The GRAMMY Museum (Los Angeles, CA)
06/26/23
Australian musician G Flip sat down for a candid conversation with Tomás Mier at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, California followed by an intimate, stripped back performance for the small audience. G Flip talked in detail about their sophomore album, DRUMMER, which is set to release on August 11th. G Flip also discussed some of their favorite songs on this upcoming record, such as “The Worst Person Alive” and “Good Enough.” Their second single, “The Worst Person Alive,” is about feeling like the worst person alive when instigating a break up with someone. While writing this song, G was listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen’s music and was heavily influenced by the production in his hit song, “Born to Run.” They implemented the same sense of urgency and intensity of the drum beat in their own song. The oldest song on the record, “Good Enough,” was written from the place of finding something great, but not feeling good enough for that person because they feel like a shell of a person. G Flip described the depressing and dark verses as feeling that you’ve found something so amazing and you just don’t feel like you’re the best version of yourself. What starts as a ballad gets to the heaviest possible on the record. They stated that there’s all live drums on the record, except for one song which has no drums at all, but in that song, they’re singing about drums.
The drummer dove into their past, opening up about their drum instructor Jenny who was the most pivotal figure in their life and inspired them to become the pop star they are now. At age 12, when they were struggling heavily with finding their place in the world as well as figuring out their sexual and gender identity, Jenny was someone G could see themselves in. After meeting Jenny during grade seven and taking lessons, G started to look to her as a role model and began to truly fall in love with drums. She took G under her wing, teaching them how to sing and drum simultaneously. To this day, when they play drums, their body is playing drums in autopilot and all they can think about is trying their hardest not to mess up the lyrics.
Tomás Mier also asked G Flip questions regarding their gender identity, as it has been two years since they first came out as non-binary. Although their gender does not directly affect their music all of the time, they have released songs in the past such as “Waste of Space,” which is about their gender identity. They always questioned themself as to why they felt like a hybrid between boy and girl as a child, but struggled to find the language to describe their feelings. Once they educated themself about what being non-binary is, they began to reflect on their entire life. Coming out was a very euphoric experience for them and made a lot of the questions they had about themself finally make sense. After publicly announcing their relationship with Selling Sunset star Chrishell Stause, G Flip was faced with the decision to enter the world of reality television. Since there is no queer representation of any kind on the show, Chrishell and G made the decision together that they would help provide that representation in hopes of changing people’s lives. G has described their gender identity as a “gender smoothie,” feeling in between genders for most of their life. G Flip is proud to provide representation for the nonbinary community and speak on behalf of people who often are not given a voice in this context.
After the conversation concluded, G Flip went on to sing stripped down versions of “Be Your Man” and “Lover” while playing drums, “The Worst Person Alive” on acoustic guitar, “Good Enough” on keyboard, and lastly “GAY 4 ME” on drums. It is insanely impressive to see a musician kill it on three separate instruments while simultaneously belting out the lyrics. Hearing some of the songs from the new record have me counting down the days until DRUMMER is released!
