Benee Just Wants To Say Hey

"I'm a sad girl in this big world," 20-year-old Benee sings on her most prominent song, "Supalonely," a bubblegum disco cut with funky musicality that belies its own melancholy. Nevertheless just before the world shut off earlier this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, the New Zealand pop chameleon was having the time of her life. "Literally in the week before we went into lockdown, I was at a techno festival," she tells MTV News. "That was really fun."


As we navigate a recent intercontinental Zoom call, I mishear "techo" as "TikTok" — at least partly due to the blazing star power "Supalonely" has shown on the app since March. The tune's been (officially) used in over 10 million videos, and she sang it to an older virtual crowd on both The Tonight Show and Ellen. It's brought her acclaim and notoriety across the globe, far away from the North Island where she grew up, and Benee — place on Earth Stella Rose Bennett — agrees it's a good entry point for her music. The rest of her debut album, Hey U X (styled Hey u x), which dropped on November 13, hops around stylistically, showcasing a much wider length as it dips into glitchy electronic with Grimes and confessional lo-fi as she strums an acoustic guitar.


It's also buoyed by its impressive roster of visitors — Lily Allen, Flo Milli, Kenny Beats, and more from across the musical landscape — who help execute Benee's vision for telling her particular story. As soon as she invites fellow Kiwi musician Muroki (and his "smooth, smooth, vocals") into the fold for "All the Time," the tune reflects its subject matter of vibing with a particular person while you're both under the influence. And Grimes's ethereal vocals offer the ideal counterpoint to Benee's mechanized ones on the hyperpop-adjacent "Sheesh." "I just thought, yeah, I want it to be a robot, so it worked out," Benee says.


Of course, Benee's music is only the half of it. Even amid the warm Radiohead-recalling arpeggios that lead opener "Happen to Me," she injects the anxiety she feels into her lyrics. "I hope I don't perish indoors a plane," she sings as frantic drums enter to echo her mood. And later, she's spinning a claustrophobic yarn along the edge of "Winter"'s groove: "Zombies surround me / I'm out of place, I feel so susceptible / People staring at me." Although in general, Hey U X is as amiable as its simple text-message greeting of a title suggests. It also works as a message to her fans; since the coronavirus pandemic has made touring outdoor New Zealand largely unsafe, she's as an alternative filled arenas at residence, where the disease rate hovers around zero.


"It's weird," Benee says of the sold-out October shows in Auckland that she also live-streamed, however there's like this new energy from people, and it's just making me excited for whenever each person can go back to playing shows and stuff." Below, she dives into her former life as a water polo player, speaking up about mental health, and what you could find in the Benee starter packer.


MTV News: "Supalonely" is the song that, now, each person understands you from. Is that the song you thought that can you may send to someone to be like, yeah, this is my vibe, maybe you've got to begin here?


Benee: I think I'm happy that, out of all my songs, it's the one that got picked up. I feel like I was super experimental in the session. I put more than a few Auto-Tune in the verses, and I did, like, a spoken-wordy thing and had weird ad-libs going on, and I was swearing, so I feel like it leaves the limitations from whichever else I want to create, which is nice. It's routinely, like a new, weird life that comes to a song as soon as you perform it. You must take it away from the studio, yet some people know it as well. It's pretty wild to perform.


MTV News: You said Auto-Tune, which plays a large part in "Sheesh." Did you realize that you needed Grimes on that from the starting, knowing that you were going to take this futuristic tone? At what point did she come in?


Benee: I knew that I wanted to have a feature on the song, although I didn't even think about Grimes cause she's just like — I'm such an enormous fan, and I was like, trim never desire to do that. No, that was Sony/ATV [Music Publishing that] planned she be featured on there, and I was like, oh, my... Far out. However if I had thought about her at the begin, she would have been brilliant on it, I think. She smashed it.


MTV News: In building a song like that, is the Auto-Tune something that you begin with, or is that something that comes in later, as a way to try the song in a new way?


Benee: I think I recorded that with the Auto-Tune. Yeah, I did. With songs that, I'd like to have tons of effects on my voice as soon as I'm recording it because it gives me this weird confidence, and I'm like, OK, I'm going to do a crazy-ass EDM song now. And I just thought that yeah, I want it to be a robot, so it worked out.


MTV News: Another visitor on the album is Lily Allen, who you had opened for in Auckland. Had you kept in touch since that show where you played?


