Natasha Hunt Lee is a rising Los Angeles-born and bred singer/songwriter, whose strength lies in raw and honest storytelling paired with cathartic pop sounds. In the past couple of years she has released her debut album ‘The End of the World’, been placed on multiple playlists such as Spotify’s New Music Friday and Fresh Finds, featured in diverse magazines like The New York Times and NYLON and independently sold out her debut headline show in her hometown LA. On January 10th, Lee released her second single ‘Hometown’ of her upcoming sophomore album ‘Best Madonna’ and we discussed all things music, childhood, and inspirations, while she packed her car with clothes to donate to victims of the Los Angeles wildfires – as the love for her city and it’s community undeniably weaves into every single aspect of her life.
“I’m really safe on this side of town, which is great, but I grew up legitimately right next to this fire. My parents’ house is directly on the line and for some reason, it went in the opposite direction, thank God!”, Lee tells us first thing and we are relieved to find out she doesn’t have to evacuate from her beloved hometown that she just released a song about. The making of the track was quite simple yet different from her usual songwriting approach, she says. “I was working with my friend who I grew up with and I was really obsessed with a sort of sound, I wanted to do something that’s kind of piano-oriented. I also wanted to work off of a bunch of songs I really liked the sound of and they were different from mine, so we started that one. It was weird, sometimes I’ll go into a session with an entire song and it’s like, “Okay, how do I take this and make it what I want it to be?”, and in this case, it was like, “Okay, now we have this sound and this vibe, what words feel right within it?”. And for whatever reason, I just started gravitating towards talking about LA and of course, the fact that I grew up here but also the idea that when you’re always in the same place, you are surrounded by a bunch of emotional stuff.” Lee further elaborates, “I think it just so happened, since he is from here too and whatever resonated worked out. We just worked on it more and more and more, and then we kind of tabled it for a while, maybe six months. I was like, “Let’s see what happens, maybe I’ll pitch that song”. Then all of a sudden, there’s one day where we just finish it. I remember finishing it and being like, “Wow, we both really like this!”, and then it just became a matter of when it was time to push it out. So now we’re here and it’s out! I was thinking about what it is all about, and there are certain things that are about certain people, but generally speaking, it’s really just about the idea that everything for me emotionally, is here. I go to one place and I remember this person, I go to the other side of town and then I feel like I’m 16 and falling in love for the first time, it’s like, inescapable”.
Along with ‘Hometown’, she released a music video, where she drives around LA on the back of her roommate’s and producer Brandon Shoop’s motorcycle – and even the driving route is well thought out. “We wanted to find a path that made sense for us to do, where it would be a lot of the iconic features of LA, like the Sunset Strip, or the lights on the Boulevard, but also safe because we literally had friends hanging out of the window of my car. They’ve literally been driving my jeep next to me, and my roommate driving his bike with me on it. And once we finished, we actually did come, you know what I mean?”, she smiles.
When it comes to Lee’s musical beginnings, the first thing she remembers is her admiration for the soundtrack of the movie ‘Moulin Rouge’ with Nicole Kidman. “My dad had the CD in the car and I thought it was so magical before I even watched the movie. Eventually, I asked him to watch it and from then on out I was obsessed with ‘Your Song’ by Elton John, the rendition of that. I just started singing the song in the car and at the house.” Not too long after, Lee started singing in front of other people for the first time. “My dad would have dinner parties on Friday, Shabbat dinner, and he would invite a bunch of people, and because my dad is a producer for film and TV, very LA, he was trying to show his people my voice and have me sing.” However, a couple of years later, she had a moment where she thought “this isn’t for [her], [she doesn’t] like this, [she doesn’t] wanna do this anymore”, so she stopped. Lee eventually ended up rediscovering her love and enjoyment for music in her teenage years, she reminisces on one significant moment: “When I was 14, my best friend came over and told me she learned how to play ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele and I was like, “Oh my god, play it for me!”, and she started playing and I remember being like, “I gotta do this again, I’m jealous, I like this, I’m gonna do it myself!”, so I literally just started playing again.” From that moment, she took it more seriously than ever before. “I remember my parents were like, “If you play every single day, we’ll get you voice lessons, but not until you show us that you actually care about this”, so I just did it until they finally took me seriously enough.” Lee initially intended to go to college for tennis, as it has always been a big part of her growing up, and she was the captain of her team, but in her senior year of high school, she decided that she wanted to study music at NYU instead.
