Brooke Candy is Shifting the Vibe Back
The vibe shift is real. It’s been coming. But as of late it feels like the vibe is shifting towards sinister things: Andrew Tate. Male podcasters. Shadowbanning. The Metaverse. Huel. RuPaul’s fracking empire. Newly appointed Prime Minister Liz Truss identifying as “Destiny’s Child feminist” for a sharable soundbite on BBC Politics Live. Endless doomscrolling. It aint looking good luv. But where do we even go from here? Polyester editor Eden sat down with Brooke Candy to try and find peace in the chaos of it all and to talk staying authentic in the ever changing face of internet subculture.
Brooke Candy is a fan of the grandma lifestyle. You wouldn’t think so - She’s an intimidating figure. Her music is hyper-sexual and aggressively feminist, she’s covered head to toe in tiny tattoos that she’s spent 15+ years curating. But she’s an early riser, waking up at 6am most days and heading to her studio. Totally opposed to the debauched, Indie Sleaze days when the night would still be going til the morning after.
In the constantly evolving social media landscape, Brooke finds herself struggling to keep up with what’s cool. Just like everyone else, Brooke is having to adapt her internet habits and notes her frustration with the eternal damnation of feeling obliged to post, “I was watching all these TikToks and I couldn't figure out what was going on at all. My brain just doesn’t understand the app. So I just put my phone on the wall and wiggled my hips.” She divulges, “I think that's what you're supposed to do! It makes me feel very old. But that's okay. Being old is cool. I was born to be a grandma.”
Just as we’re seeing a change in the social media apps people are gravitating towards - add me on BeReal guys - the vibe is also shifting towards general frustration about liberal ways of thinking. And Brooke feels this too: “In 2007 - 2012 it felt like there was a real creative renaissance. I’d go to club nights like Mustache Mondays in LA and GHE20G0TH1K in New York. These really cool underground spaces where aesthetics and expressing yourself were really important.”
Brooke laments, “But people who were part of that, who were outside of the box thinkers and were liberal and open minded are now going down the right wing way because that is the niche thing. It’s so bizarre.”
The counter culture is inarguably turning towards the conservative. Brooke comments on creatives she’s known who have spent their entire careers doing everything DIY, being all about punk and seemingly never having a mainstream thought, who are now struggling with their authenticity and shifting towards the right, because the punk, liberal agenda has been capitalized upon and become mainstream.
So how do we tackle this? Brooke comments about the importance of sticking by your morals: “My opinions have not changed. I’m still extra liberal, extra gay, extra feminist. I've just gotten harder with what I believed. I see what's happening in popular culture and the disparity of it all, but I've stayed true to who I am.”
You can feel this extra gay, extra feminist vibe reverberating through Brooke’s music. Her last record, Sexorcism, featured guest appearances from Drag Race Alumni Violet Chachki and Aquaria to Charli XCX and Ashnikko. The lead track Cum feat. Iggy Azalea’s “Make me cum, make me squirt” echoed in the raw, empowering sexual energy of her music almost a decade ago. Das Me’s “It’s time to take the word back / Slut is now a compliment” literally rewired my brain when I found it on 2012 Tumblr.
Her latest single, Flip Phone, arrives with a self-directed Fast n Furious meets Titane music video where Brooke dances on top of a purple sparkly car in the rain. I ask her if she’s seen Titane “I haven’t seen the film but I did read the comment section and a few people said that! I just fell in love with the car. The girl who it belongs to is called Mini Truck Mommy, she’s a cyber goth stunt driver who builds cars from scratch, customizes them and does donuts at 100mph. She's a badass. I just had to make the video about the car, I fell in love with it.”
Flip Phone is Brooke’s first release since 2019. So how does she feel now that it’s out in the world? She notes, “It feels really good. It's a little depressing that it's over. It was such an exciting moment to reengage that part of my creativity that was dormant for quite some time.”
Brooke adds that the joy of releasing tracks is the same as in 2012 when she first released music, “It had that same feel for sure. I had the same tenacity and drive to just make it and get it out. But this time around, the entire process has just made me fall in love with music again and directing videos. I just want to keep going!”
“It’s smoke and mirrors a lot of the time. Something I will say about popular culture now is you do need to be transparent and genuine. People want to see what's really going on. So for me, I can do that - I can try at least!”
Music isn’t Brooke’s only creative output: she’s served as a muse for the past decade for everyone from Grimes to tattoo artists, and followed through on the muse to artist pipeline when she picked up a tattoo gun for herself during the pandemic. Brooke enthuses, “I taught myself how to tattoo, I started to book appointments and I got to just hang out with at least one new person everyday. I would hear about their story and how they were feeling during such a chaotic, intense time. It was really grounding. I felt really blessed.”
So how does it feel going from tattooed to tattooer? “The whole thing takes a lot of trust and patience, you need a lot of relaxed and calm energy. I mean you’re cutting open flesh and injecting ink that will then sit in that person's body for the rest of their life. It’s very intimate! But it’s like therapy for me.”
Now carving out a career as a tattoo artist, Brooke muses about the struggle between picking a main passion in life. “Lately, I've been struggling with doing music and tattooing at the same time. Does continuing to tattoo take away from the validity and my credibility as a musician or does making music take away time from the practice of tattooing? But I want to do both.” She continues, “I'm going to do both just because I feel as though I have to like just to survive!”
With a self-released album in the pipeline and a tour planned for the coming months, as well as a blossoming tattooing career, Brooke is booked and busy. Does she prefer working independently as opposed to a big label? “It would be nice to have huge budgets for videos but it would definitely take so much of my spirit away. I don't want to have to run an idea past ten people then wait weeks and weeks to get any decision greenlit.” Brooke explains, “I just want to make it when I want to make it and how I want to make it. It’s freeing to do it that way. Certainly harder. But it's worth it.”
This works in Brooke’s favour as she faces an audience that has a constantly growing cynicism. We can see through the bullshit and tell if an artists sudden shift to politics or feminism or sex positivity or being a sexy goth has been greenlit by a load of middle aged men in suits at a meeting because they think it’s marketable. Brooke agrees, “It’s smoke and mirrors a lot of the time. Something I will say about popular culture now is you do need to be transparent and genuine. People want to see what's really going on. So for me, I can do that - I can try at least!”
In the decade since the first viral video, Brooke Candy has stuck to her guns and to her vision to produce an authentic creative output. She’s not had to worry about vibe shifts or micro trends because Candy produces her own vibe - one that’s hard to ignore when speaking to the enthusiastic internet veteran. In a year where controversy is what many online cling to in order to stay relevant, Brooke questions the relevance of internet fame. Who cares about a trending podcast when you could be drawing on strangers with your tattoo gun and making a genuine connection instead.
Words: Eden Young | Photographer: Nedda Afsari | Styling: Brooke Candy & Willyum Beck | Hair: Ricky Fraser | Makeup: Gilbert Soliz
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