Who Am I? is the second studio album by English indie pop band Pale Waves. It was released on 12 February 2021 by the independent record label Dirty Hit. The record was produced by Rich Costey and recorded in Los Angeles. While the band's previous album, My Mind Makes Noises (2018), took inspiration from 1980s synth pop, Who Am I? was inspired by female pop and rock musicians from the 1990s and early 2000s, including acts like Avril Lavigne, Liz Phair, Michelle Branch, Alanis Morissette, and Courtney Love.
All of the songs on Who Am I? were co-written by the band's lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Heather Baron-Gracie; others were co-written by Sam de Jong, Suzanne Lyn Shinn, Jake Sinclair, and band drummer Ciara Doran. Many of the songs on the album revolve around themes of romance, love, acceptance, and queer sexuality, all of which were partially inspired by Baron-Gracie's romantic relationship with singer-songwriter Kelsi Luck. Baron-Gracie was further motivated to focus on LGBTQ+ themes after Doran came out as non-binary.
Who Am I? received mostly positive reviews, according to review aggregators Metacritic and AnyDecentMusic?, with critics commenting on the Pale Waves's change in style. Others discussed the impact of the artists whom Heather Baron-Gracie has cited as the album's influences. Many reviews appreciated the evolution in the band's style, comparing their newer sound to that of pop music from the early 2000s, although some felt that the record was too derivative of its influences. Upon its release, Who Am I? debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart and at number one on the UK Independent Albums Chart. Who Am I? was supported by five singles ("Change", "She's My Religion", "Easy", "You Don't Own Me", and "Fall to Pieces" all of which were promoted with their own music videos); due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pale Waves was forced to postpone a tour supporting the album to 2022.
Production
Background
In February 2020, three of the members from the band Pale Waves Ciara Doran, Hugo Silvani, and Charlie Wood were involved in a near-fatal road accident when travelling between shows in Sweden and Germany. The bus they were in slid on an icy road and rolled into a ditch, and while no one was seriously injured, the band members have said it was nevertheless traumatic. On top of the road accident, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the planned release of the album, which had originally been slated for early 2020. Despite this setback, the band's frontperson Heather Baron-Gracie explained to NME magazine that quarantine allowed time for band members to have some "space and time to process what happened [with the road accident] and heal from it".
Inspiration and writing
When writing for the album began, the members of Pale Waves struggled to craft songs that sounded different from those on their debut album. Baron-Gracie discussed this issue with Nylon magazine, explaining:
I think the first batch of demos we were trying to be too much like first album. ... I was done with the sort of '80s influenced pop style ... [and Ciara and I] both needed space artistically to create separately. We sort of overworked one another and we were exhausted and we just kept writing the same songs. So it got to the point where we both knew that we needed to take time apart from one another. I went off and I think I only wrote with maybe four people, and 50 percent of the album or more was done with the same guy, [New Zealand songwriter Sam de Jong], because we just hit it off so well. ... That was really freeing for me because I didn't have to sort of consider someone else's artistic vision.
Baron-Gracie later told Coup de Main magazine that when she first met de Jong, "it just instantly clicked" and that the two of them "basically [wrote] the whole album in a month." Baron-Gracie's decision to co-write with de Jong was a break with precedent, given that all of the band's previous songs had been co-written by Baron-Gracie and Doran (on this album, only "Run To" and "Who Am I?" were the product of Baron-Gracie and Doran). Baron-Gracie decided to work on music with other people to prevent creative burnout and engender new ideas: "It was uncomfortable at first because I've never been in a room and made or written music with anyone apart from Ciara before," Baron-Gracie told NME. "But I did it because we're a band and we need to carry on our career." While Baron-Gracie and de Jong worked on songs for this album, Doran worked with other artists to hone their production abilities. Jake Sinclair and Suzy Shinn also co-wrote songs for the album, contributing the tracks "Wish U Were Here" and "Run To", respectively.
The themes inherent to Who Am I? were heavily inspired by Baron-Gracie's romantic relationship with Kelsi Luck. So important was Luck to the record that in an interview with Vanity Fair, Baron-Gracie stressed that she "wouldn't have this record if it wasn't for Kelsi." Baron-Gracie then revealed that during the writing of the album, at a time when she found herself "a bit out of love with music", Luck had encouraged her to read through poems "that had really meant something to her". This helped rekindle Baron-Gracie's interest in lyrical expression, leading to the songs "You Don't Own Me" and "Wish U Were Here", both of which were inspired by poems that Luck had written. (Although Luck initially objected to Baron-Gracie's interpolation of her poetry, she eventually relented.) Baron-Gracie and Luck's relationship also resulted in the album focusing on LGBTQ+ themes. Although aware of her sexuality during the first album, Baron-Gracie felt that she "wasn't confident about [her]self or with [her] sexuality" to be open about it at the time. With Who Am I?, however, Baron-Gracie decided to use its lyrics to came out as gay. This was inspired both by her growing frustrations with many of her fans thinking she was straight, as well as by Ciara Doran's confidence and openness about being non-binary and using they/them pronouns. The decision to be honest with her lyrics caused Baron-Gracie to feel as if "a weight has been lifted off [her] shoulders".
