Prima Queen talk their long-awaited debut album 'The Prize' • Interview • DIY Magazine

Having first met all the way back in 2016 after a chance encounter during a songwriting course, Louise Macphail and Kristin McFadden have made no secret of the strength of their friendship since then. Having bloomed into musical life as Prima Queen - ushering in a whole new chapter for the Transatlantic pairing - they’ve since embarked on the kind of journey normally only confined to silver screens, taking to the road for endless shows (supporting the likes of Everything Everything, Wet Leg, The Big Moon and more), with both stages and audiences alike growing with every year. And so, what better way to mark almost a decade of enjoying each other’s company than by sharing their biggest project to date?

Following on from their 2023 EP ‘Not The Baby’, Prima Queen’s newly-released debut album ‘The Prize’ continues their knack for painting intimate portraits of life, love and friendship; whether traipsing through a field at Glastonbury, or trying to save face in the mire of modern dating, it’s a multifaceted (if sometimes messy) depiction of their lives so far.

To celebrate its release, the pair tell us a little more about how ‘The Prize’ came to be…

Congratulations on the release of your debut album! What sort of emotions have you been going through in its lead up?
We always say releasing music feels like finally telling a secret that you’ve been holding on to (for years!). There’s been a whirlwind of emotions because it’s such a big moment for us. It can be really intimidating and overwhelming working on such a big project for the first time but we’re really proud of what we’ve made and for the secret to not be ours anymore. This has been such a rewarding experience, and we know nothing will ever be quite like releasing your first album - so we’re trying to be present and enjoy it.

Where do you think ‘The Prize’ really began? You’ve said that the album’s pieced together with songs from across the years, but do you feel as though there was a line in the sand when you knew that work on the album had really begun?
We’ve been planning ’The Prize’ since we became friends nearly 10 years ago now! Ever since we started writing together we’d imagined what it would be like to release an album and we wanted to wait until we felt that we were ready (and that people would have an appetite for it). It really started taking shape after we released our EP in 2023 - we had some songs that we knew had to be on the album (for example ‘Mexico’, which we’ve been playing live for years) but we really considered how we wanted the album to feel like a cohesive body of work.

As we started collecting songs we started to notice the emotional themes of growth and empowerment that reflected our own journeys of personal growth. It felt like there were some gaps that we needed to fill in the story arc which inspired songs like ’Flying Ant Day’ and ’Sunshine Song’. We wrote them over the summer of 2023 and you can definitely hear the sunshine in them, and we feel excited that the album is coming out in the spring, so that people can enjoy them as they were intended.

Did you go into making the record with many expectations or hopes? You obviously released your ‘Not The Baby’ EP back in 2023; did you have any conscious thoughts about how you wanted to continue on from that release, building on its foundations?
After touring our EP ‘Not The Baby’ we were thinking a lot about which songs we loved to play live, and how we wanted the album to feel when we played it. We were really inspired by shows that were high energy, fun and left you feeling amazing after you left. Wanting to make a show like that made us think a lot about the songs we wanted to choose for the album and how they would be produced. You can see that on the higher energy songs like ‘The Prize’, ‘Oats’, ‘Ugly’, and ‘Fool’ and we love playing all of these live. We wanted to keep storytelling at the heart of the album but we also wanted to create a whole world, which can be challenging within the time constraint of an EP.

Before the album we’d always written our arrangements with the view of being able to play them live with just two guitars, bass and drums, but making an album for the first time allowed us to pick songs that we knew we wouldn’t have to play live or be singles so we were able to be more creative with those songs. For example, we brought ’Sunshine Song’ in as a stripped back, simple song and then we decided to add a crazy section in the middle with seven key changes and wild glitches which would make it a bit of a nightmare to play live. It was freeing to be able to show different sides of us as a band with both upbeat and more intimate and experimental moments.

