It surprised me when I put on VIVICA, the newest record from multidisciplinary artist Vivek Shraya, that I didn’t really know it was her. First, a sharp swerve to sweaty dance floor inflected beats. Next, distortion in the voice. Finally, rowdy lyrics: The opening track “Crass” acts as a solid thesis statement for the project as a whole. Consider the verse “flash the bouncer at the club / crass like that.” I probably should have dialed into its difference and the album’s emerging character when I got to “Goon Tune.”
Shraya will be the first to admit her earnestness, but it’s also something I’ve come to know about her over the years as I’ve followed her career. Vivica, her alter ego, on VIVICA is not that. She is unabashed and abrasive in her centering of desire, thinking a lot about staying out until 4 a.m. in latex coated bodysuits. She’s Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman in Batman Returns but soundtracked by synthesizers. She’s brat before brat became a thing (but don’t tell Charli that.)
Shraya’s pop alter ego exists in the image of those who came before her: Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce, Madonna’s Madame X, and Lady Gaga’s Jo Calderone, to name a few. Becoming Vivica and journeying through her life, how she responds, and what she does (and who) were fun for Shraya because it’s not her. Art, if you’ll permit me a moment to gush, is extraordinary for this reason: such containers exist safely—and perhaps riskily—to explore important, hot-to-the-touch ideas without so explicitly using “I” for the self.
Which is how VIVICA continued a conversation about sex that’s Shraya’s been having for a few years in her work. This record takes these ideas several steps further and embeds into it a more political and radical act of sexuality. Trans people have been subject to a relentless prodding at their personhood, the stripping away of their rights and overall dehumanization, while battling an intrusive and mechanical gaze into their sexual lives. This record, largely a real exploration of fun, in part serves as a celebration of trans bodies in all their sensual, desirousness.
Shraya spoke about all of this and more in our conversation below.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
SOCAN: There are a lot of levels to this record but I think it’s largely and unabashedly horny. This is a bit of a two-part question: why do you feel at this particular moment in culture we need those themes, and why was it important for you specifically to creatively explore it?
Vivek Shraya: Maybe I’ll start with the second question. I’m very much a late bloomer, I think, largely because of the homophobia and racism [I experienced growing up] in Edmonton. I had this joke I was like Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed because I hadn’t had my first kiss until I was 17 or 18. At that point, the person who kissed me I think felt sorry for me. She was my lesbian best friend. She was like, “let’s just do this so you can have the experience.”
How was it?
She kind of kissed like a tiger. She was very teethy. In terms of an instructor, it wasn’t useful because in the future when I kissed people, I thought kissing was like mauling. I remember when I kissed a guy for the first time, he was like, “ow!” and I didn’t understand because I was kissing like a tiger. But I’ve only been in three relationships, and the last relationship is the one I’m in, which has been for about 15 years. I look at my friends who’ve had a lot of casual sex and done a lot of drugs, drank, and all that stuff, and I’m like, “oh, I wish I had gone through a typical Canadian or North American adolescence,” which I didn’t really get to have.
Also, I did a visual art project called Sex is Sex. It was the first time I worked with Christopher Sherman, who I was very inspired by just, you know, his caption is always like, “Have a horny day!” It’s very sex positive but cheeky and playful… it’s got a kind of humour to it. It’s also analogue because he only shoots with film. I was really inspired by our collaboration, and after I started thinking about how I wanted to make a sex album, you know, in the great tradition of horny albums, if you will.
I wrote two albums essentially at the same time. One was New Models, which came out in the fall, and also this one. They’re very much yin and yang: New Models is grieving the world that we’re in and the shock of seeing progress undone. I have had such a linear perspective on progress; I thought we’d just move forward. I think this is the first time — at least in my generation — we’re seeing laws in real time getting deleted. It’s a very strange thing to happen. The New Models approach is very earnest and serious, which is where I feel most comfortable. At some point, it started to feel incomplete or heavy, and my collaborator, James Bunton, played some of the beats that would then become VIVICA. And I was like, “Oh, this is the energy!” But I found the only way I could get into the songs was by inventing a character.
With all this stuff around trans rights, and just the general obsession with our lives and what we want to do with our bodies, it feels like — without sounding too grandiose — the most radical thing I can do is really claim my body and my sexuality.
To be really unabashed about it and very visceral about it. You know, to be a trans person in 2026 and [sing songs that say] “everyone wants me, everyone wants to have sex with me, everyone is obsessed with me” felt important. In the face of what we see in the news, which is that transness is evil and we’re all groomers or we’re coming for your kids, you know, the album feels like a way to push back and have fun.
My experience listening to this record is that — I wouldn’t necessarily say celebration because my read of Vivica is that celebration is a little too earnest for her because she’s very chic — is an exclamation point.
The way I put it is Vivica is very caps lock energy.
How did the idea of Vivica come to be? How did she appear to you?
