Blondshell on New Album and Hopes for an India Show

When indie singer-songwriter Blondshell, aka Sabrina Teitelbaum, sings, “23’s a baby/
Why’d you have a baby?” on the song “23’s A Baby” from her new album If You Asked For a Picture, it almost has a nursery rhyme-like cadence.

One interpretation of the indie rock song is that it could be addressed to a friend who had a child in their early 20s and has alienated their close friend, prioritizing parenthood. But Blondshell has said it’s actually about “finding compassion.” This song, among the rest of the 12-track album that released in May, sees the artist moving away from binary emotions. “The first record feels really black-and-white to me. This record has more questions,” she says, referencing her 2023 breakout self-titled album, which featured songs like “Olympus.”

She tells Rolling Stone India, “I think living in gray areas is really new for me, and that’s why it’s such a big subject of the album. The first album was so much about ‘I love you’ or ‘I hate you’ […] there’s so much more reality in the in-between. I think I was a bit scared of the in-between before, and this album was my way of exploring it.”

Along with a heap of compassion, songs like “T&A” see Blondshell ask herself important questions (“Why don’t the good ones love me?”) as she veers between romantic and sexual stories. Elsewhere, “Event of a Fire” draws on both the emotional tour burnout and a tour anecdote—when a hotel fire alarm went off at 4 am and Blondshell, in her exhaustion, headed for the elevator instead of the stairs (“this is the number one no-no,” she said in an interview).

Most of If You Asked For a Picture with its melancholic, yet charged-up indie rock, was written while Blondshell was on the road. When asked about how being in the spotlight has changed how she approaches making music, the artist is clear that it’s important to “not think about the reception while you’re actually making the music.” She adds, “If I were thinking about what people wanted to hear, it would literally be impossible to write what’s true to me. I think touring does affect writing a lot, though, because you end up thinking about how something would sound live and then making production choices based on that.” Joined by producer Yves Rothman (from the band Yves Tumor), Blondshell points to how songs like “He Wants Me” and “Arms” were born out of ideas of how they would sound at live shows.

Thematically, the album takes its title from American writer Mary Oliver’s 1986 poem “Dogfish.” It talks about how much of a life story one should share and how much one should keep to themselves, which appealed to Blondshell. She says, “My first intro to Mary Oliver was in high school, but it didn’t really click for me until I read her book Dog Songs. It’s about how complex people’s relationships can be with their dogs and what we can learn from them. After that, I kept reading her stuff and came upon ‘Dogfish.’”

Currently on the road through the U.S. promoting the album, Blondshell is also supporting rock favorites like Fontaines D.C. at a London show and Queens Of The Stone Age in Vienna in July. She’ll be back in Europe in September and in the U.S. in November, making for a packed year. “Sharing recorded music is cool, but actually going and seeing people’s faces and being in person together is hands down the most important part for me,” she says.

Steadily gaining a global following as part of an indie rock wave that’s been championed by the likes of Boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers, Wet Leg, Momma, Bartees Strange and more, Blondshell says she also has India on her radar. She says, “I’ve had interactions with people from India online, but I’ve never been in person. I would really love to go one day!”

The artist adds, “It’s so hard to get to other areas, but I would love to play in India, Southeast Asia, places I’ve always wanted to travel to but have never been. It means so much that people there listen and find these songs.”