Caity Baser: “I’m not a Taylor Swift just yet; one day, I will be”

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With her new mixtape ‘Still Learning’, Caity Baser is embracing the crazy side of pop. From hyperactive chaos to introspective brilliance, her path to Main Pop Character looks set.

Words: Martyn Young.
Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

“It’s been amazing, stressful, perfect, gorgeous, stunning and terrifying,” says Caity Baser breathlessly as she describes her ascent towards the summit of Mount Pop over the last four years of madness. “Every single emotion that you could feel is how it’s been. But mainly just amazing and exciting as it’s been my dream forever, and now I’m doing it.” Doing it would be an understatement; the 21-year-old sensation from Southampton is a living and breathing embodiment of all the joyous ridiculousness of pop music, doing things very much on her terms and bringing her huge personality to life in different ways. The bonkers journey of Caity Baser is firmly gaining momentum in 2024, though, with her second mixtape and biggest collection of work yet, ‘Still Learning’. All in a day’s work for a pop star who was born to do this. 

There are a few artists in our orbit who truly embody the ethos of Down With Boring, and perhaps none more than Caity Baser. For Caity, the pop star life never stops. As we meet her today, she’s preparing for a sold-out headline tour, getting ready for the Brits having just come back from the Grammys in LA. She’s probably made around 179 TikTok videos, and she has a truly outstanding bright red hat on her head in the style of a massive strawberry, accessorised with an oversized pair of shades. An iconic look. 

“I just decided to put it on my head today because I felt like it,” she smiles. Things are swiftly ramping up for Caity as we approach release, and she’s very much in the zone. “There’s no such thing as quiet time,” she says. “There’s no such thing as quiet time. I’m at rehearsals, and as soon as we finish, I’m going back to rehearse. I’m a busy girl. I’m doing actual pop star work. It could be worse.” 

“I’m very comfortable in chaos”

Caity Baser

When Caity released her landmark EP ‘Thanks For Nothing, See You Never’ last year, Dork described it as “Pop chaos in the best tradition”, so a year later, just how chaotic is life for Caity Baser? “It’s even more chaotic than it was before,” she exclaims. “Whatever I thought was chaos back then is just easy now. I’m very comfortable in chaos. I’m very sweet being everywhere and having all these things going on because my brain works at a million miles an hour. I love it for sure. It keeps it exciting and keeps you young.”

Perhaps the secret to Caity’s success is that hyperactive million-miles-an-hour brain. It’s a frenetic sensibility that drives her impulsive and instinctive pop smarts and her ability to create a lasting impression. When you first discover Caity Baser, you’re either going to fall instantly in love or be utterly bamboozled and retreat to something more sedate and gentle, but you’ll certainly never forget her. For four years now, since she first emerged in the pop consciousness to brighten up the dark days of peak pandemic, Caity has been making a scene. 

Caity’s magpie-like impulses to try out numerous musical forms have been heard throughout her work so far as it jumps from classic pop to rowdy indie punk to smooth, luxurious jazzy stylings to big balladry, all centred with the throughline of her attitude and energy. 

“I love everything,” she explains. “I grew up listening to every kind of music, from Motown and 50s music to boy bands and pop girlies. I really love proper British-sounding music. I’m influenced and inspired by everybody. I’ve taken characteristics from loads of different artists, put them into what I like and what I would do, put my own little spin on it, and made a little crazy genre called crazy pop.” 

“I just walked in and said I quit; I’m going to be a pop star”

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At school, growing up in Southampton, Caity wasn’t quite the rebellious, nihilistic, no-filter queen that you might imagine encountering her today. “I was the bestest girl in the world,” she laughs. “I was well-behaved. I didn’t ever get into trouble. I worked hard, but I was always quite crazy, if that makes sense? Just ‘woo look at me’ sort of thing. That stayed the whole time, and I’m just more confident with it now.” 

It was around this time at school that Caity was bitten by the songwriting bug. “I made a song called ‘Superman’ when I was in a caravan park in Cornwall, and I sang to my family, and it was the shittest song ever, and they were all like, that’s amazing you’re going to do great things,” she laughs. 

Sadly, she can’t remember how the song goes. “It was about wanting to be able to fly and be a man. It was weird.” 

As she continued to fall in love more and more with music, Caity would find ways to indulge in her true passion. “All throughout school, I would take myself off to the music rooms and play piano and make songs. I didn’t really believe in myself at all in school, but I really responded to my teachers and people older than me with more knowledge,” she says. 

