In Fletcher’s childhood bedroom are relics from an era we’ll call Little Cari: “I still have Disney Channel posters that I’ve never taken down — the Jonas Brothers, Ashley Tisdale, and Dylan and Cole Sprouse are all hanging in my closet,” the singer, born Cari Elise Fletcher, explains with a laugh. “Honestly, I’m still a fangirl.”
It’s mid-July when we talk, and the 26-year-old pop singer has been sheltering-in-place with her family in New Jersey for almost four months. During that time, when people across the country were documenting their attempts at sourdough-making and DIY tie-dye, she was hard at work on her newest, and most ambitious project yet: A synth, visually-driven EP called The S(ex) Tapes, chronicling the raw aftermath of a breakup, and all of the conflicting emotions that can come with it.
She started making music from a childhood bedroom in a particularly non-musical household, as she describes it. Now, she’s making music videos from that same space, on her own terms: She transformed her parents’ living room into a bedroom set because space and lighting was better, and did her own hair and makeup. Her ex, YouTuber Shannon Beveridge, was quarantining with her family at the time, and served as both muse and director; together, they sourced green light bulbs, used iPhones to capture behind-the-scenes footage, and devised seven sets out of what Fletcher calls “nothing.”
The ambitiousness of the task paid off, in a seven-track release that preserves her confusion and heartbreak on tape forever. “If I could somehow make a long story short,” she half-jokes, “this entire body of work is about the ups and downs of a relationship, and of being a 20-something and finding yourself and losing yourself and then discovering and rediscovering your sexuality. Kind of, just what it means to be a young person.”
There is no one good way to heal from a breakup: Some people benefit from chocolate and romantic comedy marathons. For Fletcher, coping with her breakup resulted in seven stages of a breakup, starting with “Silence,” the first song on The S(ex) Tapes.
“It’s about needing the time and the space to be away from somebody and to sit with things by yourself and process what you need to process,” she says of the bass-filled, snap-heavy track, “to grow and to do the things that you feel you need to do.”
Because this is a breakup anthem, there is no getting back together just yet. The ensuing songs, “Bitter” and “The One,” offer contradicting points of view on moving on with someone new: The former offers an honest look at jealousy and bile and serves as a real-time commentary on what your ex has been doing after you broke up, while the latter revels in being able to move on.
But then comes “Shh… Don’t Say It,” which warns a potential new paramour you’re still broken, and the best they’ll get from you is a short-term rebound. That’s Fletcher’s favorite song on the album, which she loves because it reminds her of the Jersey house music she listened to growing up, but also because of its honesty. “It’s like, please don’t tell me you love me, I don’t want to feel guilty,” she says. “I have so much of my own emotional baggage right now that it’s overweight at the airport.”
“This EP,” she adds, “is so much more raw,” than her You Ruined New York For Me EP, which she was able to develop with time and perspective away from the relationship that inspired it. This time, she says, “I don’t really have any answers and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m just really in it.”
More than anything, Fletcher is getting used to all of the contradictions of her life now — getting recognized at a bagel shop in her hometown and not remembering why someone would freak out over meeting her, stanning the talented fans who cover her songs, Taylor Swift telling her that she’s a fan of her songwriting backstage at Jingle Ball. She is growing into the realization that she can now create the safe spaces that she needed as a kid, and foster the energy she felt at Lady Gaga’s and Halsey’s concerts, one where, she says, “you feel really empowered to be who you are.”
Artists have been writing songs and albums about their exes since time immemorial, and perhaps an upside for Fletcher and Shannon alike is that the latter will not have to discover that her ex channeled their personal lives for work by turning on the radio. The two talked a lot about the feelings and experiences that inspired The S(ex) Tapes, Fletcher says, and she knows that “some of these songs were painful for her to listen to. And it was like, well, how can we make something beautiful from that?” She calls their visual collaboration “an honest representation of what it’s like to struggle in a relationship and what it’s like to be confused and not have the answers.” It is both sides of their breakup, told through opposing lenses.
“Especially for an artist like Cari, she very much writes how she feels and it’s very genuine,” Shannon tells me. “To read your ex’s journal or diary is an intimate experience, and then to hear it and know that it’s going to be shared with the rest of the world adds a layer to that.”
Though the duo are each famous in their own right and have built their careers on being open with fans about their identities as queer people and creators, they never confirmed or denied their status to fans while their relationship was still intact. Shannon tells me that stemmed from a decision they first made when they got together to keep things between just them; it was something they never revisited until recently when they made the decision to collaborate together in quarantine.
“Our relationship has always been something that we really wanted to just be to keep to us,” Fletcher underscores. “But I think it’s gotten to the point now for both of us that it’s just like, keeping secrets sucks.” She exhales, already ready to go there with me, a relative stranger to whom she owes nothing. “And if I’m not being honest about the shit that I’m going through with the people that are literally following me because they care what I’m going through… People don’t have time for robotic artists and robotic conversations.”
Fletcher knows the title to her EP is provocative — some fans have even lamented that their parents won’t let them pre-order the project because of its name. But not only does Fletcher want to challenge the ways in which female sexuality is still often made to be a taboo topic.
“In its raw form, a sex tape is somebody in their most vulnerable form and barest state,” she posits before pointing out that the project’s title is also a play on the fact that her ex was the one behind the camera. “The reason why I felt comfortable filming and doing that is because it was shot by her — by somebody that has always looked at me through a lens of the utmost love and respect and has always seen me for me,” she says.
As a white, cisgender woman, Fletcher would be the first to call out her own privilege in that respect. “I have benefitted from the progressive change within the gay community without having to suffer from any of the oppression,” she says definitively, a fact that informs her commitment to fighting for the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized people, and for “being the artist I needed when I was a little kid.”
That artist, for her, is more introspective than ever. Where past songs like “Wasted Youth” and “Princess” centered on anthemic choruses and hooks meant for singing along at the top of your lungs, the songs on The S(ex) Tapes are softer and bolder all at once: She isn’t afraid to drop an f-word, to name gritty emotions, to own up to her messiness. Her stories are also more personal, and heavier on the first-person narrative than ever — building on the rear-view storytelling she offered in 2019’s You Ruined New York City For Me, whose breakaway hit, “Undrunk,” spoke of a certain kind of 4 a.m. regret. More than ever, she’s putting melody to feelings that are universal and wholly relatable and honors the kind of bravery it takes to admit that you are heartbroken, out loud.
“What we can all relate to here is like, these feelings and this journey of self-exploration and confusion,” she says. “And that… I don’t know, if you haven’t gone through that, can you call me and tell me? Please, give me your therapist’s number, tell me what to do.”