Lucky Break’s face appears on my phone screen. Her pink hair and chunky aviator glasses are something reminiscent of an earthy punkrocker. Her music is much the same.
When I met Lucky Break, we were both wearing diapers. We are the daughters of East Village artists, and so naturally the course of our lives would take shape in a similar form. Though she moved to California with her family when she was about eight years old, we’ve always kept in touch.
“I can’t even say I’m from New York anymore,” she tells me, “I feel like such a Bay Area girl.”
Having worked on music in some capacity for her entire life, her EP Biggest Thing is the singer-songwriter’s most recent project, and the first released under the Lucky Break moniker. It speaks to her transition between college and first job-hood.
“I had one foot in each world: half in college, half in LA,” she says. The EP captures these moments in time.
Graduating from UC Berkley in 2023, Lucky Break found community in the art scenes which allowed her to regularly create and perform music within those spaces. Red Balloon talks about what those last few months of freedom felt like.
“Red Balloon I wrote in Berkley in senior year of college. There were three more months before school ended, and I wrote it in one afternoon. That song was about wanting to be free from expectations and going out and making it on my own, and wanting to stay a kid forever, having that childlike wonder forever” she explains.
Burning String describes the initial shock that comes after college graduation. Lucky Break speaks directly to the young women who feel like they aren’t doing enough, even if they’re doing everything.
“Every young woman has felt like she’s wanted to save the world and be a martyr for a cause. Every sixteen year old girl is Joan of Arc, and wants to create a better world. And that’s why so many people feel burnt out and sad and terrible about ourselves.”
Honeysuckle came out of those first experiences in adulthood.
“I wrote Honeysuckle a few months into my first job out of college, which was a highly competitive and male dominated space,” she says of the single. “People were expected to work 60-70 hour weeks, and within my first month at the job I woke up one morning and couldn’t get out of bed. My nervous system was really affected by that.”
The song itself commands a wistful smile upon listening; it is somber, yet entirely sweet. Spiritual in nature, Lucky Break presents a message of love, hope, and abundance. Writing a song with these themes was the reaction to existing in an environment that presented the opposite.
“I did a guided meditation on YouTube that said to imagine your heart as a flower. I couldn’t really think of it. But then I got a memory of being at camp and sucking on the petals and sugars in honeysuckles. My heart is a honeysuckle.”
This image of existing as a part of nature comes through the song beyond the individual honeysuckle heart. Lucky Break describes a place where humans move through the natural world as spiritual beings beyond the confines of social constructed systems and structures.
“There is a connection to the Earth and an abundance of sweetness. There’s an idea of scarcity, that if you’re not the best you’re never going to be anything, and all of these capitalist mythologies that keep us trapped and scared. If you look around, there’s all this beauty and abundance that is there for you. The sun is this abundant source of energy that we just have.”
I ask if Lucky Break believes her music to be political in any sense of the word. She thinks for a moment.
“I’m a result of the systems around me, so of course any art I produce is going to be in relation to these things. All art is political if you look at it long enough. I definitely have a motivation to make the world a better place through my music.”
If Honeysuckle is about existing as a spiritual body in a political world, One Way To Be is about dealing with the realities of it.
“Honeysuckle and One Way To Be are opposite sides of the same coin. Honeysuckle is more spiritual. One Way To Be is about multiple truths at the same time. We have function in the world, and have physical world responsibilities, which can often be very degrading because we have to live in this system which is not based in love or human value. It’s based in profit, so there has to be a sense of humor and a sense of anger based around that so we can continue fighting for a world where those systems don’t create pain and violence.”
She continues, “My favorite writers and artists were people who directly spoke to their communities and saw the power that art has politically. Art is a way to create community. Music particularly makes people feel, and that is very political in and of itself.”
Lucky Break returns to the idea of creating community several times throughout our conversation. I ask why.
“I emphasize community so much because I’m fascinated by individualist culture, and what individualism does to serve the economic and social structures we have. Individualism is the core of all really intense loneliness and unhappiness. In order to feel like an individual with a purpose you have to have a community to contribute to” she says.
For Lucky Break, performing her music and the creation of community go hand in hand.
“All of the songs on the EP were performed live many times before I ever recorded them. Performing is a way that I feel connected to other people. Expressing myself through music is me trying to create that connection. Performing it and feeling it in real time is special.”
Creating safe spaces for young people to exist is a top priority. She references Lucky Break not as herself, or another person, but more as an idea or a community in itself.
“Lucky Break is the place where you can experiment and try to access parts of yourself that you don’t in your everyday. Dream up and imagine what you want.”
Dream on; you could be a star in a little boy suit.
Comments