Syd Matisse
The lyrical storyteller, whose most vulnerable songs are serenades to her own safeguarded memories, offers a voice for her younger self.
In her own words, Syd Matisse has characterized herself as if Joni Mitchell and John Mayer wanted to have a baby and asked Alanis Morissette to be their surrogate. While it's a playful remark, the Florida native’s influence behind the analogy is inspired in her songwriting and unmistakable in her inflections.
The source of Syd’s creativity is in her vulnerability. Her lyricism emanates from the need to express her emotions, and having studied songwriting from Berklee College of Music, her approach to crafting a song pursues a finely tuned balance between convention and candidness.
Over the summer, Syd released Stonefield Memos, a four-track treasury of songs recorded from her bedroom that she had written over the course of two years. It's a raw, lingering aftermath of four distinct narratives that speak to Syd’s personal moments of imperfect romance, reminiscence, and disillusionment. “I don't write songs about people that don't exist,” she spells out. “I write the words that I wish I could say to people.”
Syd and I meet in one of her unfinished apartment rooms that she has since refurbished into a photo studio. Garment racks are set aside, fashioned with curated sweaters and coats in preparation for the launch of her Brooklyn-based pop-up clothing shop Aalso Eighties Vintage.
In reflection of her musical growth months after migrating to New York City, Syd touches on the superstardom fantasies of her childhood, the intimate stories behind her midsummer voice memos, and the unforgettable moment that shaped her career as a musician.
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
Vaguely, yes. I don’t remember what it was called, but I remember it was written in this tiny pink notebook. I was about six years old. My childhood self regurgitated love songs that I was hearing on the radio. I found that notebook again when I was a teenager. The song was funny—something like, “Oh baby, please don’t go.” As a child, I absorbed cliches. I wanted to be a pop star, so I thought I’d try writing a song.
When you were that young, rather than writing as a means of expression, would you say you were more drawn to that superstardom aspect?
I told myself I was going to be a songwriter. But did you know that I used to orchestrate rehearsals for a girl group when I was in the 4th grade? Around the early 2000s, there was this pop group called Dream. I was obsessed with them. I wanted to put together my own girl group, but I also wanted to perform in it.
So, I had my best friends on my playground at school, and I remember printing out lyric sheets of my favorite Dream songs, color-coding who would sing which part, burning CDs for each of them, and making up choreography. I remember distinctly doing that with my friends. I was so extra [laughs].
It was a fantasy for me. Like, “I want to be a pop star, so let me create songs that I can sing when I’m pretending to be one.”
After you’d gotten into writing your own songs, what pulled you to learn musical instruments, too?
That's the thing—I don't think I ever considered myself a songwriter until after I started playing instruments. As a kid, it was all about that pop star fantasy and making songs in my head, but it was never really a craft for me until—wait, no, you know what? You’re making me dig far, far back in my memories…
No, go for it. That’s what this is for. Where’s the trauma?
I’ve got a lot of it [laughs]. Kidding. You can’t be a songwriter without trauma!
So when did songwriting start to feel like an actual craft for you?
My lyricism came out of producing. I must've been about eight years old. When we moved into a new house in Florida, we got a Mac that had GarageBand. I distinctly remember my mom showing me that I could use the internal mic to record vocals, and I thought that was the coolest shit in the entire world.
All my childhood, all I wanted was to be able to hear myself on a CD. Just the idea of putting a CD into a drive and hearing my voice back on it? That used to be the most mysterious thing, the end goal of my entire life. And my mom showed me that you could record your voice into the computer instantly. I was messing around with harmonies by ear, and then that Christmas my uncle got me a midi keyboard. I didn’t have any actual experience playing piano, but I started learning my way around default synthesizers in GarageBand. That's where my lyricism was born—out of just messing around and creating songs.
“All my childhood, all I wanted was to be able to hear myself on a CD. Just the idea of putting a CD into a drive and hearing my voice back on it? That used to be the most mysterious thing, the end goal of my entire life.”
Fast forward to middle school, I’ll never forget this. My mom worked at a university. Her office was in a rec center, and in the center of the lobby was this piano. There was an event happening in the gym on the other side, but I’d escaped to this piano, and there was a student sitting there. She was just playing this simple little song, but I thought it was the coolest thing. The way both of her hands were moving at the same time. And she taught me to play this song. That moment was the catalyst to my piano playing.
I have no idea who that person was, and I’ll probably never see them again, but I wish I could tell them that I became a songwriter because they lit a spark in me. Since I had a piano at home, I kept playing that same song. Eventually, I created my own iteration of it that turned into what I’d call the first song I ever wrote on piano. It was very simple, pretty much an ascending diatonic scale.
Some of the best songs tend to be simple, don’t they? A lot of memorable pop songs can be played with just four chords.
Right, and again, it was me just regurgitating the songs I’ve heard in my life. “Day after day, after trying to get next to you, it’s so hard, it’s so hard, it’s so difficult, what have I gotten into?” Like, verbatim, those were the lyrics. But that song led me to another song, which led me to another song.
