This Valentine’s Day, Pom Pom Squad wants you to feel Red with Love.
Words by Alex Free + photos by Kayla Smith
Pom Pom Squad singer Mia Berrin talks building trust in relationships, emotional growth, and the feeling of extreme closeness on the release of their latest single.
Since the release of Ow late last year, Pom Pom Squad has taken a 180 turn in the emotional direction of their songwriting. While retaining the raw intensity and force of Ow, new single “Red with Love” deals little with feelings of hurt and social ostracization, and instead asks us to spend some time feeling crazily in love.
‘I need you closer / and you’re not even an inch away,’ Mia Berrin sings, as the song rushes headlong into a feeling like the ocean opening up, small explosions, the world being yours and whoever’s you want to share it with.
Admittedly confessional, if hyperbolic, Mia says her songwriting comes from a place of honesty, and that the new flavor of her music comes in part from the processing she did on Ow. Learning to write openly about her negative relationship patterns by talking with her bandmates, coming to rely on them for honest musical critiques and day-to-day emotional support, she says opened her up to accepting love from others.
Now with a partner who Mia says “really loves me, and I know that, and it’s something that I trust wholeheartedly,” the lead singer of Pom Pom Squad has allowed herself to explore this new kind of songwriting. And it’s given us this new kind of song: flushed with supreme and youthful snapping excitement, hanging back in a quiet, tender moment; escalating into a crescendo with a full-blown backing string arrangement straight up until the close. It’s carefree, an explosion: Mia’s voice so sweet and brash, forceful, unbridled, at the perfect emotional pitch as she yells, ‘I need you close.’
You’ve said in the past that when you’re writing a song, it’s coming from a very emotional place for you. Can you tell me about where this next single is coming from, and how it’s evolved since your last release?
MB: I grew up as an obsessive journaler. I used to write every day, and felt like if I didn’t document my day I’d lose it forever. That was a huge phobia of mine— losing time, or losing memories, or misremembering things. When I was writing Ow, depression and mental illness were a huge part of my life. I was at a particular crossroads with my illnesses where they were getting in the way of life, and living presently. When I finished writing Ow, I felt like I’d finally found a way to write about my illness in a way that felt complete, that felt right for me. And then this crazy thing happened where I started feeling happiness, and started feeling really conscious of things like love and friendship and positive relationships. And it became a huge challenge for me—I didn’t really know where to fit the good stuff into my writing practice. I think this song for me is a huge step on an emotional-growth level, and allowing myself to be happy and be present in happiness, instead of treating it like a fun dessert you get to have once a year. I feel like that’s the main difference, is coming from a totally separate emotional place.
We’re part of a political moment right now where I think a lot of people have been questioning the trust they should have in various relationships, and who they should be afraid of, and who they should be vulnerable with. From the title of the single, “Red with Love,” I was expecting more a turn toward self-love, and kind of end-of-relationship, independent statement. To hear instead that it’s really nice to be in love with somebody, and it’s nice to be borderline obsessed with somebody, that to have intense passion is wonderful and fun, can be really healthy and something to seek after was gratifying to remember.
MB: I think a lot of my songs in the past were born out of really unhealthy relationships, which I think that I, in particular, was recreating for myself. I think that you create the most comfortable version of pain that you know. And I just found myself reliving these situations over and over, and coming at things from this place of intense distrust and hurt. The benefit of all these injustices and abuses being exposed is that they’re exposed, and there’s language for them, and a way to help people around you, saying ‘I went through that, I see you going through that.’ There’s ways to protect ourselves and each other from it. One of my relationships that really did change my life was my relationship with my bandmates. Having people who had also been through trauma and also had their issues, who let me come into a room once a week and scream, and cry, and be mad and be happy and be irrational, who equal parts support me and call me out on what needs to be. Having that relationship opened a door for me emotionally to say, “Okay, it’s alright for me to feel the way that I do, and to really feel it.”
I was wondering about the return to trust, and places where you feel that reliance, and you are supported by the people around you. Do you think that establishing that trust is a product of time, giving time to your relationships, or luck?
MB: I don’t know. I have the same question of life and of myself right now. I do truly believe that there are certain things you can’t see until you’re ready to see them. I think time is a huge factor in that. This particular realization comes from equal parts time and bad experience, and also the generosity and kindness of other people. Maybe the realization that you don’t deserve all the shit that happens. Which I think is a definite time-sensitive issue. If I hadn’t made the breakthroughs that I made while I was writing Ow, I don’t think that I could’ve come to a song like this. Or it would’ve felt fake, or dishonest. I feel like you can hear dishonesty in songwriting, and I try not to do it. Not that everything has to be literal, or that everything is from my diary, but I think that if you don’t know what a line means it’s not going to translate. If you know what it means, beyond the dictionary definition, like in your body, then it’ll read.
That’s something really noteworthy about this single. The emotional intensity and emotional pitches that you reach within the song are very moving. It’s like feeling that you, the singer, are going through almost breaks through the song. There’s a line that goes ‘I need you closer and you’re not even an inch away.’ Can you talk about that extreme sensation of closeness and that you can’t even get close enough?
MB: It’s just that feeling of waking up beside a person you know more about than any other person. Like, ‘I’m excited to know more about you than I did yesterday.’ What I’ve realized from falling in love, really, is that it’s not this fairly tale, girl-meets-girl experience. It’s about meeting somebody where they are in the moment. That’s something a lot of people feel deprived of right now. I think it’s very hard to feel closeness through a screen. There are a lot of amazing possibilities online and it’s given people unprecedented access to communities, knowledge, things they’ve never had before. But for me, being on the internet and building a persona is just being alone in public. You’re not actually alone, but you’re lacking closeness. It’s a really special thing that I’ve learned about semi-recently, is feeling close to people, and allowing yourself to be all angles and dimensions of yourself in front of another person. I think that’s what that line says to me, is just that desire for human closeness that I don’t experience every day when I’m riding on the New York City Subway. The trust needed to bring something vulnerable to someone, and whether they think it’s beautiful or sucky or in need of repair, know they’ll accept you and work with you where you are.