Nessa Barrett’s new album began with a Pinterest board—sort of. Titled Aftercare, the musician’s sophomore LP dropped on 15 November. But, as she told Cosmopolitan Australia a month before its release, when confronted with the task of crafting the follow-up to 2022’s Young Forever, she didn’t set out to write an album—rather, she was building a world.
Every time she sits down to write, the VMA-nominated artist—who found fame on TikTok in 2019, which won her a deal with Warner Music—tries her best to tell a story. Similarly to how a director would storyboard, or a creative director might moodboard, for this album, she created a Pinterest boardlike page of stills pulled from cinema and television (the Lily-Rose Depp-fronted The Idol was a key reference), as well as images that reflected the visuals in her own brain. “From the moment that I start writing a song, I know in my head exactly what it looks like,” she says. Nessa adds, “I do this thing where I create … a deck [with] a bunch of random photos that I feel really shows the whole world what I am creating behind the album.”
If the album is a movie, then Nessa is the filmmaker at its helm throughout the entire process. She is also its lead actress—the starlet taking on the role she has written.
“Whatever story I’m telling, it’s very important for me to really become the character that the story is based around. [Whether that character] is something I’ve created in my own head, a dramatised version of me, or me, myself and the rawest, parts of my personal life—it is all just about really diving into the character,” says Nessa.
“I was actually dealing with such a writer’s block at the beginning of creating this album, simply because my entire career—and honestly since the moment I started writing music—was always my way of coping and being able to deal with things that I was going through in present time,” she says. “And when it came down to the moment where I started to write this album, I wasn’t dealing with anything in particular. It was the first time I started to write in a different way; not by writing from something I was going through personally, but by adapting this character and being able to write about something like sex.”
She continues, “Over the process of writing this album, I have really grown into this confident character [who] I started to write about, and so now it feels a lot more personal to me.”
This character is, of course, Aftercare’s leading lady, who dances through a soundscape of scenes. The title track, which intros the album, befits the story’s opening sequence, beginning with the click and print of a polaroid camera, followed by a ghost-like melody, a church bell and, eventually, Nessa’s feather-light vocals. Except they’re distorted—reversed and, therefore, unintelligible.
“Pretty face, naked skin / Draped in lace, your favourite sin / You love the chase, you love to win / But will you stay when it ends?” Nessa coos, when the lyrics are reverted.
The song had initially contained a first verse with actual lyrics, which Nessa recorded before deciding to scrap them at the last minute. “It was kind of like an Easter egg, foreshadowing the album’s hidden meanings by having the very first lyrics that you ever hear on the entire album to be in reverse,” she explains.
In the intricacies of these hidden meanings, on this album, Nessa proves her range as a songwriter. At face value, Aftercare is a study of sex. Its name is a double entendre and its tracks include titles like ‘Pornstar’ and ‘S.L.U.T.’ Sonically, it recalls the thrill of new connections, the comedown of dissipating relationships and the emotional highs and lows of physical intimacy. Yes, sex is a central theme, but on the album’s edges it ponders the experience of finding independence as a young adult. In addition to sweaty beats and breathy vocals, the album is laced with reflections on self-confidence and the panopticon of contemporary womanhood. Nessa’s favourite song from the record, ‘Glitter and Violence,’ underscores this, then returns with a pastel-pink highlighter for good measure. “I really wanted a stripper song,” she explains, referencing the track’s pulsing beat and layered, hazy instrumentals. “And so on the surface, Glitter and Violence seems very sensual and hot, but the lyrics are just so beyond personal and deep.
“This whole album is really supposed to focus on female empowerment and overall confidence within yourself,” Nessa adds. “I feel like [that’s] been something that I’ve been really focusing on in my life, currently.”
“This whole album is really supposed to focus on female empowerment and overall confidence within yourself,” Nessa adds. “I feel like [that’s] been something that I’ve been really focusing on in my life, currently.”
That’s not to say the album isn’t tinged with her signature gothic tendencies—Nessa isn’t going to gloss over the rough edges of her subject matter. However, as she shifts from moody, even haunting production to thumping dance tracks, she leans into the leisure, rather than the catharsis, of the creative process. In this era, not only is Nessa finding her feet in adulthood, she’s also having fun. And in this coming-of-age movie, she’s in the director’s chair.
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This article originally appeared in Issue 03 of Cosmopolitan Australia.
