Allie X and Empress Of on Fandom, Friendship, and Becoming a member of Forces for Their New Single “Galina”

The 2 are long-time followers of one another’s work, and sparked up a friendship over Instagram. When Hughes started excited about releasing “Galina” as a single (prompted, partially, by the monitor turning into a fan-favorite), Rodriguez was the primary one who got here to thoughts as a doable collaborator. “I undoubtedly wished a female-identifying voice on it, as a result of it’s about feminine relationships,” Hughes explains. “And I simply form of thought by who I knew, and Lorely made numerous sense.”

Whereas they solely met in individual for the primary time on the set of the visible they filmed for “Galina” in Los Angeles a number of weeks again, each Rodriguez and Hughes see one another as considerably kindred spirits. “Allie, the artist, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s my lady,’” says Rodriguez. (Certainly, Rodriguez additionally appears to have a facet gig as pop’s largest hype lady—should you comply with her on Instagram, you’ll usually spot her within the feedback gassing her friends up.) Provides Hughes: “I really feel the identical about you! I really feel like we’ve numerous mutual pals, we’ve each been doing it for a minute, similar type of viewers. I really feel like I knew you earlier than this, however we’d truly by no means had a dialog in actual life earlier than we did this collab.”

One factor they bonded over was their love for an acrobatic melody. “I wouldn’t wish to be on a monotone music—I wished to sing!” Rodriguez exclaims, whereas Hughes notes her affection for “huge, hovering, all around the place-kind of choruses” that she traces again to being a theater child. (At this, the pair go on a tangent about their musical outings in highschool: Rodriguez fondly remembers showing in a manufacturing of Guys & Dolls, whereas Hughes carried out Bernstein’s Candide.)

However the subject material of the music—which is, at its essence, the story of a wierd connection between two ladies—additionally felt applicable for a collaboration between two trade friends. “I feel in my life, I’ve had these ladies, particularly older ladies, come into my world with this very maternal, mystical factor occurring, and steer my life in a optimistic route,” says Hughes. “That’s all the time been very important to me. And, yeah, Galina was a kind of ladies. There’s nearly like a maternal, divine, female love embedded within the music.” Provides Rodriguez, with a wink: “You’re keen on Galina as a result of she made your pores and skin bomb. She made your face beautiful.” (To create a visible accompaniment to the one, the pair labored with the cult movie director Jennifer Juniper Stratford, who additionally made the movies for Hughes’s Lady With No Face period, with the operative phrase for his or her trend being “regality.”)