Olive Klug is not a Gen-Z singer-songwriter. They are an incredible artist, instrumentalist and creative who is reimagining folk and crafting their own unique story. Klug’s journey to becoming a professional musician was a complex one, filled with trials, tribulations and victories along the way. The best part about it all is that Klug is always evolving, always shifting and we, as fans and listeners, get to be a part of that journey with them.

After Klug graduated college in 2019 with a degree in psychology, they began working as a therapist and doing intensive social work. At the same time, Klug was writing songs for fun and going to open mic nights. This duality was the start of Klug’s superhero origin story. They enjoyed music, but never thought it could be a genuine career move. Halfway through 2020, what we all know as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Klug’s job and living situation hard. They moved back in with their parents, started working a stressful job they hated in Portland and began writing songs 24/7. Around the same time, Klug downloaded TikTok and learned how to post music on the platform. “I ended up getting fired from that job. I had also gone a little, tiny, tiny bit viral. Not like, real viral, but to me at the time — viral, and I was like: ‘This is a sign. I’m just gonna really commit myself to music,’” Klug says.

So that’s what Klug did, honing their musical craft while working at a coffeehouse. Ever since, it’s been a slow rise up to the point they’re at right now. Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded, released in August of this year, was the first album Klug ever made. Previously, they had only come out with singles and EPs. “I got a record deal, that was crazy, and I was like, ‘Oh, well this means I have to make a record now.’” It was a very messy process, as Klug didn’t have much experience with production and creating an album. Klug and their producer figured things out as they went. Their spontaneity is a signature part of their personality; Klug is not the type to plan things out and even when they do, things always change. “It was a process of figuring out what I wanted to say, what songs were most important to me and what songs fit this narrative that I created,” says Klug. What’s interesting about the songs on Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded is that many were written before music really became serious for them, when they were still living in Oregon and working at the coffeeshop. While curating the album, Klug combined their favorite songs from that phase of their life with songs they’d written in LA this past year. Klug admits that, since Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded was recorded in 2022, it already feels like a different era of their life.

“If I had to describe my music in a silly way, I would say it’s like folk-punk musical theater with a vintage flair,” they say. On Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded, two songs really stick out to Klug. The first is “Coming Of Age,” the most popular on the record. As an artist, Klug has had a complicated relationship with the track. When it blew up on TikTok, the artist was stunned, finding “Coming Of Age” cringey. “At first, I was like, ‘How the fuck am I [going] to make this thing that everybody else likes something that I [also] like?’ But, it’s what the people were asking for. And I was like, ‘Hey, well, I’m a small artist. I can’t pull a diva move and [say] I’m not gonna release this — people like it!’”

Klug had to find a way to love the song themself. They didn’t want to go down a pop-ier route, but “Coming Of Age” isn’t quite a folk song either, due to its angst. Eventually, an epiphany came to mind as Klug was on their way home. They were listening to a folk-punk song by Apes of the State titled “Bill Collectors Theme Song” and the realization washed over them like a tsunami: “Coming of Age” was meant to be an angsty, fun and funky, folk-punk song. That night they wrote the bridge — their favorite part of the song — and got incredibly inspired, excited to get to the studio the next day and rework the song with this bridge. This was done, for the most part, in less than 24 hours. “I feel like I really succeeded and it helped me clarify my artistic vision for the whole project. I had so much fun making the music video for that song, so [it’s] a really special song to me because I’ve had such a journey with it. When I perform live, [“Coming of Age”] is the one that everyone sings along to the loudest.” Klug is glad that they stuck with the song, committing to making “Coming of Age” their own and carrying out some heartfelt fan service.

Within two weeks of development on “Coming of Age”, Klug also wrote “Taking Up Space” which is the final track on Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded. It’s the only song on the album that Klug will listen to for their own sake, feeling like if it were on somebody else’s project, they would genuinely still treasure it. This is the marking of a powerful piece of work, considering many artists never return to their music to re-listen after it’s published and out in the world. Klug has been playing “Taking Up Space” with a full band for every show, even their opening gigs, and it’s made them feel powerful and good in a way they’ve never felt before.

During our conversation, Klug got real and honest about touring. Klug declares that it’s so fun touring — the best ever — but that the logistics are extremely demanding. “It’s hard not sleeping in your bed, figuring out who’s going to live in your house while you’re gone and take care of your pets. But, it’s so worth it because the feeling you get from performing live and meeting people who listen to your music is unmatched,” says the artist. As of right now, Klug is trying to find a happy medium, a balance that feels sustainable and steady. While they love touring, it’s not something they can do all the time. On a mental health note, transitioning out of living a quiet life at home and doing side gigs to touring and feeling like a rockstar all the time is, in a way, destabilizing for Klug. The highs are really high, but the lows are proper lows.

As a genderqueer individual, Klug is one of many artists in the community that have made a name for themselves. “I feel like I didn’t really ask to be a representative of the queer community,” Klug admits. Being a Gemini, Klug jokes there are always two sides to their thoughts and feelings about things. On the one hand, it means the world to them to be a queer storyteller, an openly queer person and, especially, to have younger, queer folks come to their shows and feel seen and heard. “That was so few and far between when I graduated high school in 2015 and even early college.” When Klug was in high school, gay marriage wasn’t even legal in the U.S., so it was a very different landscape for queer people. Knowing that queer individuals coming up now don’t have to fight as hard for diverse and expansive queer rep is one of the most fulfilling parts of being a musician for Klug. At the same time, there’s a layer of added pressure. For this reason, there are aspects of Klug’s identity that they felt they had to explore in private, as experimenting publicly would become a big, heavy thing with lots of labels and assumptions being thrown at them.

As far as career aspirations, the biggest one Klug has, at the moment, is just to make more music. The artist has plans to record another project and to go in a more folk direction with it. As a musician, Klug has been frustratingly lumped into the category that all other TikTok artists are grouped into: Gen-Z singer-songwriter — and they hate it, understandably so! “I’m not even Gen-Z, I was born in 1997,” Klug laughs. “I think we all get placed in categories that we don’t necessarily feel right [being] placed in.” To further illustrate this point, the artist refers to a friend of theirs who everyone pins as a folk-country artist, when she really wants to be known as a rock musician! Klug, like many others, wants to be something different than the genre and audience labels they’re assigned, while still keeping in touch with infusing their other influences. Recently, they’ve been getting into old folk music and experimenting with traditional folk instruments like mandolin and banjo.

If you’re a new listener, the artist themself recommends not listening to their top five on Spotify. Artists don’t have control over that algorithm and while they are songs Klug loves, they’re also songs that they feel don’t accurately represent the rest of their music’s sounds. “If you listen to ‘Raining in June,’ don’t listen to my next top four. Go to my album and listen to that! Then, you can listen to everything else,” Klug jokes.

Finally, for all my fellow Emerson kids out there: get excited! In spring 2024, Olive Klug is doing a show at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, and as a liberal arts grad themself, wants to reach out to other schools in the area and set up potential performances… I let them know that Emerson has to be at the top of that list. ;)

Olive Klug Is Folk Reimagined