“I remember we got set a task in Year 8 to write a song and compose it. Everyone did a little tune on the piano or a little guitar riff, but I made a full song with piano and lyrics and structure, and my music teacher listened to it and went, ‘What the fuck Caity?! That’s insane’. I was like, ‘Thank you, yeah, it is insane. This is great’. So I just kept on doing it. Ever since then, I wrote songs every day in the piano room, but that was the moment when I was like, slay queen.” 

Despite her obvious talent and passion, it wasn’t clear how Caity was going to get her break in music, and as the pandemic struck in 2020, she hit upon the idea to release some of her numerous songs online and post them on TikTok because why the hell not? “I didn’t have a plan at all,” she explains. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to the world because we were in lockdown. I literally was just like, lol. I had nothing else to do, and I love singing, and I wanted to be a superstar, so I just wanted to post something, and I did. That’s why I’m here.”

“Everyone was like, what’s next? What does all this mean? What’s the message? I was like, I literally have no idea. I dunno”

caity baser

There was one pesky inconvenience that she had to get out of the way, though, before she could truly begin her mission. Lasting a grand total of three shifts at the Co-op in the summer of 2020, Caity knew the pop life was calling. 

“I literally did my first shift and was like, cool, whatever,” she explains. “I did my second shift and cried the whole way through it, and then on my third shift, I didn’t even do it. I just walked in and said I quit. I said not for me; I’m going to be a pop star. Sorry. And my manager was like, all right.” 

Perhaps that manager can get a plaque displayed above the Co-op door saying, ‘Top pop star Caity Baser worked here for three shifts’. “World’s shortest career,” she laughs. 

Her impulsive decision to quit her job is an example of when Caity Baser says something, she does it. She literally was off to be a pop star. Those early songs, beginning with a viral hit, the lilting ‘Average Student’, were a massive success and the birthing of an instant pop personality. 

Beginning in 2021, a string of singles followed, each highlighting more and more of Caity’s distinct style, and she started to get some genuine proper hits like her first Top 20 single ‘Pretty Boys’ and numerous collabs and high-profile live slots as she began to integrate her self more and more in the UK’s dance scene with people like Sigala and Joel Corry as well as her work as a prominent member of the Loud LDN collective of all female and non-binary artists all with a common vision to forge a new inclusive future for dance music. So, big things all around with a critically acclaimed EP and a musically dynamic mixtape. Everyone was starting to know who Caity Baser was, but crucially, did she really know who she was? 

“It was chaos. Last year I did 60-something shows in the summer,” she says as she remembers her mammoth touring schedule as she played seemingly every festival under the sun. “In between, I was doing studio sessions and not really thinking about the next thing. I was just making songs for the sake of making songs and enjoying myself in music. Once festival season ended, though, everyone was like, what’s next? What does all this mean? What’s the message? I was like, I literally have no idea. I dunno. I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted to put out. It was just, when am I going to sleep next? It wasn’t top of my priorities, then I was like, what is my priority? What am I doing? I have no idea what any of this stuff means.” 

For maybe the first time in her creative life, Caity had a pang of self-doubt. “I was really mean to myself because I was thinking, why do I not know what I’m doing?” she continues. “I have all of this stuff and all of these amazing songs. I’m a shit artist, blah blah blah. Then I thought, what if that’s the whole point of the mixtape? That I just don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m learning as I go along? That’s where the idea came from.” 

“I hate when people go, ‘Ugh, you’ve changed’. Good!”

Caity baser

The result of this period of reflection is ‘Still Learning’, a 13-track mixtape that finds Caity going ever deeper into both her own psyche and her own inimitable glorious pop exuberance. It captures every dynamic of the Caity Baser experience, from the in-your-face braggadocio of ‘I’m A Problem’ with its wild cries of having “Big Dick Energy” to the tender and heartfelt universalism of the closing track ‘I’ll Be Here For You’. 

It was important for Caity that the message of the mixtape and her own period of self-discovery carried through in the music as she recognised the themes of self-doubt and aimlessness were shared by a lot of people in a modern society that places so much value on people being seemingly so focused and driven. “There’s so much pressure, especially now, for everybody,” she says. “You even have young people, like 13-year-olds, moaning because they haven’t got their life figured out, and I’m like, what? What do you mean? Chill out, take a breath, enjoy every experience – the good, the bad – and just learn as much as you can.” 

It might seem a short period of time since her emergence into the spotlight, but there’s a big difference between the wide-eyed dreams of a 16-year-old aspiring superstar and someone who is now 21 and has experienced some of the buffering and grind of daily life that we all go through. Caity has released that it’s okay to be just a little bit messy. 

