F  L  A  U  N  T

 [**HARDEMAN**](https://hardeman.co) jacket and vintage pants. You can almost taste the moment. Two teenage girls are riding in a car in Los Angeles. They’re singing along to Joni Mitchell (“Blue”, of course), driving into the timewarp of Laurel Canyon, veering between a loyal kinship they have with one another and flickers of romance—a hormonal tension at the heart of intense companionship. This was Claire Cottrill (aka Clairo)’s experience one summer, as she spent time with a girl. They were more than friends. It was the type of situation that can lead to obsession as she’d dissect the tiniest of glances, or the tone of passing words. One day, they were driving, and listening to “Motion Sickness” by LA songwriter Phoebe Bridgers on repeat. _“I have emotional motion sickness/ Somebody roll the windows down.
There are no words in the English language/ I could scream to drown you out.”_ “Motion Sickness” is a diss song Bridgers wrote about older troubadour Ryan Adams, who she would later out in the New York Times as an emotional abuser. In the song, Adams is the bad guy. As Cottrill and the girl she was seeing repeated the song, Cottrill would sigh with envy. “We were listening to
it for the 12th time in a row,” recalls Cottrill now at a cafe in LA’s Echo Park. “I was like, ‘This song means everything to me. I wish I could write a song like this.’ And she turned to me and said, ‘You should write a Phoebe Bridgers song. You should make it about me!’” Cottrill’s dimples widen as she laughs this memory off. “I kinda knew she meant that it should be about us, but she didn’t explicitly say it,” she says, the ambiguity still lingering.
Cottrill, now 21, went home after their hang. The next
 day she wrote the song. The song is called “Bags”—the cornerstone of her debut album, _Immunity_. She did what she always did when she was learning to write songs at the age of 15, locked away in her bedroom in Carlisle, Massachusetts. She played “Motion Sickness” on guitar, deconstructing it, then re-constructing it as a new piece of work. “It definitely felt special,” she says. “The whole writing process was me writing songs every day till I’d get to a point where I’d have to connect with one song more than the other ones I’d written.” She’d written 40 ideas before she got to “Bags”. “Bags” was easy. She wrote all the words in one sitting, and recorded the vocals and guitars. Her voice was “shitty” because she was sick. She didn’t re-record it. She proves it by pulling up her iPhone and playing the original demo that she made alone. There it is on the screen: “BAGS (1)”.  [**NODRESS**](https://nodress67.com) corset and talent’s own jewelry (worn throughout). Before Danielle Haim drummed on “Bags”, and before Rostam Batmanglij \[formerly of Vampire Weekend\] produced “Bags”, “Bags” sounded very close to the “Bags” you now know. “It felt like the first time where I really listened to what was happening around me and tried to put it in a song. It 
felt how songs are supposed to feel. They’re supposed to feel like a stamp of that time.” When Cottrill showed this girl the song, she didn’t say anything. Again, her dimples crease at the thought. “But I think she knew that it was about her,” she says. The titular bags of the song are a reference to the final lyric of the chorus: _“I guess this could be worse—walking out the door with your bags.”_ It’s about choosing to not express your feelings for someone and keeping them in your orbit, because it’s better than never seeing them again, or being rejected. The drum pattern is like a heartbeat skipping to the next scene, rising with fresh hopes only to fall as they’re dashed once more. The melody reminds of ‘90s alt radio: Marcy Playground’s “Sex And Candy” meets The Cardigans. The bags are also just Cottrill’s emotional baggage, which she explores throughout _Immunity_. They’ve spoken about the song since.  [**NODRESS**](https://nodress67.com) corset. “We did,” confirms Cottrill. “It was a good thing.” It was also a good thing for Cottrill’s creative confidence. “Bags” was the first song I ever wrote that I would totally listen to. It was the first song I ever explicitly wrote about a girl,” she says. She still doesn’t like addressing her sexuality head on. “Everyone’s asking me all these questions about my sexuality and I’m not sure what those answers are yet. I don’t wanna be in the conversation until I know what I have to say. I also like men. I like everyone. It felt good to acknowledge it.” Today as Cottrill talks, her blue eyes dart around, or 