Lee admits that even though she certainly did not lack confidence, she did have to practice and work on her talent a lot, “Music was sort of calling to me but I had no reason to be that confident, particularly when I listen back now to old songs, even all through college. I know it takes a second for anybody to get to where they’re supposed to go and do the work to be as good as you can be, but I had some serious, serious work to do for a second there”. “But, you know, for whatever reason I just decided that that’s what I was going to commit to. Now I feel confident about the stuff that I make but I’m sure in a couple of years I look back and I’ll feel the same, because everyone, I think, does that with their older stuff. But especially when I was a kid and I was like “Yes, this is what I am supposed to do”, I look back to that stuff, and I’m like, “What was this?”, she raises her voice and shakes her head. “If only I felt that compelled right now by anything!” One of the earliest self-written songs the artist can remember was a song called ‘If I can take you too’. “It was a love song and it was basically like, “I’ll take your flaws if I can take you too””. “I remember it was literally life-changing to listen to myself for the first time professionally recorded. I was like, “Put it on the car!” and I was like, “This is crazy!”. But, you know, now I would do anything to not have anyone have to listen to that,”, Lee laughs.
A fellow musician who has always stuck out to her and became her biggest inspiration to this day is British icon Adele. “I played piano, which is so, so important to me, and her songs were the songs that I would play and sing when I had no idea how to write my own stuff. I think that played a really big part in being like, “This is an example of an artist whose entire thing is songs about love on the piano and it doesn’t need to be anything else”. That gave me a lot of confidence, even though I pivoted in my sound. But I feel like what you learn it on is always a huge part of your story and in some ways the reason that you do everything the way that you do.”
Lee points out that her musical identity lies in “really honest, romantic, sometimes nearly dramatic lyrics, with pop, kind of approachable, top-line melodies”. “Sonically, I think is what is changing as I change. The other stuff is who I am, and this part of the song, the sound, is way more of what I’m inspired by at the moment.” She tells us that her new project, her sophomore album ‘Best Madonna’, was very guitar driven. “I don’t play the guitar myself, so I think I went through this whole moment of being really excited by what it made me want to write when someone else was leading with guitar because it was like a whole new world.” The through line in Lee’s artistry is her writing, her “inhibition to say whatever”. “Sometimes I look back at songs and I’m like, “I can’t believe I released that”, I used to be even worse!’, she jokes about the fact that some songs do feel a little too targeted. Nevertheless, Lee finds it hard to describe her music to people who have never listened to her before as she is sure that “someone else who’s more objective has a clearer view of things”, but she loses her objectiveness, “because [she’s] so close to it”. The best example is her work on the upcoming album and how people she played it to reacted to it. “When I was writing all these songs, I thought that there was no way that anyone was going to feel like these are similar because I wrote them with different people and they feel so different to me, but when I showed people, they thought it was very consistent, the songs all sounded like me, nothing was wrong. It’s just the way that you see it. I think with stuff that you create it is impossible for you to be objective about it.”
As mentioned, Lee focuses on raw and honest storytelling in her lyrics and therefore always writes about personal experiences. “It’s very much like, “What is going on in my life?”, whether that’s good or bad for other people in it.” When she is hired as a songwriter for other people, she likes to “try tapping into their stories and their perspective”, but for her own project she has a “weird kind of aversion to make up things” because so much of her already released music is coming straight from her heart and she “would feel like [she’s] lying”. The biggest difference between writing for herself and other artists lies in the patience and grace she gives herself as a songwriter. “I’ve had moments in my life where I’m like, “I gotta write every day, I gotta write one song a week”, or whatever my goal was when I was in college and music school and around a bunch of other musicians. I’ve tried everything, and I think I’ve realised that when it comes to my own music, my ability might get better by writing a lot, but the good songs just kinda come when they come. When I’m writing for somebody else I will simply sit down and write the song because that’s why I’m there. Whereas when it’s for me, I think part of me is kind of like, “I’m gonna sit down and if I get to the point where it’s just not happening, that’s it”.”
‘Best Madonna’, Lee’s new upcoming album, is set to be released in late August/September, and centres “the weird perspective of a woman who’s constantly in these really complex, unorthodox relationships with men, where it’s not one way or another, like, it’s too intimate to be platonic, seemingly, but it’s not sexual, but then romantic is so, I would say, subjective as a word to begin with”. “I think this whole project is just about being like “Okay, if I’m gonna be in these weird squares that I’m not really satisfied in, at least I’m gonna try to own it and go with it”, and at the same time I’m realising that I’m part of that.” She explains her concept and we attentively listen while she continues to talk us through what seems like a very vulnerable yet common experience for young people in the dating world. “What is it that I am doing, looking for, allowing that puts me in these situations where I’m constantly in some relationship that isn’t a relationship but taking all of my emotional energy? That happens so many times! But now, I feel like I finally made a choice and was like, “This actually sucks and I’m actually done”. This project is the reflection of what I feel started that pattern, and then the past four years as a single person just rotting in that pattern. So all the songs are very different approaches to that same era and stream of thought, and trying to figure myself out.”
