In my world, either everything is happening or nothing is happening. Living in New York, it’s usually the former. Everything, all the time, all at once. When I wrote “Racecar,” I locked myself in a freshly built garage in San Antonio with no internet. No distractions, no noise, just me and the scent of lumber so pure, if you closed your eyes, you’d swear you were in aisle 12 of Home Depot.
I’m not from Texas. I feel like I need to clarify that every time I mention visiting my family there. No shade, it just didn’t shape me. I’m a California girl. People say I have a California accent, which I think just means I talk slow and sound slightly stoned. But the longer my family lives in Texas, the more that place seeps into me. Every time I visit, I end up writing something. “Racecar” came out of that garage. Fresh paint. Wood shavings. That strange in-between scent of sawdust and something just about to start.
Just before my trip, my friend Alex Tepper (Blush) sent me a track he’d been working on that he thought I’d be into. He was right. It was punky, glossy, and fun, like driving too fast with no idea what’s around the corner. I kept picturing a racecar. Not the object, but the feeling. Full throttle, hyper-focused, decadent, and doomed.
I’d hang out with my family during the day and then lock myself in the garage at night and play the track on repeat. The garage was detached from the house, which meant I could sing as loud as I wanted and get kind of feral with it. I wrote the whole thing in this state of manic clarity, kind of like when your brain’s going 100 mph and you’re half convinced that you’re psychic, or at least perceiving something no one else can see.
The lyrics poured out pretty quickly (after listening to the track one million times, of course). It’s confident but fragile, which is a character I sometimes play: the girl with a steel-blue chrome spark and a self-destructive streak; the kind of girl who’d rather crash and burn than coast. Behind the attitude, it’s really just me hoping someone will see me. The chorus repeats, “What’s it gonna take for me to get to know you?” like a question, a prayer, and a crash out all at once.
For the video, Persia Beheshti fully captured the chaos and glamour of the song. We centered everything around the racecar itself, which was actually my friend Maura’s old Saab, on the verge of being scrapped. So this was her last hurrah. We dressed her up with jewels and trinkets and turned her into a shrine.
“Racecar” isn’t just a car; it’s a mindset. It’s a breakup song, a crush song, a club song, a meltdown. It’s for people who love too hard and drive too fast, metaphorically or otherwise.
— Allyson Camitta
(Photo Credit: Brittany Orlando)
