The sparklemuffin is a new(er) species discovered in Australia of what is called a peacock spider, a small creature obviously colorful and with a lot of flair. Hence the inspiration for Suki Waterhouse — a British singer-songwriter, model, actress, whatever — on her new double LP, released in September, called Memoir of a Sparklemuffin.
Within a week of Christmas, I connected with Waterhouse on the day of her Nashville show, the penultimate date on her 26-city Sparklemuffin Tour, capping off a calendar year that found the artist delivering not only her sophomore album but also her first child. Both Suki and her daughter — “a communal baby” the new mother has been so grateful to keep close while in the U.S. this fall — arrived by bus to Ryman Auditorium moments before we spoke.
Waterhouse remarked about special it was to be headlining the historic venue. Notably, she opened for her Sub Pop labelmate Father John Misty there in 2022. She’s since headlined both weekends of the Coachella festival last April and opened for her friend Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour in August at her hometown’s enormous Wembley Stadium. What is it about the 2,400 capacity Ryman, then?
“I think every time you walk into this venue, it kind of hits you in a completely different way. Even just watching everybody come and look around and the fact that it’s a museum, looking all the pictures on the wall. This is one of the shows that I’ve been most looking forward to on the tour.”
I asked what Waterhouse’s impressions of Nashville were when growing up in the U.K., maybe her earliest remembrances of country music. “I listened to a lot of Tim McGraw…‘Any Man of Mine’ [by Shania Twain]…‘Strawberry Wine’ [Deanna Carter]. My parents were pretty into [Brooks & Dunn’s] ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie,’ I think that’s what it’s called?”
Opening for Waterhouse both at the Ryman and in Atlanta the following night was former WNXP Nashville Artist of the Month Bully, also on the Sub Pop label. Hear my full conversation with Suki Waterhouse here and at WNXP’s podcast channel.
Celia Gregory: Memoir of a Sparklemuffin is a sizable piece of work, and I wonder when you said you maybe didn’t even think you would make a second record, how it turned into a double LP? You clearly had a lot to say and I want to know about the decision-making to put it all out there.
Suki Waterhouse: Well, I guess when I made my first one [I Can’t Let Go, released in May 2022], it had been such a long time…it’s almost taken me a decade of having these ideas and then finally getting them actually into an album. And I sort of felt completely fulfilled at that point by just having one. And I felt very much just like that was all that I had to say. The option of doing another one, I just didn’t really know if that was ever going to be the case.
But I think I just got so fueled by the idea that I had all these new opportunities and suddenly, like, I had so much more access and I got to work with different people and, you know, hit up people like Jonathan Rado from Foxygen and Greg Gonzalez from Cigarettes After Sex. And suddenly I just felt like the world was so much more open to me to connect with people and widen my musical horizons. So suddenly a lot of music happened.
Note: Waterhouse recorded “To Get You” to tape with production from Gonzalez and a co-write credited to Rado.
CG: Was there new stuff that you were able to say and/or were you saying stuff that you’d had in you but in new ways because of this opportunity?
SW: Yeah, I think for the first [record] it was very much an expression of the kind of sadness I’d been in for, like, many years. And when I came around to making this record, I think one of the first songs that I made was this song called “My Fun.” I sort of recognized pretty quickly that I was making very different songs. It was an incredibly different frequency and I was in a very different place — in a much more joyful place. And then the music started reflecting that, too.
CG: One of the most joyful songs on the record is one we’ve played a lot on this station, which is actually [called] “Supersad.” But it’s basically a refusal to live there, to to stay there, right? It’s a triumph.
SW: Yeah, exactly. I was excited to make that song. I wanted to set myself a task with writing a song that had a lot fewer lyrics and that was more of an upbeat song. It is joyful but still kind of downtrodden at the same time.
CG: We just ran our most-played songs of 2024 and “OMG” is on that list because it had time to reverberate before the record came out. But also, talk about jubilant! It feels like a fist-in-the-air declaration of womanhood, of living life on your own terms.
I know your life has changed a bunch since the making of this record and even more in the release year. I would love to know what it’s like, especially having grown your family [Waterhouse is married to and had her daughter with fellow British actor Robert Pattinson] and now promoting a record, touring a record here at year’s end. What are your impressions of doing it this way at this new phase of your life?
SW: I feel incredibly lucky that I’ve been able to have my baby, you know, release the record right around the time I had to…I kind of had to do a bunch of things so I could release my record in September, like shoot the cover. And that was like five weeks afterwards! I could have just left it and returned to it next year. But yeah, I wanted to celebrate having a new record and having a new baby kind of in tandem. And I think that that was always what was going to make me feel the feel the most fulfilled that I could possibly be. I’ve had such a great time bringing her on the road, as well. She’s now a very kind of like a communal baby and with us and with our whole team and and it’s been really nice to take her places, be able to go and make these memories together.
CG: Since you have spent time in Nashville, you talked about your previous impressions coming into the tour tonight and in this city. What’s a song that you feel like might come alive in a new way because you’re inside this historic venue? Or is there a song from the record that has come alive on tour in a particular way that you maybe didn’t expect now that you’ve gotten to play it in different rooms?
SW: I mean, I’m pretty nervous to play my kind of wannabe country song “Think Twice” in front of the Nashville crowd. It’s going to definitely be quite a special moment for me. I’ve been thinking about that the whole time. I hope people are into it.