Hollywood Heartache

Words: Molly Marsh

Born and raised in LA, Glüme launched her career at the age of six. A prolific child actor with a mother determined to make her a star, she spent her youth being home-schooled, surrounded only by other showbiz youngsters. In 2023, she’s an electro-pop singer-songwriter – and on her new album, Main Character, she’s finally ready to talk about her past.

Still based in LA, we took to her spiritual home; the internet, to get to know the artist.

As soon as she appears on the call, I’m immediately struck by her appearance. She has tattoos all over her arms and hands, and wears a flamboyant pink dressing gown. Her bleachblonde hair is styled in a way that evokes her idol, Marilyn Monroe. Her lips are a bold red, her eyelashes expertly preened. I have to remind myself that while it might be 5:30 in the evening in London, it’s only 10AM in Los Angeles. My mind wanders back to my own appearance at 10 that morning. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

But with a long history in the world of stardom, the title of her sophomore record strikes me. What does it mean to be a ‘main character’ when everyone around you is making a career of being one?

“I grew up doing child acting,” she tells me, “and I had a very scary stage mom who always wanted me to get the leads – the main characters. But I didn’t realise until the last two years that the way I was living my life was always like a supporting character in a movie. I was never living for myself or my own needs. I was always taking care of others and catering to other people. So, I never really was the main character, but I played the main character on a lot of TV shows and things like that.”

People who haven’t spent their entire lives in the all-singing, all-dancing world of LA showbusiness usually experience main character moments when we attempt to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Who hasn’t been walking through the rain and imagined they’re in a music video? Well, Glüme hasn’t – because she routinely makes music videos.

“I feel like I miss a lot of real life moments,” she explains. “I didn’t really have a childhood and I don’t have time for a lot of regular personal life stuff. My love life is a mess because I work 12 hours a day. So I don’t always feel like I’m living, and part of me is okay with that, but some days I’m like – oh shit! Am I gonna regret not doing this or that? I regretted not being a kid!”

I ask if the album taps into any of these anxieties - “Absolutely. It’s the first time I’ve been open about my upbringing. I made a short film about it too that’s going to be coming out with the album, called ‘Child Actor’. It’s not good for you when you’re that little, to be working. I’ve been working full-time since I was six, so I feel like an old guy! I’m tired!”

We talk so often about child performers struggling with their egos and senses of self, but rarely worry about the effect that working so much has on somebody so young. Glüme admits to having been through both struggles.

“It takes a toll on the body. And ego-wise, it depends on who you’re surrounded by, but generally it kind of fucks up your ego. When you’re 13, they’re like ‘Get work done, lose weight!’. And you still have stuffed animals! You kind of still fuck with your dolls’ house! You’re not thinking about looking like a sex symbol. But it feels like people are telling you ‘Stay young, grow up, stay young, grow up’ and you’re like ‘which is it?’. To this day, I’m still confused about whether it’s okay to be an adult woman or if I’m still supposed to be an adolescent.”

I tell Glüme I’ve never been to Los Angeles, but that my perception of it in the movies is that there are a lot of main characters there. I ask her what it’s been like to grow up in such an ostensibly glamorous place.

“The only people I knew growing up were other child actors, because I was home-schooled. So I never felt like anyone was more of a main character than anyone else, because we were all trying to do the same thing. Everyone was competitive, but we were also just there for each other because we had no other friends. We were all up for the same parts but no one was catty about it. Whereas I went to one year of high school and that was much scarier – there were so many social hierarchies I had no idea what to do with.”

Glüme’s experience of school is a familiar-sounding one. I went through something similar, albeit in Tameside, Greater Manchester, rather than Los Angeles, California. I tell Glüme that I think that kind of tribalistic behaviour has its roots in self-preservation, and she agrees. “It felt like if you were bitchier, people would like you more. In entertainment, they really chop you down and you’re humbled by that.”

The new album, Main Character, is extremely genre-diverse, mixing electro-pop ballads with trap tracks like recent single ‘Flicker Flicker’. It’s near-impossible to pin down, heralding a death knell for the idea of genre itself. ”I mean –Taylor Swift was country, then she was pop, then she was whatever. It’s about making whatever kind of art you think is exciting. It’s not like people come out of the womb and are like ‘I am electro-pop’.”

Despite this forward-thinking, label-less approach, the album has a cohesive sound, and I’m interested in how she and her collaborators kept everything sounding so harmonious. “When we went in to mix the album, we were really careful about the bass and drums being consistent, no matter which collaborator we were working with. Johnny Jewel – the owner of my label – killed it by making sure consistency was the main thing.”

But even in a city of stars where everyone is battling for a moment of fame, Glüme isn’t immune. With the album’s tracklist boasting a feature from Rufus Wainwright, her whole demeanour changes as she gushes about it; “I’ll be honest – I don’t get starstruck often because I grew up around here. If I ran into Jude Law, I’d just be like ‘He’s really good-looking’. But when Ru showed up and knocked on the door, I was definitely a little starstruck. They say never meet your idols, but sometimes it’s okay. We were watching him work in the booth and he’s a genius. We were hiding behind the monitor and being like ‘OH MY FUCKING GOD’.”

The Wainwright collaboration is just one of many highlights on Glüme’s sophomore record, which releases on February 17th on Italians Do It Better. Also featuring contributions from STRFKR, Kevin Barnes, and Sean Ono Lennon - it’s a whole world to step into, and Glüme’s ready to be the protagonist.