AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The pop star Sombr is just 20, yet no stranger to heartbreak.
SHANE MICHAEL BOOSE: I definitely have experienced many times seeing, you know, the one I loved with someone else, and it's really - the feeling you get when you see that and you still haven't moved on is like - it really, really does feel like suffering.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDRESSED")
SOMBR: (Singing) I took the train to see my mother. I look across the track to see you with another. There's nothing worse than seeing your lover moving on while you still suffer. I'm looking...
RASCOE: Shane Michael Boose gained a following on TikTok. Now he's Sombr, S-O-M-B-R. And his melancholic take on pop is topping charts around the world. His debut album is called "I Barely Know Her."
BOOSE: It's kind of talking about when you thought you knew someone so well, and then something happens in the relationship, you end up wondering if you even knew them at all.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNDRESSED")
SOMBR: (Singing) I don't want to kiss someone else's neck and have to pretend it's yours instead. And I don't want...
RASCOE: Do you look at this as a breakup album or an album about unrequited love?
BOOSE: I don't really have a category to put it in. It's me kind of still learning what love and what heartbreak is, and this was the easiest way for me to express it.
RASCOE: You know, you grew up in New York City's Lower East Side. How did that shape you as the artist you are today, or what impact do you think that's had on you?
BOOSE: It always felt like there were so many cultures that I was surrounded by. I would spend a lot of my childhood skateboarding in Chinatown. I would take the train to school, and there would be buskers in the station that would be inspiring to me. And then also some of my favorite bands were active in New York and artists.
And it also just felt super romantic, the Lower East Side. You get really good views of the city from down there. Places in the Lower East Side mean so much to me that I kind of have to write about them, and I've experienced so much in the Lower East Side. So you'll definitely hear it a few times on the record.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CANAL STREET")
SOMBR: (Singing) As I walk down Canal Street, I see the girls with the low-rise jeans. But they do nothing to me 'cause these are the streets where we used to be.
RASCOE: You attended LaGuardia High School in New York City. That's what "Fame," that - the famous movie is based on, that high school. You studied classical music there. Is there a through line between that part of your life and making, you know, what you call now, like, bedroom pop?
BOOSE: Yeah. LaGuardia was an amazing school. I was studying vocal, and they classically trained us in Italian arias, French arias, German, among other languages. That's where I learned how to sing classically and I learned mouth shapes. So it was definitely an education that helped me a lot for things like stamina when singing live, or hitting certain notes, you know, the singing technique.
RASCOE: Some people have said that, like, the kind of, you know, harmonic stylizations in your music evoke the Beach Boys.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE NEVER DATED")
SOMBR: (Singing) How come we never even dated, but I still find myself thinking of you daily? Why do you always leave me aching, when you were never mine for the taking? I can't...
RASCOE: Was this intentional, or are they some of your inspiration?
BOOSE: The Beach Boys, among many other bands, were the soundtrack to my childhood because my dad - he would play all these bands on the record player when I was growing up, so it is a huge influence for me, and I - it's honestly just a great compliment that you'd even recognize that.
RASCOE: You also use distortion on these tracks. Why do that? What do you think it adds to the music?
BOOSE: Yeah, I definitely put a lot of distortion on my voice. Like, the vocals almost cutting through or trying to escape, and I like the amount of distortion on the vocal to reflect how emotional what I'm singing is about. It's a way for me to express emotions that I don't feel like I've fully expressed just from singing into a microphone. I want to push it even harder.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE NEVER DATED")
SOMBR: (Singing) Can't make you love me. No, I can't make you love me. Babe, I can't make you love me. No, I can't make you love me.
RASCOE: Your story of heartbreak that we kind of started off talking about - like, where does this album leave us? Have you reached some epiphany about love or heartbreak?
BOOSE: No, I don't think I've figured it out because I don't - I don't think I've been truly in love. It's just left me kind of wanting to live more and experience more now and kind of enter a new chapter, get new material to write about.
RASCOE: Well, now, will the her who you wrote a lot of the album about - will she be surprised that you've never been in love? Like, I thought he was in love with me.
(LAUGHTER)
BOOSE: No, I just don't know whether it was love or not. You know, I felt so obsessed and like I would be with this person for the rest of my life, and I would do anything for this person. When something like that ends, it really leaves you questioning. Was it love? Maybe the fact that I don't know means that it wasn't (laughter).
RASCOE: I don't know about that. I had to think about it (laughter).
BOOSE: Me too. If it ended, it probably wasn't meant to be.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME CLOSER")
SOMBR: (Vocalizing).
RASCOE: That's the music artist Sombr, talking about his new album, "I Barely Know Her." Thank you so much for joining us.
BOOSE: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME CLOSER")
SOMBR: (Singing) If you give a dog a bone, he will follow you home and wait for you, until he's bored of you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