Whereas Pale Waves's debut album My Mind Makes Noises (2018) had been inspired by 1980s music, Who Am I? takes greater inspiration from the alternative rock and pop rock of the 1990s and 2000s, with Baron-Gracie specifically citing Avril Lavigne, as well as artists like Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love, Liz Phair, Michelle Branch, and assorted country musicians as inspiration. Baron-Gracie also revealed in an interview with The Honey Pop that The Chicks and Kacey Musgraves inspired "the melodic side of [the] record." Regarding the album's influences, Baron-Gracie told NME, "I know there are a lot of my fans that love Avril so I know they're gonna dissect my album and know what I've pulled from Avril. I went back to my roots with this album with someone like Alanis as well. She's just unapologetic, and I wanted to be like that in this album." In an interview with Northern Chorus, Baron-Gracie commented on the change in style between the band's first and second albums, explaining that the transition "came naturally." "We were so young when we did the first album ... I didn't really know myself at the time and we were all quite new to it all," she explained, "but we had a bit more time to think about where we wanted to go [stylistically-speaking] on the second record". In the same interview, Baron-Gracie also called the shift from 80s-influenced music to a more pop punk sound "a necessary change," and she admitted that she "couldn't have done another record that was a twinkly 80's sound".
Recording
Who Am I? was primarily recorded in Los Angeles alongside producer Rich Costey who had previously worked with acts such as Foo Fighters, Muse and Biffy Clyro. The band chose to record in Los Angeles, California, as Baron-Gracie felt that "it's just a really encouraging and inspiring place because there are so many creative people". Despite Pale Waves often being described as the protégés of the 1975, the members of the latter band – who had previously helped produce the Pale Waves singles "Television Romance" and "There's a Honey" – had "zero involvement" with Who Am I? While speaking to The Big Issue North, Baron-Gracie revealed that the band had intended to feature a collaboration with the 1975 on the album, but these plans were abandoned because the band had "grown tired of being in [the 1975's] shadow."
Portions of the album were recorded with the entire band in Los Angeles, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, the band members dispersed: Baron-Gracie and Doran remained in L.A. while guitarist Hugo Silvani and bassist Charlie Wood returned to the UK. Silvani and Wood would record their own parts remotely and send them to Baron-Gracie and Doran in L.A. Owing to COVID-19 containment and prevention protocols, the last segment of the album was recorded alone by Baron-Gracie with one other producer in the room. Social distancing guidelines meant that Baron-Gracie spent most of this time confined to the studio's vocal booth.
When the band was working on the album in the studio, the rock band Muse was recording in an adjacent room. According to Baron-Gracie: "They were really incredibly nice because they let us use loads of their equipment. And I actually recorded on Matt Bellamy’s vocal mic. He just lent it to me. He was like, 'Yeah, you can use this on your record, you can take any guitars that you want, and you can come in here when I’m not in here and play my piano.' And it was so cool of him to just let me use whatever I wanted." Bellamy was also going to perform some of the bass parts on the album, but as Baron-Gracie told DIY magazine: "We managed to do it over the internet with [Wood] in the end."
Content
The album opens with "Change", a song that lyrically discusses the pain of heartbreak. According to Baron-Gracie, the song was one of the last tracks to be written for the album, and in an interview with NME she explained that it was one that she "knew [she] needed on the album, but [she] didn't have it yet." Lyrically, the song posed a challenge to Baron-Gracie because, at the time, she had never experienced severe heartbreak. She consequently spoke to people in her life who had, "gather[ing] their experiences" to make the lyrics as authentic as possible. Baron-Gracie wanted "Change" to serve as the album's opener because musically it was different from the band's previous work. The song's "unapologetic" references to oral sex were also a deliberate attempt by the band to "shock people" and "let them know [the band was] back."Williams & Baron-Gracie (2021), 0:33–2:30. "Fall to Pieces" was inspired by the early, turbulent days of Baron-Gracie and Luck's relationship, when Baron-Gracie herself was "all over the place" mentally. Lyrically, "Fall to Pieces" details two individuals in a romantic relationship who keep falling into a loop of argumentation. Baron-Gracie stressed that while it is "kind of a negative song ... it has hope".Williams & Baron-Gracie (2021), 2:31–4:27. "She's My Religion" is an open love song to Luck that celebrates "lov[ing] someone and their entirety" and not simply their positive attributes. The song marked the first time that Baron-Gracie had been "so open about [her] sexuality." Because of its impactful and openly queer lyrics, Baron-Gracie wanted the track to represent the LGBTQ+ community in the "most honest and sincere way."Williams & Baron-Gracie (2021), 4:28–7:23. Baron-Gracie contrasted "She's My Religion" with songs like Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl", telling Pride Magazine: "There's not a lot of songs that [handle female queerness] in an appealing way. It's either experimental or playful. I just think it affects [gay women] and it knocks us back, especially when straight women do it."