QSC Aspiring Interview: corook on if i were a fish & new song, crumbs

Nashville-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist corook – who calls themself the leader of a frog hat-wearing queer cult – reflects on responding to internet trolls with viral song, if i were a fish, opens up about getting top surgery, and reveals the personal events that inspired their brand new song, crumbs – taken from corook’s eagerly anticipated debut album, committed to a bit.

What’s a typical week looking like for you at the moment?

I'm in Nashville right now and I'm in a very exciting time in my life. I just got top surgery, which is a big thing. It's the most joyous experience of my life thus far. I mentioned it because this is the first thing I'm doing since my surgery. So forgive me if I sound like half a human being, because I haven't really talked to many people other than my doctors for the last two weeks! 

There was so much that came before this to make sure that this happened. I'm in such a season of coming into myself musically and personally, and this was a very physical version of that. I'm really blessed and lucky to say that, and it's going to make my music even better, because I feel more me.

What have you been doing while you recover?

I've been watching Lost for the first time. It's kind of crazy. It's maybe not the best thing I could have been watching the week where my brain turned to mush… this island with a bunch of strangers [laughs]. I absolutely hate John Locke. He's just so sad. He's hard to watch. That's the only character I truly have visceral feelings about.

Who is the first artist you can remember having an impact on you?

This is kind of a funny answer, but the band Linkin Park. My dad brought home this DVD of a live performance of Linkin Park and I watched the whole DVD. I sat in front of the TV with a notepad and a pen and I took notes as to what everybody was doing. 

Meanwhile, I didn't have any musical experience. I didn't have any instruments in the house. I just had this feeling of, ‘I have to do what they're doing’. Looking back, that was a dark band for me to be feeling that way about, but also they're epic and so talented. It's just not the music I make.

Are you into any other music that might surprise people?

I listen to a lot of instrumental music, like Nils Frahm. I'm a huge fan. I got into him because my drummer is really into him. My drummer makes a lot of instrumental music, so he put him on in the tour van. We're all a bunch of music heads and the one thing we want to do on these super long drives is listen to Nils’ really delicate electronic pieces of sound. It's so calming for me, and I listen to that a lot.

Aside from Nils Frahm, what do you think will be on your Spotify wraps this year?

Probably Remi Wolf. The album that she came out with this year was so good, so funky and fun to listen to. Chappell Roan, obviously – there's got to be a couple Chappell songs if you're gay. Still Woozy is always one of my favorites. 

I think my number one listen will probably be Tennyson. He's an electronic producer. It's such intricate, detailed electronic music, my ADHD brain loves listening to it, because every time I listen to it, I hear something different.

When did you first start writing songs?

I started writing songs when I was in middle school, around seventh grade. As an adult, sometimes I get a little mad at little Corinne [corook’s real name] because I'm like, ‘You really were not thinking about anything but making songs. This is a whole job. We have a lot of work to do’. It's work that is really scary and difficult sometimes, especially as the person I am, but I like doing scary things.

Your single, if i were a fish, was co-written with your partner Olivia Barton as a spontaneous response to internet hate. Tell us about this and how you wrote it in just 10 minutes.

We really did write it so quickly. I was getting a bunch of hate comments on the internet for the first time and it really hurt my feelings to think that somebody could hate somebody that was just trying their best. I'm such a sensitive person, and I brought it to my partner. At the time, I was really coming into the fact that I was non binary, so I was even more sensitive. 

I was just asking her, ‘Why? Why me? Why am I so different? I hate that I'm so different. I'm so weird’. She was like, ‘I love that you're weird. It's the coolest thing about you. Let's write a song about how you're weird’. 

I really needed that joyful turnaround. Every time I'm sad, especially about the fact that I'm different, I just want to sing and I want to pick up an instrument. It doesn't even matter what I sing. At that time, it felt really important to say something while singing. She was like, ‘What's the weirdest idea that you have for a song?’ I said I’d been thinking about this… I feel like if I were a fish, people would like me more. She was like, ‘That's so fucking weird. That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard. But let's absolutely do it’. 

If I can be totally honest with you, I was thinking about how – and I hate to call out a group of people! – but straight white men that go fishing a lot will hold up this dangly weird-looking thing so proudly, and they're cheesing about this weird thing that they just pulled out of the ocean. I'm like, ‘How am I more weird to them than that fish?’ It doesn't make any sense to me. That's how that song came to be.

