Ūla Dishes on "Scandal"
Ūla, a Sydney-based artist with over 1.5 million followers on TikTok, is turning over a new leaf. Music has always a been a big part of Ūla’s life, with her mom putting her in singing and dancing lessons at an early age. When the lockdown hit Australia, Ūla began taking music more seriously.
She began posting videos on TikTok as an escape from the stress of her impending high school graduation. Views and likes started going up, and in no time, Ūla was connecting with fellow creatives and releasing music on the platform. “That did kind of kick-start me having an actual career in music. [It wasn’t] just a hobby anymore,” Ūla says.
This online success kick started Ūla’s career as a genuine music artist, with it no longer being a hobby. She continued to make songs, many of which were bedroom pop classics. “I had success with past releases, but I feel like now I’m growing into the artist and space I’ve been trying to get to,” says Ūla. Bubblegum grunge—a combination of her original bedroom pop feel and eighties/nineties rock influence—is more than just a genre for Ūla. It encapsulates her personality, style and music, and is a phrase that is representative of her artist project as a whole. “I think I was just a little bit scared when I was younger and introduced to this big, wide world of music. I didn’t know how to assert myself in a space, saying that I wanted to do music with references from [heavy rock] bands.”
This hesitancy to explore changed when Ūla started working with producers who nurtured her passion for grunge and pop punk music, and thus, she further and heavily contributed to the rising popularity of bubblegum grunge. Her latest single “SCANDAL,” which was released in September of this year, really hones in on this new signature sound, which she considers a more mature and nuanced track than past works.
The chorus is ridiculously catchy: “I’m looking for a love and a scandal / So baby can you handle me?” Here, Ūla plays coy and harps on the idea of a gossip-riddled, scandalous and purposefully public relationship. “Get caught in the rumors and the illusion / It’s only human,” she sings later on with playful autotune technique. In these lyrics, one can’t help but think of PR celebrity relationships. Despite only being two minutes and twenty-five seconds long, the song still manages to leave a huge reflective impact while making you want to get up and dance.
Image courtesy of @kissmylenz
“When we were writing the song, the first word I thought of was ‘scandal.’ My producer was just playing [around] and I was like, ‘This is really sick! Imagine if scandal came in on the chorus…’ so, we recorded that and then [considered the question,] ‘What does scandal mean?’” Ūla says. The song developed a mind of its own, centering itself around the word. “SCANDAL” was not only fun to sing but cheeky, carefree and exciting for her to write. Ūla succeeds in conveying the process through the production and energy of the track, with ironic lyrics not meant to be taken too seriously and harmonized punk vocals.
Currently, Ūla’s biggest goal is to collaborate with Bring Me The Horizon, a major British rock band. “If they’re reading this, hit me up,” Ūla says with a laugh. She also hopes to build an increasingly intimate community around her artistry. Ūla doesn’t simply want to be an artist you listen to on Spotify every now and then, but also a person listeners can connect to. “I do a lot of social media, live streaming and just talking to my followers. I’m trying to create a project that isn’t just based on liking a song you really like — and then that’s it.” What Ūla, as a project, aims to do is to create a space for people that extends beyond music.
For this reason, fans play a huge role in the music Ūla puts out. Online, the artist will tease snippets and ask for feedback, applying their thoughts and opinions to what actually is released in the future. To her, Ūla is every single person that follows, likes, shares or comments. “My favorite thing about doing this project is dissociating from ‘the person Ūla,’ who’s just a twenty-year-old girl living in Sydney and [entering] this community that’s been created.”