Paris is starting to feel familiar to Magi Merlin. The artist says it’s something of a privilege, touring the world, continuing to build her audience further from her home in Montréal. Merlin has, for example, toured with likes of Omar Apollo, Yaya Bey, and Tyler The Creator. But, for touring artists, especially those on the rise, a home away from home is something of a welcome comfort and necessity.
Merlin spoke to me on a bright Wednesday morning from Europe before her tour across the continent in support her debut album, Power House. Her sonic style can be described as potent in its introspective lyrics with seemingly unlimited production possibilities, as she innovates sounds by blending different genres together. It creates something that’s closer to new than not, something she embraced with one of her first—and now long-time—collaborators.
Merlin’s artistic journey began at 19 when she moved to Montréal from Saint-Lazare, Québec where she grew up. Like many other artists just starting out, finding a community to support the early stages of her journey wasn’t always easy. “It’s so funny because I think back in the day when the indie scene was booming in Montréal. Musicians were able to connect much easier at parties and arts spaces. I wasn’t around for that. Now it’s all happening on Instagram.”
One of those people Merlin met through the Meta app is producer Funkywhat, a creative collaborator she’s had for nearly a decade. “This musical relationship was essential to the growth of my project, my style, and who I am as an artist”, she says. “[We] had the opportunity to grow together, which is important. When I met Funky, he was six months into making beats, [but] I’d been writing for a long time. We were able to really build something together.”
Power House finds Merlin solidifying her experimental, genre-less otherworld. She refers to her sound as “broken R&B,” something that has R&B, pop, punk, electronic, soul, experimental, and jazz elements in conversation with one another.
“Broken R&B” was coined by Merlin and Funkywhat as a path to more freely explore music. “We had landed on R&B being the foundation of this sound because— for both of us—that’s where we’re kind of linking, you know?” she explains.
“The broken part is that it’s everything: it’s our influences, our friends’ influences, our parents’ influences. There are no rules as to what should or shouldn’t be in this place. I think coming up with the term for it was super exciting. It also gives us a thing to say to people when they ask.”
This sort of creative philosophy allowed her to seamlessly move around on Power House tracks such as the buttery smooth soul on “EAT!ME!OUT!” to a sparkling downtempo on “So Smart” to anthemic pop on “Spice Kick.”
“I think of ‘broken R&B’ like an open-face sandwich. It could literally be anything. It’s really fun to have that title to work underneath. It allows for anything to happen,” Merlin says. “This direction for us is very telling of what type of music we make, and what a lot of [other] people are making. There are cool musicians creating things that don’t belong in any singular space. You can’t box them into one sound because it could literally be anything.”
Power House is deliberate in its execution. Something Merlin feels “super proud of the fact that it feels like a cohesive body of work.” There is an abundance of care around the record. “It just feels like the world building around the record, the visual elements, styling, all feels very thought out and thoughtful, which is what I really wanted to do. I put a year and a half, almost two years, of thinking into it.”
Thematically, Power House is in pursuit of understanding the human experience. The 12 tracks become a sort of love letter to humanity, embracing the beauty hidden deep within our imperfections. “One thing I’ve been learning more about is the duality of people: How one thing can be true, and another thing completely opposite can be true? We can make decisions that aren’t 100% always aligned with what we feel is our character, but that’s because we’re human beings and we’re very complex and we’re very contradictory.”
When Merlin began writing for the project, she says she “started to think more about pieces that make up a person. We deal with anger, ego, introspection, and heartbreak. Also, there are times when we’re just being a bitch, straight up. We’re so many things, but we can be the opposite of those things, too. It’s liberating to understand you’re not going to be shocked at any time that there’s an inconsistency. You could be more empathetic.”
Being human, of course, is a constant work in progress. This isn’t just an album for Merlin: this project is a story written in real time.
Wherever it takes her, she’s not afraid to make mistakes along the way.