Music

Marnie Stern is not just "the girl who plays guitar"

by Anne T. Donahue

Marnie Stern wants to be honest. In a industry associated with bravado and falsities, the songwriter-guitarist is quick to offer her opinion; addressing the personal aspects of last year’s self-titled album and the price she pays for being renowned as “the girl who plays guitar”—a title she believes perpetuates a self-fulfilling prophecy spearheaded by the industry itself.

“I never separated gender when I would watch bands play,” she begins. “I really just thought ‘did I like the music or did I not like the music,’ and I think that helped me in a lot of ways to not have any of those barriers. And the irony is now that it gets asked so much, that it gets put into my head where it wasn’t before.”

“I don’t like it because it puts me into some cartoon pocket of ‘the girl who plays guitar’ when really I write songs,” she continues. “All the bands that play, you don’t think ‘oh my God, that guy’s a really good guitar player’—you’re listening to their songs. And you don’t look at their instruments, you just think ‘yeah, you’re musicians.’ That’s what they’re supposed to be.”

After releasing her third full-length album to critical praise at the start of October, Stern’s remained upfront about what her record represents. Sharing that she’d previously “been cocooned without a personal life,” she sees Marnie Stern as an album “about regular life pain and hurt,” and used the experience to improve as a lyricist and songwriter on top of channeling a different side of herself.

“[The record’s] so personal that at first, when I’d come down from all the emotional feelings I was going through when I wrote it, I was a little bit embarrassed,” she reveals. “Or worried that it put me in a really vulnerable position—far from the badass I could think of. But at the same time, hopefully maybe that vulnerability is strength in some ways. I’m working on it every day.”

“[But] as much as this record made me feel vulnerable and sort of in ways pathetic, it was honest and it was what was going on, so in a way I think it was brave to do.”

The desire to be badass is no fleeting want for Stern, who’s been vocal on her respect for the trait, as well as her hope to be categorized under such a title. And while she admits that her knack for risk-taking helps cement her as such, she also maintains that sincerity and honesty is just as valuable and something she strives for just as much.

“I think everyone is trying to be sincere,” she says. “I feel like everyone’s doing their best, hopefully. I think sometimes one person’s sincerity doesn’t feel that sincere to me, but that’s not to say that they’re not trying.”

“So for me, I think that my whole goal with music is to be as sincere as possible,” she continues. “To put as much of myself into the music as possible—the actual notes, and the singing, the whole thing. And that’s really my goal because when I’m listening to music, the songs that seem to be the most sincere are the ones that stay with me the longest and the ones that I gravitate towards.”