QSC Aspiring Interview: Genevieve Stokes on With A Lightning Strike

Since teasing her single, Mean Guy, online, Genevieve Stokes’ fans let the alt-pop singer-songwriter and pianist know that they were more than ready to get hurt by her music again. The teaser swiftly racked up over 6.3 million views, and the comments from fans eager to hear the track in its entirety ranged from, “​​Ready to be utterly destroyed by this song,” to, “I’m staying alive just for this to drop,”. Stokes reads them all.

“They're really funny,” she says from her home in Maine, a few weeks before her debut album, With A Lightning Strike, releases. “I mean, some of them are kind of concerning, but I think it's intended to be a joke,” she smiles. 

“They're passionate! It's really sweet and it's so funny. It's always random; that song wasn't even finished and I put up a verse that was literally recorded on my phone, and that's the thing that does well? But I love that, and I love that song. It's my most recent song I've written and so I'm happy people are liking it.”

Stokes first taught herself piano at the age of eight. Spending her teen years developing her own unique sound, she was inspired by iconic female musicians like Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor and, encouraged by her father, would perform at open mic nights aged just nine years old.

“My dad was my biggest fan growing up,” she beams. “He would bring me to any open mic and post my songs on YouTube. They weren't good, but he saw something in me and I was so excited to share what I had to say at that age. Regina Spektor was my first big inspiration. I remember in those early recordings and open mics, I'm pretending to have a Russian accent, because I was so obsessed with her that I mimicked everything that she did.”

Stokes initially attracted attention for her intimate yet lush approach to alternative pop, amassing over 7M streams all before releasing her angsty, nostalgic 2021 EP, Swimming Lessons, bolstered by standout tracks, Surface Tension, Parking Lot, and Running Away. 

Recorded in a cabin just a stone’s throw from the 23-year-old artist’s childhood home, the critically acclaimed project went on to earn over 38M streams worldwide, which was followed by EP, Catching Rabbits, whose lead single, Habits, went viral on TikTok.

“I was actually really anxious about it,” she admits of the moment she realised the song was going viral online. “I was really excited, and I had been wanting a moment like that, but I was also mentally in a really weird space,” she considers. 

“There was a lot of stuff in my personal life that wasn't great, so it was a weird juxtaposition of extreme excitement and feeling really sad and confused. I kind of wish I dealt with it better, because I just wanted to disappear, but I love that song. I'm really happy that so many people got to hear it and still listen to it.”

Stokes’ eagerly awaited debut album, With A Lightning Strike, is available now via Atlantic Records. Stokes shares that she spent over a year writing songs in her parents garage and recording out of airbnbs with her close friends.

“With a Lightning Strike represents so many experiences and phases of my life, and it's almost painfully personal at times,” she discloses. “For the first time in my career, my sound and vision is entirely clear and true to me. I wanted it to feel really cinematic and extreme. I love when songs are really intense and vibrant in their own ways. Each song was an experiment to see how far I could go in each direction and to really lean into whatever the meaning or the feeling of the song was.”

Stokes shares that she also took inspiration for the album from her favourite Tarot card: The Tower, which is associated with sudden, disruptive revelation and potentially destructive change.

“It's all about upheaval. It's a very scary card because it usually represents a traumatic event that changes your perspective on reality,” she nods, “but it’s also a super transformative card. It's visually beautiful and I'm very drawn to it, so I wanted to create my own version of the Tower card, but to convey Maine. So the tower is a lighthouse, and there's lightning in the distance. I wanted to capture that moody, dark, cinematic world, while still grounding it in Maine.”

Co-produced by longtime collaborator Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Paul McCartney), With A Lightning Strike is a darker take on Stokes’ search for childhood whimsy than her previous releases, with the Portland, Maine native returning to her hometown to capture the vibrancy she had been seeking. 

When she wasn’t in L.A. with Berg, Stokes worked on much of the album with her friends on the East Coast, like drummer Fiona Stocks-Lyons and her music director Pete Cafarella, who played synth and bass on the album. The first single from the album was euphoric earworm, Dreamer, which Stokes shares captures the feeling of summer ending.

