The sudden attention that came with her debut album left Pom Pom Squad’s Mia Berrin feeling thrown. with her follow-up, she’s ready for battle.
Words: Linsey Teggert.
After the release of her acclaimed debut album, ‘Death of a Cheerleader’, in 2021, Pom Pom Squad’s Mia Berrin found herself wholly thrown off balance. Unprepared for the scrutiny and analysis that would follow, her sense of self had become fragmented to the point that she wasn’t sure who she was anymore.
“When I wrote ‘Death of a Cheerleader’ and when I was writing music prior to releasing it on a label, I wasn’t thinking about critical reception or social media, or the comments people would make about what I was doing,” Mia explains. “I was just thinking about what I wanted to make for myself, and it was coming from a very unselfconscious place. At that point, I didn’t know if anyone was going to hear it or care about it.”
She recalls one comment in particular, where a certain outlet referred to her voice as ‘unconvincing’ and still clearly bristles at the memory. “I remember that comment specifically because what does that even mean? I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything; I was just trying to write music that meant the most to me and fulfilled me the most. My sense of self at that time in my life was a little flimsy, so I just wasn’t prepared for any response to what I was making in general, and it made me question myself. Am I making the most honest work I can make?”
Pom Pom Squad had always been a safe space for Mia, where she could express herself and be honest, and growing up feeling marginalised as a queer woman of colour, the project she started at 17 allowed her to explore her own identity. She first started performing in the New York DIY scene, playing punk songs wearing a cheerleader outfit as a way to subvert people’s idea of the all-American cheerleader, empowering herself in the process.
“All this analysis forced me into a version of myself that I didn’t recognise”
Mia berrin
‘Death of a Cheerleader’ was an irresistible blend of punk sneer, 60s pop sparkle and grunge, wrapped up in a surreal sheen of John Waters meets Twin Peaks aesthetics. To see it be misunderstood by some as simply an album about high school understandably pissed Mia off.
“It wasn’t about that for me at all; it was about me being a queer person and coming to my queerness in my early 20s. All this analysis forced me into a version of myself that I didn’t recognise as the person who wrote that record. I’m not a famous artist, and I don’t want to make it sound like I’m self-aggrandising in any way, but once you debut into the industry, you do have expectations put upon you about what kind of artist you are and how you’re being sold. It became even more difficult to connect with the authentic part of myself who knew what I wanted to make next because I was so entrenched in the persona of myself – so it became this kind of meta weird battle between two sides of me!”
This idea of coming to terms with the different versions of yourself and battling through the noise is explored throughout Pom Pom Squad’s follow-up ‘Mirror Starts Moving Without Me’. The title references the classic horror movie trope where a character looks into the mirror, and their reflection moves in a completely different way, representing how Mia felt she was unable to even trust her own reflection. To move forward, she found she had to first take a step back and reengage with that unselfconscious version of herself.
“This record started to find its footing when I started to engage with the things I liked as a kid”
mia berrin
“This record started to find its footing when I started to engage with the things I liked as a kid. I tried to strip back anything I’d put on as I got older or any kind of pretences that came with the industry. That involved playing a lot of video games, watching movies I loved as a kid, asking myself what my favourite stories were, and having conversations with my mom and siblings and trying to get down to the core of who I am and what I am at my most basic state.”
One of the main things that helped, was making a playlist of every song Mia could remember from childhood or adulthood that changed her perspective on music. “I specifically wanted to focus on things that changed me in some deeper way, and it helped me to break down what I value about music and art again. I liked that exercise so much that I had all my bandmates and producer do the same thing, and we shared playlists during the first day in the studio for this record – it was amazing how much we had in common! It unlocked this real sense of joy and playfulness, and it was also a nice signifier that I’m working with the right kind of people!”
