Diandra Interviews Cassidy King: Love Is Not So Picture Perfect

We see it all the time. Someone looks at their favorite artist, from Adele to The Weeknd, finds out they were just broken up with, and says, “We are going to get such a good album.” While the argument is out as to whether heartbreak or pure, blissful love makes a song better, Cassidy King proves its a mixture of both. In our interview, we discuss her debut EP, Not So Picture Perfect, and the love that changed how she defines love and looks for it in her music and relationships.

Diandra: What was it like to create and release your debut EP during a pandemic?

Cassidy: The pandemic has brought an awareness for a lot of people that is really interesting. We’ve spent a lot of alone time to get to figure ourselves out. The beginning or quarantine, no one knew how to adjust. I spent a lot of time recording, and I pushed myself, vocally, in a new way. It made me look for the best of everything. Looking back on relationships and recording this project, it helped me figure out parts to my artistry.

Diandra: With the EP released, do you have new feelings or more perspective about the relationship it was based on?

Cassidy: A lot of self-growth came out of that relationship! I am a hopeless romantic, and I love to talk about love. There is such healing about getting to talk about the those relationships and the what you were feeling and your faults. There was a lot of self-recognition, and figuring out how to be a better person from those relationships. A relationship can be really emotionally damaging to you, and it is not the easiest writing about them, but when you talk about things, you heal more. So you write these songs that are so personal and then they get released, months later, and it is almost like opening up the wound again. So when I was speaking about the album, I would get emotional, and I would see, “Okay, you still need to heal this.” So there was definitely a lot of growth. This relationship was the first time I fell in love, and it was with a woman. It was just a lot. I am grateful for it. I got a lot of songs from it.

Diandra: You WIN!

Cassidy: I WIN (we laugh)
Cassidy King – Safe Places (Official Video)

Diandra: Was there something you noticed about your relationship the you thought, I need to rethink how I love?

Cassidy: I learned so much about how I love, and I think it is a matter of who you give it too. I think I love very hard, and I think I invested in the wrong one. I don’t think that is bad, but I need to find the one that loves that and appreciates that. So it is about finding the person that doesn’t take advantage of how much you love. So it was about figuring out what I deserve, and gaining the self-confidence to be with someone who loves you for who you are and how you love. I think it becomes toxic when you depend your confidence on this person and how they receive your love. You could really lose yourself in a toxic love and you need to realize whether they are taking advantage of that. You can become infatuated with a person so fast. So it made me aware to be more cognitive about who you love not how you love.

Diandra: Was there something about the relationship that made you realize what you are attracted to in a person versus what you should find attractive?

Cassidy: The first thing that attracts is whether they are smart and funny. Those are all surface level things until you start to get deep. So what I am trying to figure out is how I will know whether a person will be nice to me, and whether I can even handle that because i have never had that. I’ve never been vulnerable and you can get so used to chasing hurt. It becomes your new normal and you start thinking this is what you deserve.

(she laughs) I am really trying to figure how to have someone be nice to me and see that as what I deserve because there is something addictive to chasing after someone that doesn’t like you or isn’t nice to you. It’s like, “No, you are GOING to like me!” It really is about how you are taught to love, especially because there is so much infatuation in the first phase. It’s butterflies and sunshine when it starts, but you get treated a certain way, whether that is growing up or in previous relationships, you start to think that is what you deserve or is the standard. So it really goes back to self-love and never settling. Don’t settle for anyone! You are worth so much! I try to remind myself of that when I start a new relationship.

Diandra: So what did breaking up teach you about how you love?

Cassidy: I always think first loves are important because they set a bar. I think I stuck around a lot because there is beauty in the pain. You are hurting in a good way, and we both fought so hard to be together. So it was like, “What have we fought for, if we give up now?” So the more you fight with somebody, the more you give in a way. You give up yourself to the toxic, but it was the first time I felt so much. It was the best and worst at the same time: perfectly imperfect. It’s like, “So give up? No!” It’s not easy.
Cassidy King – Abigail (Official Video)

Diandra: Yeah, I felt that in that in Not So Picture Perfect. Like you were fighting to heal how you fought to love.

Cassidy: It’s all a collective of the same relationship. I didn’t see myself with a woman. Growing up, you are taught it is a guy and a woman, and they go off to live a perfect life and have kids. I think it defied, for both of us, what we saw for ourselves or rather what we were taught to see. So it was our first experience in a lot of different ways: our first time with a woman.

The whole project was me falling in love with a woman who was also with a man. So it was about me not feeling enough, and feeling like I could never compete. Like, I couldn’t compete with a man. I am not a man, and I am comfortable in who I am. I am comfortable being a woman, and I felt like I was going at it with this guy. It was a very emotional time in my life like, “Safe Spaces” was based off a poem I gave her about what I was feeling, and “Abigail” was about one night, at 3AM, I was really lonely. We had broken up and I was up and I was like, “I f**king miss her.” Did I really miss her or was I just lonely? So I unblocked her from my phone because I was just thinking of all the good things, called her, but she had me blocked. So the song was about the frustration and loneliness of really wanting someone and missing having someone so badly that you are wiling to go back to something that is toxic.

Diandra: Something about 3AM makes people make SUCH BAD relationship choices. Like who hasn’t done the 3AM text to a toxic ex?

Cassidy: (laughing) Yeah, I just need to go to bed earlier.

Diandra: (laughing) Yeah, you didn’t miss her. You were just sleepy.

Cassidy: Between 12 AM to 4AM people are on their phone, and scrolling through pictures or a Snapchat memory pops up, and it is like, “I miss her,” but its like I’m just lonely. So I should just go to bed.

Diandra: What is a love story from a book or film, you think I would become a great concept album.

Cassidy: Call Me By Your Name. I would love to see that film turned into an album. That movie breaks me apart. It is amazing.

Diandra: OoooOOooooO You can have a track called “Peach.”

Cassidy: (laughing) YES!
Cassidy King – Polaroid (Official Video)

Diandra: It also feels so relevant to Not So Picture Perfect.

Cassidy: Yeah, because it is about not getting what you wanted. I’m also a major Pixar fan, but that is really childish.

Diandra: Pixar makes me ugly cry so hard. I am eviscerated by Coco.

Cassidy: Wall-E and Up! I SOB! The huge reason I romanticize love is because of these movies.

Diandra: Disney movies are all about the romanticism of love, but like, Pixar, it is very adult about love. Like, people lose.

Cassidy: Pixar is really teaching kids love is real and they are doing it in an honest, not so “in your face” way. You watch these films when you are older, and you are like Whoa! This is woke!
Cassidy King – When I’m Gone (Visualizer)

Diandra: So when you think of Love, now, what is your picture perfect?

Cassidy: The whole story behind that title is finding perfection in the imperfect. So it is about loving someone for all that they are, and loving them through the parts of them that are not perfect. Loving their good and bad, and that is what makes it so beautiful. Loving someone’s beauty despite their flaws. Damn, you got me in my feelings, here!

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