Audrey Hobert remembers the exact day Instagram hit her seventh-grade class in Los Angeles. Kids ran up and down the hallways, choosing user names and sharing vintage-filtered grainy photos.
“When people started to post pictures from pool parties that I wasn't invited to is when I went, ‘Hey, this don't make me feel good. Why is this a thing?’" Hobert tells Teen Vogue over Zoom a few days after her debut album, Who’s the Clown?, was released.
The question “Why is this a thing?” is a good thesis for the album as a whole. On it Hobert questions everything: the way she lives, the way celebrities live, the way she acts in public vs. private, why people don’t want to be around her all the time, will she ever be desired, what is the point of all this. But she's not so interested in getting at finite answers, and even less interested in judging herself or others for asking the questions.
Who’s the Clown? is Hobert's first full-length effort under her own name, but she has already made an impact on pop music through her collaborative work with Gracie Abrams, most recently on Abrams’ album, The Secret of Us. Abrams and Hobert, who are childhood friends, wrote “That’s So True” together, which has since become Abrams’ highest-charting song to date. The pair clearly have something special, playing off each other’s energy to create music that’s both serious and deeply un-serious.
“I think it's just fun, period. We have a lot of fun together in work and in life,” Hobert says, chewing gum and half-braiding her hair as we Zoom. “I just always have a cow. I always laugh really hard, and she laughs hard, and we just laugh together. I'd love to be a collaborator of hers for as long as I live.”
Below, Audrey Hobert reflects on Who’s the Clown? since its release, what people think about her, and what she thinks of herself.
Audrey Hobert: Just free as a bird, honestly. I've been waiting for this. I feel free.
AH: What is it? It's been almost a week of it being out. I had a really fun party, and I lived it up over the weekend, and then I immediately left town and went to a few radio stations and did performances there. I got back last night, and it feels like I'm wrung out like a wet cloth, but I'm still usable.
AH: I have to say, I've loved it so much, especially because of the people. It's not glamorous but it's very real. And I am very much a radio listener, so I identify with, I guess, just being there in general. I'm very happy to do it, and agree with what you said.
AH: That makes me think…. Well, sometimes, I like to unintentionally mark periods of time in my life by when I start a new journal, and I started a new journal about, I want to say, a month ago?
It's interesting. I've never been so busy and in demand, and I've never felt, yeah, just more... What I was going to say was, I've never felt more special. But I've actually felt way more special at other times in my life; I just feel busy and seen in a new way.
I am trying as hard as I possibly can to just be in the present moment, which is cliché, but it's true. I think it's easy when you're this busy, going from place to place, to forget about [the moment] because you're meeting so many people and going to so many new places, so I'm just trying to take in as much as I can and stay grounded and real.
As for this being a different era of my life, it's really hard to say. I actually don't know.
AH: I think that's true.
AH: When I just make myself laugh to myself or... I'm looking for the right word… This might be a little obvious in my music, but I feel special when I feel like the underdog or I feel invisible. I think that's the thing I am just now starting to notice in being looked at — now I understand why a shift in lifestyle like this can rattle somebody. However, I'm not saying I'm Madonna or anything. I'm just trying to be as aware as possible of what's happening to me and how it makes me feel as it's happening.
AH: Totally, totally. It's an interesting thing because I've always felt like “The Man,” but I just didn't feel like enough people knew. Now I don't really know if there's a second way I feel in response to that, but I'm just taking it day by day.
AH: I was very confident. Always. I was outgoing. I was not afraid to be heard and seen, and also cripplingly aware of myself and people around me. I always was a watcher and a listener, but also a big talker, and I just felt... I don't know much about astrology, but I'm a Pisces, and I do identify with the daydreamer thing.
I think it's why I've been in so many car accidents. Because I'm always somewhere else, and suddenly, it's like I start the car, then I come to, and I'm home. I've just been somewhere else the entire time, and I've always been that way.
AH: I know. Sh*t. It's nuts.
AH: Sh*t. Take it. I like driving, and I haven't been in an accident in a long time, knock on wood, but you never know.
AH: There was definitely a shine that I looked up to — and felt a stranger to. I think people assume because I grew up in LA, or that anyone who grows up in LA or has a connection to Hollywood, that they've seen it all and are desensitized to the glitzy, glamour stuff, but I still get shocked by stuff in that world, believe it or not…
It's a clear theme in the album. I've always wondered what it might be like to be in a position of power or fame or success. Yeah, I've been adjacent to it, but I think until you're there, you really have no clue.
AH: I don't feel like I radically changed as a person in any way from the beginning to the end of writing the album. I think more so when I would sit down to write a song, I was not trying to work through any emotion or figure something out about myself; I was either angry and needed to get it out as revenge or I was just trying to craft a story.
