Changing a name is never easy for an artist, but Ryan DeRobertis has pulled it off with grace. The 22 year old former Boston College student asserted himself as a rising talent in 2013 with his Saint Pepsi project, winning over huge sects of the blogsphere with his funky take on the rising vaporwave genre. However, early this year he announced that he would be dropping the kinda, sorta trademark-infringing name and adopting a new moniker: Skylar Spence.
Many fans were skeptical of this shift, especially given the more vocal-centric nu-disco sound that he had been playing with in the previous months. However, while certainly a departure from earlier material, his excellent output in the ensuing months speaks for itself. DeRobertis has shown himself to be a deft purveyor of pop, crafting impeccably assembled, eye-winkingly playful, endlessly danceable earworms, most notably his summery anthem “Fiona Coyne.” Sporting a deep but enormously accessible sound, Skylar Spence has nowhere to go but up.
DeRobertis is gearing up to release the debut Skylar Spence album, Prom King, this September and has been hitting festivals and venues nationwide in support. We chatted with him ahead of his show at Great Scott tomorrow night about the name change, loving the 80s and his time at BC, as well as briefly touching on a more Saint Pepsi-like side project he has in the works.
Allston Pudding: I wanted to start off with some of the name stuff. A lot of people assume that you changed your artist name for legal reasons. Was there any specific incident that led it this?
Ryan DeRobertis: They weren’t really specific when they reached out. I guess following the train of events, “Fiona Coyne” came out in July (2014) and started to get a little more popular between August and September. Right before CMJ Festival happened we got an email from Pepsi saying that they had caught wind of the project and that they liked the music but they have the trademark and that it wouldn’t be cool to use it anymore. (laughs) They gave us the rest of 2014 to ride out the last tour dates that we had in the US and Europe and then we’d have to change at the beginning of 2015. I don’t know if it was anything other than just “Fiona” happening that made it a bigger deal than it was beforehand.
AP: I know the name Skylar Spence came from a Saint Pepsi track. Why did you choose that as your overall project name?
RD: A couple of reasons. Skylar Spence comes from two character names from this Woody Allen movie called Everyone Says I Love You, which was this 90s flop. I liked it a lot in high school- it was sort of a romantic comedy but also a musical. All the actors did their own vocals and no one could sing and I thought it was charming and cute and all that. When I left school- I went to school in Boston for two years- I watched it again and there were a lot of elements about the movie that I found repulsive. I used that movie to symbolize the transition between me making music in high school versus what I want to do now. I feel like I have more of a focus on where my place is in the music world, and a lot of the stuff that I hate about what I used to do is inspired by that movie. It seemed kind of fitting to me.
AP: So that’s essential watching for your fans then, right?
RD: Yeah, definitely! And you might love it and you might hate it. For me it really depends on the day and how I’m feeling. There’s so much going on in it. It’s really beautiful too- a really beautifully shot film. He’s always really good with that.
(NOTE: DeRobertis used footage from the film to tease his name change earlier this year- peep it below!)
AP: Do you consider Skylar Spence to be a different project from Saint Pepsi? Has there been a change in your ideology beyond singing your own lyrics?
RD: Not really. When I started putting Prom King together I had no indication that I would have to change my name. I had this idea for the album the whole time. It actually kind of worked to my advantage, in some ways, because it was going to be kind of hard making the full transition into singing and lyrics. Now people just kind of assume that it’s a new project and they’re excited when they hear the elements of Saint Pepsi still in there, rather than expecting a Saint Pepsi and being put off by the change in style. I don’t think it’s a big deal but a lot of people do! (laughs)
AP: I read this really interesting quote from you. You said “[you] think nostalgia is inherently narcissistic and [you’re] currently very into the idea of exploring the connection between nostalgia and narcissism. How would you say your music explores the idea of narcissism?
RD: With Prom King, I feel like the main point of the record is to be revisionary, almost in a comical way. I wrote a lot of the songs about things that never happened or happened in an entirely different way. I tried to make the lyrics kind of universal and, with the exception of “Can’t You See,” most of the material is very non-specific. I like to have fun with the play between the theme of the song and what’s going on in the production.