She took some time. The album was two to three years in the making. I don’t know if people are familiar with me. I tend to be a pretty earnest person and, in some ways, very shy. If you had the lyrics in front of you from where the songs started to where the songs ended up, the first song I wrote didn’t even make it on the album because it felt very PG. I think part of what allowed her to evolve is just taking time. There can be such a rush to finish things, and I have to credit my collaborator, James, who’s always pushing to take time to do things.
I will say the other thing that kicked in for me at some point is that—and this has happened to me with fiction writing in general—is that I have more fun if she wasn’t me. The first iterations of songs were based on some of my own fantasies or interests. As the songs evolved, I was less interested in me and more like, “what would this fictional character like?” One of the reasons why I work with James is that we spend more time talking about it. What does Vivica look like? Who are her friends? What does she do when she’s alone? Those kinds of questions start to unlock the lyrics, right? My first idea of what she looked like was a cross between Catwoman/Michelle Pfeiffer and Mystique/Rebecca Romijn.
VIVICA. Photo by Christopher Sherman.
You do have such a prolific creative career. Your output is unmatched. You even have a novel coming out later this year. But you have worked on these projects for years. I wonder if there’s a difference when you’re working in fiction with characters and how you get there versus fiction here with Vivica when it comes to music?
In some ways, it’s not that different. Especially in writing my last novel, The Subtweet because I actually wrote at the top of the manuscript, “this is more fun when it’s not you.” I used that same motto with Vivica. The difference with a pop song is that you’re working with so many more limitations. You’re not working with unlimited pages or sentences. You’re working with a short attention span. You’re working with the need for a catchy chorus or a hook, you know?
What makes it different is just the medium. The process feels very similar. I think with these two projects, VIVICA and The Hystericals —my upcoming novel—is that it’s a dystopian book. It’s quite heavy. This is one of the reasons why I like working on multiple projects at the same time. It allows me a little bit more balance internally. I’ve been in The Hystericals for six years. I started it before COVID-19, and the joke I make is I probably wouldn’t have written the book if I knew where the world was going to end up.
Do you ever feel like a hard switch between projects?
I try to create more space now. I think when I was younger, I could hop freely between projects. I could work on two different projects during the same day. I find the older I get, the harder that is to do. I’m supposed to work on another writing project and I’m going to wait until July because my headspace is so consumed elsewhere. I also want to give myself the freedom to be in a particular headspace. I don’t feel as malleable or want to be as malleable.
I’m curious about tracklisting. I wonder how precious you are about creating your tracklist for a record.
Somebody put out an album a few years ago where it was mandatory that you had to listen to it sequentially. Like, you couldn’t move the sequence. Anyway, if I could mandate something similar, I would. I grew up like in the 90s with cassettes where there was no skipping.
The album is a journey. I’m so biased but I really think that the album is one of the greatest art forms as a journey, as a way to tell a story, or learn about yourself and reach people. I take the album very seriously, and track listing is a huge component of that. With this project, I really pushed myself for the titles to be provocative and the spelling to be really intentional as well. The first time I really thought about titling was The Con by Tegan and Sara. I just loved how they had titled their songs… they didn’t— as I naively thought a title has to be— [have to be] words that are referenced in the chorus or something. What’s exciting about track listing is that it can do a lot of work for you in different ways. It represents a song, but it also tells a broader story in its own way.
In terms of sequence, part of it is knowing people will probably only listen to the first track before they make up their mind about whether or not they want to listen to more, especially with how we consume albums now. “Crass” feels like the thesis of the album. In some ways it’s the most abrasive of the songs for an abrasive character. Why not just start there, as opposed to tucking it in the old school way as a build-up.
“FKGRL” is my favourite song on the record. “Crass” seems to me the thesis but this song’s who Vivica is.
“FKGRL” is my favourite song on the album! As an artist, when you put out something out, you’re always curious about where people will land. No one has mentioned that song. I keep waiting. Everyone likes “Crass” or “3WAY” or the title track. I’ve been waiting for this particular song, so thank you for being the one.
“FKGRL” started with the beat. That’s actually the first song we recorded for the album. James played me the beat, and I was like, “oh, this is something.” I just felt it in my body. I liked it so much that it was annoying. But it took me a while to get the lyrics — to get to where we wanted. I hate to say it because I don’t want to sound like that person, but we were working on this album before Brat came out. Then there was like the whole party girl movement through or the party girl rhetoric through Brat. I was like, “I can’t have a song where I sing about being a party girl.” It just feels a little tired. So, it was cool then to lean into this baby girl thing but be “I’m not your baby girl.”
The thing about pop music sometimes is repetition can feel so satisfying. I’ve never actually done a chorus like that where it’s basically the same melody as the chorus —like “never gonna” something again. It’s eight times and then it happens again for another eight. It’s just very repetitive, but it’s such a vibe.