“I was reflecting on how August kind of feels like a Sunday afternoon,” she says. “There's a sadness to it, but it's also such a beautiful time of year. I wanted to write something kind of upbeat, but also a little sad. It's actually one of the most upbeat songs I've ever written,” she insists. “It's a very fun song, but the lyrics are still kind of depressing,” she shrugs.

In fact, Stokes is fully aware that her wheelhouse is more confined to sad girl bangers, although she insists she’s not a melancholy person. “I write a lot of dark music and things that are very heavy,” she agrees, “so in my free time, I listen to a lot of lighter rap music and things that feel very different and refreshing. When I'm writing on piano, I gravitate towards more emotional chords; I don't really gravitate towards making happier, upbeat music. I do enjoy it, but it doesn't feel as authentic to me. 

"Music has always been a way of expressing emotions for me, or dealing with things that I'm struggling with, so it's more natural to write sad music or to write things that strike a nerve, you know? But I love listening to music that's happy and upbeat. I just can't write it,” she laughs.

Dreamer was followed by the hauntingly spare single, God, which Stokes describes as the “hangover of emotions when you accept the meaninglessness of life,”. She acknowledges that it sounds fairly melodramatic.

“It sounds so much more intense than in my mind!” she laughs. “This song was written when a lot of horrible things were happening in my personal life and I was feeling really lost and wondering if life had any meaning…. but at the same time, there's a hopefulness to the chords. I created this piano melody that feels very positive to me and there's this whimsy to the song that, even though I'm saying negative things, I'm still addressing God as if it's a real thing. 

"Even though I'm denying the feeling of purpose, I'm still acknowledging that there is some inherent awareness and purpose to life because we're experiencing it. I wrote it to comfort myself through feeling alone and in that process, I realised that I created my own purpose, and that the meaninglessness of my life was kind of beautiful in a way. It's a sad song, but it also is very positive, to me. 

"I also wanted it to feel childlike in the approach, because at the core of it, we've been asking those questions since childhood, and it never really changes. I wanted the song to feel very simplistic and straight to the point, because that's just how it is. That's how life feels, and those childlike questions never really leave us.”

The album’s lead track is Desert Eagle, a track name shared with a song from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, although, with an entirely different meaning, she points out. “I did know that we shared a song name,” she nods. “It's very cool. I feel honoured. They're very different songs. I just kept singing [desert eagle] when I was writing the song. I just liked the way that it sounded, honestly. 

"I was thinking of a bird circling and a desolate field or a desert, and the desert being empty and alone…God, I sound so morbid!” she laughs again. “This is the one outlet that I use to be very sad! I just liked the image of a desert eagle. And it's not about the gun,” she clarifies.

On her favourite track from With A Lightning Strike, she takes a moment to consider: “I cycle through a few different ones, but right now, Lost Forever Now is one of my favourites. And Amusing, which comes out pretty soon.”

With a few viral songs already under her belt, Stokes shares that she avoids thinking about the numbers in terms of what is viewed as a success or a hit song. “I never let myself think about that with the numbers,” she admits. 

“I probably should care, because I'm signed to a label, but that doesn't really affect me. Also, it doesn't mean anything here,” she adds. “I live in Maine and I live at my parents house and I literally hang out with my siblings and my three friends. I'm really grateful for it, but it doesn't affect my daily life in any way. I mean, that's not true entirely,” she corrects herself, “because I get to go on tour and I get to make music for a living and I feel very grateful, but I just don't think about it really. It's so abstract right now, but I'm sure it'll feel more real in the future when I'm on tour…” she trails off. 

“I remember my monthly listeners went from 300,000 to 3 million, and I was like, ‘Oh my God’. It brought in a lot of new listeners and it broadened who's listening to my music a lot. it was casting a really large net and created a solid fan base of people for me. This past year has been such a strange time. I don't want it to get in the way of creating a really stable body of work.”

Stokes will celebrate With A Lightning Strike on her biggest North American headline run to date. The With A Lightning Strike Tour gets underway October 14 at Washington, DC’s DC9 Nightclub and then travels through a November 7 finale at West Hollywood, CA’s historic Troubadour.

In terms of performing live and expressing yourself through music, Stokes explains what the phrase Play out Loud means to her: “Playing live is such an important part of writing music, because it's the connection, and I make music to connect with people. When I'm playing live, I get to see people's faces. I get to connect with them in ways that I would never really imagine.”