Suki Waterhouse on her new album, touring with a baby, and ditching maternity style

Suki Waterhouse has a lot going on at the moment. Not only did she just welcome her first child, a baby girl, with partner Robert Pattinson back in March, she is also about to release her second studio album, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin, on September 13. On top of that, she both made her Coachella debut and filmed a major commercial campaign for Sonos Ace mere weeks after giving birth. (The campaign, which sees Waterhouse strutting down the streets of New York in a fluffy pink coat and smooth white Sonos headphones, is the first big ad to feature one of her songs.) But despite everything happening in her life, she says she is anxious to get on the road and tour again, even if things might be a little trickier with a baby on board.

“I’m actually really looking forward to it,” she tells me when we talk on the phone. “I think it’ll be so fun just to … have an amazing kind of bonding experience. Just to go around America with her on the bus, I can’t wait.” Of course, with a four-month-old in her life, our conversation often turns to her life as a new mom. “I’m having such an amazing time,” Waterhouse says. “I’m really, really enjoying it.”

While she’s likely missing out on more sleep than usual these days, Waterhouse is used to a busy schedule. “So much has happened in these last two years. It’s kind of like I can’t even really comprehend it,” she says. Before welcoming her daughter, whose name has not been made public yet, the singer spent the latter half of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 doing various live gigs, all the while recording Sparklemuffin.

Ahead of the LP’s release, Waterhouse has given fans a taste with tracks like “My Fun”—which revels in the merriment of her relationship with Pattinson—and lead single “Supersad,” a deceptively titled, smooth rock song that celebrates Waterhouse’s resilience, even in the face of depression. “My last album was very much exploring this kind of sadistic relationship that I was spending a lot of time getting over,” she notes. “And I think this one is like my head is above water … I’m kind of in this new season of life, which feels really exhilarating.”

When I ask which Sparklemuffin tracks she’s most excited for fans to hear, she names “Blackout Drunk,” a song she describes as a “buzzy maritime” tune about waking up and telling a man all the messy things he did the night before. “It kind of became this thing, I guess, about, like, gender and drinking,” she tells me. She humorously adds, “[Men] don’t go to therapy and they don’t know how to control their drinking. It’s a very annoying combination.”

Other personal highlights for Waterhouse are “To Get You,” which she co-wrote with Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex, and “Lawsuit,” which she says stemmed from the story of an unnamed figure who got what was coming to them. “It wasn’t my lawsuit, but it was someone that I dislike very much,” she reveals. “[Someone] getting held accountable for something.”

I can’t help but wonder if any of the Sparklemuffin tracks were written for her daughter, but when I reference “Lullaby,” Waterhouse laughs. “‘Lullaby’ is absolutely not like a sweet song about potential moms,” she says. “I don’t think I was pregnant when I wrote that song.”

She does reveal that she did write a bunch of songs for her child—but that at least for now, they will remain private.“I had this sense that she was gonna have blue eyes, and I wrote this song called ‘Blue Eyes,’ ” she recalls. “And then I actually didn’t end up [including it on the album]. I ended up keeping them for myself, and I didn’t end up putting any of them on the record. So, yeah, there’s no hint of baby on this record.”

As a project, Memoir of a Sparklemuffin is more about Waterhouse’s personal journey, and you can see that reflected in the eye-catching title. Waterhouse explains that she learned about the sparklemuffin spider and was immediately intrigued. For context, sparklemuffins are a colorful species of peacock spiders whose male members perform a dance to try to impress their mates. If a female spider is not successfully wooed, she ends up eating her suitor.

“[The title]—it’s kind of one of those things where I’m like, if you get it, you get it,” she says. “I wanted something that leaned towards a kind of ridiculousness and felt a little bit comical and a bit fabulous. … The world is kind of violent and you can get eviscerated and you can get eaten at any moment, and we’re in this, like, kind of beautiful and also, like, devastating dance together.”

Although it goes unsaid, I get the sense that being a musician can also often feel like you’re being eaten or performing a dance to impress the world, and Waterhouse seems to hint at this as well. “Fear never goes away,” she admits.

She even refers to herself as “untrustworthy” and says she experienced a roller coaster of emotions with many of the songs that did end up on the album.“Some of the songs that I really disliked, I suddenly would rediscover when I was putting together the album by the end,” she says. “And [then] I’d be like, ‘Why was I in such a terrible mindset about this song? I love this song now!’ ”

At this point, the Daisy Jones & The Six star has no regrets about the final product. “I’m really looking forward to it,” she tells me. Of course, a new album era means an opportunity to explore new fashion styles, which Waterhouse is really embracing now that she’s no longer pregnant. “I feel like my wardrobe is having such a renaissance,” she excitedly says. “I’ve been shopping all the time.”

She names Paloma Wool, Leset, and Patrizia Pepe as brands that have become favorites, and she says she’s also been really into thrifting, recently obtaining a spiky pink bag from a ’92 Dolce & Gabbana collection. “Now that the album’s coming out, I want loud accessories,” Waterhouse proclaims. “Things with sparkles, things with bright colors. That was part of naming the album. I want to be able to point to a cute thing and be like, ‘I must have it, it’s sparklemuffin.’ ”

This article first appeared in harpersbazaar.com in July 2024. 

Lead image: Wikimedia Commons

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