stare off in the distance. The bruised truth comes out of her mouth but direct eye contact can be a step too far. When she performs “Bags”, her eyes stare to the side or at her guitar. Often they remain closed. She’s still tender. She still fears the rejection. She’s not over it. “It’s an important song for me,” she concludes. “It did a lot in terms of facing how I’m feeling about this person. There’s a sense of frustration that I like to bring out. I don’t know. I just...” she pares off. “It _still_ cuts.” Recently, Cottrill performed “Bags” on _The Ellen DeGeneres Show._ DeGeneres introduced her to the audience as Apple Music’s Up Next Artist—“the same title that Billie Eilish held one year ago.” Cottrill, who is presently walking along a main street with passing traffic, in her wife-beater and ripped jeans, can’t imagine being Eilish. “If I put myself in her position for two days...” she says, incapable of completing the thought. Being on Ellen was “really surreal.” She grew up watching it. It would be the first thing she’d put on the TV when getting home from school at 4 pm. “It was always that relief that everyone needed in the day. To be asked to play something I’d looked up to forever was really fucking cool. Really _really_ fucking cool,” she laughs.  [**NODRESS**](https://nodress67.com) corset, [**DIOR**](https://www.dior.com/en_us) pants, and [**VETEMENTS**](https://vetementswebsite.com) boots. Despite it not yet being a week since the performance, it’s almost a distant memory. “I’ve already forgotten it,” she jokes. “I’m worried about other things now.” 2019, particularly in 
the past six months, has been a whirlwind and a progression. She’s unsurprisingly wiped, chasing a bottle of water with a Coca-Cola because her sugar levels are flailing. Cottrill flies back to New York tomorrow, where she technically keeps an apartment, but rarely ever spends time there. She’s preparing for a big headline tour. As she apologizes for her rambling style of answering questions, fighting to find sentences, it becomes clear that this whole experience of releasing her first record has been one of processing.  [**GUCCI**](https://www.gucci.com/us/en/) sunglasses. _Immunity_ is a reflection on her own coming-of-age. It’s about her experiences of mental health struggles, her questions about her own sexuality, her difficulties with body image that have been compounded by her experience of having juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. It’s not hifalutin, though. It’s rooted 
in little memories that then become huge life lessons. Take “Alewife,” the album opener. It’s about a suicide attempt—her own when she was in eighth grade. “I think about this time in my life and the emotional turmoil I was going through,” she remembers. “It’s interesting to start the album at rock bottom. It’s a lens to see everything through. You realize where I’m 
at.” Specificity is never compromised. “Songs are just about blowing up small moments,” she says. “They can seem more dramatic than they are. My favorite songs are about really tiny things that everyone feels...talking about them in full.”  [**HARDEMAN**](https://hardeman.co) top, [**PHLEMUNS**](http://www.phlemuns.com) skirt, [**MIU MIU**](https://www.miumiu.com/us/en.html) shoes, and [**EMILY DAWN LONG**](https://www.emilydawnlong.com) socks. The immediate honesty is also Cottrill’s way of reintroducing herself to a world that already thought it knew who she was. Two years ago, Cottrill went viral with bedroom pop song “Pretty Girl,” and its lo-fi webcam-esque video. Its tongue-in-cheek feminist message (“I could be a pretty girl, shut up when you want me to”) has now clocked up almost 40 million views on YouTube, but Cottrill never checks on those numbers. She hasn’t for a very long time. Her career wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She made the song in an instant, and uploaded it just as quickly. “All I do is research music, know music—it’s my portal to the world. My outlet is communicating through music,” she says. “I don’t think “Pretty Girl” is a bad song. But _come on_. To know that I know what good