Pom Pom Squad on Perfect Blue, Doubting TikTok, and Studying Her Craft

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Mia Berrin's second record as Pom Pom Squad, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, hits digital and physical shelves this Friday, and it features a few intriguing new wrinkles to her sound while still keeping the songwriting appeal of 2021's Death of a Cheerleader intact. I talked to Mia back in 2019 for my big Vulture survey of indie musicians' financial situations, and it was great to hop on a call with her a few weeks ago to chat through some similar topics as well as where she's at five years later. Check it out:

I hear some distinct changes in your sound with this record. Tell me about what went into that.
In between Death of a Cheerleader and now, I had a little bit of a crisis of self-image and went through some new creative methods to refine myself and my voice. I made this long playlist of every song, from childhood to adulthood, that really changed how I hear or feel about music. I realized the music that I was making and the music that I was most inspired by like are sometimes aligned. I'm in a fortunate position in terms of my musicianship right now, where I spent the time learning how to produce, do live shows, and craft songs. Now I have the opportunity to get closer and closer to what I want to be making without the pressure of pretense.

Tell me more about that pressure of pretense. I've talked to a lot of artists in the past few years who are pretty fatigued about the constant tide of outside expectations.
I'm just doing well enough as an artist to not have a day job, but I'm not doing so well thatI can't afford to, like, not work. It's really easy to get so caught up in the industry aspect that you forget why you like making stuff in the first place. Also, rock—indie rock, and the DIY scene—I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that there's like a lot of pretense around it. There's "cool" attached to certain artists or styles, andscenes attached to certain venues or places. There's just a lot of pretense everywhere with music, and that was getting in the way of making stuff I actually liked.

Initially, after Death of a Cheerleader, I let some voices get in my head about what people "wanted" from me. And a second album is a weird thing, because two times is not a ton of times to have done something. With the second album, everyone wants you to do the same thing you did on the first one—"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I didn't want to do that, and the more I tried to force myself to make Death of a Cheerleader 2, the less I enjoyed the process. And that's not because I didn't like Death of a Cheerleader—you're just a different person at 22 than you are at 26, and I needed to allow myself to grow. It took a little bit to get back to listening to myself.

Death of a Cheerleader came out right when the pandemic was winding down in terms of pre-vaccine life. Did you complete it during the pandemic or largely beforehand?
Some of the older songs I wrote before the pandemic—the earliest song, I wrote when I was 17—and the last song, I wrote in 2020. So I did a fair amount of work on it over the pandemic. There was also a sense of removal that helped that album. I was still really early into my production journey, and when you're going into sessions with producers, it can be really easy to let someone else take over. I needed that time to work really slowly and intuitively, and with this album I just needed to detach in a different way.

What was your pandemic experience like in general?
Honestly, it could've been a lot worse. It was obviously a difficult time emotionally and politically, but physically I'm lucky that I was in a decent spot. I felt safe in my apartment, I have a long-term partner who I was living with then, I'd just gotten on medication. I was pretty fortunate to be in a settled enough place that I could respond to the chaos in a relatively healthy way. But I was just inside. I was not a pandemic partier.

Plenty of musicians found the lockdown era to be creatively fertile, and plenty more found themselves questioning their pursuit of music altogether. Where did you land?
Smack dab in the middle. Again, I was sort of lucky—when the pandemic started, my career was really just beginning. I'd put out an EP totally independently, it did decently well with press, and Spotify responded really well to it um. I was supposed to go on my first tour in March of 2020, and that got cancelled. But I was lucky that I was not in a place where touring was part of my financial stability at that point. Obviously, things stagnated, and that was disappointing, but it could've been so much worse.

I'm realizing that I need to be grateful for every step in my career, because it's so easy to say, "I wish I was bigger right now." Back then, I definitely wished that I'd been doing more and that I was in a better place—that I had a more fruitful career—but if I'd crashed [during the pandemic], the fallout could've been much worse. There's a benefit to every step, and the more steps I take forward, the more I realize you gain something at every step. But you also lose something at every step, and at that point I really didn't have much to lose, which was a good place to be in.

How did you feel about the overall reception of Death of a Cheerleader?
I mean, it was really amazing. I'm so grateful for that album and what came from it. It was also disconcerting, as someone who knew from my young age that I wanted to have a public career as a performer, there's things you think you're prepared for that you're just not, particularly on a mental health level.

This sounds kind of silly and naive, but I remember when I was a kid and I'd read celebrity interviews like, "Britney Spears refuses to talk about her secret boyfriend," and I was like, "I don't understand why they just don't tell people that they have a secret boyfriend. Why does it matter?" You're naively like, "I'd be so much better at this than famous people—I could handle it." But even on the smallest scale—I don't have a huge platform or anything— seeing people criticize your art or speculate about your personal life, it throws you off in ways that you don't expect. It's not a huge deal, but it's slightly disconcerting, and that was a little bit of an adjustment for me.