Mia also credits album opener, ‘Downhill’, as unlocking the rest of the record for her. It’s a triumphant opening statement that sees her working out the different facets of her personality – the part of her that is reserved and introverted versus the part that wants to go on stage and demand attention. In the end, she says to hell with it, let’s just go down in flames: “Get in, we’re going down-fucking-hill.” A slinky disco beat and synths give a sense of freedom and joyful abandonment as Mia declares, “I’m coming back from the dead.”
“I had the melody in mind and just opened a logic session and decided to go through every sound I could, trying to find something that felt good, not thinking about genre or instrumentation or whether it was going to be easy or hard to translate to a live setting; just something that felt really intuitive and exciting. Being able to get into the nitty-gritty of all of the sounds and building up that track told me I needed to have a heavier hand in the production of this record.”
With the bulk of ‘Mirror Starts Moving…’ recorded at the iconic Electric Lady Studios, Mia co-produced the album with new Squad member Cody Fitzgerald of Brooklyn indie rockers Stolen Jars, having learned a lot from the incredible Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties), who produced ‘Death of a Cheerleader’.
“Even though this was the most collaborative project I’ve ever done, it feels like the clearest distillation of my artistic voice yet, and I don’t think I could have done that without all of my band [consisting of drummer Shelby Keller, bassist Lauren Marquez and guitarist Alex Mercuri]. Even though that sounds counterintuitive, being in a band is crazy and even though it’s my project on paper and I’m the face of it, we go through a lot together, and it takes a lot of communication and friendship and compassion for each other.”
Despite the struggles surrounding its conception, ‘Mirror Starts Moving Without Me’ is just as sharp as its predecessor, with plenty of the sass and acerbic wit Mia demonstrated so effortlessly on ‘Death of a Cheerleader’. The spiky ‘Streetfighter’ is a standout, taking inspiration from the childhood video games she found herself re-discovering, all punches and hair-flicking swagger. ‘Villain’ is similarly sneering, a riot of gasps and breaths with a confrontational chorus that suggests Mia is ready to come back swinging. “Fuck around and find out who the villain is,” she snarls.
As a very visual artist, of course, Mia has taken full advantage of the themes at play on Pom Pom Squad’s second offering. Promo images and video so far have debuted a sort of Anime-meets-Alice in Wonderland vibe surrounded by cavernous black spaces, hinting at the darker identity crisis themes at play. ‘Streetfighter’ sees two versions of Mia, one clad in pink and one in blue, throwing their dukes up at each other, a reference to that battle between the two sides of herself.
“I love to recast hyper-feminine characters in a different light”
mia berrin
“I think I’m always going to be inspired by queer aesthetics particularly, and there’s always going to be a little campiness to what I do,” she states. “Where ‘Death of a Cheerleader’ was more joyful and colourful, this one is a little darker, so I visually wanted to represent that.
Alice has always been one of my favourite characters, and, obviously, the themes of self-exploration and self-discovery in that story mean a lot to me.”
As she talks about struggling with personas, it’s hard not to consider that whether by assigning a strong aesthetic and costume to each Pom Pom Squad release, Mia is simply adding another layer of self-preservation, further disguising the true authentic self she discusses. However, she remains defiant that this is not the case, that dressing up allows her to empower herself in a way that she never expected she would be able to do.
“I think it has something to do with portraying myself in ways that I thought I would never be able to be portrayed when I was growing up. The cheerleader is this strong Americana figure – she’s blonde, bubbly, pretty, popular – all things that I never felt aligned with me as a person. So putting on this costume became a cheeky thing because it played off of people’s understanding of who the cheerleader is. Through being that character, people started to see me as empowered in a way that I’d never expected, and I got to rewrite that character for a queer audience and for women of colour. I love to recast hyper-feminine characters in a different light because I do feel like femininity is still so misunderstood and trivialised, so I think there’s always going to be that costumey, hyper-feminine aspect to what I do.”
Taken from the November 2024 issue of Dork. Pom Pom Squad’s album ‘Mirror Starts Moving Without Me’ is out now. Follow Upset’s Spotify playlist here.
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