“The best compliment I have ever received about my music is when someone tells me “I just sat there and brooded about my ex-boyfriend” and I’m like “Same!” Because that’s how the song got made”
(The artist goes by the pronouns she/they, primarily “she” and this piece will be alternating between the two)
Unruly thick brown curls, radiant smile, and eyes framed with a sharp wing — “Sharp enough to kill a man,” claims Sweaty Lamarr, at the start of our Zoom interview. “It’s literally become part of my personality, I’m unrecognizable without it.” A New Jersey license-plate with the name TARA on it looms in the background, referring to Lamarr’s name, Tara Giancaspro.
The stage name came from a need to separate professional life from music pursuit.
“I make a lot of dick jokes in my songs and those don’t need to be shared with my LinkedIn connections, now do they?” she told Funk in the Trunk back in 2021. “I’m also a giant idiot and I thought a pun would work well. I love the dichotomy of Hedy Lamarr, who inspired my artist name.”
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress, who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communication systems.
Sweaty Lamarr began writing music in March 2020, having started off initially as a creative fiction writer. Although not a guitar virtuoso, as they so comically described themselves, the artist simultaneously writes their lyrics along with the vocal melodies.
“I can literally hear the way [the lyrics] will be sung, and here’s the hot goss for you, I then get my much more talented friends to play the guitar, and we then sing the song to a click.”
And that is exactly how her latest single, Mysteries got recorded — a beautiful ballad put together pretty much at the last minute. Once the lyrics began to flow, and the song took form in her head, Sweaty Lamarr texted Jacob Blizard, guitarist for acclaimed singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus, pleading with him to help out with a quick recording session. The duo met up, contacted Sweaty Lamarr’s producer Sam Roller of Lovegrove Studios, and the song was recorded in Roller’s New York apartment.
“What’s hilarious is that I had horrible sinusitis for like two days before recording,” chuckles Sweaty Lamarr, “so we had to wait for my stuffy nose to get better, and immediately got to recording. The guitar part was written within an hour, and then poof! It all fell into place.”
Two life-altering events happened in the artist’s life to lead to the song.
Sweaty Lamarr’s grandmother passed on Valentine’s Day of 2021, and a former flame made her feel safe, and hopeful again after a few disappointing experiences. Weaving them together led to her realising that being set in one’s beliefs is not a healthy way to go about life — nor the right way.
“I have been a hardcore atheist since I was 15,” she says. “But when [my grandma] died, I panicked thinking ‘Wait, so am I never going to talk to her again? But what if I feel her?”
And indeed, the artist confesses to feeling a sense of warmth the first few months following her grandmother’s passing.
“And it got me thinking, I can either be so right and dig my heels in what I thought my world view was, and what I thought the truth was,” they say, “or I can say you know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s okay for me not to be the smartest person in the room.”
The artist exploring the theme of mysteries also came after a short, but an impactful relationship that led them to have hope in love again.
“I was so positive that I could never find love again, and I was heartbroken at the time,” they say, “I had ran out of hope. But then, I met this person, and I find out that I was also wrong about [love] as well. Although the relationship was short, it was impactful for that reason. It led me to be hopeful again.”
And that is a feeling the artist wants to stir up in her listeners — especially given the unprecedented times we are currently living in. “We’re losing hope,” she says, “but we gotta hope that we’re wrong.”
Mysteries is a beautiful ballad conveying exactly that — the lyrics evocative of what it’s like to be proven wrong by life. Just when you think you have it all figured out, it throws you curve balls, confuses you, and makes you realise that you don’t know everything — and that is, to a certain extent, very reassuring. And that is something I believe we can all relate to — which is all Sweaty Lamarr can ask for.
“Whenever somebody tells me that they related to something that I wrote or thought about, first thing I tell them is “please get a therapist,” she jokes. “Second is ‘I’m so happy I’m not alone in this.’ It’s a beautiful thing to feel seen and to make people feel seen — and the second part is my favourite in all of it to be honest.”
An upcoming EP is in the works for the artist, with a release date targeting mid-April. So make sure to stream Mysteries, and to follow Sweaty Lamarr on their socials for updates on new music and more!
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