Porter Robinson’s ‘SMILE :D’ is a testament to the power of creative liberation, as the artist fearlessly explores new sonic territories and confronts uncomfortable truths with unbridled enthusiasm.
Words: Ali Shutler.
Photos: George Muncey.
“Every project I’ve done has been a total reinvention,” says Porter Robinson. After helping lay the foundations for EDM with a string of early tracks and co-writing Zedd’s massive dance-pop crossover hit ‘Clarity’, Porter’s 2014 debut album ‘Worlds’ was a glitching, melodic bid for fantastical escapism that wanted more than big drops or sugary hooks. 2021’s ‘Nurture’ took things even further. More stripped back and lush, the album saw Porter gently reckoning with relationships, mental health and belonging over intricate soundscapes.
“I guess the most surprising thing I could do now would be make something that retreads similar ground,” he says before smirking. “But I just can’t do that.” True to his word, new album ‘SMILE :D’ is another bold leap into the unknown, thanks to a giddy collision of scrappy 00s guitar and the bratty confidence of hyperpop. “I wanted to make music that felt huge.”
That feeling first came about while Porter was touring in support of ‘Nurture’, backed by a live band. At Firefly Festival, sharing the stage with the likes of Green Day, Bleachers, Wolf Alice, Yungblud and Haim, he playfully encouraged the audience to pelt him with glowsticks as he stood, arms outstretched, on top of an amplifier. “That’s the spirit of ‘SMILE :D’,” he says. “It’s maximum fun and has a real spirit of play.” Every track hits just as hard, each one a self-contained burst of vibrant colour.
“I’d become so focused on writing music that felt so heartfelt and serious that I’d started denying the parts of me that were about wanting to have a good time. I wanted to bring that back,” he explains, with ‘SMILE :D’ his attempt at making a “fun, exciting costume party of bravado.”
“However, a lot of what came out of me was confessional, vulnerable and honest,” Porter admits. But that combination of day-glo musical aggression and twisting, revealing lyrics excited him. “It wasn’t what I was going for, but it’s what ended up getting made,” he shrugs.
“‘SMILE :D’ is maximum fun and has a real spirit of play”
porter robinson
Across ‘SMILE :D’, Porter confronts uncomfortable truths. “I just tried to say yes to everything that felt provocative to me,” he says. Anything that felt too taboo, scary, self-aggrandising, or just plain stupid made the cut. “There are songs where I admit I sometimes want more attention than I’m currently getting. There’s a part of me that’s definitely addicted to fame. It feels shameful, but it’s also true,” Porter offers. He figured if it provoked a reaction in him, it would spark something within his audience. Take the line “Bitch, I’m Taylor Swift” from the sneering ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’. “When I wrote that, I knew it was so unforgivably stupid, but there was nothing I could replace it with that conjured a stronger reaction from me.” Before, he would have never shared that lyric with the world, not wanting to be misunderstood or wage war with Swift’s fiercely protective fanbase. “Now, though… It’s just funny, isn’t it?” he offers. “The more you self-censor, the more boring your art becomes.”
The first piece of music written for ‘SMILE :D’ was a dance-pop song that felt similar to ‘Nurture”s ‘Look At The Sky’. Porter figured it would be perfect for a companion EP, but then came ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’. “That was the moment,” he says. “That song has this bravado that’s so different to everything that’s come before. It was almost scary because I knew I was going to have to do so much work to realise this world,” he grins. But the entire record was finished in 20 months, the same amount of time it took Porter to create the 2017 six-track ‘Virtual-Self’ EP.
On ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’, Porter becomes a shameless version of himself. Partly a reaction to self-curated social media feeds, the confirmation bias they come with and how contextless everything online has become. “It’s an anthem of acceptance about how you can’t control how you’re seen,” he offers.
“I’m a good boy. I spent so much of my career worrying about being misunderstood, but with enough experience, you realise that can’t be helped. If you’re going to exist in the public eye, you’re going to get dragged,” he says. And with social media, pretty much everyone lives their life in the public eye.