I've spoken to other songwriters and artists who have this sense of being exposed once they put their work out, and I really didn't have that — and haven't had that with even more "vulnerable" songs on the album. When I sat down to write those, I never shed a tear. I was just like, How can I get this story and this point across as clear as I possibly can?
Maybe that will change in the coming years as I write more music, but definitely, it just felt more like work in a positive way than it did learning about myself, I guess.
AH: For sure. I did often have that thought of, Whoever's out there, whoever ends up listening to this, I'm beating you to the punch.
AH: It always hurts, but I guess... Yeah, that's an interesting thing. The control aspect is what I love so much about writing by myself — just the complete control I have over the narrative I'm trying to write.
AH: I think “Sex and the City,” which was an early song I wrote. That was the fourth song I wrote for the album. The first [song was] “Wet Hair.” When I wrote “Wet Hair” I didn't ever consider really giving it away, but I also didn't feel like "I must tell this story."
But when I wrote “Sex and the City,” that was when it flipped for me. I thought, Well, if I feel this passionately about this thing I just wrote, then I guess I should full-force tell everyone about it, and not concern myself with what it will mean for me beyond just telling this story and being the person to tell it.
AH: I love that one so much.
AH: Oh, literally, it happens. It still happens.
AH: I have an aversion to a lot of trendy slang. I really dislike when people use the word “situation.” That's just a fun fact about me.
But I think there's a happy medium between something like a Shakespearean-level common phrase or “situation.” I have my own barometer for what is going to stand the test of time in terms of current slang, so I feel comfortable using those. Like, "If he wanted to, he would," that doesn't even feel like trendy slang, it just feels generally truthful.
I like to incorporate common terms of phrase like that because I think it's memorable. And if there's truth to it, then it's not a common phrase for nothing, I guess.
AH: Because people don't spend 0.2 seconds longer trying to think of what they're actually trying to say; instead, [they] just say “situation,” and it just bugs. I don't know.
AH: Not always, especially if I'm PMS'ing. But I think it's something you have to practice. That's something my mom would talk about a lot in one way or another, that exact thing.
During COVID, I would use the Calm app, and in one of the meditations, there's this analogy that they use that is like, "Pretend you're observing your thoughts as if they are water in a flowing river. Just observe them and let them pass. You don't have to grab on to them or jump in the water per se, just observe them without attaching meaning, and then it will eventually pass."
I think it involves a lot of self-regulation, and I'm not always living that way, but it just, I think, is not taking things too seriously. Another line in my song: knowing that things could be worse, usually.
AH: Since the time Instagram was created — I remember the day it came out when I was in middle school — I have always had an issue with it. I've always had an aversion and trained myself to not be addicted to it. Because it doesn't matter if I'm on top of the world or not, it always, always, always makes me feel bad, especially now, where I can see myself on it beyond just looking at my own profile.
I just stay off. I do. As much as I can. Even in this week, when the album’s come out, I have looked surprisingly very little. Albeit I've still looked, and it has made me happy, but I know that...
Well, it's not that I know, but I have a suspicion that where people in my position start to go crazy is just by being in a constant echo chamber of seeing themselves and judging themselves. I can't avoid if somebody comes up to me on the street and says I'm ugly, but I can avoid if someone on the internet types on my post that I'm ugly. Ugly or not, that's just an example.
I'm trying to remain an interesting person, and I think the quickest way to become boring is to only think of yourself all the time. I have to do that enough for this job, so I just try and stay away from it, in general.
AH: Not at all. I am not entirely sure what goes into "construction" of a pop persona, but I don't feel called to do that. I really enjoy it in others and find it entertaining and fun, but I feel mostly like a writer, so that's what I'll be.
AH: Well, it's so hard to say because this is my first crack at all of this. I'm learning how it makes me feel as I go.
But touring, I'm looking at that as an adventure for me. I haven't traveled much outside the US, so my priorities are to have fun and be present.
What I'm glad about is that, at this point, I feel no pressure to be anything but myself. When it comes to the live show... I'm such a theater fan, and so much of this entire process has been a dream come true before my very eyes, and putting together a show is going to be the cherry on top because I love live art, I guess. The fact that I get to craft something and that people will come see it is beyond me. I'm very, very excited.
AH: I am almost apprehensive to say this because I don't think it's a negative thing or a bad thing at all, but I've seen “awkward” a lot, and I totally understand why, but also...
I've definitely felt weird. I felt overlooked. I've felt out of place, but I haven't felt awkward since middle school.
I don't know. I think I totally get why that word is being thrown around when it comes to, I guess, my music and the music videos and me in TikToks performing, but I don't feel awkward.
AH: Totally, totally. Which I agree with, and that's why I'm like, "Should I even say it?" But hey, it's not like it's a slight, and I don't feel insecure or misunderstood. It's just something I've noticed.
This story has been updated.