“The minute I started teasing the mixtape I got messages from people of all ages saying that feeling never changes,” she says. “You’re always learning, and you’re always figuring things out. It’s a good message to tell everyone that it’s fine if you don’t know what you’re doing because neither do I, and neither does anybody. Just grow and change. Changing isn’t a bad thing. I hate when people go, ‘Ugh, you’ve changed’. Good! You haven’t. You just need to grow and learn and take every experience on the chin.”

The changes Caity has experienced have seen both the primary aspects of her character amplified as she engages with her twin primal emotions of rage and internal reflection. “I’ve developed more confidence and more angst,” she says of her progression as a songwriter. “When I first started listening to music, and I listen back to my first ever EP that I released, I sound so innocent and so sweet and adorable. The next one is a bit more gobby and empowered, and this next one is even more so. The more I live, and the more I learn, I’m like ‘FUCK THIS Rwaaarrrrrrrr’. I just go crazy,” she laughs as she throws her head back with a glorious cackle.

“I’m going to toot my own horn, but I think I’ve always been an excellent performer”

caity baser

As well as her development as a writer, Caity is 100% on point as a dancer with a sharp eye for choreography and creating a visual world for her songs to live in. This is one area in which she’s always excelled. “I’m going to toot my own horn, but I think I’ve always been an excellent performer,” she proclaims. It should also be made clear that here at Dork, we endorse any and all forms of horn-tooting by pop stars. Caity continues to toot away: “I’m not going to lie. My best quality is the way I perform. I love to perform, and I think it’s the only time I feel true happiness.” 

Does Caity feel like a different person now, though, compared to the carefree kid who just quit her job for pop superstardom? “I feel older than I am,” she reflects. “When I go back home sometimes, not with my friends, but when I’m around people my age, I’m like god??!! There’s so much more to life, they’re crying over a boy, or they’ve got all these problems, and I’m just like no queen. The world is huge. Like taxes, what is that??!! That’s what I think about now. Tbh, I don’t actually think about it, my dad thinks about it for me, but it’s just the pressure and the thought of it.” 

It’s hard to believe that in the technicolour world of Caity Baser, she might have to spend even one millisecond thinking about something as mundane as taxes, so shouts to her dad for taking on that task. 

On ‘Still Learning’, though, there is much more real-life emotion and a reflective quality at work amongst the high-energy turbo bangers. The songs with a deeper meaning are still huge, but they have a lyrical message that’s more resonant than before. 

“I’ve expressed more emotions on this mixtape,” explains Caity. “Normally, my response to every situation is anger and shouting, which is good, but also, I’ve learned it’s sometimes not good to do that. Sometimes, it’s better to just sit and think about things and then go back to it and maybe cry a little bit or isolate yourself. I think there’s a more vulnerable side to me that people haven’t seen a lot of, so I’m excited to explore it. It’s mainly just chaos and vibes, but there’s a deeper meaning to this than the one before.” 

“I feel older than I am. Like taxes, what is that??!! That’s what I think about now”

caity baser

The best thing about Caity Baser’s work is the duality between the unabashed silliness and fun of her songs and the undoubted emotion that is there in the subtext, and when it comes to the fore, it’s even more powerful. The push and pull of emotions and heightened feelings amplify each other. 

“That’s genuinely my response to almost every situation – ‘LOL, DON’T CARE, HAHAHA, SILLY GIRL’, and then like a week later, I’m like, ‘Oh, I fucked up a bit there’ or ‘That’s a bit shit’, then the next week I’m like, ‘Haha it’s all gone, it’s fine’,” she says with a sharp perspective on her own emotions. “It’s like the stages of grief. Deal with it in your own little way, regroup, get over it and move on,” she continues before adding with perhaps tongue ever so slightly in cheek, “Live, Laugh, Love, woooohhh.” 

The one song that encapsulates the feeling of attitude twinned with emotional development is empowerment anthem and mixtape highlight ‘Oh Well’. “I made that song when I was really going through it,” she explains. “I was falling out with my friends and being a bit of a dickhead, and they were being mean. I was in a situation where I felt like I’d lost everything, but it was all sort of out of my control, and I was angry at that because I couldn’t change it. I just had to look at it and go, oh well. Once I put that statement on the situation, it was funny. ‘Oh well, whatever’. But I had to go through that first to realise that.” 

It might seem on the face of it that Caity revels in forever being frivolous and silly, and that might be 75% true, but it’s not all purely laugh a minute. “There are definitely things that I’ve not found humour in and times when I just cry and cry and cry and cry, but that doesn’t really happen anymore. I’m a very level-headed person who can see everyone’s point of view. That’s where I’m at. That’s what ‘Oh Well’ has empowered me to do. Whenever I go through something, and I’m like, ‘Ohhh, this is fucked!’ I listen to that song, and I’m like, ‘Woooo, oh well!’”

