Going Solo and Experiencing Queerness Through Music: An Interview with babybl.u
June 21, 2021By Laurine Payet, Music Journalist
For the first musical portrait of Pride Month, we talked to one of this year’s most exciting pop projects: babybl.u. The queer East London-based artist Karolina Sztolcman released her first single ‘highs + lows’ last February, which already got a lot of attention, including plays on influential radio show BBC Music Introducing.
Having already made a name of herself in the London music scene, being the frontwoman of the electro-pop band Oh La Kanada for the past four years. After announcing a disband in 2020, Karolina decided to go her own way, giving birth to babybl.u. Laurine Payet, from myGwork, spoke to her about her music, her path in the industry and her relationship with Pride.
Aged 25, Karolina comes from a small town in Poland, where she grew up before moving to London six years ago to start her creative journey. The name babybl.u originated in high school when she randomly decided on a social media username, which years later became Karolina’s stage name.
“I want people to feel understood, I want them to listen to [my music] and think ‘I resonate with this, I understand it’.”
According to the singer, her work sounds like “angry moody girl music”. While some songs are big reflections on the state of the world, she takes pride in not limiting herself to one emotion. She talks about always looking for other forms of songwriting to explore, leading her to write moodier, more emotional tunes. A lot of her unreleased songs are situations that never happened, but a result of her constant daydreaming.
“Everything that excites me inspires this kind of passion in me, I’m an emotional mess so it’s a lot about emotions.”
babybl.u writes music with the main objective to make her fans resonate with it and to feel understood. No matter if the song is sad, happy or angry, the singer states she wants people to “dance, scream, sing, shout, whatever they want! I want them to take it as an expression of their own emotions.”
“Stevie Nicks and Wolf Alice both resonate this different kind of energy, it’s something a bit ethereal in a way but very artistic and when I see them in my head it’s kind of the same type of story that I want to channel.”
When it comes to her musical influence, babybl.u mentions a wide range of artists and genres, always varying on how she feels, and what she writes. She cites Stevie Nicks and Wolf Alice as being the artists she always has, and probably always will, look up to. Her current hyperpop playlist however has a direct impact on her next releases. The contrast in her influences is an accurate reflection of the eclecticism of her personal music library.
“There’s not really a guilty pleasure, because what’s guilty about listening to ABBA or One Direction? Absolutely nothing.”
babybl.u shared that many of the new artists she’s currently listening to she discovered through the social media platform, TikTok. When asked who she thinks – and hopes - will break through this year, she mentions PinkPantheress, a mysterious London artist producing electronic sounding music accompanied by very dreamy vocals. She also talks about Playdate as a “more electronic poppy vibes” which influences a lot of her new songwriting, especially the song ‘Windows Forever’ which she’s been playing on repeat recently.
Her top pick is the singer-songwriter Anastasia Vol – who myGwork spoke to last month. “Her melodies, her music, her lyrics, it all just paints these beautiful pictures and it’s just so artistic, gentle and delicate but it can be so raw at the same time.” babybl.u praises the singer as being “one of the most insanely talented artists” and expresses frustration towards her wish for the recognition she believes Anastasia Vol deserves.
“I’m so proud of what we’ve done musically as Oh La Kanada, the songs we wrote I think are fantastic, are they my style now? Not at all. But did I put 100% of myself into them? Yes”
Before babybl.u, Karolina used to front Oh La Kanada, a five-piece band she formed when arriving in London. After four years of electro-pop and a few successful releases, they parted ways in 2020. While she shares that she is proud of what they’ve created together and still appreciates people listening to it because of her huge input in the songs, she wants to put that chapter behind her, close it, and be done with it. Even though she is aware the number of streams from Oh La Kanada could push her new career forward, she doesn’t want to profit from it because of how different the styles are.
“As a solo artist, you don’t have to think about pleasing other people and working out your ideas with multiple other people to make one thing out of it, you can just do whatever the hell you want.”
As a songwriter and performer, babybl.u is enjoying working on her own. While working as a solo artist gives her the creative freedom she’s always wanted, she talks about the difficulties she’s now facing being alone. Everything about being an independent artist is a challenge, but being a solo independent artist means facing it without the added support. It’s all up to the artist to find the people, connect, manage their time and getting recognition is incredibly.
babybl.u’s efforts are however proving to be even bigger now on her own. She recently got selected as the top 2 in London’s BBC Music Introducing Live Lounge special contest where she covered Dua Lipa’s ‘Hallucinate’.
“Pride for me means the fight that everyone before me has been through to be socially acceptable to be who we are and just me taking the steps to fully come out to my homophobic country.”
Whne it comes to her sexual identity, babybl.u still oscillates between bisexual and pansexual labels, as she struggles to find a definition that fully applies to herself. It’s however not much of a question for the singer as she states “if I like you, I like you. It’s that simple.” Coming from Poland, she talks about her journey before moving to the UK, which hasn’t always been easy.
Since being out to everyone in London, Pride Month means babybl.u gets to fully enjoy being free and enjoy her sexuality. Although being a different experience for every artist, she is happy for her sexual identity to be public, she wants people to know who she is, and that is a part of the LGBTQI+ community.
“It’s not something I want to capitalize off of, but I put out my music and my music is everything that is so true to myself so I would like to be as honest as I can and that means being open about my sexuality, especially if my emotions are about my sexuality.”
Songwriting has actually been a part of babybl.u’s journey towards the realisation she was queer. She recently realised she was unable to write romantic songs about straight relationships. She talks about finding herself in the situation where she was writing a song about a relationship unfolding and breaking apart and realising that the entire time, she’s been writing the song she could never see herself with a man experiencing this.
“It helped me experience my queerness through my music.”
babybl.u’s plan of releasing more music during spring has been pushed back because of schedule issues, but she is now fully depending on herself and herself only and is talking about summer releases to come.
Find babybl.u: