Interviewing Taylor Momsen: Ex-"Gossip Girl" stella, star says experience, maturity make new disc so good 

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Taylor Momsen, the erstwhile star of TV’s “Gossip Girl” and frontwoman for the rock group The Pretty Reckless, says the difference between the group’s 2010 debut album “Light Me Up” and its new sophomore album “Going to Hell” is simple: Experience.

In the time between the discs, the four-person band toured relentlessly and homed in on a sound.

Momsen left acting completely to focus on music, and did something else, she says: Grew up.

Perhaps it’s that maturity that has made the record such a hit.

While “Light Me Up” peaked at No. 65 on Billboard’s albums chart, barely cracked the Top 20 Rock Albums and was largely seen as another actor-turned-musician project, “Going to Hell,” released in March, broke Billboard’s Top 5 and hit No. 2 on the Rock album chart.

It produced back-to-back No. 1 Mainstream Rock hits with “Messed Up,” a title sanitized for radio, and “Heaven Knows,” which spent 18 weeks at the top and was the chart’s No. 1 song for 2014.

That made The Pretty Reckless the second female-fronted group ever to have two No. 1 hits in a row at rock radio — the last was The Pretenders with Chrissie Hynde in 1987.

In a recent telephone call from an undisclosed location in New England, where she was rehearsing with her band, Momsen spoke about the new disc, the growth of The Pretty Reckless and the future.

LEHIGH VALLEY MUSIC: Hey, Taylor. How are you?

Just fine, thanks. So tell me about the [new] album “Going to Hell.” Tell me what it’s about, how you came up with it.

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“This record was written very much as a band record compared to [the group’s 2010 debut album] “Light Me Up” in the way that there’s very minimal production on the record. It’s very honest, it’s very blunt. It’s guitars-bass-drums-vocals and that’s it – very few bells and whistles. Which inevitably made it heavier – which naturally kind of occurred because, after touring ‘Light Me Up’ for 2 1/2 years, the four of us became a really, really tight unit as a live band. And so think record, I think, captures what we really sound like. We really homed in on a sound on this record, and I think it definitely is very representative of the band that we are today.

“Like, ‘Light Me Up,’ I wrote [the song] ‘Make Me Wanna Die’ when I was 15 years old. I’m 15 on that record and I’m 21 now. So it’s definitely much more mature. It delves into a lot grander topics, I think. It’s equally as personal but after touring the world and seeing it all with your own two eyes, that only changes your f—king perspective on life, and this record definitely talks a lot about social and political issues of the imbalance of power structures and how everything’s run. ‘Cause frankly, touring the world, you see it all with your own eyes, and you go, ’Jesus, this is so f--ked up.’ We’re  doing it so wrong. Like [laughs] so wrong.

“So this record, it definitely is a little bit more in-depth in that type of grand topics. There’s definitely more maturity, but I think it really … if you listen to the record and then come see our show, there’s not much of a difference. ‘Cause we don’t … I won’t play with tracks, ‘cause I don’t believe in that. It’s gotta be live rock ‘n’ roll. That everything’s gotta be played on stage that day. If you suck, you suck that night. But that’s what you get. [Laughs]”

Bless you for feeling that way about live rock ‘n’ roll.

“Thank You. I feel like it gets lost nowadays, especially, with everything tracked and ProTools and AutoTune. This record is very raw – it’s very stripped. You can really hear the players a lot more. It really is two guitars, bass, drums, vocals. No AutoTuning, no anything. If it sucks, you redo it, like take another take. So it very much captures what – I mean, there’s still a quality of ‘here’s a record’ as opposed to ‘here’s a live album.’ But it definitely is a lot closer to … I think we’ve really developed a sound, or honed into what The Pretty Reckless is, and is becoming, with this record.”

Hey, let me ask you something: When you were talking about the subject matter on the record, you said about ‘We’re doing it wrong.’ Do you mean, like, globally, or the United States, or who’s doing it wrong?

“Us, globally, everything. Everything’s so f—ked up, the whole world. And the imbalance of power is so f—ked up. I mean, I don’t want to get too in depth talking about what the songs mean because I like to leave it open to interpretation by the listener, because personally I like when I hear an artist5 that I love talk about what the song was actually written about, then it f—ks with it so much to me. Like, it ruins the song for me, ‘cause when I hear it, it moves me in a certain way, and when I hear what the story is, it takes away that element of ‘Well, this moved me in this direction, and now I know the f—king story.’ So I don’t like to talk to much about it.

“But I think worldwide. Like on ‘Going to Hell,’ the song ‘House on a Hill,’ you travel around the world and you’re shocked how little kids can’t eat and barely have a roof over their heads, and then there’s a giant mansion on top of a f—king hill with the people who own it all and rule it all.

“And young violence – ‘[Why’d You Bring a] Shotgun to the Party’ is another song. With all the shootings in the schools , how can I not write about that? I know people are talking about it, but they’re not talking about it blatantly in music, and I want to say something with it – not necessarily to raise awareness, but bring it up, you know? Like it’s all good and fine to go out to a club and enjoy having a night and not think about the serious sh-t in the world, but when it comes down to it, people need to be talking about that stuff again, and I think that’s just what rock ‘n’ roll is for. It’s a means to give people the freedom to say what the f—k you want and mean it.

“And if people like it, great. And if they don’t, f—k ‘em. [Laughs] You know?”

[Laughs] Let me ask you –and talking about song meanings here. [The song] “Heaven Knows” to me sounds like a really provocative song, Like, you’re really sort of going there. Am  I hearing that right, or do you mean something different?

“Um, sure. I mean, again, take it how you want to take it. I don’t like to use the word ‘provocative,’ because I think it’s too cliché and I think it simplifies things too much. But I hate the word ‘edgy’ and ‘provocative’ and ‘dark’ or whatever. ‘Cause I don’t consider myself a pessimist or an optimist. I’m an artists, so I’m consistently unhappy and consistently frank about what I’m doing. So I’m never happy and I’m never satisfied. At the same time, I love what I do so much I wouldn’t trade it for the world. [Laughs] So it’s the curse of being a writer.

“But ‘Heaven Knows’ … the whole record has a bunch of themes that run through it when you listen to it, and it’s meant to be listened to like an old-school record, where it’s not a collection of singles, or ‘Here’s a dance song, here’s another song. Here’s a pop song, whatever. It’s a piece of art and a piece of work where you listen to it from front to back and it tells multiple stories. And the more you listen to each song, the more you’re going to discover different meanings and different things inside of the songs.”

I couldn’t help  but notice the album cover – you’re naked on it.

“Yes. [Laughs] Again, it was f--king taken very wrong. Everybody, again, has their own opinion and tabloids are always trying … they got to write a story about something. [Laughs] But that came from, that concept is the cross on my back is the symbol of the record – the ‘Going to Hell’ cross. The arrow pointing down to hell. So that’s everywhere. And I wanted the record to be like I don’t … the first record, ‘Light Me Up,’ there was a picture of a little girl representative of me as a child. This record, it doesn’t have my face on it. It’s very much focused on the music, ‘cause I could die tomorrow, but I want the music to last and be something that I’m proud of. So everything I do, I take extremely seriously.

“So the record cover came about with … it was a takeoff on a(n Eric) Clapton cover that I love, which is a picture of a woman’s back and I wanted to pay homage to that and really take a beautiful photograph and have the cross be the focus of it. Which is why the vinyl is the only one that actually shows my butt. The other [formats], they’re all cropped in.”

“Um, [Laughs]. But it came from the idea that you come into this world with nothing but your soul, and you leave with nothing but your soul. So why the f--k am I dating myself with clothes or anything like that. This record was so stripped and honest in the recording of it, the writing of it, and I wanted the imagery that went along with it to be equally artist and stripped and  honest and that meant naked. And by the way, everyone’s naked .We all have a butt, we all have a body, and clothes are the thing you put on to stay warm.

“So it wasn’t meant to be sexual at all and I think people are taking it incorrectly. It was meant to be a beautiful photograph capturing the cross. That’s the point. And I had a very, very talented body painter who painted that on me. It was quite incredible. It was quite interesting – it was a very good shoot and he has a lot of great photographs from it.”

The other song “Heaven Knows” goes to No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart. No. 1, it sounds very bluesy to me. And No. 2, I’m a huge Led Zeppelin fan, and I hear led Zeppelin in it. Am I wrong at all?

“Well, we are all giant Led Zeppelin fans, so I would not say you are wrong. “

I really like the song. It has a really nice blues-rock sound to it.

“Thank you. Blues is absolutely … rock ‘n’ roll comes from the blues. So blues is definitely an influence on us. It’s the base of everything. So absolutely you’re not incorrect on that. [Laughs] I grew up wanting to be Robert Plant and f—k Jimmy Page. So that’s my phrase that I say all the time [Laughs]. So it’s definitely not wrong.”

Well, you’ve got my heart with that. I’m a huge Led Zeppelin fan, too. Do you feel at all that you’ve matured with this album? I mean, is that fair to say?

“Oh absolutely. I mean, the first record I recorded and wrote when I was 15 years old. I was 20 when I wrote this album. The difference between 15 and 20 is immense. I was a 15-year-old girl, I’m now a 21-year-old woman. So I think this record is definitely a lot more mature in a lot of aspects than ‘Light Me Up’ was. But I’m equally proud of both records and equally excited for both.”

How’d you hook up with Nickelback [for the tour]?

“I’m an artist and not into business, so I’m not actually sure how it came it came about.  So it should be a fun tour. We’re very excited to tour and can’t wait to be playing all the new songs live. We’re f—king psyched to have everyone hear us.”

Let me ask one more question, and it’s from the acting end of it. What was it like for you to have “Gossip Girl” come to an end and do you have any movies or shows in the works? Or are you just concentrating on music?

“Um, well, I quit ‘Gossip Girl.’ I was never fired and the producers and the writers were very supportive of my music career. And they knew that I was never an actress – I started as an actress ‘cause you can’t be putting out a record when you’re 3 years old. And it was a job and paid my rent but when I finally wrote a record worth of material that I wanted to release, it wasn’t even a question. It was, ‘I’ve got to go and this is what I’m doing now.’

“So music has forever been my goal and my entire life has been based around me being a songwriter. It’s what I do. I live for it. So the intention is to make records and tour and make them better and better as long as I’m alive.

“And if the right acting role comes along at some point, and it’s so perfect that I can’t … then maybe. But I’m not actively pursuing it in any way, shape of form.”

THE PRETTY RECKLESS, opening for Nickelback, 8 p.m. Feb. 14, PPL Center, 701 Hamilton St., Allentown. Tickets $39-$85 (other sections sold out). Info: www.PPLCenter.com, 610-347-TIXX