I guess a lot of the narcissism comes from the maximalism in the production of the songs. Really, really big hooks and overdone harmonies and pitch-perfect vocals and stuff like that. It’s essentially like photoshopping in Ableton! (laughs) I feel like that’s sort of where, in my music specifically, the narcissism comes into play.
AP: Going back to the lyrics for a second, there’s one line that’s really been confounding me in “Fiona Coyne,” which is “I’ll love you til the record stops.” Part of me thinks you’re trying to get across the idea that you’ll love this girl forever, while the other thinks it’s ironic; that you’re crazy about her right now but you know it’s a transitory thing. Was either of those the intent, or was it supposed to be a bit ambiguous?
RD: Yeah! It’s a double meaning. I have “Fiona” fade out because depending on how you read it it either does stop or doesn’t. The song is an idealization of a relationship that I was in, which I stretched a lot to make a connection with a character from Degrassi. This relationship was one of those where we never had any closer with it, so every time we’d see each other we’d fall back into old motions. That’s what “I’ll love you til the record stops” is about, I guess!
AP: What’s your process for writing a track?
RD: It’s a lot different now from what it used to be. I used to start off at my piano and get the chorus down first, then work a verse in. Once I started doing Saint Pepsi stuff… I started initially to learn how to use Ableton and it’s sort of taken over my life since then! Usually I’ll throw a sample into Ableton and kind of wrap it around until I don’t recognize what it is anymore. I’ll layer a bunch of different chord progressions in the session view and then move that over to the arrangement and keep it on loop for hours until a good melody comes into my head. Nowadays I’ll have the progression first and then melody and lyrics come second. It’s what I spend the most time on, definitely.
AP: What’s your live setup like?
RD: It’s cool! It’s a work in progress, but we’re a four-piece band right now. I’m on guitar and keys and vocals, then I have a guitarist and bassist and a drummer.
The music translates pretty well. It’s a lot more jammy live, which is cool because I think there’s some interesting stuff going on instrumentally on the album and there’s a lot more freedom to work with that in a live band. It’s definitely a different kind of feeling, so it’s been great getting to explore that.
AP: There’s a distinct 80s feel to the recent releases, not just in the sounds but also all the visual iconography. What attracted you to that period?
RD: In a weird way, I grew up on it! My dad is a really big collector of New Wave memorabilia. His record collection was definitely instrumental in influencing my future in music. I remember in 6th grade I brought this boombox in and played some Duran Duran 12” tapes that he compiled and a bunch of kids thought I was the weirdest. It was a bad look in retrospect! But the music that I sample is stuff that I grew up on and definitely has had that influence since before I can remember.
AP: Our website’s based out of Boston so I wanted to ask, what was your time at BC like?
RD: It was interesting. I think I went in with the wrong mindset. It was the best school that I got into and I think I felt like I should take a more academic route when I went there. I majored in political science instead of doing music like I wanted to. I did the radio station, which was the best thing that I did there by far. I made a lot of really good friends who I still keep in touch with. Doing the music directing there was important as well. As far as the academics, I definitely didn’t click with BC. I tried salvaging that by majoring in music the last semester I was there and didn’t really click with the curriculum so I got my ass handed to me. But, you know, it happens!
AP: So you have Prom King coming out in September. Are there any tracks you’re really excited about?
RD: There’s a song called “Affairs,” which I think will be out before the Boston show, and it’s my favorite track on the album! It’s sort of my attempt at doing a Duran Duran-esque romantic ballad, so it’s dancey but it’s also a bit contemplative. I’m really happy with that one.
There’s another song called “Cash Wednesday” which is a return to the early Saint Pepsi kind of sound, and also the name of a side project I’m working on which will be a lot more of that sort of heavily-sampled future funk music that people thought I was done doing.
Skylar Spence will be playing at Great Scott tomorrow night, 7/30, with Jonah Baseball and ABSRDST. Tickets are still available here. Prom King drops September 18 on Carpark Records.