“I noticed that his whole career and life fell into place once he decided to just be himself on stage completely,” Hobert tells NPR. “So I picked up my banjo guitar. I was at the time writing a one-woman show because I was still unsure of like, what am I going to do? I started writing the song because I was like, ‘How would I open my one woman show?’ “<\/p>\n
The result, “I Like To Touch People,” is a hilarious, whimsical tune about making small talk at a party, having a people-pleasing mom and \u2014 well, touching people (figuratively, sure, but also maybe physically?). It sets the tone for Who’s the Clown?<\/em>, a bubblegum pop album with goofy yet vulnerable lyrics that make Hobert an instantly endearing narrator. “I’m taking thirst traps in the mirror in my room,” she sings in one track over an unrelentingly upbeat melody. “I think I look bad, so I take a hundred.”<\/p>\nOver Wheatus<\/a>-like guitars and drum machines, Who’s the Clown?<\/em> \u2014 out on Aug. 15 via RCA Records and produced by newcomer-slash-Finneas<\/a>-protege Ricky Gourmet \u2014 establishes Hobert as an unconventional new voice in pop. The album’s stream-of-consciousness writing plays less like what you’d find on a major label release and more like an unfiltered voice memo from your most optimistic friend (even after she’s just had the worst day of her life). In “Don’t Go Back to His Ass,” Hobert delivers instructions for staying away from a toxic boyfriend via folk harmonies. In the song “Chateau,” she micro-doses psychedelic mushrooms before going to an industry party where everyone is trying too hard to be cool, which Hobert clocks automatically as lame. The music video for “Wet Hair,” a lackadaisical song about not getting a blowout before meeting up with an ex to prove a point<\/em>, has the DIY quality of something a tween would make on the family computer when left home alone in middle school.<\/p>\n