With Big Ideas, Remi Wolf stays unpredictable and vulnerable

Remi Wolf appears in our Summer 2024 Issue with cover stars Wallows, Drain, Maya Hawke, the Linda Lindas, and Winnetka Bowling League. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy. 

“Right now is the first time in a long time that I’m not depressed,” Remi Wolf says over a Zoom call. She’s seated in a sun-soaked room in her home in Los Angeles. “It’s very fire,” the 28-year-old singer jokes, laughing and flicking short curls away from her face. She’s just days away from embarking on Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS world tour. Ordinarily, the prospect of touring is paired with stress and anxiety, a shadow that has followed her into buses, planes, and hotel rooms for years. But, “Europe in the spring sounds lovely,” she tells me, cheerfully.

This “good feeling” Wolf describes has only recently breezed into her life. “Maybe it’s something about the moon or the sun of the solar eclipse,” she says, strumming her cherry-red, stiletto nails against her cheek. She’s wearing a Creature World hoodie unzipped, revealing a yellow, bedazzled BeBe tank top. Even though her bottom half remains off camera, she sports white Croc platform loafers for the occasion. She does a twirl for me to showcase the entire ensemble. 

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“I was really resentful of fashion for a while because it became such an integral part of my job,” Wolf says. “But it’s always been a huge part of my self-expression, and I’m in this phase where I’m enjoying the process again.” I can’t help but also think that some of her newfound energy is due, in part, to the impending next chapter of her career. She’s gearing up to release her sophomore album, Big Ideas — her most personal work to date, which she’ll be playing on a headlining tour of her own this fall.  

Wolf burst onto the scene in 2020, when her track “Photo ID” went viral on TikTok for her catchy, now-signature blend of funk, pop, and R&B. In 2021, after moderate success with various singles and EPs, she dropped her major-label debut, We Love Dogs!, a compilation of remixes of her previously released tracks. With unpredictable reworkings from artists like Nile Rodgers and L’Impératrice, she introduced herself as one of the zaniest and most colorful conceptual artists emerging from the pandemic’s bedroom-pop bubble. Her debut studio album, Juno, arrived later that year to critical acclaim. With bright, raspy vocals and a flair for surrealist wordplay, Wolf and her multicolored, multigenre experiment had proven successful.

But behind the scenes, Wolf was struggling. In the summer of 2020, the then-24-year-old had checked herself into rehab for a drinking problem. Newly sober, and in the depths of a still-raging pandemic, Wolf began writing what would become her debut album. And even though her newfound sobriety had a distinct effect on the project, Wolf’s approach to topics like addiction and substance abuse were often distant and vague. “In my writing, I’ve tended to lean really heavily on metaphors and wild imagery,” she says. On Juno’s lead single, “Liquor Store,” she describes her battle with sobriety as “walking a tightrope” and “marbles on the brink of spilling.” Wolf’s lyrical approach on Big Ideas is much more direct. “In this record, I wanted to bring a sense of realism.” 

Big Ideas addresses sobriety head-on. “I was going through so much shit, and I wanted to channel that as honestly and raw as possible,” Wolf says. On songs like “Alone in Miami,” that vulnerability turns into a dour frankness, as she confronts the memory of a drug-fueled bender at Art Basel in 2021. “Everything in that song is 100% true,” she says. “I was there to go to a party. I was in this drunken drug haze for four days.”

Throughout the year-long period of writing Big Ideas, Wolf was in and out of sobriety. “There were times when I was sober in writing, and there were times when I was not,” she says. Both provided a different kind of mental clarity for Wolf, who benefited from an array of creative environments. “I’m always writing about love, lust, confusion, vices, mental health, and shit like that” — topics that remain in states of flux for the artist, as a child and now, as a young adult. 

Wolf’s first encounter with fame was unpleasant. At 17 and a senior in high school, she tried out for American Idol and got invited to Hollywood. Though she didn’t get very far in the competition, she was shown on TV. “The day after my episode aired, I went to school, and people were looking at me. It was the first time I ever thought about fame,” Wolf says. “I wanted to hide and die. And I’m still that way. I truly don’t like being perceived.”

Many of Wolf’s personality quirks seem to come in conflict with the reality of her life. Growing up, Wolf lived a double life as both a normal student and a downhill ski racer. Her training, which began at 8 years old, led her to qualify for two Junior Olympics. “I didn’t have a normal high school experience at all,” she says. Her school year became split between the flat city of Palo Alto and the mountains in Lake Tahoe.

At a certain point, as she watched her peers spend every day on the mountain, she realized she needed to either be all in — or get out. At 16, she hung up her skis and threw herself into music with the same mindset she’d learned on the slopes. “Through skiing, I learned a lot about working hard and the idea of training,” she says. “I know how much I need to be invested in my work for it to pay off and for me to feel satisfied and do good shit.”

She also learned early on what it was like to live on the road. “My life was so chaotic when I was an athlete, traveling all the time, which really prepared me for my life now, because it’s equally as chaotic now.” Even when Wolf’s life is spread out into different states and continents, she can find the space to create. Big Ideas spans months and state lines, patchworking together five distinct chunks of writing sessions between March 2022 to May 2023. Each session had its own unique sound and vibe, influenced by Wolf’s emotional state, the various studios, and the multiple collaborators she worked with.

“I like that the album feels like a variety show,” Wolf says. “That’s where I’ve realized my artistry lies. I listen to so much shit and I like so many things that this album could feel like it’s all over this place, but really it’s tied together.” The project is the definition of transient, a collage of an artist booked and busy. “Wave” and “Frog Rock,” the emo-rock pillars of the project with their angsty guitar riffs and vocals, were written in the “first chunk” of the writing session with Ethan Gruska and Jack DeMeo. “I was really in my emo bag,” Wolf says. “I was unwell. Listening to a lot of Flaming Lips.” 

Collaborating with close friends and talented artists is one of Wolf’s talents as a conceptual artist. “I’m not a person that likes to sit in my house alone and [record]. I love working with people and feeding off their energy. I love them to pull shit out of me and for me to pull shit out of them.”

As Wolf gets ready to cross the Atlantic for a two-month tour in Europe with Rodrigo, she realizes she’s not only excited but ready to bare all. “People know me for my baggy, bi-sexually coded vibes. But for some reason right now, I want everything to be tight and to show my body,” she says. “I’m just over hiding.”