I Don't Sing To Be Pretty

Cris Cohen: One other point that caught my ear about the song “Scrub” is the line “I don’t sing to be pretty.” I love that line, because to me it shows you’re not in this for the image, but for the audio output and the emotion of it. Is that a correct interpretation?

Johnny Manchild: Yeah. And not to say that I don’t love aesthetics and visuals. (But) there’s a time and place for that. The actual performance of singing, especially live… the purpose of that is definitely not to look pretty. Because when I’m (singing and) really feeling it, I don’t look great. I look straight up ridiculous sometimes. But it feels good.

Thinking about that lyric, what it reminds me of the most is (how) at shows there’s so much reluctance to move around and dance or do weird stuff. I think it’s because there are phones everywhere. Everyone knows that (the photos and videos are) living on the internet forever and they’ll be scrutinized.

That is the other thing: the purpose of this is not to be scrutinized for how I look. Just ignore that. That’s not the point.

I wish everybody, including myself, felt more comfortable looking stupid. Because we are stupid. Humanity is dumb and ugly and weird and gross and that’s fine.

The whole thing that you’re describing, with trying to look pretty doing this, that’s not always the point. Even (David) Bowie, as cool and hot as he was, was a very odd man. And he went out of his way to look strange sometimes.

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