Sandy Ha
20-year-old Cece Natalie is backstage at Elsewhere 10 minutes after wrapping up an exhilarating set. It’s night five of Isabella Lovestory’s Vanity tour where Natalie is opening nearly all of the North American shows (she didn’t get her passport in time for a pair of Canadian dates). Despite it being her first tour, the Connecticut-via-N.Y.C popstar-in-waiting has already settled into life on the road. “My first real show, me and Ali were FaceTiming every day for three weeks going crazy like, we gotta make it perfect.” she recalls. “Now it’s like, so unserious to me. It’s not serious till I get on the stage.”
From her emphatic dance moves to campy on-mic banter with her DJ Ali RQ, Natalie brings a playful intensity to the stage, carefree one track, severe the next. That’s an apt microcosm for her standout July 2024 mixtape Miss Behaves, which folds 2010s trap beats with ambient production and earworm-y toplines. Natalie says her favorite popstar is Britney Spears, and that influence is audible on the singsong “Tennis Court” and “Toxic”-coded “Limit.” Elsewhere, her sultry, self-produced music sounds more like mixtape-era Tinashe. Whether she’s rapping about her ideal man (“Team Cece”) or crooning about an on-and-off lover (“I get mad”), her voice weaves through hard-knocking drums and effervescent synths.
Over the past decade, pop music has thoroughly metabolized the sounds of hip-hop and EDM, but Natalie’s synthesis feels headier and wonkier. There are flashes of Disclosure, Zedd, and DJ Mustard in her instrumentals but Natalie’s music never reads so upbeat and unconcerned, even though she says that she feels a fraction of her small but rapidly growing audience tends to miss the raw emotions beneath the surface.
“I’m not a Y2K sparkle, glitterpop princess,” Natalie says. “I’ve always been very misunderstood.” Her insistently catchy production and diva-esque demeanor can distract from the love-hate tension animating “I get mad” or the bittersweet edge of fan favorite songs like “Like a taxi (Oh Well)” and her biggest anthem “Ambulance.” But to those who pay attention, “you’re a real ass bitch,” she says.
Below, the singer chats about her start as a producer, gatekeeping her music, and filming her first music video.
Sandy Ha
The FADER: In another interview, you talked about how fans misinterpret the lyrics to your song “Ambulance.”
Cece Natalie: That’s why I don’t perform it. I feel like it’s such a depressing song, and if I were to watch people dance to it and shake their ass, like, not understand it… But also I wrote that song when I was 18. I wasn’t a great writer when I was 18. So it comes off as just a silly, unserious song. Which, I get it. But if I don’t like how people see it, then I’m not going to perform it. And if they don’t like that, they can leave. If they stay, then mwah, you’re a real ass bitch.
On that song you have a line where you say, “I want to get hot for summer so you can’t blow me off.” I really felt that, when you’re like, “if I just do XYZ thing, then this person will do all the things that I want them to do.”
The whole point is that in the end, no matter what you do, no matter what you change about yourself, there’s always going to be that one person who doesn’t give a fuck. It’s not how you look, it’s not anything. That person just doesn’t like you.
And that’s what I was struggling with. And it was really sad. When you’re 18 and you haven’t really dealt with like — well, I mean, I’ve definitely been through some real shit, like real, serious shit. But when you’re 18 and all your dumb boy problems feel like it’s the end of the world, it makes you sad.
Sandy Ha
You started as a producer, right?
I started on my phone when I was 15. I remember when I was 10 years old, I had GarageBand on my iPad and I would try to make beats. It was kind of a flop because I was literally in fifth grade, but that’s something I forget about often. Producing has always been the thing that’s my favorite. I just had to spend some time getting good at it.
Are you recording at home?
Yeah. Even in hotels, I get nervous because I don’t know who’s gonna hear me. The good thing about my apartment being a basement is that no one can hear me. I could be getting murdered, no one would hear me. So that means I can record as loud as I want and I don’t have to worry about anything.
You’re working on new music for an upcoming project. What has the recording process been like?
It’s different because it’s been such a busy year. When I was in the process of making Miss Behaves, my life was like, wake up, go to this fuck ass trampoline park job. And I had a lot of free time. It was easier because nobody expected me to make an album. There was no pressure, because it’s like, “who the fuck is Cece Natalie?” Now it’s like, first of all, I’m really on tour right now. So crazy. So much has been going on, I don’t really have as much free time. And then also, there’s a lot of expectations. People like, “When is it dropping?” I’m glad that they want to hear it, but it also makes it harder for me because of how I work and how I don’t like pressure. So a lot of times I work on it in increments. I also make songs and just don’t show anyone. I gatekeep the fuck out of it, and I pretend like I’m not working on music at all. And then when it’s ready, boom. No one’s gonna know.
I also make songs and just don’t show anyone. I gatekeep the fuck out of it.
What are you drawing from?
Obviously what mental state I’m in, what I’m feeling at the moment, is crucial. I cannot make any kind of song about anything that I’m not feeling in the moment. I can’t make a sad song if I’m in a good ass mood and I just want to get up and dance, and I can’t make a song that makes you want to get up and dance if I’m sad. A lot of times I don’t really write things out beforehand. It’s like speaking in tongues, basically. But then it always ends up being very, very personal. Like, [my song] “Not even lying,” the lyrics low-key sound so drunk but it’s also one of the most personal songs ever.
I wanted to talk about the “Angelina” remix you did. Tommy [Genesis] is underrated.
First of all, I literally just love that song so much. I remember there was a time where it was just stuck in my head 24 hours a day. I love how her delivery sounds so psychotic, but also monotone. And I was thinking about my childhood, how I was always in and out of therapy.
They were just trying to figure out like, what the fuck is wrong with me. Like, why is this child in our class insane? I had to sit in the school counselor’s office during lunch. So I was always on some bullshit. And I really look back on that like, it’s funny. I think it’s so unserious to me. And I wanted to talk about that and show how it makes me feel powerful. Like, I was this crazy psycho child. No one knew what was wrong with me. If they couldn’t figure it out, then that means I clearly am smarter.
One of my favorite songs off Miss Behaves is “I Get Mad.” How did you record that?
That one I recorded when I was living with my mom, so I was recording everything at the kitchen table. I remember that was one of the first songs that really just came to me. I remember making demo after demo and listening to it on the treadmill at the gym and thinking, oh, I like this, this beat is so good.
How are you approaching your music videos?
I’ve only done one, but it was a great experience, because I was with [points to] Stan [Smith] obviously, and then Zach [Sinistermind], who [Stan] didn’t know that well. But we all had such good chemistry, it was such a fun day. We had ideas beforehand obviously — we booked a certain motel, we had the location planned — but the real ideas come once you’re there, once you start doing it. It was probably the perfect example of what kind of teamwork works for me because we were all just into it. It felt like living in the song. You’re all putting your energy into it and it becomes this magical thing.
