The inspiration for this song was pretty much my entire childhood.
I grew up with parents who were divorced when I was three.
They both remarried to other people when I was about 10, and then they both got divorced
again when I was 17.
"Older" is a song that I've been trying to write my entire life, and I never really knew how
to write it without sounding too bitter.
And I think I had to live my own life and experience things for myself in order to really
get the perspective right and understand what my parents went through.
King Henry is an amazing producer and he's also my boyfriend, which is a bad look, but
YOLO.
I remember, I actually wrote this song in Germany when I was doing promo with my friend
Danny.
And we got super high; somehow we found a joint in the middle of Germany and we were
like, "Thank fucking God."
And then we went to KFC and then we went back to the hotel room.
Danny starting playing this guitar thing and I starting singing "Older" over it.
So we had written the first half of the song, and then I sent the voice note to Henry.
He texted back, he was like, "Oh my God.
What the fuck is this?
I started crying in my living room."
He just started an idea for it at home.
And then when I came back to LA, we finished it out together.
After my mom and my stepdad got divorced, we moved out of this house that I went to
high school in, and then my senior year I spent living in an apartment with my mom,
and I had this tiny room.
I mean, literally, it was my bed and then a keyboard.
And I just remember spending pretty much all of my senior year in there.
And my stepdad would come over and they would go at it, so I would just get in my room and
open the window up and light a joint and try and just shut it all out.
I always tell King Henry's going to be my first husband.
Just kidding.
No one really knows what they're doing.
And I think as a kid, you expect your parents to have all the answers and you expect them
to be perfect.
And as you become an adult you realize life has challenges you didn't even know existed.
I think the more that I live and go through things I'm just trying to figure it out myself.
And I think I'm just a lot less harsh judging my parents and everyone because no one really
knows what they're doing.
You know when you're first in love with someone, you're so in love with them, and that honeymoon
phase is insane.
And it's hard to imagine that ever ending.
And then as time goes by and you change and you grow into different people, it gets messier
and what was there in the beginning doesn't last forever.
With my mom and my dad, they had me very early on into their relationship.
My whole life I was like, why couldn't you have just made it work, like why couldn't
you have stayed together.
And once I went through my own breakup I was like, well sometimes it is better not to be
with someone.
Even if you end up hating their guts, you will always have that love for them no matter
what.
And I actually really believe that.
And I experienced that with my ex-boyfriend.
I still love him and I still hope the best for him.
I wanted him to be happy and that's I think why I had to walk away.
I went to high school in a really small suburb in Massachusetts and I grew up in so much
dysfunction and then I would go over to my friend's house and they had this giant McMansion,
their parents were seemingly perfect and all the holidays were always fun, there was just
a lot of normalcy surrounding me.
And I just remember always going to my friends' houses and being like, man, I wish my home
life was like this.
I'm lucky though because I got to see what not to do.
And I also got to see what to do.
So I kind of got like the best of both worlds.