The Woodsies stage at Glastonbury has become a prime venue for talent spotting, giving those in the know an early chance to enjoy the likes of Wet Leg, The Last Dinner Party, Girl in Red, and Dua Lipa before they made it big.
This year, it has happened again with a standout set from Palo Alto’s rising alt-pop star Remi Wolf that made everyone there sit up and take notice. Surely it’s only a matter of time before she’s spoken of in the same breath as her breakout predecessors; her new album Big Ideas, out today, is one of the best and most exciting pop records of 2024.
At Glastonbury, Wolf was a charismatic, engaging presence, leading the audience through an energising workout (featuring lots of gyrating) and effortlessly proving why she’s one of the buzziest emerging names on the alternative pop scene in the process. And she realises it was a moment too.
“As an American, I don’t think I realised the gravity of Glastonbury, and how much it means culturally,” Wolf says when we meet a week after her triumphant performance. “People go so f***ing hard for that festival!” Though she had to leave Worthy Farm the same evening, she still found time to pop up as a surprise guest during Arlo Parks’s set later on.
“Oh, and the other thing I did was I had one of those apple ciders,” she adds, of being introduced to the local delicacies. “I think that’s a thing? It was good!”
With her bright, cartoonish pop, a sprinkle of pop-punk, and updated take on vintage soul, Wolf feels like a very refreshing new kind of pop star; the product of an internet age that has blurred the old genre lines. In place of media-trained social media posts, Wolf opts for something slightly more chaotic and humourous which seems to resonate. “My ass!” reads a recent caption. Her fans — nickname the “Remjobs” — respond with cries of “mother”.
While her debut Juno made her a sleeper star, Big Ideas seems likely to prompt the real breakthrough. Fans often joke that Wolf is incapable of penning a bad song, and Big Ideas is no exception, its flawless pop bangers underpinned by witty storytelling and honesty that is hard to look away from. Its biggest hit Cinderella should be filed next to other massive summer hits such as Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, and Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe.
Wolf has been living out of a suitcase for most of 2024, touring relentlessly in the run-up to the release. Earlier this year, she was among Olivia Rodrigo’s support acts — which also included Roan and PinkPantheress, as well as US legends The Breeders — and opened for her on the European leg of the GUTS tour.
“For a lot of those kids, that was their first concert ever. So I took it upon myself to teach them how to be at a show, and how to dance and move around,” Wolf says. “They’re loud!” she adds of the tens of thousands of fans that filled each arena. Trying to foster connection in such enormous venues, with an audience that was here for the headliner, was “good performance practice”, Wolf says. Though the gruelling schedule meant that she and
Rodrigo didn’t get to see each other much, both artists live in LA and are hoping to find the time to “legitimately hang out and chill. She’s so sweet, I’m really grateful to her for bringing me on the road.”
One unique feature of the GUTS Tour, she says, was the regular presence of mental health support. “They had therapists on staff, which I’ve never seen before. Every single person in the crew… had access to therapists who have been in the industry.
“Having a mental health presence there felt so much more safe than sending everybody out with no resources available at all. It’s hard. We’re running a business here. We want to feed the people who are giving us our careers, the fans. I want to go out there and perform for them. But it’s a crazy balance.”
Wolf grew up in Palo Alto, and spent a big chunk of her childhood travelling around the world as a competitive skier. She sees parallels between that period, and the “split life” sensation of returning from tour.
“I’m really grateful to Olivia Rodrigo for bringing me on the road.”
Much of her new album was written on the road, during a time when the artist was struggling to balance the high demands and hedonism of performing every single night with looking after her mental health.
Debut Juno explored her relationship with alcohol; when she wrote it, she was recently sober and had just left rehab. Now her approach to sobriety is less rigid. And new album Big Ideas is even more existential. “I’ve been pushed to the brink of sanity,” she says. “There was just so much swirling around in my mind, especially regarding my artistry, and who I am as a person.”
Accordingly, Big Ideas feels like it’s constantly pulling in two directions: on Cinderella’s jaunty percussive whistles Wolf sings about shapeshifting “on the company dime” and fleetingly wondering where her true self has gone in the process. For every horny, strutting banger about causing multiple noise complaints in a hotel after some late-night, extra-curricular activity (Toro) there are moments of real vulnerability. That smokey, vintage-flavoured track Motorcycle in particular, she says, is especially representative of the “inner turmoils and battles that I was going through as a touring musician”.
Wolf adds that she is a huge fan of Charli XCX’s album Brat, how it goes from deep life questions to club anthems. “There’s a reason that album is so huge. She was so honest about the internal struggles of being a woman in this modern society, especially when you’re a badass working bitch that’s ruling your own shit,” Wolf says. “She hit the nail on the head. I feel like I was given a voice like through that album. I cried during the last three songs! I was like, holy shit. She’s f***ing sick.
“I think there’s a lot of good music coming out right now, and especially from women,” she adds. “It’s summer right now, so it’s kind of bop season. Sometimes I’m like, do I fit in with what’s going on right now? I have to trust that my songs bop just as hard.”
Judging by the number of times people have hit replay on Remi Wolf so far — 4.8 million people listen to her each month on Spotify, while her biggest bop of all, Dominic Fike collab Photo ID, has racked up 77 million listens — she doesn’t need to worry about that one.
