My Plants Are Dead

AVC: You’ve talked about the difficult side of Penny Sparkle, but some of the songs, especially “My Plants Are Dead,” seem to have a sense of relief to them as well. Where do you think that comes from?

KM: When I started writing that song, I was very sentimental about the girlfriends I had in New York. I have so many girlfriends that live alone and are still single, and they’re beautiful people, and you have to be kind of strong to live the way they live in New York. I’d really like to write songs that they could just listen to, that they could just lock themselves in the apartment and feel really protected and have a relaxing song. That song in particular, and maybe “Everything Is Wrong,” I wanted to accompany my friends with the music. Literally, “My Plants Are Dead,” I used a text my girlfriend sent me. She was planning to have a ping-pong party and she just canceled it. You know how girls are so moody, the day of the party she didn’t feel like it, so she canceled it. It was the funniest text that she sent me. I used all of that for the chorus–it’s an excerpt from that text. Her parents live in the city and she has a ping-pong table, and she wanted to have a ping-pong party. She sent that text to me and I was laughing–how moody and temperamental we can be, so cute. Six months after, I was writing a song and went, “Oh my God, I’m gonna use that text.”