Visually, ‘Best Madonna’ and its aesthetic are inspired by Hollywood’s IT women, such as Marilyn Monroe and Pamela Anderson, etc., and the worship culture they incite. “The vanity, emotion, mess and loneliness expressed through elements of vintage glamour and contrasted by trashy American grit, with gaudy religious symbols”, plus the spirit of Bad Luhrmann.
Compared to Lee’s debut album ‘The End of the World’, which she describes as “particularly sad and vulnerable”, the music on her sophomore album carries “more confidence and more of an edge”. “I think the music was a little bit more gentle [on ‘The End of the World’] and I will say the first two songs I put out [off of ‘Best Madonna’] are a little bit more gentle too, because I wanted to bridge the gap. I went from ending my childhood in my last project, to then being a young adult. And I have no fucking idea what’s going on, nobody does. And I’m kind of losing my mind all of the time”, she shares truthfully and I think a lot of us young adults can relate to that feeling too. “But I do think, generally speaking, as I said before, the writing remains and that’s what I can count on as my through line. I co-produce things with everybody but I will never be the engineer and the one with my hand on the mouse, and because of that, it’s really nice to know that at least in my writing style, or what I want to talk about, prevails enough to create consistency.”
Additionally to Lee’s music career, she started a party project with two of her best friends in 2024 called StarGirls. The parties happen twice a week at two different venues in Los Angeles and their priorities lay in creating a safe space, particularly for women. We wonder if Lee is a big party girl herself and if she thinks that somehow impacts her artistry as well? “Totally, I think it does”, she immediately nods. “More than anything, I am a very, very, very people-driven person, very outside and very involved in what’s around me. I think that my music is a reflection of that because it’s quite literally the truth about my context and people in the areas of my life. And the parties are weirdly about the exact same thing, and about celebrating the same thing. The music is not directly about the parties, but who I am is being displayed in different ways by both. One is what I’m thinking in my mind, and one is how that’s making me act in a way, does that make sense?” The parties are new – “they started nine months ago”, she informs us – but they have been doing “amazingly well”. “As with everything, it really goes to show that my surrounding is just unbelievably supportive and wonderful. I’ve been really lucky that the things that I’ve gone into doing, even professionally, and that pay my rent and stuff, are all at almost the mercy of my community. Only if they’re gonna support me, that’s gonna make a difference in whether I can do it or not, and they continue to do so. That is a really big piece of gratitude for me every day. Especially with these parties, it didn’t just work out, it’s been fantastic! We have people come to us all the time and be like, “I was gonna leave LA but someone invited me to this thing and now I come here every week, and I haven’t introduced myself yet just because I’m trying to leave you guys alone because you’re working, but thank you so much for giving me somewhere to go” and that’s just so kind, and so beyond what we thought that we were doing!”
Although we are already a couple of weeks into the new year, we ask Lee how she feels about New Year’s resolutions and if she has any for 2025. “I think that resolutions and possibly trying to get better is necessary because if you don’t, nothing’s gonna change. I feel like, with any attempted improvement, what’s the harm? Even thinking about it is in itself part of it. Thinking about what you might need to do for yourself, or do for others, or how you could be a happier person or everyone else.” Lee gets candid with us one last time, as she shares her main resolution for this year. “Mine is to stay more consistently positive and confident. It’s all about consistency and perspective for me this year, just because I am a big swing girl on the pendulum. I feel confident that this past year I’ve shrunk the swing and from now on I really want to practice thinking in that space.” She reflects on the fact that her parents “are very reactive people, [she] grew up around a lot of loudness and drama”, so therefore, “as [she’s] going to be 28 this year, [she] want[s] to take care of [herself] like a parent”. “I want to create an environment where I don’t freak out about small things because I spent so much time doing that”, Lee assuringly smiles into the camera one last time.
It is undeniable that Natasha Hunt Lee is an incredibly interesting and unique artist, especially when it comes to her detailed yet relatable concepts for lyricism and visuals. We are excited to see where her talent will take her in 2025, and hope that she will keep her positivity and confidence every step of the way.
Written by Vicky Madzak
GEM Magazine 