there was, and there still is shame now, but I mean, there was so much shame around it at the time and to be so strong in that and who he was. Yeah, absolutely incredible person.
Kat Cunning: Yeah,
Rae Leigh: think just about everyone, but I want to ride with, if I'm honest, like you wouldn't turn it down if you could.
Kat Cunning: no. God.
Rae Leigh: That's so cool. so what have you got coming up this year? What's next
steps for you?
Kat Cunning: Yeah, I have a song coming up soon called boys. And it is an Anthem that I wrote for trans masculine people. That's the twist it, the hook. And as long as beautiful boys, then it's an homage to the first transmasculine person I met and fell in love with. And also I wrote it a couple of years ago on that first writing trip and Held onto it until now, because I really wanted to release it with the support of the label.
But basically it sometimes as songwriters, we we write premonitions and I hadn't yet come out as non-binary and I'm trans masculine leaning. So the song is also sort of like a love note to myself. Yeah,
but it's about getting out of. Wherever you are. If it's not a healthy place for you or a nurturing place for you and knowing that you can find a community that will mirror you and support you is really just like for all of those queer spaces that nurtured me.
Rae Leigh: That's so true.
Kat Cunning: but I also feel like it's kind of got like fast car vibes. It's also just get out of your shitty situation. You're worth more,
Rae Leigh: Yeah, I love that. You're always worth more, especially if you're listening to the wrong people.
Kat Cunning: Yes. So, yeah, that's coming next as a single around all the happenings with pride. And then I'm really working on like the final steps of making sure I have an EAP that I'm ready to make us my statement, debut EAP, and it'll be coming sometime soon after that. But, yeah, I've written a lot in the pandemic and I have songs I've held on to since the beginning of writing.
And I still feel like I have a little bit more to write, but at some point it's just gotta be given to the people cause he can't hoard. You can't hoard it at a certain point, but I do feel like there's a little more, I have to say. So.
Rae Leigh: awesome. I'm such a song hotter, but that was just me. I was like just sitting in my bedroom, singing these songs to heal myself and like just survive, you know, the PTSD of everything. And I think I got to a level of my healing. Like we talked about earlier and I was like, wow, these songs have really saved my life.
Why am I keeping them to myself when they could potentially help someone else? And it's I don't know. But yeah, it was just. I didn't, it was like a penny
drop down. It's just yep. Okay. Now it's the time I'm holding these your eyes. You got to let them out at somepoint.
Kat Cunning: Yeah. That's very cool. I love that. I love the idea of a penny dropping too. Cause I feel like revelations come at the time. You need them,
Rae Leigh: Exactly. And follow the the journey of your body. And I am learning to do that. I think that can be hard for anyone who has been through trauma of the body or sexual trauma. It's like learning to trust your body again, and actually just. Go with it. Even when it's really painful, it can be really uncomfortable internally.
Your body knows it's the body is so smart. You just gotta go with it. Yeah, no, I love it. All right. Well, we are pretty much done. Is there anything else you would like to say before we finish up?
Kat Cunning: Let me think. I don't think so. I think that was a really lovely chat. I'm so glad that we did this as nice to come on the show.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, me too. I'm so honored. And I'm so glad that you shared what you've shared. So vulnerably and openly, and to me, that's what artists three is sharing vulnerably in public. So I really appreciate you doing that cause it's not always easy and yeah, you've really touched me. I'm really looking forward to sharing this. Thank you.
Kat Cunning: Yeah, ditto, Thank you. for creating such a safe space to do it.
