The World is my Oyster: A Conversation With KiNG MALA
“I think ‘cunt noir’ and ‘horror pop,’ I would call it,” KiNG MALA comments about her musical style and sound. Areli Castro, better known as KiNG MALA, is a rising alt-pop star with hits like the menacingly dark and catchy “cult leader,” the brightly upbeat and groovy “dirty dishes,” and the ambitiously fun and infectious “she calls me daddy,” which became a viral sensation. If you are looking for a new pop star to obsess over, then KiNG MALA is for you.
“I think this album is what I have wanted to make my whole life, and it means a lot to me that we were able to do it, and I’m so unbelievably proud of it,” KiNG MALA says about her debut album, And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing, which is set to drop on May 2nd. “It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a project. I think it’s really opened up the world for me as a creative, as a woman, and as a person.”
Creating an Alter Ego
KiNG MALA is an alter ego that Castro steps into while creating music to make herself feel a bit more comfortable and confident. “I think as a person, on a personal level, I’m quite anxious, I’m a bit shy, I’m quite dorky, so I wanted to create a character that felt like I could step into the most confident version of myself, especially as a performer,” she says. “Performing live is probably the most terrifying part of it all for me. I knew I’d have to create a character I’d embody in order to give my best performance and not freak out.” KiNG MALA and Areli Castro are two entirely different people as she adds, “My value as a person is not necessarily directly tied to this project. KiNG MALA is someone I step into to make this art, and then Areli is like who I am day to day. I have my sister, dog, and parents; that’s me. And KiNG MALA; she’s her own bitch!”
A New Writing Style
For And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing, KiNG MALA and her team went into it with a very intentional and specific mindset. “We spent a lot of time creating the narrative and the concept for the record before we even wrote any of the music,” she says. “For this album, we sort of got our ‘freakiest friends,’ and we were like, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ We let ourselves explore all the different inspirations we had for the record. But we were very intentional with the stories.” This approach is quite different from before as she continues, “Usually, I would just walk in and be like, ‘This is how I’m feeling today. This is what I’m thinking. This is my inspiration.’ For this record, it was sort of a little more psychotically planned.”
A pivotal change for the record is the writing style. “Writing in a more narrative way and creating characters and this story made me realize that is what I’m most comfortable doing as an artist,” states KiNG MALA. “Writing from personal perspective is very cathartic, like it feels very healing to write about experiences, but writing a more narrative character-based project is just so exciting. It sort of feels like ‘the world is my oyster.’ I can do anything, and I can create any type of story.”
“I also think there’s a lot of ways to use the art that inspires you a lot more when you create a narrative character-based project. We used a lot of movies, art, screenplays, books, and poetry to inspire this record and sort of inspire our character development. It’s really exciting to dive into world-building and to create a sort of universe that has never existed before. That’s what I love so much about that sort of writing. But I think writing from a personal perspective is equally as important, and also incredibly relatable and healing.”
Creating a Memorable Chorus
Creating a charmingly catchy and highly memorable chorus that will stay with listeners long after the song is over is something that most artists, especially pop artists, try to capture. “It has to be the best part of the song but also the most simplistic, which I think is a difficult balance strike,” says KiNG MALA. “I think I’m just really drawn to choruses that feel like you’ve heard them before, but you haven’t, if that makes any sense. There’s a certain element of nostalgia that I think a great chorus has. Also, for me, that’s where I turn to the other people in the room, and I’m like, ‘OK. Let me know when I find it.’ I just keep singing melodies, and keep trying stuff out until the whole room is like, ‘That’s it!’ I feel like when you hear the chorus everyone knows it, like it’s very objective.”
The Creative Process of “GØD”
The first single released to promote And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing was “GØD.” “We actually wrote the chorus for this song pretty early on in the album process, and it was just a chorus for months and months and months,” exclaims KiNG MALA. “We knew it was gonna be an important song just because that chorus felt so special.”
Something that really stands out from “GØD” is the beautiful intro. “We knew we wanted this one to have a lot of pop elements and inspiration, but pop nowadays doesn’t really have a lot of intro, but with this song in particular, it just felt right to build up all of the instrumentation one by one,” exclaims KiNG MALA. “We also did do a full live choir of a bunch of my friends, and I just wanted it to just feel enormous and grandiose—It feels very spiritual to build out an intro like that. It feels like a hymn almost with the vocals sort of coming in and out and creating a very angelic landscape.”
Huge Inspirations for the Album
Horror is a huge inspiration for And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing. One film in particular that greatly influenced KiNG MALA was Robert Eggers’ The Witch. “That’s my favorite movie of all time,” she comments. “It is a big inspiration for the entire record. I think this record explores a lot of themes of desire, like feminine desire, desire for power, and the consequences of desire, and The Witch is like a perfect microscope or microcosm of female desire. It’s a perfect metaphor for female desire.”
Sci-fi was also a huge and somewhat unexpected influence. “There’s a lot more sci-fi inspiration than I was expecting for this record just ‘cause one of my producers is a big, big sci-fi person,” laughs KiNG MALA. “I read this book Hyperion (by Dan Simmons)—I was reading it a lot during the writing of the album. It was a big inspiration. I feel like you can make things scary that are unexpected in sci-fi, which is fun.”
Another huge inspiration in terms of the visuals was Renaissance paintings. “I think we just love the idea of creating tableaus, like creating these sort of iconic poses and images and stills within the art,” comments KiNG MALA. “Each visual for each song on the record, the goal is for each of them to be a sort of tableau and mimic that Renaissance painting of like a still of a very chaotic moment that sort of captures a lot of emotion.”
Playing With the Idea of Gender
And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing sees KiNG MALA exploring lots with the idea of gender. “I always found it very empowering to play with masculine silhouettes and performances throughout this project,” she comments. “(In) this entire album, we take a lot of traditionally masculine characters and turn them into hyper-feminine versions of themselves, which I think is really fun. There’s something particularly confident and self-assured about a masculine presentation in our society, if that makes sense. Like the CEO, traditionally he’s in a suit, is tall, reserved but commanding a lot of power, but using all of those elements for a very feminine project. There’s a lot of exploration of the feminine experience in the music and lyricism of this album itself. I just love the balance of it feeling very much masculine in the visuals but exploring a lot of femininity in the music and lyrics.”
Content Creation and Music Creation
To have a big following or be successful in music, most artists nowadays have to simultaneously juggle being an artist and a content creator on social media platforms such as Instagram or TikTok. “It does feel like this is the first time in music history that content creation is almost as important as music creation, and I don’t necessarily believe they are equally as important, but it does feel like, as an independent artist, you do have to get creative with the way that you promote and try to reach an audience,” reflects KiNG MALA. “It certainly is exhausting, but I like to compartmentalize it. Part of the year, I get to be my artist and writer self, be in my bag, and making the music. Then, part of the year, I’m a content creator, making all of the visuals, promoting, tapping into what my audience is responding to online, and trying to find a home for the art that I’ve made. Then, part of the year, I’m touring that art and finding a live audience for it. I think being able to see it as segments of one larger process has made it a lot easier.”
Concluding Comments
Along with And You Who Drowned In The Grief Of A Golden Thing, KiNG MALA has plenty of exciting news for fans. “We have a lot of really special things that are going to be coming out with it,” she smiles. “A lot of really incredible visuals, art, merch, and vinyl. We’re working on a lot of really fun stuff. This record is sort of the biggest piece of the puzzle.”
Follow KiNG MALA on Facebook, Instagram, and X (Twitter) to keep up to date with announcements.
Photo Credit: Alexandre Souêtre
