Bartees Strange is known for merging pop songwriting with country swagger, rock and roll grit, and self-assured hip-hop. His influences are as eclectic as his background growing up in rural America as a queer Black man — an experience that taught him how to face fears. His new album, Horror, channels terror into newfound confidence and genre-bending sonic pastiche.
Strange tells KCRW that horror is always on his mind. He was writing tons of songs, not knowing which would be on the album, then noticed three or four that felt super personal about things he normally wouldn’t discuss. That scared him, he admits.
“I kept playing around with this idea of what are things I'm afraid of, and afraid to talk about, and afraid to address within myself that might be things I could express through a song that I might not be able to express to people who even know me? And that's what the record became — a way for me to start a longer process of facing things that I still deal with to this day.”
Part of his fear comes from his upbringing in Mustang, a small, rural, and conservative town in central Oklahoma. His family — a military dad and artist mom — was among the few Black ones there.
“My parents grew up in the South, and they grew up with all of the nightmares of the South too. … They told us all the things they heard and all the things they went through. … It made me a very hyper-aware oldest sibling and a person that had to grow up pretty fast. And I was generally really afraid. And so over the years, I learned all these little coping mechanisms, from wearing a mask, to code-switching, to really never being the fullest version of yourself. … That's what the record is addressing. It's like you move through life, and you think you're doing it the right way, and then you realize I'm upside down and inside out. I need to get back to what I actually am, and you do that through facing these horrors that are inside of you.”
Strange says he developed a familial relationship with fear, finding that the emotion could bring a lot of fun and learning. He particularly enjoyed watching horror films from foreign countries to discover what other cultures were afraid of. “It's … a fun medium to explore a range of emotions. I fell in love with it. … That's all I watch — horror stuff.”
He even drew inspiration from horror movie posters for the album art. “I love big, dramatic characters for my album cover. I was going into this whole album thinking I wanted to create this larger-than-life version of myself. … If I can create something that's like Blade or Oz or the wizard, someone that is powerful and seems to be on a higher plane, it'll be easier for me to talk.”
The song “Loop Defenders” is about debating a lover's dad on politics and policing. Strange sings that he’s made to feel like a demon “up on the ceiling,” a reference to the horror film Hereditary.
He explains that the song is about people who hold power and how they make him feel. “The first verse is about high school, dating white girls … and growing up, you're the only Black guy in town, you play football, everyone likes you until you have an idea that they don't agree with. … You learn that really young, just how quickly people's perceptions of you will change if you don't do what they want you to do. … That was something that shaped me as I got older. … I lost myself and … had to re-find myself.”
The second verse, he says, is about telling a reputable music label representative how much money he needed, only to be asked, “You're going to spend it on rims? Where are you going to spend it on?” Strange continues, “I was like, ‘No, I need to survive, and I need therapy, I need to pay my rent. I'm just a person.’ And so ‘Loop Defenders,’ I was thinking of it as … a gatekeeper, a power broker, someone that has the keys.”
As for Strange’s musical influences, they range from indie rock, punk, and hip-hop — plus artists his dad loved like Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, and Parliament Funkadelic. Strange says this eclectic blend is more cohesive than some folks realize.
“For listeners, they see the divides, mostly racial, in these artists. And they assume that there's no connection. … But in reality, it's so extremely connected. So with my record, I really love just showing people that all this is the same.”
In the track “Hit It, Quit It,” Strange merges a funky verse with a cinematic rock chorus. It’s an example of the seamless genre-pivoting that happens a lot on the album, something that comes naturally for Strange.
“ I don't ever go into the song thinking I'm gonna have an Anderson Paak verse and a Quincy Jones chorus and then do a hardcore outro. I'm normally just like, what's the sickest thing I could do? How do I make this chorus cool? … Also, I was trying to reference Funkadelic and Parliament, and big guitars, and big Black rock bands.”
“Backseat Banton” is the final track on the album, in which Strange describes how fear has transformed him. He says now that he’s getting older, he realizes that there is solidarity in fear. “There are things we're all afraid of, and a lot of them are similar things. And I think that when people realize that about each other, it can … encourage people to move through life together and not feel so alone.”