After the piano, how did the guitar fall into your hands?
I learned how to play on my mom’s classical guitar that she took lessons on when she was in the 3rd grade. She never picked it up, but she had it around the house. I would just noodle with it. I woke up one day, and I could play it.
My mom and my uncle were so encouraging. My uncle, to this day, would randomly send me gear. He once bought me really nice headphones for no reason. He was a musician in the 80s, a big music guy. He does audio tech stuff, he’s a drummer—he’s incredible.
I truthfully play piano better than the guitar, but piano isn't my principal instrument. Maybe it should be.
I know that high school was a transformative phase of your life musically. What was it about that time that’s informed where you’ve taken your music today?
I could cry thinking about this. I’ll answer with the moment that shaped my career into becoming a musician.
It was the first day of freshman year in high school. I was excited because I signed up for all these electives. I really wanted to do fashion. But when I got my schedule, I saw that I had chorus instead. I was in that class with someone I’d been friends with since elementary school, and we both wanted to do fashion. We were like, “This is so dumb, we should switch.” But Mrs. O’Neal walks in, starts the first day of chorus, and…
There’s so little I remember about high school, but I still remember how she made me feel. Needless to say, my friend switched to fashion, and I didn’t.
I was in chorus all four years. I learned how to sing classically, I competed, I learned music theory, I got into opera, I taught voice lessons. My high school career was musical theater and chorus. That became my life. Music became solidified as being a part of me, a core of my identity. Music for me is such a personal and existential thing. The way I experience music is to think, how are we lucky enough to be situated as humans on earth with consciousness who are able to feel something so beautiful and so emotional and so everything? I don't think I would’ve gotten in touch with that if I didn't get into chorus.
In conjunction with all of that, I’m absorbing all this theory that I’m now applying to piano and guitar. I went to maybe three or four sessions of our school’s guitar club. I didn’t take formal lessons, but the teacher gave me worksheets that had tabs and shapes for jazz chords. I still play them to this day. My style would not be what it is if I didn’t have those three sheets of paper.
“The way I experience music is to think, how are we lucky enough to be situated as humans on earth with consciousness who are able to feel something so beautiful and so emotional and so everything?”
What other influences did you have around that time? Were you listening to any artists that also shaped you in some way?
John Mayer. I listened to so much John Mayer in high school.
Of course. Continuum? Everything after?
Um, everything before [laughs]. My favorite John Mayer album is Inside Wants Out, which is his demos from like 1999. That’s kind of my genesis.
In high school, we had a pageant. It sounds worse than it actually is. They had a Mr. and Mrs. DHS—which stands for DeLand High School—where you perform in front of the school and judges vote. It was the first time I performed an original song on guitar in front of a large crowd. I wanted to have a positive message. I wrote a song called “Extraordinary,” and it was basically just about being yourself. I was 16, so I was like, “I want to be a beacon of inspiration!” And I won.
My prize for winning was to become the person that performs at every school event. It was transformative because, holy shit, I was a performer. Like, I could write original music and play it in front of people? The fuck?
The EP that you released over the summer, Stonefield Memos, is modestly just four tracks long. Had you released other songs in the past?
There have been singles. I don't even want to mention them [laughs]. One is from 2013, and the last time I listened to it, I was like, “Honey, no. Why did you put that one out?”
But it’s funny to hear you refer to Stonefield Memos as an EP because I literally just airdropped voice memos from my phone to my computer, and uploaded them to Bandcamp solely for the purpose of donations to the ACLU.
In your own words, you’ve described Stonefield Memos as “candid, guilty, naive, and a little optimistic.” What can you share about the stories behind these songs?
Each of those songs is a story about a different person from a different situation over the course of two years.
The first song, “Like a Man,” was about someone who was a little younger than me. He always hung around, he was always like a kid to me, and I didn't think much about him. But then years later, I saw him and was like [gushes]. I wrote this song about how jarring it was to see him and think, “Oh, you grew up.”
The second song, “Needed / Like Godot,” I wrote after a breakup—one breakup of many breakups with the same person. Just sort of lamenting codependency. Feeling like someone is dependent on you, and is making you feel guilty about setting boundaries. The idea is that I don’t ever want to be needed by anyone. I need to be a freestanding person that can do things with my own volition.
Third, “Slowly, Surely.” This was one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. Where do I even begin? A casual encounter with someone that I had very ambiguous feelings for. It’s about having to program your brain to understand that everyone doesn't work the way that you do, especially in regards to physical intimacy. Realizing that sex can be something that is so vulnerable for me, but to someone else can have a completely different definition. I’ve found myself in very one-sided situations. This song is just about learning—about convincing myself to understand how things work. That maybe I need to harden my heart a little bit. It’s one of my most vulnerable songs because it’s like, yeah, I was fucking naive. “I felt something that you didn't. I’m going to get it eventually, but I’m at the disposal of a man once again.”