“That song is about, what if I just stopped caring about how other people view me? I want that to be aspirational for my audience,” he continues. “Our world is shaped to be oppressive and is designed to keep individualism down. The desire to not stick out or be embarrassed changes people’s personalities, but being immune to cringe is such a superpower,” Porter offers.
“It’s okay to be big, to be loud and to be yourself,” he continues. “The more colourful and more themselves one person becomes, the more it gives permission for other people to do the same. You can be meek if that’s your vibe, but I have found so much value in jumping up on the table. Life is short, so what am I so scared of? The time to exist is now.”
That’s not to say he’s fearless about such a hard pivot. Before lead single ‘Cheerleader’ had been released, Porter had a conversation with a friend who had quit a decent job to come out on the road with him. “I told him, if everyone hates this album, I might fuck off entirely.”
“I’m really not bluffing either,” Porter continues. “I love that I can make the music the way I want to, and if it isn’t received well, so be it. Maybe I can go live on an island. That feeling of creative liberation is hard to come by, especially when you reach a point in your career when people rely on you, but that freedom is insanely valuable.”
However, any niggling plans to live out the rest of his days on a tropical paradise while fans slate ‘SMILE :D’ were scuppered after the release of ‘Cheerleader’, with listeners quickly embracing the new era. “I fuckin love My Chemical Robinson,” reads the top-rated comment on YouTube. “I love how each Porter Robinson project is so distinct from one another, yet still so distinctly Porter Robinson,” says another.
“I did think ‘Cheerleader’ was going to get more of a negative reaction, especially because it basically says sometimes the attention that I get from the fans feels borderline stalkerish and is weird in bad ways,” says Porter. “There are moments of vulnerability, but it’s mostly a banger. I thought it would be more controversial, but maybe if the music’s good enough, people don’t give a fuck.”
“Being immune to cringe is such a superpower”
porter robinson
Porter’s relationship with fame is especially pointed because he didn’t set out to be a star. In fact, he started making music as a kid to add other people’s music to a Dance Dance Revolution emulator. In order to do that, though, he accidentally taught himself production basics and was soon making tracks on his mum’s computer using whatever software he could torrent. “My initial ambition was never superstardom. It was never arenas or playing Coachella; I was just seeking the smallest nuggets of recognition. There was never a plan to become a pop star, I just constantly found the next step so insanely exciting,” he says, which quickly led to Porter Robinson performing on massive festival stages and DJing at his own Las Vegas residency as EDM took over the world.
That rapid rise didn’t sit right with him, though. While performing at a festival in Australia, he started dissociating and decided he’d had enough of EDM. He began berating audiences and slating the scene in interviews as he tried to grow beyond the bro-heavy scene. In one infamous encounter with NME, he claimed EDM wasn’t art, just entertainment. “That was so wrongheaded,” he admits today.
“I haven’t felt like an EDM artist for a decade now, but I still get categorised that way,” he adds with a sigh, still unable to shake off the label. “The thing I’ll say is, I’m not going to turn my nose up to anyone that wants to listen to my music, if they find value or meaning in it. If the rest of what they’re listening to is mainstage dance music, but then they can hear a song like ‘Blossom’ and cry, there’s beauty in that.”
Porter also understands the fans begging him for a return to older eras because he’s felt the same way about plenty of his own faves. “I’ve made art for long enough now that I know that you can’t go back, though. I’ve seen enough artists try to appease their audience by making the music they think their fans want to hear, and it always sucks. It’s this hollow, thin, nostalgia thing. You can always feel that lack of sincerity,” he offers. “Anyway, most of the time, it’s not the music you miss; it’s who you were when you heard that music for the first time.”