music is and then to write “Pretty Girl”? What the fuck? It gave me everything I have. But now I want to be taken seriously, thank you.” After “Pretty Girl” happened, Cottrill made an EP of similar bedroom pop, _Diary001_. She’s since distanced herself from internet aesthetic and kitsch-y videos (the original video for “Flaming Hot Cheetos,” featuring dancing Cheetos has been removed from the internet). “Before _Immunity_, people talked about my writing as very surface level, and I agreed,” she critiques now of her releases last year. “I wasn’t writing about anything that made me emotional.” When it came to rip the band aid off, she did not hesitate, but you can sense the winces on _Immunity_. Every song captures the prickliness of learning. Take the R&B softy “Sinking,” which is sultry on the surface, but an ode to her insecurities surrounding arthritis. “I feel like I’m not desirable when I’m dealing with pain. I’m not sexy,” she explains. Ironically then, she made a slow-jam to discuss why the idea of sexual intimacy terrifies her.  [**CHARLOTTE KNOWLES**](https://charlotteknowles.com) bra, top, and pants. Rostam Batmanglij has been crucial to her ability to delve into more sensitive places. Batmanglij heard of Cottrill at a party. He went home, checked his Instagram DM history and saw she had already interacted with him. “I’d always been a 
fan of his. I remember listening to \[solo album\] _Half-Light_
 in my dorm. It was the first time I’d made my dorm homey. I put the album on and I was like, ‘Fuck yeah this is so good.’ 
I put it on my Instagram story.” In October 2017, Batmanglij messaged her. They went for dinner and made the song “Feel Something” (one of _Immunity_’s plainest; just a piano, a beat and a confessional ache) afterwards in a few hours. Theirs was a mutual respect. “He wanted to listen to me as much as I wanted to listen to him. I don’t think I’ve ever really had that,” she says. “It’s always been me against me.” As a producer, he also brought in an army of credible musos, including the aforementioned Haim, Vampire Weekend producer Ariel Rechtshaid, engineer extraordinaire Shawn Everett, and Dave Fridmann, formerly of indie royalty Mercury Rev. “It was incredible to watch Rostam be so focused and dedicated to something. But for it to be my work? Oh my lord.” Before she released _Immunity_, Cottrill was convinced it would chime with 15-year-olds who are experiencing the things she’s reflecting on. It has, but _Immunity_ has chimed way more with people older than her. You wonder if that says something about the purity of youth and its eternal influence on the way we feel and breath and live. She smiles. “It’s cool for me to have older people say they love the song about being in eighth grade, ha! It feels like we’re all in this together. And it’s changed my outlook. I worry less about whatever problem I’m facing because I’m sure everyone has been where I’m at and they’re fine.”  [**CHARLOTTE KNOWLES**](https://charlotteknowles.com) bra, top, pants and [**VETEMENTS**](https://vetementswebsite.com) boots. Still, Cottrill has also started a conversation for kids with similar stories. Young girls struggling with arthritis who once thought they were alone are messaging her. “So many kids reach out with autoimmune diseases. You can make a record and think your experiences are so singular. Being able to joke with a girl about how big our knees are when we’re going through it and how we won’t be able to wear shorts, that’s a relief. You become kindred spirits. Maybe this album was a cry for help for those people to come into my life!” She chuckles. “Honestly I feel so great now.” Cottrill wasn’t popular in her own high school, which makes her the type of kid you would want to make playlists for you now. Her social cache has always been music. Even today, as we walk into the cafe, she starts drumming her hands and singing along in her pretty voice. The song overheard is by alt R&B singer ABRA. “This is the first song that I ever re-produced,” she shares. “I used to re-produce songs to practice producing when I was really bad. I’m _still_ really bad.” Cottrill would teach herself production on Ableton. “I recreated this song and did a terrible version. So I know it inside out.”  [**KARLA LAIDLAW**](https://www.karlaidlaw.com) top and [**HELENA MANZANO**](http://helenamanzano.com) skirt. Last night, Cottrill was at a dive karaoke bar in Hollywood with friends. It’s one of those places that if you know it, you know it. “I did two songs,” she recalls. Her first was “So Into You” by ‘90s R&B princess, Tamia, “my go-to.” The second was “Free” by soul star Deniece Williams. “My friend did ‘Pretty Girl,’ which was really funny.” She grew up with a sister and two music-obsessed parents. They moved around a lot because of her dad Geoff’s marketing work. After seven years in Atlanta, she lived in Washington for three before settling in Carlisle. Her dad taught her everything she knows about Al Green. Her mum taught her everything she knows about Cocteau Twins. What’s the best Cocteau Twins record? “Oh my god. Can I look?” she says, pulling up her streaming service. Isn’t it “Heaven Or 
Las Vegas”? “I mean yeah,” she responds. “Is that the obvious choice? For sure. Is it the best one? Probably. But ‘Love’s Easy Tears’ is up there for me.” Music was a friend, a language, a medium she could constantly learn about. She started her deep dives on Tumblr before YouTube and streaming hit her in high school. “I loved the idea of getting to the webs of music,” she says. “Finding one band, finding their cousin’s band, finding their cousin’s best friends’ band...I loved the idea of me and my friends making music that wasn’t meant for people to hear, then people coming across it. Music was the one thing I knew I could talk about.” She pauses. “Still is kinda the one thing I’m confident I know about.”  [**KARLA LAIDLAW**](https://www.karlaidlaw.com) top. What did she listen to this morning? “You’re gonna laugh at me!” she says. “Feenin’” by Jodeci was her wake-up call. ‘80s rock band Red House Painters are next to Drake on her phone. “It’s always all over the
place,” she laughs. “But
 that’s how I like it.” The
 breadth of her tastes is 
heard on _Immunity_. You
 can tell she’s a student 
of sound and one who 
treads the line between 
cliché and familiarity
 well. Clairo has landed
softly in the latter—a
 song like “Sofia” is 
evocative of both The 
Strokes and Mazzy Star. It’s her academic
approach that led her
 to songwriting. She
 had a Facebook page
 (Claire Cottrill Music)
 full of covers. She didn’t
 tell her school peers.
 Her most popular was
 “Skin,” by a duo called
 BOY. She covered “The
 Cave” by Mumford &
 Sons. She sang City
 And Color tracks, and a 
song by Baltimore indie 
band, Teen Suicide (now
called American Pleasure
 Club). “They’d be 
basement videos directly 
uploaded to Facebook,
not through YouTube.
 They were funny. I 
became friends with people who made punk music. They’d go into the school studio at lunch and just jam. Sophomore year. I loved it. Even though I can’t for the life of me make a punk song, we could talk about Bad Brains _forever_. My favorite thing was making friends with people who wouldn’t be friends with me unless I knew who a band was. ‘Oh you like Descendents? Let’s hang out.’”  [**KARLA LAIDLAW**](https://www.karlaidlaw.com) top. Her new friends took her to punk shows at local recreation centers. She experienced her first mosh pits. “That was a really important time in my life,” she reminisces. “I wanted to start a band. I performed at a festival in high school. I started to find a real community.” After hours, Cottrill would take the train to house shows, learning about local scenes. Her friends lived in neighboring Cambridge. She’d travel to Boston to play small venues. She started a Bandcamp. She dated a Philadelphian who played in the band Joy Again and took the train to play house shows there. “I’d leave my home state to go play with my music friends. I’m really close with them still.” Cottrill learned about Connan Mockasin, Mac DeMarco, his various side-projects, and record labels like 4AD and Polyvinyl. She covered Frankie Cosmos. She later played a show with her. “I didn’t think it was gonna go anywhere cos I was going to college. I remember crying because I wasn’t old enough to go to a Beach Fossils show, and now I’m friends with them.” By the time she got to Syracuse University, her Soundcloud was gaining traction. She wrote Alex G-inspired DIY songs from spliced loops. “I didn’t produce shit. I downloaded Ableton to make a beat so I could write the song. There’s something funny about making a song that has spliced loops that genuinely anyone in a room could make but still being able to use it as your vehicle to say what you wanna say.”  [**KARLA LAIDLAW**](https://www.karlaidlaw.com) top. It’s an ethos that reminds one of early hip-hop or ‘90s riot grrrl. Her poppier stuff is what caught people’s ears, though. When “Pretty Girl” exploded, the major labels came running. She got offers from RCA, Capitol and Columbia, but went with something far subtler: FADER Label and a 12-song deal. Jon Cohen, co-founder of publication The FADER and its label, was a family friend. It’s unfortunate that accusations of nepotism have dogged Cottrill’s origin story online, because so much of her background chimes with tales of resourcefulness, of figuring things out by trial and error. “The thing is, I get where they’re coming from,” she muses of her skeptics. “I am extremely lucky to have grown up the way I did. I have really supportive parents. My dad knew a couple people in the industry but it never made sense to talk to him about it because it wasn’t ever a conversation. Jon Cohen was like a brother to him and a second dad to me. So when “Pretty Girl” went viral on its own on YouTube, no one could control it. I was able to turn to my parents. I didn’t know what else to do.” A pretty natural response for someone so young. “It’s crazy!” she says. “My dad was like, ‘Let’s call Jon Cohen, he’ll know what to do.’ I was able to get on my feet with FADER.” She made her EP flying to Chicago from Syracuse every weekend. You could say she endured a baptism by fire, racing to find a sound, doing everything she thought she should be doing, making videos to harness the multiplying streaming figures, afraid to take the necessary space, and consider the bigger picture. “I didn’t know anything about what I wanted for my music,” she says now. “Whether I even wanted it at all. I used what I had at the right time, when I needed to use it,” she says. “Jon Cohen calmed me down when I was freaking out.”  [**KARLA LAIDLAW**](https://www.karlaidlaw.com) top. _Immunity_ has been widely embraced by the music press and fans alike as a “Best of 2019” album. Cottrill landed safely in a place she feels comfortable in, proving to herself and others that she was more than just “Pretty Girl.” Hanging out with her, you get the sense she still seeks validation from the other kids in the school corridors. But those 15-year-olds grow up, and they become adults, and Cottrill has received oodles of respect from them. Maybe she was just an old soul all along. “I’ve been trying to let it happen,” she says of the future. “_Immunity_ just happened. It’s out in the world and I fucking love it. It’s my child. At the end of the day, I wanna make records that have just as many perfect moments as they do imperfect, and are rough around the edges. Perfect albums are all so subjective. You may as well make something that sounds cool to you.” Right now, Cottrill is writing more music that sounds cool to her. She’s stepping up her production. The tracks don’t 
have lyrics yet. She’s waiting for some more of life’s moments to strike. “Next time I’m really going through it, I’ll pick one
of the instrumentals I’ve written out, see what happens,” she says. Clairo may struggle to find words in the every day, but she knows she’s going to catch them when it counts. [Issue 167](/store/issue-167) from $15.95 **The Voyage Issue:** _A Fool’s Errand_ Outside Cover: Select Outside Cover ORLANDO BLOOM PRE-ORDERCLAIRO PRE-ORDERSWAE LEE PRE-ORDER ORLANDO BLOOM PRE-ORDER CLAIRO PRE-ORDER SWAE LEE PRE-ORDER Add To Cart document.querySelector('.product-block .product-block').classList.add('is-first-product-block'); * * * Photographed by [Shane McCauley](https://www.instagram.com/shanemccauley/?hl=en) Flaunt Film Directed by [Eduardo Capriles](https://www.instagram.com/ecapriles_/) Styled by [Peri Rosenzweig](https://www.instagram.com/perirosenzweig/?hl=en) Hair: [Candice Birns](https://www.instagram.com/hairbycandicebirns/?hl=en) using [R+Co & Oribe](https://www.randco.com)  at [Nest Artists.](http://www.nestartists.com) Makeup: [Amber Dreadon](https://www.instagram.com/amberdmakeup/?hl=en) using [Sisley Skincare](https://www.sisley-paris.com/en-US/) and [INC.redible cosmetics](https://www.sephora.com/brand/incredible) at [GreyScale Management.](http://www.greyscale-mgmt.com)