Time-stamping Teenage-dom: An Interview with Gilda About Debut Album “Gilded”
If you haven’t met her, let me introduce you to up-and-coming singer-songwriter Gilda. I met Gilda Colaiaco at a show at The Whiskey when I was seventeen. I saw her set and was in awe. I found her music so thoughtful and beautiful. I knew I had to talk to her. We talked for a bit and exchanged Instagrams and have kept up since. When I found out that she was planning the release of her debut album, we talked and had an interview.
Colaiaco has been performing her whole life. Starting with musical theater as a child, to leaning into songwriting when she was fifteen. When she released her first single Pink Rose, it all clicked for her. She continued in this process by releasing an EP, and then in her senior year of high school, she worked with a producer at UCLA named Jonah, and together, after long school days, she would go to his dorm and work on what would become her debut album Gilded.
“It's eight songs, and there are songs from 2021 till now…I just basically picked my favorite eight that I really loved, and I made it with him. And this release is so special because they are songs that have kind of been in the vault for a while. So now that they're finally out, it’s so nice, so refreshing. Now it's about kind of promoting and doing it all over again” explained Colaiaco.
As I previously explained, I asked Colaiaco about how it feels to be your most vulnerable self onstage. I was curious if having friends and family watch her was more or less frightening than a stranger. She explained, “it is intimidating sometimes, having people I know watch me. And I guess sometimes it's a little less intimidating when it's strangers because I don't have to worry. I care more about the opinions of the people in my life…So many people I love, and my family, and my friends have been so supportive of this whole adventure. I have an incredible support system, and that's also really helped boost my confidence, and lower that impostor syndrome. I mean, it still comes every once in a while, especially after a release when things can go slower than expected…Releasing those expectations is also very important. But yeah. It can be intimidating at times, but mostly, I feel incredible having people I know surrounding me and supporting me and watching me.”
The funny thing is, Colaiaco and I came up in a pretty similar music scene in LA, as that is how we connected in the first place. We are both surrounded by people who make music all the time. For me at least, when I see my friends and peers really committing and doing something, it lights a bit of a fire in me to push myself more and more. Colaiaco and I agreed on that, but she explained that collaborating with creative peers instead of being intimidated by them is way more beneficial, with which a totally concur, because if you can’t work with others and be a collaborator, you won’t get anywhere.
Later, I asked about the cohesion of the album. I was shocked to know that there wasn’t actually a throughline because in my opinion, the album was so cohesive. For Colaiaco, that wasn’t really the point. “They were kind of just my favorite– favorite ones that I wrote lyrically and melodically. For my next project, I definitely want to think of a more cohesiveness to it. But, yeah, I think it came together in the end…They all have similar stories of kind of codependency and struggles with relationships. But they're all very unique in their own way. And some of them, “Worship Me,” for example, are just clear. ‘How could you not worship me?’ It's more of an angry song…I try to incorporate some sort of positivity. So it's not fully negative, because… a lot of creatives in the industry, like myself and so many of my friends say it's a lot easier to write a sad song.”
Colaiaco, never having been in a serious relationship, focuses on all kinds of love and relationships, from looking in as an outsider, to talking about friendships, to the romantic feelings she has had. She explained that a lot of the songs on the albums are songs about a friend breakup, and I feel like those are the worst. She taps into teenage years, and timestamps it. Without a specific story to follow, her debut Gilded is tied to these years, and what being a teenager in the later 2010s and early 2020s means.