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Interview: Alt-Pop Artist Remi Wolf Brings Her Big Ideas Tour to Miami Beach

Wolf sits down with New Times to discuss Big Ideas, touring, Miami, and her busy year ahead.
Image: color photo of singer songwriter Remi Wolf, bespectacled, clad in a low-cut plaid dress, and showily primping her hair
Remi Wolf talks Big Ideas, touring, Miami, and her busy year ahead. Photo by Matty Vogel
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Southern California alt-pop singer-songwriter Remi Wolf will perform at the Fillmore Miami Beach on Friday, May 2, as part of her Big Ideas Tour. Released in July 2024 via Island Records, Wolf's highly anticipated sophomore effort, Big Ideas (2024), earned a spot on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. Following the success of her 2021 debut, Juno, which garnered more than 2 billion global streams, Big Ideas chronicles Wolf's maturation in her approaches to her transient lifestyle, love, and coming of age.

Ahead of her Miami Beach show, the Palo Alto-born LA transplant sat down with New Times to talk Big Ideas, touring, Miami, and her busy year ahead.

"I wrote Big Ideas in between tours, over a two-year period when I was touring Juno. And in that amount of time, I went through a bunch of different crazy relationships. It was a very new lifestyle — I was fresh out of the pandemic, straight into tour, it was just all new," Wolf says. "So I was kind of like being birthed again, and being pushed out of a new birth canal — just into a different universe than I had ever existed before. So it's kind of about me exploring my new life and also still being a twentysomething-year-old and having big feelings and big dreams and dating people. You know, it's all kind of the same shit, just a new lens."

Big Ideas' 13 tracks document Wolf's tumultuous midtwenties as she grapples with rising fame, turbulent relationships, and loneliness. The funk-inspired opener, "Cinderella," is a playful exploration of the whirlwind emotions of touring and is expanded upon by more pensive ballads like "Alone in Miami" and "Wave." The soulful "Motorcycle" and the bouncy pop track "Toro" use extended metaphor to discuss sexuality and the idealism of a honeymoon stage. By contrast, danceable bedroom-pop songs like "Soup" and "Pitiful" incorporate Wolf's tongue-in-cheek sensibilities to address the pain of a fraying relationship.

Chalk up Wolf's fast-paced lifestyle to late nights, top billings at festivals, and opening for artists like Paramore and Olivia Rodrigo, in addition to her own shows. On her days off, Wolf would dedicate her time to songwriting and producing in different studios nationwide, including Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios — a stark contrast to the pandemic-era restrictions that confined Juno's recording process to the bedroom. No longer quarantined, Wolf achieves healthier work-life boundaries, further electrifying her eccentric stage presence.

"You turn it on and you turn it up on stage. You must," she says. "And I have a mission on stage. I have something to accomplish in these shows, and I want the shows to feel warm, welcoming, intense, shocking, and also super fun and euphoric. And you gotta turn up your personality in order to make that shit happen. But it is still me, and that's a muscle that I've definitely had to build over time."
click to enlarge color photo of singer songwriter Remi Wolf, bespectacled, clad in a low-cut plaid dress, looking ecstatic and shouting
"You turn it on and you turn it up on stage. You must," says Remi Wolf
Photo by Matty Vogel
Wolf's trademark vibrant and eclectic indie-funk fusion is a testament to her musical influences, which include the likes of Chaka Khan, Rufus, Joni Mitchell, the Doobie Brothers, and Thom Yorke. Alongside her friend and longtime collaborator Jared Solomon (AKA Solomonophonic), Wolf brought in a new group of producers and composers who helped mold her already-experimental sound into the brighter, more self-assured aesthetic that defines Big Ideas. For Wolf, the latter comes from finding a happy medium that satisfies the demands of touring while making the most out of traveling and doing what she loves.

"You've got to figure out ways to ground yourself into a real human experience. Making sure that I go see the light of day and trees. I've been playing a lot of tennis recently, which has been really, really good for that — just getting out and moving my body," she elaborates. "Allowing yourself to actually live life and experience things but breaking the monotony whenever you can is really important, and it's something that I strive to do while I'm on tour. And definitely once I'm done with these tours, I'm gonna do something else for a second just to be a human again."

Wolf believes that "a good way to get to know a city is through the food." Each tour stop includes "food pop-ups" that showcase local restaurants, and Miami will be no different. While her Fillmore performance won't mark her first time in South Florida, the "Alone in Miami" singer is eager to return — albeit under different conditions. Track five of Big Ideas details Wolf's eventful first visit, which included cubano sandwiches, "crypto bros," and an invite to a Playboy party during Art Basel — an average Miami weekend for some locals.

Speaking of different conditions, this summer, Wolf will perform at Boston Calling Music Festival, the Newport Folk Festival, and Lollapalooza and host a SuperJam set at Bonnaroo. Despite the top billing and rising-star status, Wolf's emotional vulnerability continues to shine through in her work. For artists or creatives suffering from creative blocks, she has some advice.

"Keep on pushing, even if you feel stuck, even if you feel completely lost and powerless and helpless. The world's an absolutely insane place right now, and I think the most important thing right now that the world needs is for people to express themselves and express how they really feel," she says.

"I think it's easy to feel completely beaten down by it, but I just urge people to keep going and keep believing in the fact that art and expression actually does change stuff. It changes how people feel and changes the way people view the world and experience community and connection. I think it's a really, really important time to be making art, so I urge people to just fight and keep going."

Remi Wolf. With Dana and Alden. 8 p.m. Friday, May 2, at the Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 305-938-2509; fillmore-miami.com. Tickets cost $58.50 to $75.50 via livenation.com.