“(Maybe We Belong) Right Where We Are.” I wrote it over the summer. This person takes the cake for the most songs I’ve ever written about someone. A lot of [those songs] had to do about longing for them and wishing that I didn’t. Wishing things went differently, wishing I never met them. Wanting something that I don’t have was a big theme, and it got to the point where I was like, “What if I accepted things the way that they are?” Because it’s so easy to really like this person, and after things don’t work out, to wish it never happened so I’d never feel this pain. But I do think everything happens for a reason, and it was such a beautiful blip in the timeline of my life, an incredible emotion to be able to experience and connect with. And maybe we aren’t supposed to be together—maybe we belong right where we are.
Because the song starts off like, “He’s so incredible. God, what a fucking waste. I have all these memories now, I know all these things about him. Why do I have all this useless information?” But there’s a narrative, an arc. Instead of having a bridge, I go back to the pre-chorus. The first two were about thinking it was all a waste, but when the pre-chorus comes back around, it’s like, if that was a mistake I’d make the same mistake a thousand times. It’s an acceptance of something so beautiful that I wouldn't trade for anything. I would do it over again in a heartbeat.
These are really personal memories of yours. How did people feel after they’d heard these songs themselves?
When I released this “EP,” people who reached out to me would tell me it’s exactly what they’re feeling now in their lives. It really is universal—there’s no new emotion under the sun with my songs. I think it's really beautiful that I had these experiences, and that so many other people resonate with me talking about them.
You talked about wanting to be a star when you were little, when songwriting was purely a performative ambition. Now, your music comes from a very internalized place. How do you typically unravel those emotions and approach creating a song?
I’ll tell you I have hundreds if not thousands of voice memos on my phone of me walking down the street with a train in the background, humming a thought in my head and a melody after it. Very rarely do I sit down to write a song. The genesis of a song will either be a thought seed or me feeling something so strongly—having something I want to say to someone so badly—and sitting down with my guitar, just yelling until it turns itself into a verse. I went to Berklee for three semesters, and I studied songwriting.
How did Berklee change the way you think about songwriting?
Having gone through it, I have the experience of thinking of songwriting from the perspective of someone who’s doing it as a job. Writing for someone else, trying to construct something for certain conventions—as opposed to just writing whatever comes to me. I see both sides: Having something structured that's going to wow everyone, but also having these raw emotions that I'm going to yell at you.
Even though I do have the experience of knowing how to sit down and write a song—and I would love to be a staff songwriter someday—the way that my art comes about is so born from very authentic emotions. I don't write songs about people that don't exist. I write the words that I wish I could say to people.
“It really is universal—there’s no new emotion under the sun with my songs. I think it’s really beautiful that I had these experiences, and that so many other people resonate with me talking about them.”
I understand you’ve gone through stunted moments, a lack of inspiration with your music lately because of the pandemic. How have things been for you this year?
At the beginning of all of this, I did get that cliche COVID song thinking about your ex [laughs]. But it's kind of strange. I had all the time in the world, but it was too much time. There's something about only having an allotted period of time that makes things more special. It's like the way I feel when I open Ableton, and there are so many different sounds, and I don’t know which sound to use because I have 900 sounds right here, so I’m just going to close Ableton.
[This year] made me take pressure for granted. I think beauty and innovation is born out of pressure, and having an overflow of time just made me anxious. People go through creative dry spells, but also, the world is up in flames right now, you know? Sometimes, you just got to be a human first, and then an artist.
It would be an injustice not to mention your passion for photography. You’d even spent your student loan refund to get yourself some good gear. Where are you planning on taking things?
Getting into photography was very serendipitous. I had the freedom to pick it up and had so many people that wanted to collaborate with me. I started out helping other musicians and artists with their visuals—promo stuff, album art. After I had success freelancing, I moved back home to finish up college and kind of fell off with photography. I’d lost a lot of my inspiration.
But now that I’m in New York, I was able to swing an arrangement where I’m living with one of my best friends, and we have this open room that we’re turning into a giant studio. We’re going to use it for so many cool things. I have this passion project where I want to do a vintage clothing pop-up, and I want to showcase the clothing on social media in a way that emulates 80s catalog photography. I think that’s going to get me back into things, plus learning to shoot film. Ultimately, I think the space I want to occupy is going to be helping artists—making photography accessible for up-and-coming artists.
Especially in your music, so long as people will listen, your stories will continue to resonate. What ultimately drives your passion for writing, and what do you want the world to experience through your own voice?
What drives me is being sensitive as fuck and needing to express myself at all times [laughs]. I mean, that’s really it. My art is born of my own need to express and process my emotions, while giving a voice to those who are also trying to process things but might not have the words. Because I know how meaningful it is to me when I find a song where I’m like, “How did you read my mind?”
Being honest in my music feels less weird if I know other people agree with me. It’s about that connective aspect in my emotional output. That’s how I want people to connect to my songs. To be like, “Sydney told her truth, and it was my truth, too.”
I also just want to make people feel good. I’m sort of going through a phase right now of writing for my younger self. Writing songs I wish I had—like the first time I had my heart broken—to empower me and remind me how valuable I am. It’s like documenting the growth that’s happened in my life, and writing it for my younger self like, “Here. This is for you.”