Dragonette’s Martina Sorbara has opened up about the reason behind her recent break from music.
The singer released her last Dragonette album ‘Royal Blues’ back in 2016 and is set to return this autumn with its follow-up ‘Twennies’ – her first since becoming a mum.
Reflecting on how welcoming her son in 2018 affected her outlook, she tells Retro Pop’s October 2022 issue: “It took me a long time. For a while, I couldn’t even combine those two areas of me – being an artist, singer, performer and being a mum. Those were very different things; it just did not overlap at all.
“I couldn’t figure out how to blend those things or if I was allowed to be a mum. It took a long time to be like, ‘Oh, these things coexist and this is who I am.’ I don’t know how it’s affected my songwriting, but it must have. I just don’t know how…”
For the musician, it was a transition akin to starting over, as she compares the lifestyle change to her early years in music.
“I started out in Dragonette just figuring out who I am and at the beginning it was like really putting on an act: ‘I’m crazy and flamboyant!’,” she muses. “And then slowly, I think I learned that the most important thing to represent is myself.
“When I had a kid, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to authentically represent that part of me.’ I think that has to do with the fact that there’s not a lot of women in music representing themselves as mums.
“It’s not like we don’t see it; it’s just like, we love young 18-year-old girls and as soon as they turn into the other thing – which is not 18 and mums, all that kind of stuff – the media at large pays significantly less attention to what they’re saying and what they’re doing.
“So, I think because I didn’t see a lot of that reflected back at me, I didn’t know how to do it and it took me a while to figure it out.”
Having returned with the single New Suit earlier this year, she’s back with new music and reveals of its direction: “It feels really good to write a big song that everybody loves and everyone can relate to. But at the same time, the process of writing those songs somehow doesn’t massage the same places in me as writing the stuff that needs to come out.
“I wrote a song called Cuckoo that was just guitar and voice and I know there’s more examples of songs that harken back to a more acoustic thing,” she adds.
“Now, I’m trying to mix those elements more. Instead of just one song being acoustic and the rest hugely dancey or electronic, I’m trying to put them in the same bowl and stir it up.”
‘Twennies’ is out October 28 and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the October 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
