Becca Harvey, the 26-year-old Atlanta musician who performs as girlpuppy, speaks the same way she writes songs. She’s funny and sharp, talking with an air of whimsy and an earnest self-awareness that turns every almost-too-somber observation she makes on its own head. Just listen to her talk about her second album, Sweetness, which she created on the other side of a four-year relationship.
“I describe it as devastating, but not really,” she says. “It’s funny because it’s sad in such a monotonous way.”
The 10 tracks on Sweetness find Harvey recalling a familiar rise and fall. In the beginning, the prospect of newfound romance is limitless and thrilling. The early single “I Just Do!” paints an all-too-relatable picture of a blossoming crush, which somehow always includes severely oversleeping because of some guy’s blackout curtains. The album’s closer, “I Think I Did,” sees Harvey hoping to never see that person again. Tale as old as time.
Despite its perceived chronology, “I Just Do!” was actually one of the last songs she wrote for the album. “This is not necessarily the same story about the same person all the way throughout,” Harvey says, “but I wanted to follow a narrative structure. It starts with ‘I Just Do!’ where it’s like, ‘We met and we’re having fun and I like you,’ and then it just gets progressively sad. And then the record ends with ‘I Think I Did,’ where it’s like, ‘Well.’”
Harvey approaches songwriting and performing diaristically. “There have been times when I’ve written a song and I’ve been like, ‘OK, this is kind of a lot. I don’t need to put his brother’s name in there,’” she says. It helps to disassociate a bit from the lyrical content: “In those moments where I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah. This really did happen to me,’ it’s nice to be like, ‘Well, now I’m onstage and I’m singing it. It happened and now it’s not happening, and this is just a little memory.’”
Writing was the reason Harvey began making music at all. Her voice is currently the only instrument she knows. “I feel very grateful that I know talented people that understand me, that can take an a capella voice note and make it into a song,” she says. (Her 2022 debut album, When I’m Alone, was recorded with Alex G guitarist Sam Acchione and engineered and mixed by Slow Pulp’s Henry Stoehr; Alex Farrar, who has worked with MJ Lenderman and Wednesday, is her producer and co-writer on Sweetness.) But she’s started thinking about expanding her skills: “As I’ve written more complicated melodies without instruments, I’m like, ‘I really should try to find a medium to learn this.’”
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For the time being, Harvey says that her lack of any technical music training offers a sense of freedom. So while her collaborators in the studio prattle on about Ableton and quantized drums –– “I don’t know what that stuff means,” she says — Harvey’s creativity has free rein to run wild. That’s how she listens, too: “When I listen to music, it’s very much like, ‘What are they singing about and what are they saying to me?’”
Her album bio references break-up poets from Leonard Cohen to Avril Lavigne, and she’s quick to list off the musicians her parents played around the house growing up: Bob Dylan, Shania Twain, John Mayer. “I’m a huge Beatles fan,” she says. “I don’t really talk about it a lot, but I love the Beatles.” She also chatted with the National’s Matt Berninger (“King,” she says) for a published conversation about artistry.
Harvey’s range of inspirations is evident across the music she’s made as girlpuppy, from her lo-fi pop 2020 single “For You” to the more folksy charm of her first LP. “I was really obsessed with Grizzly Bear at the time that I did When I’m Alone, so there’s so much mandolin,” she says. “We had to put the mandolin down at one point, like, ‘Get it out of the room.’ It would’ve been crazy.” Her Seventies-pop-infused 2022 single “I Miss When I Smelled Like You” currently sits as her highest-streamed song, with more than 2 million listens on Spotify. “I absolutely love pop music, but I’m never going to do that again,” she says. Now, on Sweetness, Harvey’s sound takes a grungier turn, with heavier guitars and more feedback-laden compositions supporting her tender vocals.
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Sweetness is accompanied by girlpuppy’s biggest album rollout yet, which has given Harvey a slight identity crisis. “Even with my hair. I feel pressure with the platinum hair,” Harvey says. “A couple months ago, I was on the phone with my label and I told them I had a hair appointment and was going to just go back to brown because I’ve been doing this for five years now. And my label was like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. The white hair is your brand.’”
Harvey continues, “When I think about what I want to do down the line and how I want to present myself and what my audience is, I don’t want to just have a specific one.” Her eyes light up as she has a revelation: “I want to be Fiona. I want to be Fiona Apple. I want to just be constantly changing and just being myself always, and whoever likes that can stick around. And if you don’t, then I’m sorry.”
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The “Future of Music” title is hard for Harvey to wrap her head around — “My first reaction was, ‘What the hell?’” she half-jokes about her own inclusion in this series. When she thinks of the future of music, she thinks of artists like Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan: “People that stick to their guns and aren’t trying to change for a check.”
Thinking it over some more, she adds: “But for me, I’m honored. I would love to keep making music forever. So yes, I am the future of music because I want to make music forever.” A pause, then another revelation. “I actually deserve this, in that case.”
