The line arrived before the song did. When MINOE sat down to write Shell, the Nova Scotia-born, now Toronto-based singer-songwriter did not reach for a melody or a metaphor. She reached for the sentence that had been following her around. “The first line that showed up was ‘what a waste of 24’ because it was something that had been circling my brain for a while, feeling like I’m wasting my youth being overweight,” she says. “It isn’t fair because I didn’t choose this, most people don’t, but I think a lot of people in their twenties can relate to that sentiment of being scared you’re wasting your ‘prime.’ I really want to dismantle that thought process, and writing is always how I start.”
The place where the dismantling began was not a studio. “I was in the shower, honestly, most of my best ideas come to me in the shower,” she says. “There’s something about being alone and vulnerable yet fully relaxed; it’s an important creative space for me, I’ve realized.”
Shell sees her hand the microphone to her harshest inner voice, and there is a contradiction sitting right at the centre of it. She is openly against ageism and body shaming; she believes judging other people is low vibrational, and yet she turns that judgement inward. She does not pretend to have solved it. “I think a lot of people live with that contradiction: the ‘I’d never be this mean to someone else so why am I doing it to myself?’ I wish I had the answer,” she says. “Growing up, my mother was very hyper-critical, and I watched her be mean to herself, specifically about her weight. It makes me really sad to think about, but watching your mom berate the features that you inherit and see in the mirror is a hard thought pattern to escape. I still have a lot of unlearning to do, I always thought she was beautiful, and I’m getting there with myself.”
Musically, the song gives those words nowhere to hide. Stripped-back piano, her vocal pushed right to the front, and a reference point that is stranger and more tender than you might guess. “The stripped-back piano is on purpose; our reference was actually the piano in Finding Nemo with all of that underwater-esque reverb,” she says. “I wanted it to feel lonely, like you would as a little fish in a big ocean. At the end, the big finish symbolizes growing anger toward my feelings and the situation overall, and wanting to be free of that sadness completely.”
Saying the nasty things out loud did something she did not expect. It made a few of them sound absurd. “‘What a waste of 24’ is so ridiculous, like the only way I’m really wasting my time is feeling like crap when I could be outside having fun and enjoying my mobility,” she says. Another line went further, into satire. “Another one was the ‘thank God for Ozempic, isn’t everyone much prettier?’ It’s a sarcastic line, I hope that’s obvious, because I’ve been reading some disgusting comments online about celebrities like ‘oh she used to be pretty’ or ‘omg she’s back’ after doing Ozempic as if she went somewhere? I could rant about this for a long time, I am not a fan of that language.”
She wants the song to hold space for a listener, then let them put it down. Asked what she hopes someone does in the first five minutes after it ends, her answer is practical and warm. “If these words speak to anyone, I hope they give themselves a big hug and take really good care of themselves for the rest of the day,” she says. “It’s hard enough out here, ya’ll, we don’t need to be piling self-hatred on top of everything else. Also, maybe call a friend or a therapist, can 100% recommend both.”
Shell follows Loophole, the brooding single that opened her year and found its way onto editorial playlists before taking off on TikTok. She is candid that the algorithm is not what is steering her right now. “Honestly, not really,” she says of whether that attention changed her approach. “The biggest thing that has shifted my approach to this release is my Evanescence cover that’s picking up traction online right now. I think Amy Lee’s voice and lyrics are a really good reference / side-by-side for this song, so I’ve been lucky to have both things happening at once. I’m working on a full version of that as well.”
Her recent single Foghorns pulled drum and bass energy against quieter Irish textures, part of a wider habit of threading her Nova Scotian upbringing through modern pop. She is relaxed about how much of that reads as authentic and how much reads as ornament and is happy to leave the verdict with the listener. “I don’t know if it feels earned or decorative; I guess that’s up to the listener, but I know I’m very proud of where I’m from,” she says. “I grew up listening to Gaelic music, Irish bar songs, and icons like the Rankin Family. I’ve been really enjoying working my roots into my music. It feels authentic to me.”
Those roots were in the room in Montreal at the end of June, when she supported Cailin Russo and played Shell live for the first time. “Honestly, premiering Shell was a really special moment,” she says. “I spoke with some women at the end of the night who connected to the song, and it meant everything to me. Makes me tear up just thinking about it now.”
All of this feeds a debut album, Stella Marina, framed around a mermaid who escapes captivity off the Nova Scotia coast and finds anonymity in Montreal nightlife. The myth is a disguise for something she lived. “As much as I adore Nova Scotia, my childhood was rocky at best,” she says. “I never felt welcome in my home, or really in my family. Even at school, I always felt like an outsider, so I spent a lot of my childhood alone in my room. I was a weird kid. As I’ve grown up, I have realized it has helped me in some ways. I was very creative, always painting or writing, on Tumblr or figuring out my own likes/dislikes without much outside influence, but at the time it was rough. So that was my ‘captivity’, but then moving to Montreal changed all of that completely. I met so many people who were just as weird, even weirder. So creative, so talented, so funny. It was awesome. It changed my life forever. I just moved to Toronto last week, but Montreal and Nova Scotia will always have unique and special places in my heart, so I’m excited for this album to close that transitional chapter.”
Shell is out today
Photos – Sara Wai @saraxwai
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