After the release of her critically acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut album, Blondshell became one of alt-rock’s breakout stars. But long before that, Sabrina Teitelbaum’s music career had been percolating.
At 18, the New York-born artist relocated to the West Coast to study pop music at the University of Southern California. But she ended up dropping out and creating some buzz as a solo artist, making synth-pop music under the moniker BAUM.
However, Teitelbaum pivoted once she connected with producer Yves Rothman, who helped her crystallize her dreamy, grunge-tinged sound and in 2022, Blondshell was born.
Even with the success of her first album, the 28-year-old singer-songwriter didn’t feel pressure when it came to making her sophomore LP, If You Asked for a Picture, which was released on May 2.
“I felt critical of the music in a way that I don’t think is really a problem,” she says over the phone from Los Angeles. “I think it was good for me to be critical of it.”
With If You Asked for a Picture, Teitelbaum’s confessional nature turned inward. Instead of dissecting another person’s role in a relationship, she opted to hold a mirror up to herself. For the “Sepsis” musician, that also meant crafting a record that was “tough” and balanced the “softness, femininity and vulnerability” in her songwriting.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Teitelbaum opens up about her dream of collaborating with SZA, how early 2000s on-screen romances impacted one of her songs and meeting David Byrne.
Daniel Topete
Blondshell
PEOPLE: How quickly after your self-titled LP came out in 2023, did you start If You Asked for a Picture?
TEITELBAUM: I started writing really quickly after the last album came out. There’s a couple songs on this album that I wrote around the time of recording the first album, like “Thumbtack.” It was written much closer to that first album era. It’s nice to have it as the first song because it’s picking up where the last album left off. So, the process is a lot more piecemeal writing-wise than the first album because I was doing more promoting the first album, traveling and playing shows. So, it was more like writing when I could write.
At some point, we decided to go to this big studio in L.A. where we tracked the first album and spent eight days or something getting all of the instrumentation. That was the skeleton for the whole album. Then, my producer [Yves] and I put it together, edited and cut the vocals for probably on and off for five months.
PEOPLE: Did you feel pressure making this record after your first one?
TEITELBAUM: Not so much. I think I go through phases where I’ll feel really excited about something I’m working on and then I’ll be like, “Wait, is this really bad?” It’s important to have that because if you feel like what you’re making is great the whole time, it’s like you’re not doing the editing that you need to do. So, I wouldn’t say that I felt overwhelmed with pressure or anything — I just felt critical of the music in a way that I don’t think is really a problem. I think it was good for me to be critical of it.
PEOPLE: You made former President Obama’s Favorite Music List in 2023. Did that change your life?
TEITELBAUM: I wouldn’t say that it changed my life. It was cool. It’s hard to explain to people like family members who don’t work in music or friends. Sometimes it’s hard to share milestones. So, that was a cool thing for people to be like, “Oh, I get it.”
PEOPLE: Were you surprised by the track he chose as his favorite?
TEITELBAUM: Yes, actually, but I think that one is the most lyrically palatable. There’s no crazy expletive, so I was like, “That makes sense.”
PEOPLE: How did “T&A” become the album’s lead single?
TEITELBAUM: We had a lot of discussion about what should be the first single, and I felt all this weight on that decision. And then eventually, we were like, “The album is meant to be listened to as an album.” Singles are exciting, and they can bring in new people who haven’t heard the music. They can give you a hint at what the album is like, but at the end of the day, it’s about the thing as a whole. It’s not really a “singles” album. That song felt like it was a nice indicator for the rest of the album. We tried with “T&A,” “Two Times” was the second single and “23’s a Baby” [was the third]. They’re different from each other, so I wanted to give people a little inclination [as] to what’s on the album.
PEOPLE: How is your sophomore album a departure from your debut?
TEITELBAUM: It’s different from the self-titled because there was more time for me to sit with it and figure out what it needed, what I needed to change. It was also a bigger undertaking. The first album was this burst of energy — we just made it super quickly, and then it was done. This was more like, “Okay, I have these intentions for the album, and here’s how we’re going to actually make them happen.” And, “Oh no, that doesn’t sound so good. We’re going to come back to it in a month and redo it.”
There’s just more that went into it. It’s a longer album, and there’s so much more instrumentation on it. There’s more lyrics on it. It’s more of everything, and I felt more able to try new things on this album.
PEOPLE: How did Mary Oliver poem inspire the title of the record?
TEITELBAUM: Everything that she writes makes me feel more calm and able to deal with life. I feel at peace when I’m reading her poems, and I wanted to have a little bit of that as the title. And I like the idea that music is just a little snapshot of the whole story. It’s not a huge book where you’re talking about everything that’s happened. It’s just this one person’s perspective for three-and-a-half minutes on a song. So, I like the idea of talking about that like it’s a little picture. It’s just a snapshot in time, and I like that imagery for an album.