The best case is that you're responding to peoples' ideas of you, and you're meeting people who have a certain idea of you that you don't want to tarnish—but you also have to be a fully-fledged person and artist. Going into this new album, I was thinking a lot about what people wanted and expected from me, and that kept me from growing for a second.

Talk to me more about navigating the social media aspect of being a musician. I know it's something that people are increasingly getting tired of, especially from a parasocial POV.
We're in a really interesting moment where the stock of celebrity has changed a lot. This is a weird example, but I was watching a documentary about the brand Von Dutch, and they were talking about how a brand like Von Dutch became so successful so quickly because, back in the 2000s, the only time you were getting a glimpse of celebrities' lives were when they were on the red carpet, or through paparazzi photos. People were so hungry for what were they wearing, what were they doing, where they were going—and they could have a piece of that by buying Von Dutch.

Now, everyone is relatively accessible. If a celebrity posts an Instagram Story out at a café, you're like, "Oh my God, that's the café that person goes to." There's just more access, especially for indie artists. People are more wise to it now, but being was kind of what you had on bigger celebrities, you know? People felt closer to you. In 2020, it was like, "Hey, when you buy merch from me, it directly helps me literally pay my rent." I was handwriting notes for every fan, doing IG Lives, and on social media constantly—because, at that time, it wasn't that heavy of a lift. When you're an independent artist, an easy way to promote yourself is just to put yourself out there constantly.

But the big change that I've seen is from being a relatable artist that talks to fans on social media, to going on TikTok to be like, "If you like XYZ person, you'll like." You're very literally becoming an advertiser. I've had to really reckon with how I feel about being relatable, because the pressure has shifted from being relatable to being a salesperson—and it should not be my job to get on the internet once a day and say, "Hey, if you like this person, you might like my band." I don't enjoy doing it. I scroll past shit that I see that does that. I've done it a couple times, and every time I do it, it just doesn't feel that great.

The 1:1 comparison I'd like to make is with the beauty industry. People have democratized the internet so that "beauty" is always in reach. "Hey, you're not ugly—you just don't have $800 for this procedure that these celebrities get. But now that you know it exists, when you do have $800, you could be just as beautiful as a celebrity." Perfection is always in reach—there's always more you could be doing to be prettier, and as an independent musician, there's always more you could be doing to be popular. You could be posting more, you could be following trends. Whatever it is, it feels like a scam.

Do you feel like you've gotten requests from industry-side people to do more TikToks of that nature?
Honestly, I even get them from people who aren't in the industry. If I'm talking to a friend who isn't really involved in the industry and I'm like, "I just really wish my project was doing better," they're like, "Well, have you tried making TikToks?" It really has become the prescription for everybody to suggest. It's ridiculous, and it's not sustainable for the artist's emotional and mental health. I actually don't think that it's gonna work for that much longer, to be honest. As a model, it's kind of destined to fail.

Sabrina Carpenter, I love that little blonde bitch, I think she's great, and I really loved her last album. Tickets for her shows were not cheap, and there were TikToks of her putting the mic out for people to sing her old songs and they didn't know the lyrics. There's that video of Steve Lacy where he puts the mic out for the one moment of the song that's the TikTok soundbite, and no one knows the words to anything else. TikTok doesn't actually make artists in the way that people are saying. It gets you a bunch of streams on a couple of songs—best-case scenario, you get a fan base—but people are finding music on TikTok because they like a song and not necessarily because they're buying into an artist. We've not really seen that many artists with viral songs also have a lasting career.

You started making music in the late 2010s, so you've seen a little bit of what things were like pre-pandemic versus now. What do you think has changed?
I think my biggest asset when I started out was that I had a really clear vision of what I wanted to do you know. I came up with the band name Pom Pom Squad when I was a teenager I really loved '60s girl groups, and—I've actually never had this, which is hilarious—the classic all-female band where everyone's in a sick matching outfit and mine's a different color because I'm the frontperson. I always had a very strong image of what I thought would be cool.

I grew up going to a lot of shows and studying other people's sets. My mom has a really analytical mind, so when we'd go to shows together she'd always point out things to me like, "The opening band didn't say their name enough, now I don't know who they are," or "Her eyes were closed through the whole set, which makes it hard to connect with her as a performer." Even now, when I'm on stage, if I'm singing and my eyes are closed for too long, I'm like, "They're not gonna be able to connect with me."

You have to be a student first, and that's one of the things I'm best at. When I started playing shows, I'd watch them back and go, "OK, I could be doing that better," and then I'd go see more shows and would go, "OK, I liked this." I'm fortunate that, once I started playing shows, people kept asking me to do more, so I played every single chance I got in New York until I could afford to be pickier. Eventually, I did my first headlining tour, and from there I got a booking agent and started touring. For me, the live show has always been the thing that helped me grow the project, and if someone asked me, "What should I be doing?" I'd say, "Go to a lot of shows, practice a lot, and play as many horrible, shitty bars until you can play good shows."

