VITA: “PLEASER”, “OPIA”, and Radical Honesty
Australian-Filipino artist VITA wears many hats: singer, songwriter, self-taught engineer, dancer, and world-builder. The creative is back and has reinvented herself and taken her world-building to new heights with her single "PLEASER," the first look at her upcoming album OPIA. I had the pleasure of attending a press conference where VITA played some unreleased songs, answered questions, and discussed “PLEASER” and OPIA.
VITA joins us on set whilst in between takes of filming a music video for OPIA, and speaks passionately about the upcoming project. She details OPIA as a big hallmark for personal growth. “PLEASER” is a love letter to wilder versions of her past self with whom she’s reconciled, and it also showcases an interesting polarity in the repeating lyric ‘I’ve been a self-indulgent people pleaser’. VITA says that lyrically, “PLEASER” speaks to an experience that women have of fighting between things they should do to please others, as well as the things that they want to indulge in- and the guilt that can surround that. She also says she needs to write about things to put them in the past, and this echoes in the lyric “it’s all behind you, I’m here to remind you”.
I was honoured to ask VITA a question to gain more insight on her philosophy of radical honesty, and what it looked like in practice for writing the project.
TMB: “PLEASER” showcases a deep level of candidness lyrically. How did the principle of radical honesty factor into your writing process for OPIA?
VITA: It was the whole point of the project, is to be as honest as physically possible, because, you know, I think when you're rapidly changing, I kind of went through a process of shedding where, like, 90% of the people that I thought were going to be in my life forever just kind of dropped off, and I went into, like, a really deep level of depression where I wasn't telling anybody what was going on. And I think everybody around me wanted to help me, and I just wouldn't let anybody, and I think, when I started writing the project, I think, unknowingly, I knew that it was what I had to do to be the best version of myself, and to open myself up to different possibilities, and to be more of an emotionally grounded person, to live in that honesty and live in that truth…I didn't really know how to talk about who I was and how I felt, and now I feel like it's kind of the most natural thing in the world to answer honestly. So, I think that's important for anybody. I think that's the whole point of the project
… as I was saying before, my friend called me and told me about some stuff he was going through that I just had no idea about. And we, you know, I cried on the phone and thought to myself, like, wow, like, this is important. It's important to be honest with yourself. It's important to let other people in and let them see you properly. And so, it's a huge part of the point. There's a lot of party records on this project as well about being fun and sexy and all of these things, but again, like the whole project is about duality, it's about juxtaposition, it's about being sexy and fun and also completely fucking depressed. So it's like, you know, it all kind of exists in the same place because I feel like as women, we're like either on the point of like being completely self-deprecating and hating ourselves or like having a God complex and like, we're always kind of like moving between the two.
TMB: That makes a lot of sense. I'm happy that writing the record was able to give you that new perspective, and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that as well. Thank you so much for your time.
It was so insightful hearing VITA detail her writing process, as well as speak on womanhood and how experiences in her life poured into her inspiration for OPIA; I’m eagerly awaiting the album’s release. In the meantime, “PLEASER” is out now on all streaming platforms, and it’s the perfect introduction to VITA’s era of radical honesty.