“It’s never been about shock value, though. That’s just so boring,” he says of a decade of hard pivots. Instead, Porter has always just chased what felt the most exciting. A lot of ‘SMILE :D’ came about after he picked up a guitar, fell in love with the “greatest songwriting tool ever discovered”, and figured he should probably do his homework. There are nods to noughties rock, the Warped Tour scene and MySpace-era bands like Hellogoodbye, Lights and Never Shout Never across the record. It was never about nostalgia, though. “In 2010, I was only listening to Daft Punk and electronic music. The closest I got to guitar music was Justice,” he says, once deleting an illegally downloaded version of LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Daft Punk Are Playing At My House’ before the track had even finished, just because of how raw it sounded.
There’s also a touch of hyperpop to the record, thanks to 100gecs. “I saw them at a festival, and it just clicked for me. It wasn’t this inside joke like I thought it was; it was something everyone could enjoy,” he says, describing ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’ as a mix between the brash subgenre and Weezer. “I was trying to make something that was anthemic and electronic. I don’t get the ‘Cheerleader’ hyperpop accusations, though,” he continues. “To me, that song sounds like The Killers, but whatever, you can’t prevent misunderstandings.”
Porter goes on to describe ‘SMILE :D’ as a love letter to cliché. “For something to become a cliché, it has to resonate so widely with all of humanity,” he offers. It’s one of the reasons he declares “Bitch, I’m Taylor Swift” on ‘Knock Yourself Out XD.’ “‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)’ is ten minutes of the most widely used chord progression of all time, but it’s so beautiful. Her songwriting and the stories she tells are what makes her music so powerful.” Across ‘SMILE :D’, Porter uses the most “basic, non-jazzy” chords, synth patterns, and drum fills. “I’m certainly not trying to prove that I’m like a great singer or guitarist with this album,” he adds.
‘SMILE :D’, as the smirking name suggests, is a record of joy. Yes, the lyrics pick apart the dark sides of fame, but it’s never cynical. “‘Nurture’ was me trying to fight the nihilism. I was attempting to inject meaning and hope into people’s lives at a time that felt really hopeless and meaningless,” says Porter. “With ‘SMILE :D’, there’s more acceptance of the state of things and having fun with that. But I don’t accept meaninglessness; I don’t accept nihilism. I think the shit that we do on this planet matters.”
“I don’t feel like I’ve got much to prove on this. I’m just doing my thing”
porter robinson
There’s a jaggedness across ‘SMILE :D’ that hasn’t been present in any of his other, more pristine projects. “K-pop is so aspirational and speaks to a desire for greatness and perfection, but a lot of what speaks to me is music where the heart is bleeding. I think that’s probably true for a lot of people who come to Porter Robinson for their albums as well,” he says.
It’s a few weeks before ‘Knock Yourself Out XD’ is due to be released, and Porter Robinson is “feeling the pressure” despite loving every track on ‘SMILE :D’. “Maybe I’m just the kind of person who’s prone to negative emotions,” he offers. It would explain why so much of his career has been about finding connection and understanding.
“I’ve been fighting against that recently,” he explains. “This album is more about being seen because I think being understood is ultimately impossible. All I can really do as an artist is share my feelings and hope that they resonate with people in some way. There really is no grander design for this record.”
Porter can’t stop thinking about playing these new songs live. “Some of it is so high energy and fun, but there’s also something about singing vulnerable words that would usually be hard to say in a room with 10,000 other people. All of it fills my heart with extreme joy and anticipation.”
The 70-date ‘SMILE :D’ world tour kicks off in August and will keep Porter busy until at least early 2025. “I want it to be unbelievably playful and celebratory. I’m going to play every song of mine that I love,” he promises. “Can I sound self-absorbed for a second? I love my discography. I love the music I’ve made.”
‘SMILE :D’ is the first Porter Robinson record that hasn’t really had anything to kick back against. “I don’t feel like I’ve got much to prove on this. I’m just doing my thing,” he says. Look at his career as a whole, and the uniting factor is exploration and play. “Maybe this is me embracing another cliche, but everything I do is a love letter of some kind,” he continues. “The thing that’s worked for me is leaning wholeheartedly into whatever is the most exciting thing and doing that without compromise.”
Taken from the June 2024 issue of Dork. Porter Robinson’s album ‘SMILE :D’ is out 26th July.
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