You posted it to TikTok where it instantly received an outpouring of love and support, earning 19.5M views, 2.9M likes and 388K shares and counting... When did you start to realise it was going viral?

I posted it on Instagram and it got a fair amount of attention. I didn't post it on TikTok because I was mad at Tiktok. I was like, ‘You just put me in a position of really questioning myself, and I don't want to be exposed to that, so I'm going to keep this song away from you’. 

A week later, my manager texted me and said, ‘Hey, we need a piece of content for TikTok. Do you mind if I post this video?’ I was like, ‘Sure, whatever’. I was actually on stage – on a tour opening for Maddie Zahm.

I was in Los Angeles, and by the time I got off stage, my manager was like, ‘I posted this video an hour ago and it has a million views’. I was like, ‘Holy shit!’. It was obviously a moment where people were really connecting to this song where I was talking about something really special to me.

It’s incredible that this song about being ‘weird’ went viral. Tell me about then teaming up with Barton to turn this song into an illustrated picture book?

It still really hasn't hit me yet that there are generations below me that are going to be able to have this message. I could have really used this when I was younger. To have it become a book showed me how much bigger it was than me and my song. It's a whole movement of people that want a voice that they're allowed to exist, and I'm really happy I get to be a part of that.

What kind of response have you had from the song and book?

The coolest thing about being corook is that I have fans that are six years old. I have fans that are 30 years old, and I have fans that are in their 60s. I love that. I think that if I were a fish and it becoming a book has widened my fan base. It's not just like I make TikTok music for Gen Z and millennials, it reaches far on each side. 

That has been really special because I personally do a lot of inner child work, and seeing that full circle within my crowd and my audience each night, or just online, there's something really healing about that. People have been so kind about the book, and obviously people have also been mean about the book and about the song because of what it is preaching. I think that just comes with the territory. 

Anybody that's online right now that is like me, it requires a lot of bravery to be there. I love thinking about my people, and that's what I think about whenever I post and whenever I talk about this book.

Your new single, crumbs is a contemplative and deeply personal song that was written as a reflection on your inner critic and the critical parent from whom you inherited that voice. What were you thinking about when you wrote this?

I don't think I understood the importance of this song until at least a year after I wrote it. I wrote it with somebody I had just met. His name's Jake Sinclair, and we spent the day hanging out, and I wasn't even sure we'd get a song. When we wrote this, it felt almost like I didn't write it. I feel a lot of songwriters can relate to that feeling of sometimes you're really in it and you're really thinking about each line, and sometimes it just comes down from somewhere, and it's coming out of your mouth and you don't totally know what it means. 

I think that's because it was so personal. I couldn't really connect to how vulnerable I was being because it was kind of scary. It's about my really difficult relationship with my dad. I don't like to share too much about it, because I think the song says a lot about it, and I wanted to be centered within our relationship at any point. Whenever I talk about the song, I try to centre myself. I'm really proud of myself for getting the words out and also being brave enough to say it to everyone on the planet that wants to listen.

Your debut album, committed to a bit, is due everywhere on Friday, February 7, 2025. What can you reveal about it at this point…?

I had so much fun making this album. I got to lean into my creative process with this album, especially with the concept of it being ‘committed to a bit’. Music is so much fun to me, and those are the two things that I really think about when I'm making songs: Am I being honest? Am I having fun? Sometimes it leans one way or the other, and sometimes it's both, but I feel like this album, I really got to showcase both of those things so fully. 

Some of my favourite songs I've ever made are on this album, a couple of which have already come out, including crumbs and blankets, which is probably one of my favorites. It’s about falling in love with my girlfriend; it's queer, it's fun, it's honest. You're gonna laugh, you're gonna cry.

You just announced your headline tour for 2025. How are you feeling about it at the moment?

It's across the US and I'm hitting so many places starting in the beginning of March. Shows are so much fun. I get to be so me. Opening for somebody is a very cool opportunity and you’re constantly trying to win somebody over, and there's a fun game in that. But headlining is just like coming home. I'm really excited.

Given what you’ve explained about your journey and being completely unashamedly yourself through yourself and your music, what does the phrase Play out Loud mean to you?

I personally would think about everything that is extremely difficult to say out loud, let alone to sing out loud, whether that be about me being non binary, or my difficult relationship with certain family members, bullying online, or just the joy that I have throughout all of that – and that can even be vulnerable and scary to say out loud. Playing out loud means saying the scary part to everyone in the whole world.