Babygirl Wins Us Over With “Losers Weepers”

Brooke Honnette

The Toronto-based band, Babygirl, has enthralled us with the newest EP, Losers Weepers. The duo, made up of Kiki Frances and Cam Breithaupt, perfectly capture complex emotions like reminiscing on broken relationships, handling unreciprocated love, and compensating for losing someone. All of the captivating lyricism is paired with soft synth and bright guitars.  

We had the opportunity to discuss their identity as a band, how their creative process has grown, and their musical influences.

Bad Wreck: What inspired you while creating your EP, Losers Weepers?

Kiki: Oh, I mean, I would say first and foremost, each other and our collaborators. Humans are pretty endlessly inspiring in terms of, you know, the reasons why you sit down to write a song at all. It's usually for yourself or for someone else. That was definitely the main inspiring force. I would say it's just a deep love of making music combined with creating with new people and creating with people that we've already created with.

Cam: Yeah, tapping into the humanity of yourself or your friends or your listeners. I think, musically, a lot of Top 40 and a lot of Death Cab For Cutie inspired the EP, though.

 Kiki: And country. Country songwriting definitely encourages us to keep telling a story in the song and not just have everything be “a vibe.”

 Cam:Yeah, there's a lot of music that's very stream of consciousness and off the cuff. It's a popular way to make music, but it’s not always the best way for us to write. We have a real reverence and a real patience for the craft of lyric writing, so I think we are very inspired by country music because there's a real attention to detail and storytelling.

 Kiki: As for the title, Losers Weepers… You know, we put out an EP in 2018 called Lovers Fevers, and the titles kind of came at the same time. It just so happened that there were more love songs in 2018. So, Lovers Fevers felt right for that project, and Losers Weepers felt right for this one. But we did have that title Losers Weepers in mind pretty early on, which kind of just helped focus our idea of what the EP could be.

 Cam: It’s like a thematic Northstar. We knew these had to be songs about loss in some meaningful way.

photo by Kate Dockeray

BW: How does Losers Weepers differ from your last EP, Lovers Fevers? Was the creative process different this time around?

Kiki: Some parts were different. Some parts were the same. We collaborated with more new people on this EP than we did on Lovers Fevers. Lovers Fevers was kind of just us and Miles, Cam's brother. Whereas this one, we worked with different people and had different influences. Thematically, also, there are more songs of loss on this project and there were more love songs on the last one. It felt like a pretty easy decision of what title to use.

Cam: I think the last one was very, kind of, scrappy and “do it yourself.” We were working it in bedrooms, just throwing it together in any way we could to get it done. Whereas this one, there was a little bit more of a polish in the process. Which is funny, because lyrically it's more of like a “losing team project,” but sonically it's more of a “winning team” sound. You know, we tracked the drums in a real studio this time.

Kiki: I would also say that the main difference is also just us as people. We're just very different compared to who we were when Lovers Fevers came out. Some of our favorite songs that we've ever written have ended up on this EP. I think that Lovers Fevers was a necessary step to get to this EP, and this EP is gonna be the step to get to what’s coming next.

 Cam: A lot of the last project was us sort of figuring out how to cement our identity as a band.

 Kiki: Yeah, and experimenting and being like, “this is what we want to sound like, right?”

Cam: I think this is us going into it already understanding that identity more clearly, and just trying to express it rather than try to figure out what it is. It feels like we've just come into our own a little bit more and we know who we are and what we're trying to do. There was a real intentionality, which feels good.

BW: Is there a song that you faced challenges while creating?

Kiki: Every song is a challenge. We care - probably too much - and so it makes every decision about every lyric, every performance, every production, every instrument, every arrangement part... Yeah, sometimes we overthink it and sometimes we are almost too invested. But that's just the truth about who we are. We really, deeply care and so every song is a challenge because we want to make every song the best it can be.

Cam: I think we also always make sure to come to a unanimous decision on every creative decision, which is itself a challenging process.

Kiki: We're both very stubborn. We're both very opinionated.

Cam: We're both very analytical. We can both talk in circles about why we're right.

Kiki: We're both right all the time. There are songs where we could not agree, so the song would get put down for months. It's never someone conceding when we finally agree on how it should be, either. It's always someone just being like “You were right. I was wrong in this instance.” But sometimes it takes you months... Just some funny human ego bullshit. It also makes, you know, being creative partners challenging sometimes.

Cam: We’re a little Liam and Noel Gallagher.

Kiki: But it's also why we respect each other so much and why we like working together so much. It’s because we're each so opinionated and it does make it better overall.

Cam: I'd rather work with someone with an opinion than someone who thinks everything is good. Some of the songs, like “You Were In My Dream Last Night”, those lyrics took probably a year and a half to iron out. Whereas for “Million Dollar Bed,” we wrote the lyrics in one sitting, but the production was more involved. So, if it's not one side, it's the other. If it's not the lyrics, it's the melody. If it's not that, it's the production. If it's not that, it's the mix.