“The person that you see on social media and the person that you see on stage is who I am”

caity baser

Despite her success, one part of Caity’s life hasn’t changed, and that’s how she writes songs. “My creative process has stayed the same,” she says. “The way I make songs is I go through something no matter how good or bad it is. From start to finish, what I was wearing, what day it was and how I was feeling. That’s never really changed. Sometimes, it happens in my bedroom, sometimes in the kitchen or sometimes in the studio. Now it happens more in the studio because I go in and say, ‘Guys, this has just happened, and I’m fucking fuming’. Or I’m sad, or I’m happy. I go through something and talk about it. That’s why I love going out and making mistakes and being an idiot; it will make a great song. It’s all in the name of content, fine, why not?”

For Caity, nothing is off-limits creatively. There haven’t been any occasions when anyone has dared to say to her, ‘No, you can’t do that’. “Everyone is on board with it. ‘The more insane, the better, Caity’, they say. Just go in and lose your mind, and I’m like, ‘Can do, I’ve already lost half of it’,” she laughs. 

Despite being so instantly recognisable in a more sanitised pop landscape, Caity doesn’t really see herself as a disrupter or an antidote to more anodyne or simply boring music. “Everybody has got their own little vibe,” she says. “Some people that really enjoy acoustic sets would come to my show and go, what the fuck is this noise? Everybody is doing something different, but my whole thing is to stand out, so I guess that I do,” she laughs. “My thing is just being a chaotic ball of chaos anytime I do anything.” 

It must be hard to withstand the pressure to always be on, but there’s no sense of ramping up any aspects of her character for the persona. “I’m lucky because the person that you see on social media and the person that you see on stage is who I am,” she says proudly. “I’m like an excited child, and I’m living my dream, so I’m just as excited as everyone else that’s watching. Of course, I have my off days, but when I do, I just stay at home and be sad.” 

“I just want to stay happy and healthy and slaying”

caity baser

In many ways, Caity Baser’s success is a very modern one fuelled on the all-encompassing power of social media and sites like TikTok. TikTok has been around as an influence on pop music for over six years now, so it’s natural that the way artists interact with the platform has changed and will continue to grow and evolve, particularly in light of recent developments where Universal Music Group, the parent company of Caity’s label, have refused to licence their music on the platform in a financial dispute. Not that this is of the slightest concern to Caity, though, as she made light of the now music-less videos on her TikTok feed and explained how the process is just a means to an end now and just another tool. 

“I see social media as just a promotional friend. I don’t see it as social media anymore because that’s the way the world is now. Music is social media. You have to be everywhere and do all these things all the time,” she says. “It’s great because you can reach so many people, but I think that’s how I use it differently because I used to post, ‘Here’s me and friends on my 18th birthday’. Now I’m like, ‘I’ve made a new song!!!!’ It’s things to back up what you can do. Here’s my song on Spotify, but also, here’s my song on every fucking social media platform, and here’s me doing different things on every fucking social media platform. It’s just things for people to watch. I can reach my fans on social media. I’m in all these group chats with them. Instagram have a broadcast channel where I can just talk at them for ages.” 

Ultimately, the human connection is more powerful than any algorithm or platform. “All I want to do is perform and make songs and sing them. If social media crashes tomorrow, it would be annoying, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world,” she says. 

As she embarks on the next phase of her career, Caity begins to very gently think about her legacy, and how that can unfurl and what she wants to do. “I just want to gather as many troops as I can and empower people to have fun and live hard and do what they want,” she exclaims. 2024 is going to be a huge year for Caity Baser. “My main ambition is to reach as many people as I can and put on the best shows that I can. Energy, vocally, everything. I just want to level up from previously. A lot of people saw me last year, but this is a new year, and people haven’t seen me perform yet, so I just want to come in and wow everybody, and they’d be like, ‘Woahh, level up’. I want to meet as many people as possible. My favourite thing is going to shows and meeting people. I just want to stay happy and healthy and slaying.”

With a brilliant mixtape and her joyous kaleidoscopic pop vision being brought to life on stages all across the country, Caity is setting her sights on the very top of the pop mountain, and like everything she does in life, nothing is off limits. “I think I’m big, but I’m not a Taylor Swift just yet; one day, I will be. In my heart of hearts, I feel like the best.” 

Maybe one day we will get the full Caity Baser Eras experience, but right now, the ‘Still Learning’ era feels like a whirlwind ride through the brilliantly creative mind of a pop star who is unfiltered, fearless and making a statement everywhere she goes. 

Taken from the April 2024 issue of Dork. Caity Baser’s mixtape ‘Still Learning’ is out 15th March.

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