Benee: We hadn't actually, to be straightforward, spoke at all right following the show, nevertheless she works with this girl called Gina Andrews, who made "Supalonely" with. As soon as I had finished playing, I had this really, really, bad second verse, where I tried rapping, and I was like, this isn't going to work, I require a rapper, I need Lily Allen. I knew that I wanted her in the song, and yeah, Gina hinted that if I wanted to — she did send me a song that she had been writing with Lily and asked if I wanted to be featured on it, so I was like, oh, maybe would she like to be featured on this one? And then Gina and her wrote the verse with each other, and boom. Although I knew that I wanted her on the song, because she's like the queen of pizzazz.


MTV News: "A Little While" is the only song that you have sole writing credit on, and that song seems super personalized. You use it to talk about having been hurt in the past, and attempting to get through this wall. Can you tell me about how that one came together?


Benee: That was a lockdown song that I made in my bedroom, and I was working on Logic. And I'm not very good at working on Logic, so it's quite simple. Yet I played the guitar and recorded the bassline on the guitar, because I like bass, however I don't know. I loved working on it in my room by myself, to be truthful. I like writing my own songs, nevertheless even any time I'm working with [writer/producer] Josh [Fountain] on all the other songs in the album, it could be my lyrics, however it's Josh's production. It was weird just for me to do the production, I don't know, along with a lot harder. Josh is so good at it, and he makes it look very quick and easy, and I'm like — I sit there for literally a day, attempting to identify this bloody thing. It's nice to do it by myself for a change.


MTV News: The very first words on the album are: "I hope I don't perish indoor a plane." You're not afraid to mention explicitly that you're sad, or you're lonely, or you're afraid. Is that habitually how you have written? Did it take time to settle into a confessional fashion where you can would be that honest?


Benee: Even from the initial couple of sessions, they were still quite sad and straightforward, yet I think certainly right now I've become a lot more susceptible with my writing. I've Been exploring topics that make me uncomfortable, [that] like, happened to me. It's about anxiety and stuff, and, ugh, I hate talking to people about that, nevertheless I realized that songwriting for me is such a good way to vent, and I don't have converse with anyone about it. I can just write about it. So I think it's certainly changed, and I'm even more honest.


MTV News: You're very open on social media, also. For World Mental Health Day, you posted a series of photos where you'd been crying with explanations. Do you attempt to connect with other folks about your struggles or just help people recognize as soon as you share them?


Benee: I feel like people can sort of forget that artists are very sensitive human beings. And it's like this weird fricking thing where people think that musicians are not typical or anything. So I think that certainly getting a bigger platform, I want to just really make it very clear to people that I have feelings and that I'm sensitive. And I think that it's essential to remind people that it's OK to be sad, and to cry is also really good, and to cry because you have no reason at all, because there's no reason at all. Talking to people about it is so critical, and I think that that's sort of why I was posting. It's just crucial to keep the mental health conversation going, because it may so with little effort be pushed under the bus, and that's as soon as things get really bad. You compare your life to, I don't know, a Kardashian, and you're like, oh my gosh, I do not get to be on vacation. I don't really look this happy and every photo. So I think it's nice to mix up a little bit of the raw stuff in there, you know.


MTV News: You're turning 21 in January. What are your objectives for the rest of your twenties?


Benee: Oh my goodness. I do not even know. People ask me about objectives all of the time, and I actually don't — I feel like I have some maybe internal objectives, that any time If I do something I'm like OK, yeah, that was satisfying. However I don't really feel like I'm someone who wants to do stuff before a certain time. I mean, hopefully I've released another album. That's an objective, isn't it? And maybe, hopefully I'm still happy, well, at 26. That could be wonderful. Yeah. You go. There really are my goals.


MTV News: You also lived a past life before getting into music as a water polo player. What's something that people may not know about water polo?


Benee: It's pretty aggressive. At least If I played it, it was. It's far out, man. It's pretty ruthless. You've got to be so fit to play it, and I know that right now, because I'm not that fit, and I'm like, holy crap. I used have the ability to do so much stuff and not get tired, and right now, like, your gal walks up a fucking hill and I'm coughing, so people who play top-of-the-league water polo, they are so fit. I useds to have to train day-to-day. So hey, respect to them. Respect to the polo players there.


MTV News: And finally, what's the Benee starter pack?


Benee: The Benee starter pack is a big hill. A grassy hill is in the starter pack. Oh my God, a chinchilla is on the hill, and there's a packet of — oh, no: a jar of jalapeño-stuffed olives. That's certainly me. And then some Crocs. That's the Benee starter pack. Oh, and then some headphones.