The singer/songwriter Harriette admits she has a love-hate relationship with the internet. Like many people, she spent way too much time online during shutdown. Unlike many people, she also became a viral star with her first single and video.
So it’s no wonder that the Texas-born artist’s latest single is called “I Heart the Internet.” As she explains, “It’s definitely sarcastic, and maybe a coming of age song. I felt during COVID like the internet was giving me a lot of things and taking things away, so I love-slash-hated it.” As for her fast notoriety, “I still don’t really connect with that. I feel grateful and honored certainly, but I feel more connected when I tour with different artists and see their fans showing up.”
Harriette, 23, began putting up recordings after graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York. She later moved to Nashville for a time, and is now based in Brooklyn. She’s currently on tour with the band Joan, and the tour hits the Sinclair tonight. Though she’s done a couple of small tours in the UK, these are the first dates she’s ever played in the US. “I randomly started arranging tours, just booked them and figured out the rest. I have my best friend playing guitar, and am using tracks otherwise. I’d love to be touring with a band but so far I’m on a smaller budget.”
The song that put her across was a dry-humored breakup song, “At Least I’m Pretty,” which came with a witty animated video. She appears live in most of her other vids, which usually find her playing three or four different characters. “Goodbye Texas” found her playing with country music stereotypes, and in “Wednesday” she played the Addams Family character of that name. “I would love to do more acting — That’s on my bucket list, along with doing something with fashion and touring with a band. ‘Goodbye Texas’ was a song I literally wrote while I was driving into Texas. The rest came out when I got a video camera in front of me, it was fun playing with that idea and that genre.”
She’s drawn from breakups for a number of her songs, including “F Married” which finds her grateful than an ex married somebody else. “I think humor plays a pretty big role in the characters I’m playing. That’s the way you can be the most honest; when you’re telling something sad it’s typical for someone to laugh and shrug it off.” Do people she dates expect to have songs written about them? “Yes, and sometimes they can be mean about it. But typically people say to me, ‘I can’t wait to hear about this in a song’. I haven’t heard from the guy in F Married’ but I don’t think I was rude or hurtful there. But I definitely think he knows.”
Harriette says her musical roots are in country, since she grew up with a lot of the Chicks and early Taylor Swift. “But what I really love are people like Julia Jacklin, Mitski and Lana Del Rey. All those indie cool girls.”
