When Ashe walked into a session with Suki Waterhouse last summer, she hadn’t written a song in six months.
The California-born singer-songwriter had just recently moved to Nashville and was on a hiatus of sorts from the industry after canceling a tour to prioritize her mental health. “I was like, ‘Fine, but put your expectations really low,’” Ashe says of agreeing to the session on a Zoom call with Variety and Waterhouse.
“I would never have known,” Waterhouse interjects. “I knew you’d been taking a break, but you walked in just like a ray of sunshine with these beautiful flowers.”
A few hours later, “Pushing Daisies” was born, the duo’s dreamy, psychedelia-twinged collaborative track. Inspired by the flowers Ashe brought (though neither of them can remember if they were, in fact, daisies) and Waterhouse’s insomnia, the song combines tongue-in-cheek lyricism with an undeniably catchy hook and fuzzy backing vocals.
Meeting of Minds
Ashe and Waterhouse — the musician, model and actor whose brand of sun-soaked indie-pop earned her a spot opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in London this summer — had first met in 2020 when Ashe was visiting Waterhouse’s native London.
“We just went for a tea and chatted,” Waterhouse says, recounting being struck by Ashe’s “illuminating beauty.” In the music world, “it’s pretty unusual to hang out and just be like, ‘That’s a great, cool person,’” Waterhouse continues. “To have somebody that you can talk to that’s in the same industry at any point ever is always just a huge blessing. So yeah, I was head over heels.”
“Aw, Suki!” Ashe exclaims. “I mean, likewise. I just remember being like, ‘Oh man, how annoying — she’s so cool and down to earth and pretty,’ and just checked all these boxes.”
Creative Collaboration
The pair continued to meet up whenever they were in the same place — “My first ever paparazzi photos were after I went to dinner with her in L.A.,” Ashe recalls — and always dreamed of working together. But it never worked out until Waterhouse found herself in Tennessee for Bonnaroo in June 2023. And it still almost didn’t, since Ashe was on a break from writing and nearly canceled the session. Thankfully, she woke up inspired.
“I was definitely pulling in a lot of my existential dread that I was experiencing at the time,” Ashe says. “And this concept of like, I may not even be dreaming, I might just be dead. Like this might not even be reality.”
Waterhouse was feeling the same. “There was a sort of synergy between us of understanding, and I think we were both slightly dazed from our respective worlds,” she says.
Though Ashe went into the session thinking they were writing for Waterhouse’s record — which ended up being “Memoir of a Sparklemuffin,” released Sept. 13 — there was something magical about “Pushing Daisies” that reinvigorated Ashe to revisit own music again.
“That’s like, what brought me back,” Ashe says. “I started writing again and wrote an album the next day.” That album became the confessional “Willson,” her first as an independent artist, which came out Sept. 6.
Despite both having brand-new bodies of work, Ashe and Waterhouse couldn’t get “Pushing Daisies” out of their heads. “This song was floating in the world like, gosh, what do we do with this thing?” Ashe says. “And I think Suki texted me like, ‘Do you want to just put it out and we can do it together?’ And I was like, ‘Oh! That’s what we should do.’”
Empowering Women in Music
With the collaboration, the duo underlines what Waterhouse says has been an “incredible year for women in music, especially of women collaborating together,” specifically pointing to Charli XCX and Lorde’s “Girl, So Confusing” remix.
“I love that [Charli’s] opened it up to, well sometimes it feels weird and you feel all these fucking things that everyone feels because we’re human,” Waterhouse says.
Being a woman in music — particularly in the singer-songwriter field — can be “isolating,” Ashe adds.
“There can be a stigma that female artists don’t write their own songs and there can be a tough wall we come up against,” she says. “I think Suki is such a phenomenal writer, and I feel like it’s important that more of us are getting together and honestly just hearing each other’s stories and listening and being vulnerable.”
For Waterhouse, speaking to Ashe about setting her own boundaries in the industry encouraged her to do the same. “It was very cool to see you kind of taking back ownership of your life,” she says to Ashe. “Because you have to have a life to be able to nourish your art, too — otherwise, the well dries up. Watching Ashe do that taught me a lot, and has been helpful to me in learning how to just change a few things myself.”
Listen to “Pushing Daisies” below.
FAQs
Q: What inspired the creation of “Pushing Daisies”?
A: The song was inspired by the flowers Ashe brought and Waterhouse’s insomnia, resulting in a dreamy, psychedelia-twinged track.
Q: How did Ashe and Waterhouse’s collaboration impact their music careers?
A: The collaboration reignited Ashe’s passion for music, leading her to write a new album, while Waterhouse found inspiration in setting boundaries in the industry.
Q: What message do Ashe and Waterhouse hope to convey through their collaboration?
A: They aim to empower women in music and highlight the importance of collaboration and vulnerability in the industry.
Credit: variety.com
