Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, a.k.a CMAT, is witty, razor-sharp, and has the kind of warmth that makes you want to befriend her immediately. She embodies the soul of an artist, and lacks the pretense of a popstar– though she makes up for it with facetious showmanship. It’s easy to see why audiences connect so deeply to her music– like her, it’s impassioned and undeniably sincere. During our zoom, she’s curiously positioned between cutouts of Anna Nicole Smith and the Mona Lisa (memorabilia from her last tour), an appropriately vague metaphor for her diverse taste and artistic positionality. On the verge of the release of her sophomore album, CrazyMad, For Me, we spoke about humor, time-travel, and Meat Loaf– amongst other things.
You’re often classified as the funny pop girl. How do you feel about that tag?
I think this is a thing that people get wrong about me sometimes. I co-write music and there are a lot of people who come to me and they’ll be like Let’s do something funny about breaking up in a McDonalds! And I’m like, Sure, if there’s a reason for that! I write from a very personal place. The reason there’s humor in it is because I write in my colloquial voice, which– when you’re from a small village in Ireland– is called being a gas-cunt. I’m packaging up something really deep and dark and hard to access and making it accessible for normal people. I wrote a song called I Hate Who I Am When I’m Horny– people cheat on their partners and talk about that, but no one ever talks about I’m in love with this person, but I absolutely have no sexual attraction to them anymore, and I’m attracted to other people, and I hate myself for it! I want to talk about laser-focused uncomfortable shit like that; but, like, in a bop!
What’s it like to share those vulnerable parts of yourself with the world?
I like to underplay it and be like it’s super cathartic and it’s good for you and it’s been an emotional journey– but I went fucking nuts! It wasn’t the writing that was making me crazy. It was more Oh my god my friends and family– and worse– my ex-friends and ex-boyfriends are going to be able to see this shit and everyone’s going to know that I’m horny! But then I calmed down, made myself stand my pussy up, and be a brave bitch.
You described this album as being about relationships, regrets, and time travel. What does that mean?
The jumping-off point for this album was a relationship that ended years ago. Trauma keeps you in a different reality than the one that is currently happening– and healing is non-linear. It’s weird, embarrassing, and shameful that I still feel upset about a relationship that ended six years ago. As long as I’m stuck in it, I’ll always be time-traveling. Initially, I wanted it to be a proper concept album with this whole narrative where I’m an old woman trying to travel to the past to stop myself from entering a relationship– but I end up stuck in a time desert, and then I crashland in Paris in the 1890s and just decide to have fun. I worked for a long time on these interludes, but I realized the album is too good to put interludes in. As a result, it was more autobiographical– but time travel, mythology, and all of the pop culture references helped create this magical realism.
How would you describe the album in pop culture terms?
If the first album was Dallas, you know, really camp and big hair and bitches slapping each other and being murdered, this one is Twin Peaks– more mysterious, and red. This album goes to much darker-weirder places. The red velvet curtains are in there somewhere.
What were some musical references?
When I went in to record these songs with my producer Mathias I was like, I want to make Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf– for girls. That was a big reference– especially with my vocals. His voice is the best thing you’ll ever hear in your life. I made my first record before I ever played live, and people would say that I sounded better live than I did on that record– so I tried to bring that in on this record. I learned to sing better, louder, and more intensely. I told my producer There is to be no autotuning of the vocals on this record! … Tinashe was also an influence. I wanted it to be mixed the way her stuff is mixed. She’s done stuff that I’ve never heard anyone do before! Like 333 and Song For You – the two records she’s made since she came off a major label– those records are like the bridge between Beyoncé and Bjork! She has what other bitches want. She’s like the R&B-pop Kate Bush!
I noticed that places and spaces– wanting to leave, stay, or return– are a recurring theme in this album.
I have a habit of astral-projecting myself into another physical location when I’m not happy with something. I’m grateful for being from a small village in Ireland because it’s given me a very different perspective on art and culture. We were very close to farmland with cows, but we were also about a 40-minute drive from the city center– so city life was within grasp. I aggressively projected myself into that as a teenager– I wanted desperately to not be from Dunboyne in Countee Meath. I wanted to be like from New York! Or LA! I like the artistic implication of transporting yourself into someplace else and how that changes everything.
Recently, there’s been this surge in Irish content in global pop culture– How do you make sense of this as an Irish artist who is a part of this moment?
Ireland was only liberated in 1921– and we’ve still got the six counties that are occupied– so we’ve only been establishing with full ferocity what the Irish identity is for about a hundred years. Ireland has always really really trying to be like it’s God, which is America. Since the famine, people have emigrated to America– they were this free country with money and enterprise– and they kicked the Brits out. We constantly keep recycling this history of striving for this huge American Dream and failing to get it. Then in the early 2000s, we experienced something called the Celtic Tiger, where a lot of American money came to Ireland and spread around the country. All of a sudden we had this inflation of wealth, and everyone suddenly became wealthy because there’s loads of money in property. Everybody started building and buying houses and getting mortgages because that is what American people were doing. Then, in 2008, the crash happened– and there was an absolute epidemic of suicide associated with people losing all of their money. This happened in every corner of the country. So I think what we’re dealing with, in terms of the creative wave, is that we’re dealing with a generation of people who’ve suffered this ambient traumatization, that they’re reckoning with— At least I know that’s what I’m doing.
Finally, what advice would you have for young, aspiring creatives who are trying to find their way?
When I moved back home, I shaped my whole life around the service of making music. You’ve got to make as much music as possible, and then wack it out on the internet! Even if it’s crusty and rusty, and not fully formed. You don’t learn what a song is until after people have heard it. You can be shit when you start! It’s fine– you’ve got to build it up! You gotta work through it.