Storytelling has always been very much at the heart of what you do and the album’s very clearly made up of a series of stories and vignettes, but how did you decide which stories worked best to tell?
The title track ’The Prize’ definitely felt like a eureka moment. The album had been finished for a year and we decided to go into the studio with our producer Steph [Marziano] to write another song for fun and it felt like it just popped out of us and tied all of the stories in the album together. Many of the other songs were more like rites of passage - songs that we felt like we had to write in the moment, encompassing feelings that everyone goes through (like heartbreak, outrage at it happening again and the progression of those emotions).

You can hear younger versions of ourselves in some of the earlier tracks and the songs intentionally interact with each other. More Credit is an example of that where we acknowledge some of the perspectives explored in earlier songs might feel different in hindsight. More recent versions of ourselves can be heard in ’The Prize’, ’Oats’ and ’Sunshine Song’ and act as a remedy to the emotions expressed in older and more vulnerable tracks like ’Ugly’, ’Mexico’ and ‘Spaceship’.

“This has been such a rewarding experience, and we know nothing will ever be quite like releasing your first album — so we’re trying to be present and enjoy it.”

What would you say the core ethos of ‘The Prize’ is? Do you think the album has one overriding message, whether subconscious or not?
The core ethos of ’The Prize’ is empowerment, growth, and (like everything we do) friendship. There’s a lot of songs in this album that explore the relationship to yourself through the relationships with other people in your life. Through these stories there are themes of trying to figure out expectations, delusions, revelations, boundaries, etc.

Through all these growing pains comes power (songs like ’The Prize’ and ’Oats’) and a sense of peace (‘Sunshine Song’, ’Flying Ant Day’ and ’More Credit’). We chose to make all the visuals for the album sports themed because we thought it represented the idea of strength so well. We wanted these songs to exist in a world that felt fun and powerful, and naming the album ‘The Prize’ fit so perfectly. One overriding message is to accept the love that you deserve and don’t be accepting anyone’s stale crumbs. Another would be to find the light in dark moments and knowing that everything passes, good or bad.

What were your favourite moments of making the album? Were there any real stand-outs in terms of memories for the both of you?
The first day we started recording was on Halloween and Steph insisted that we all dress up for the studio. Steph came as a “Prima Queen,” Louise went as Regina George’s mum and Kristin went as Trinity from The Matrix. Later that week, we all went ice skating at Lee Valley Ice Rink (around the corner from Steph’s studio) and we had the idea that ice skating should tie into the visuals of the campaign.

We just had so much fun throughout the entire process. Steph really took the time to get to know us, understand our relationship and cultivate our vision. We really appreciated this and think you can hear that in the album! When we were recording ’Oats’, Steph had the idea to add a guitar solo and asked Louise to try writing one - Louise was reluctant because it was the end of the day and she was so tired but Steph forced her to squeeze one out. Little did we know, Louise had watched Spinal Tap the night before and harnessed that energy and just popped out the exact thing you hear on the record now. Our jaws were on the floor and we could not stop laughing. There were so many moments like this that were just pure joy.

What originally made you want to work with Steph for the album, and what do you think she brought to the process?
Working with Steph was amazing! We knew we wanted to work with her after having a Zoom call in which we just instantly connected. We could tell she really understood the vision and matched our level of excitement about the record (as well as our excitement about Grey’s Anatomy and American snacks). Steph made the recording studio such a safe space for us to explore new ideas and brought all the fun we were hoping for - not just in the music but in the entire process of making the album. We always joke that our week at Angelic Studios (in the countryside in Oxfordshire) was like a girls spa retreat. We would wake up early to exercise, do yoga, then go and record, then come back and take it in turns to make a nice meal, do a face mask and watch a RomCom. We learned so much from her and she really empowered us to come into a whole new era as a band.

What do you hope people take away from the album when they get to hear it?
We hope that people see themselves in the stories and find comfort and joy in them! We hope it helps find a levity in painful experiences and makes you want to dance and/or cry.