Meet Magic Candy

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Magic Candy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Magic Candy, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

Having siblings is such a gift.
When I was about 13 years old my oldest sibling, Gabriel, went off to a boarding art high school. There they found their queerness as well as some of the most important music to me that would go to inspire years of creation. Gabriel was sort of like my personal prophet, bringing home goods and ideas they found while communicating with (queer) God. It’s so silly to put it that way but thats how it was. I remember when they first started gushing about Björk while visiting home. At first there was this strange fear in hearing something so out there but I’ll never forget the moment I heard Björk’s “Jòga” from her album Homogenic. I couldn’t believe something this special could exist. From that moment I desperately pleaded Gabriel for more music. So they made me a playlist of probably 4o albums. I would shuffle it on my iPod until a song stuck out which then prompted me to fall in love with albums, rather than songs. For the first time I got inspired to listen to albums from beginning to end. This era of ages 13-15 were probably the most magical for listening to music. I got to know Björk, Aphex Twin, Grimes, Phillip Glass, Julianna Barwick, Julia Holter, Joanna Newsom, to name a few. This love eventually grew to be a desired purpose. I got really obsessed with Grimes and her persona. The world of her music felt so akin to what I wanted to accomplish, and not just because we share a birthday. I remember watching live videos of her on YouTube and being so shocked to see only her, a mic, her gear, and a computer on stage. I always thought to be a musician you needed a huge team of people, the best recording gear and a vast knowledge of how a studio works. Grimes—thank god—showed me that all of that is pretty much bullshit. I quickly learned that music was not what I had always thought it was: big budget pop music, music theory scholars, mathematical jazz geniuses. I realized this medium is for misfits and I’m so grateful for finding my purpose as a misfit of music.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Magic Candy began with a need to make noise and not adhere to anything academic. When I first started making music I wanted to be as arrogant and unaffected by how people think you’re supposed to make music as possible. I would say my arrogance has since subsided but I’m immensely grateful that I was so uncompromising about how I learned the language of music. I started from absolutely nothing using the only tool I felt I needed: the music that inspired me. I learned production, mixing, singing, composing, and piano playing all by ear. This gave me this extremely intimate relationship with my craft. In the beginning I did a lot of copying at times. I would write songs with a particular artist in mind so I could learn how all my favorite music was created. To learn piano I would sit in the practice rooms at my high school (my favorite secret special place) and I would listen to Joni Mitchell songs over and over again until I learned every single note. I did this with plenty of other artists as well and eventually I developed my own style of playing. Now I’m proud to say my music is this unique minutia of all of the music I obsessed over for years. Where once I would replicate what others did, now I can use those techniques to create my special signature sound for Magic Candy.

Since the start, I have always been concerned with making albums. I’m almost never not working on one. Currently I am finishing up my sixth album and it’s the most important project I have ever worked on. It lives in this dark, black and white world. Its rash and reckless but also contained and focused. It’s wise but also childlike and filled with unabashed desire and lust. I wanted to explore friction sonically with beautiful soft watery textures coupled with big distortion and explosive dramatic hits. It is called Desire Lines Diary and I am hoping to have it be released by 2026.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Make something bad. If you’re stuck and feel lost in your work then take a bad idea and work with it like its a good idea. In this process of creating something you know is garbage, you will find new ideas come to the surface. You just have to keep going. But if you’re lucky something magical might happen. You might have misjudged this idea and all of a sudden you have this big (or small) beautiful piece of work that took you by whimsical surprise. And if not, its okay. I find being in a constant state of creativity is like working out. It’s a muscle that should be exercised. Sometimes for me it’s just recording little ideas in my voice memos.
Early on I think diving super deep into something that I ended up hating was so essential for my process. Because in this state of creativity some new idea ALWAYS gets triggered. It might even be another, possibly worse, bad idea but just go with it. If you’re too concerned with only making hit after hit you’re never going make anything.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My parents are my biggest fans without a doubt.
When I first started writing I think the two of them were in denial about the whole thing. It’s not that they weren’t supportive, but I think they hoped I’d pick an easier route to success. My dad loves to tell the story of when he first heard my music. It was super early on and I was still figuring everything out but he heard what I could do by ear and realized I had the stuff. My dad has worked in electrical engineering since out of college and like a lot of engineers he is also a musician. He has played guitar since he was 15 years old and has always been fascinated by the world of audio. Growing up he was the guy with all the audio visual cables and gear you could hope for. So starting in an industry surrounding audio I was so grateful to have an audio engineer for a dad. He helped me learn the basics of audio. He saw me singing into the mic attached to my MacBook and intervened. He had in stock a Presonus two input audio box, all the XLR cables you could ever need, and a Sure SM58. And that was my first studio setup. From then on my dad was always my go-to for audio questions. Although I know I annoyed the hell out of him with my arrogance and “do-it-myself” attitude, the things he taught me have been invaluable to my process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://magiccandymusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/magiccandymusic/
• Other: Magic Candy on all streaming platforms <3

Image Credits

Live Photos – Olive Milford
Main photo – Arden Dimanno