When I first started, I was like, "I want to do SNL, I can't wait until I can do late-night." If I got offered SNL tomorrow, I know that I would not be ready. Now, at 27, I can go, "OK, if that's my goal, here's what I need to prepare for." Being analytical is one of the best things that you can do as an artist, but for an artist who wants to have a commercial career, that analytical mind can also be slightly detrimental to being a songwriter, because there's a couple different parts to being an artist. You're a marketer, a craftsman, and a creator.

I've always had to balance those three personas, because the marketer should not be the person who writes the album. I don't want to listen to a marketing major make an album, because I don't want to be marketed to. I want to make stuff that comes from a real place within me, and that was the difficult part of getting out of the last album cycle and going into this one. You want to pick apart everything that worked about the last one, because nobody wants to fucking fail, so you go, "What can I logically use to make sense of what went right so that I can get it right again?" But that's not what making art is. Making art is not about getting it right—it's not even about making the best thing you can make. It's just about making the thing that is that you need to make at that moment.

The last time we talked, it was more specifically about the financial aspects of being an indie artist. What's that like for you now?
Financials are complicated, because it's not really something that anyone teaches you how to do—unless you're lucky. I've made a lot of mistakes in terms of how I've handled my finances. When I first started my business, I was like, "You got to spend money to make money." So every single cent that I made from the tour went back into the tour, and I was always paying everyone better than myself because I was like, "Well, I'm the bandleader, and the money will keep coming, so it'll be fine." That is not how that works. So it's been interesting, finding the balance while being in the place that I'm at as an artist. I have a pretty structured team for the most part—I have a manager, a booking agent, a label, a publishing house—but I don't have anyone doing finances, so that's been a huge learning curve.

We went through a robbery a couple years ago, and that was definitely a bit of a wake-up call for me, because I'm hyper-cautious about everything—I'm a classic over-thinker. I think 30 steps ahead for everything, and it was one of those days where you make one mistake and everything falls apart. I ended up having to replace $50,000 worth of equipment, and I got really lucky that we did a GoFundMe and people donated enough within 12 hours for us to replace everything. It was extremely heartening, and a moment of, "Wow, people do have my back in a crisis." That said, I've spent $50,000 on equipment in the past few years, and that's the cost of an upstart project. Meanwhile, I talked to people who work at major labels, and $50,000 is what they're getting in tour support.

Regarding the GoFundMe situation—do you feel like there's a greater sense of community in this decade when it comes to indie artists getting support, as well as how they support each other?
I definitely see that abstractly. I also think that, when I hear people being more tight-lipped about their secret to success, part of that is because everyone's just posturing what the secret to their success is. I can theorize about why people like my project all day, but when people are less tight-lipped about it now, it's because everyone has to acknowledge that no one has any idea what the fuck is going on. Maybe there's a level of awareness—secrets in this industry—that certain gatekeepers hold, which is why the "industry plant" and "nepo baby" conversations happen. Everyone is like, "Why not me?" And I don't know if there is an answer. Part of the reason that people are talking more is also because there's more of an acknowledgement of the fact that the TikTok economy of music is the equivalent of putting a coin in a slot machine—and there's no regulation.

I think there's definitely some community, and especially among independent musicians there are more conversations happening—but I do feel like indie music is still very scene-oriented. Everyone's talking to everyone else within their particular scene. There's good advice if you know where to look and who to talk to, but it isn't like there's a fucking online forum where you can go and be like, "How do i deal with parasocial fan interactions?" or "How do I deal with a person at a venue coming up to me and telling me there's a merch cut that wasn't in the contract?"

I saw Perfect Blue was mentioned in the bio materials as an inspiration for this new record. I saw it for the first time a few years ago and it was one of those things where I was like, "Wow, this predicted pretty much everything in popular culture." Talk to me about the impression it made on you.
I love that movie. It's so funny, because it's one of those things where, not to say that I don't recommend it, but when people are like, "Should I watch it?" I'm like, "I don't know." Obviously, it's incredibly disturbing, but for me it gave a voice to certain feelings that I had inside me and didn't understand how to make sense of. It was a really important film to me when it came to helping me find the language that I needed to finish this album.

Everyone has a persona that they present to the world, and it's easier to figure out where one ends and the other begins now, because we're all thinking constantly about how to present ourselves in public. For me, a lot of the album is trying to reconcile these parts of myself that I don't really understand: The part of me that is reserved, shy, and a little bit more serious and somber, and the other part of me that wants to be on stage and wants attention, validation, and accolades. It almost feels like a destructive impulse. I think you "get" certain pieces of media when you need them most, and Perfect Blue was one of those experiences for me.