Pom Pom Squad Eliminate the Noise
In our latest Digital Cover Story, Mia Berrin talks with us about the influence of horror films on her songwriting, working with co-producer and co-writer Cody Fitzgerald for the first time, turning playlists into motivation, and the Alice in Wonderland energy of her new record, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me.
Photo by Bao Ngo
“The tower card depicts a spire that is set ablaze by a bolt of lightning. It’s unsettling, because it shows that no matter our plans for ourselves, a divine act can completely uproot everything.” These are words whispered by Mia Berrin on her new record, Mirror Starts Moving Without Me. It’s a precursor for a shadowy tale of ambiguous identity entangled in an inner-soundtrack of relentless desire and inescapable criticisms. The Pom Pom Squad bandleader calls me on Zoom from Hoboken, New Jersey, comfortably seated in her friend’s living room, taking a breather from city life. She’s coming off a grueling recording process, a period filled with emotional dives into the past, self-destructive ambition and many tears. Though it took some time to get here, she is comfortably settled into her new moody, morose era filled with Alice in Wonderland imagery and videogame references.
Berrin, now 27, started Pom Pom Squad at the age of 18 after moving to New York City from her parent’s home in Orlando, Florida, to attend New York University. Her first EP, Hate It Here, was more of a solo project with a backing band than the collaborative, full-band project it grew to be on 2019’s Ow EP. After coming out her junior year of college and transferring to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Berrin came into her own as an artist, leaning into a production background that helped her craft a more decadent, dynamic sound for Pom Pom Squad. Two years later, she co-produced the band’s debut album, Death of a Cheerleader, and fully embodied the queer youth she missed out on, creating a world that was hers to play around in.
Now, Pom Pom Squad is kicking things up a notch on Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, a dynamic, genre-bending exploration through Berrin’s psyche during a search for her genuine self—an image that has been marred and distorted by public attention and industry woes. The band’s sophomore album is a polished version of their fuzz rock past but packed with richer production and a range of styles weaving in and out of lullabies and electro-pop while still nurturing their classic grunge sound. “It was uncomfortable at first, because I was nervous that people wouldn’t like it,” Berrin says of releasing lead single “Downhill.” “I think it’s not necessarily what my fans, my label or what I expected, but I knew that was the path I had to follow. It’s not a fulfilling way to make art thinking about other people’s opinions of it. I had to get that language out of my head to make something I was proud of.”
Death of a Cheerleader was Berrin’s ode to fuzzy ‘90s alt-rock and ‘60s girl group sweetness. Using the hyper-femme imagery of a head cheerleader allowed for a queer reclamation and, while Mirror Starts Moving Without Me still has the same girlish, queer charms of its predecessor.
However, in the wake of critical acclaim and a surge in popularity, Berrin saw her work measure up with a piece of art like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan—a transformation she references in “Messages,” when she sings about “growing feathers from her back.” It was a vicious split between the version of Berrin that she feels to be true and the persona supporting the image other people were crafting around her; she was chasing after a fantasy just out of her grasp even though it wasn’t faithful to her. “Running from myself, all my life / Running from myself, I’m terrified / Don’t know how to cope / Hoping that I won’t catch up this time,” she confesses in a similar sentiment on the heartbreakingly honest “Running From Myself.”
To make up for the time when Berrin felt like she was spinning out of control, she took a bigger role in the studio this time around. “I’ve focused on learning how to produce because I hadn’t realized it until the last few years, but being a producer affords you a lot of power,” she says. “It’s not that hard to do, but it is very inaccessible. You could technically Google everything I learned in college, but I wouldn’t have known what to ask. I think that’s true, particularly for a lot of women, queer people and, well, non-men. You don’t want to look incompetent and be judged, so you are scared to ask the ‘stupid’ question, even though it’s not stupid—it’s just not intuitive, and no one has taught you. I feel fortunate that I had the experience to learn hands-on from really amazing mentors. I hope that’s a skill I can pass on to others someday because it has empowered me as an artist. I think it’s a gift creating things—seeing your art come to life right in front of you.”
That control allowed Berrin to compose Mirror Starts Moving Without Me, a record that bites with sharper teeth and serenades with a haunting realism—evidence of Berrin’s transformation over the last three years. She details her inner turmoil in the album’s second single, “Spinning,” when she sings, “Crying for the girl I could have been / She haunts me like a melody.” It’s a bleak sentiment of the paths that Berrin did not take. However, it’s a reminder that all the strife and turmoil she endured has led her to this exact point in time, creating a work that is precisely who she exists as in this stage of her life.
In a full-circle moment, Berrin, along with bandmates drummer Shelby Keller, bassist Lauren Marquez, guitarist Alex Mercuri and co-producer and co-writer Cody Fitzgerald, holed up in Electric Lady Studios—the same studio Berrin would walk past frequently during her college days—to record a gloomy fairytale. “I heard there are ghosts,” Berrin grins, talking about the historic studio. “It was amazing recording there—it’s obviously a storied studio, and you can feel that when you’re there. It was very creatively fulfilling. When I was at Electric Lady, I was more in producer mode, and it felt really good to create this space within our little group. It felt very private and special.”
In an effort to tap into a more authentic version of herself, Berrin tasked her bandmates—and herself—with creating a playlist of their favorite songs from as early as they can remember to kick off the album’s recording session. “I wanted everyone to try to weed out songs that you went through a phase with or liked because your friends liked. I wanted to know the songs that really affected the way that you see and relate to, either as a musician or as a person,” she explains. Her own playlist consisted of tracks like “Lolita” by Prince, “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles and “You Don’t Know Me” by Ben Folds and Regina Spektor. “It spanned a huge range of genres, which was an interesting discovery. I grew up listening to hip-hop and R&B, and my mom’s favorite artist is the Smiths, so that was a big phase in my life. Then, in high school, I found riot grrrl, grunge and indie rock.”
Berrin and I commiserate over being tricked by the same headline—the promise unseen Prince footage in a new documentary that the public will never see. “There’s a battle with Prince’s estate over releasing it, and I’m so bummed,” she laments. “I read a book about Prince recently; when I was taking the train to the studio for this album, I was reading my little Prince book.” Berrin comes by her pop culture obsession honestly, growing up with a family who adored staying in the know and immersed themselves in the media’s ever-growing constant. “My siblings and I were very good at pop culture trivia early on,” she laughs. “It was just the language of my household. We watched a lot of films and listened to a lot of music.” Her cinephile status is evident in her recreation of Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides in her music video for “Lux” from Death of a Cheerleader, as well as her consistent references to filmmakers like John Waters.