PEOPLE: Your song “Two Times” was seemingly inspired by rom-coms. Can you tell me more about that?
TEITELBAUM: I grew up in an era where rom-coms were selling this idea that a relationship had to be so complicated for it to be meaningful. I mean, even the movie structure, there’s this big conflict always, and then it gets resolved or it doesn’t get resolved. I really thought this idea that your relationship with somebody you’re dating has to be fraught and has to be difficult in order for it to be meaningful. And if it’s all good, you’re searching for the problem. I dealt with that, and the song is about that. It’s like, “Oh, I’m in this relationship that feels easy. How is it supposed to be valuable if it’s easy?”
PEOPLE: Were there any on-screen couples who influenced the way you talk about romance on the track?
TEITELBAUM: I think it’s just that whole era. I turned 28 yesterday.
PEOPLE: Happy birthday!
TEITELBAUM: Thanks! So let’s see, I was born in 1997. I probably started watching movies like that when I was 12, 13, [as well as] early 2010s rom-coms, and a lot of The CW. I watched a lot of shows like The O.C. That’s a show about people in high school, so of course it’s going to be fraught. But there were so many — The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, all these big movies and shows at that time had so much internal conflict in relationships. I don’t remember seeing shows or movies where things were easy. And to be fair, that would make for a boring movie. But if you never see it, how are you supposed to know that that’s okay? So, that’s how I was influenced by movies.
Hannah Bon
Blondshell
PEOPLE: How about familial relationships on this record?
TEITELBAUM: There wasn’t the intention of, “Oh, I’m going to write about this theme, this person.” It was just sitting down to write about everything that’s on my mind at a given time. It’s like a journal. And family stuff, family history, is sometimes on my mind, so it comes up in the music. One of the most important relationships [is] with your parents, your siblings, everybody, so there’s no way it wouldn’t come up on an album that has 12 songs.
PEOPLE: It seemed like you shifted your gaze inward more on this record. Did this album help you maybe take more accountability in ways you weren’t able to in the past?
TEITELBAUM: The stuff in the album is reflective of the changes I have been going through. It’s like I change in my daily life and then I go to make another album, and then you can hear those changes in the new album. Just by nature, being a couple years older, I was more interested in my part in things like in relationships or in family relationships where everybody plays a role. I was more interested in looking inward than just looking at the other person.
PEOPLE: In terms of other artists, who were you most influenced by when working on the record in terms of sonically?
TEITELBAUM: A lot of R.E.M. I was listening to Bloc Party, which I feel like you wouldn’t think. Nothing [is] industrial about this record, but that’s something. Always listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Terno. A lot of stuff from the early 2000s, I think. The previous record was the ‘90s. We took 10 years for this one.
PEOPLE: Who do you dream of collaborating with?
TEITELBAUM: I always say SZA because she’s one of my favorite songwriters, but everybody says that. Literally, whenever anyone is asked, “Who do you want to collaborate with?” Everyone says SZA. So I have to think of something new, but that’s the truth for me. She’s amazing.
PEOPLE: After recording a song for the Stop Making Sense tribute, did you ever connect with David Byrne before or after making your cover?
TEITELBAUM: I met him. I didn’t talk to him before I did it, but around the time it was coming out, we did this performance at Pantages, which is the theater [where] it was filmed in L.A. They were showing a film and the band was doing a Q&A, so my band [and I] played my version of the song before their Q&A or before the screening. And he was there — the whole band was there — so I got to meet them. They were lovely.
Grand Stand
Blondshell
PEOPLE: Why was it important for you to use hyper-masculine aesthetics for this record?
TEITELBAUM: What I hear as masculine is not necessarily what other people hear as masculine, but it’s just my own understanding of gender and music. I wanted it to feel tough. I want to listen to Rated R by Queens of the Stone Age and Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Those are also just some of my favorite albums. I just love those albums. And there’s so much softness, femininity and vulnerability in the writing that I was like, “I really want it to feel balanced.”
PEOPLE: Have you thought about what the next project after If You Asked for a Picture would look like?
TEITELBAUM: I haven’t thought about it so much. But I’m writing, and I always need to follow the song. Everything needs to be about what the song needs. So genre-wise [and] production-wise, it would be really hard for me to go into a project and be like, “I’m going to make a country album. I’m going to make a piano ballad album.” I don’t think it would work for me to have a concept.
There always has to be the writing first, and then everything else follows. But I think it would be nice to experiment more with letting the melodies and lyrics speak for themselves. Sometimes songs get covered up of guitars and drums and bass, and just letting the song breathe can be hard to do. I think [it] could also be really rewarding. So, I don’t know. I’ll probably experiment with that on the next one.
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