“I am alive,” she lilts on Half Way Home opener “Acrobat” over babbling acoustic
Anxiety over the response to her ideas and people’s misunderstandings of her
guitar and an uneasy, diminished accordion that releases and cascades down the
identity is a huge theme in Olsen’s work. It comes up in various forms over the
scale into harmony. “I thought that I died.” The juxtaposed sentiment is one of
course of our conversation, from the misinterpretation of her wig to the knee-
gravity, but it’s held aloft despite itself by Olsen’s dextrous vocal.
jerk reaction to her album title. “It’s cool that you can take and make your own
meaning out of what is intended,” she says. “But I just want to make some things
A couple of weeks following our phone conversation, in concert at Philadelphia
clear. I’m asking people to look a little further than a cover of a record.”
venue Union Transfer, that same delicate voice fills the hall with such booming
force that it becomes easy to slip under the current and forget that a thousand
Spending time with Olsen, it becomes easier to understand just why she’s
other people are standing in the same room. Over ten tracks co-produced by
adamant to reconcile personality and persona. She’s engaging in conversation,
Olsen with pop practitioner Justin Raisen at Vox Studios in Los Angeles, My
her eyes flickering in consideration of each question. She spends much of her
Woman unveils a massive sound built around the singer’s vocals, treated with
downtime on tour reading—lately it’s been the introspective fiction of Elena
clarity here as opposed to the throwback ham-radio strokes of her lauded 2014
Ferrante and Clarice Lispector—and combing through local vintage shops.
breakout, Burn Your Fire for No Witness. Where that record’s rawness found a
(“You can really find some good jeans [in Philadelphia],” she says. “Used jeans
singular voice beginning to emerge from the echo chamber of its own mind,
that are already altered to fit you well. That’s not something you can find [just]
on My Woman Olsen has burst from the chrysalis, her personal-yet-resonant
anywhere.”) A writer’s songwriter, she understands the value of subtle details
lyrics now echoing freely outward. It’s a resounding statement that documents a
and shows a healthy capacity for empathy. Watching her magnetic face shift in
powerful artist taking complete ownership of her work.
anticipation of a question or a response, it’s clear that Olsen genuinely seems to
care about what you’ve been through, too.
But control can only extend so far. The singer knew that she was inviting
interpretation by naming her album My Woman, and yet the specter of the
Her sensitivity to limitations allows her to approach potentially ugly situations
inevitably exhausting responses was not enough to stop her from making the
with grace. “It’s a little bit different to be a lady in the music industry than to
statement she set out to make. At a climatic point of “Woman,” the semi-titular
be a guy,” she says. “I just like to handle it like Dolly Parton would handle it.
penultimate track, she issues the charge: “I dare you to understand / What makes
If someone says something that’s obviously naive, and they didn’t mean it to
me a woman.”
sound a certain way, I’m not going to be all huffy about it and just walk out of
the room. I’ll be like, ‘You didn’t mean to be like that, but you’re totally being
“I’m not saying it’s a feminist record,” Olsen says, sitting on the corner of a plush
like that right now.’”
couch in the green room of Union Transfer before her show. “It’s just that this
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particular song is about women, and—at least [for] me as a woman—what I’ve
In her songwriting, Olsen has a natural predilection to examine the nebulous
dealt with, which is: I’m heterosexual, I’m in love with a guy, and sometimes he
distances between people in intimate contexts. As we’re often prone to selling
doesn’t see from my perspective the way that I would like. And maybe I don’t see
short those we hardly know based on superficial characteristics, she also muses
from his perspective, either. But how would anyone know what it’s like? It’s not
on the ways in which we can find ourselves all of a sudden misrepresented by
his fault. That’s the kind of argument that very real people have all the time.”
those we hold dearest. The experience can be devastating.
FLOOD