Kiki: There are always pieces that fall together very easily…

Cam: But it's never all of them.

BW: How did you come up with the visual aspects that come with this release? (EP cover, single covers, the music video for “Million Dollar Bed”, etc)

Cam: We had the EP cover concept kicking around for a long time based on the title. I think I really took a lot of inspiration from that College Dropout cover, you know, someone sulking on the bleachers. I wanted to make sure that the framing in some way paid homage to that. For the calligraphy part of it, we found the calligrapher Dilbag Singh on Instagram one day… just like on the explore page, or something. He has a really interesting approach, so we reached out to him and just said, “do your thing - just make it look regal!”

Kiki: Yeah, we liked the idea of "loser" being in this very regal presentation.

Cam: Yeah, because the expectation is that it would be, you know, chicken scratch on the back of a notebook or something – especially with a title like that. So, for us to elevate it and make it more regal turned it on its head a little.

Kiki: [Posh accent] "Oh, yes, to be a loser."

Cam: The cheerleader on the EP artwork’s face is almost like the drama Tragedy mask, you know? It's like this hyper performative cry and this elevated text. We were definitely inspired by Glee as well, as far as like taking those tropes and making them cartoonishly campy and vivid.

Kiki: And fun, like… just be funny! It's such a balance of being serious and being funny, and I think that that's what life is. I think we take so many aspects of what we do so seriously, that in the spaces where we feel free to just have fun and laugh, we do that. It felt fun to us to just have this super dramatic presentation for the cover.

Cam: And I think with the varsity imagery, we had an awareness that a lot of great second wave emo and pop punk stuff was using that… like Jimmy Eat World with the trophies or the Death Cab for Cutie cover with the track and field guys. We wanted to pay homage to that because we see ourselves as a part of that lineage in some way.

Kiki: Yeah, those definitely are the kinds of artists that taught us a lot about how to make music.

Cam: Especially how to make melodramatic guitar pop.

Kiki: We shot this cover with our friend, Becca Hamill, who's a great local photographer. We brought the concept, and she was really great at collaborating with us to make it look great because it's not something that we necessarily would have had the skills to do - to take a great photo. For our music videos, often we’d work with someone like Dylan Mitro who would be bringing the idea to us. and we’d just be like, “yeah, let's do it!” I think, in the future, we are definitely going to get more involved in the videos. We are really excited by the idea of directing some of them or co-directing.

Cam: We're very inspired by Tyler the Creator and artists whose fingerprints are on every aspect of their work. We’re not just like, "We'll hire someone to do the video and whatever they do is fine." When we put the amount of love and care that we do into the music, we don't see a reason why to stop there.

Kiki: For “Million Dollar Bed,” we worked with a director named Iris Kim. It was collaborative, but she was definitely steering the ship in terms of how it all came together. We're really excited by the way it came together. We really wanted to do the “band in the living room” shot, and we got to do that in a way that felt so fun. We weren't actually performing to a crowd as it was for the video, but it was so fun to even just be half playing in the room. It got us so excited to tour and to think about playing these songs live.

Cam: I think we also really advocated for the “band in the living room” shot because there's all this highfalutin stuff in the video. I think we wanted to make sure to have a sort of grounding point of reference for how we actually see ourselves, as a counterpoint to this set of characters we're playing in the rich people part when we’re in fancy mode. In a similar way to the varsity imagery, we felt like we wanted to play homage to the bands playing in suburban living rooms in music videos trope, you know, like Alexisonfire, “Pulmonary Archery”, and Sum 41, “Makes No Difference”. There's a bunch of them that we grew up on. We felt like it's a rite of passage for a pop rock band to play in a living room in a video.

Kiki: Cam really pays attention to those signifiers. We both are very involved in the visual identity, but I do think that Cam often will steer that ship in terms of really caring about design and aesthetic presentation. He has a passion for it. He's very much an inspiring force in that way. He made the EP art for Lovers Fevers, and obviously was very heavily involved in this EP art.

 BW: Are there any particular songs you are most excited about releasing?

Cam: Yeah! “Today Just Isn't My Day.” It's something different.

Kiki: Yeah. I think it shows a side of us that really reflects us as music listeners as well. I mean, we love every single song on this EP, but I think that that is one that shows a side that maybe hasn't been shown before. And it's a side that we plan to keep on showing. We really, really love that song.

Cam: We're so proud of how it turned out. I mean, we love the whole EP, but we're perfectionists. So, there's always going to be little things we would change here and there. And that's how we keep improving. But “Today Just Isn't My Day,” for me, at least, is the one where I wouldn't change a thing. It's perfect.

Kiki: Me too. I'm really excited for people to hear that side of us. I just hope that that song can be to people what it is to me, because it's a special song to me. I hope that it can resonate with other people too.

Listen to Losers Weepers here!