poutyface

Before she was Poutyface, Olivia Knight was the “dairy fridge girl.” Like many recent high school graduates, Knight opted for menial jobs while she devised her next move. The 17-year-old didn’t predict that, between shifts stocking milk, she had become something of a viral sensation on the then beta-stage songwriting app. As it turns out, Knight is not like most teenagers —she’s Poutyface. Although, Poutyface took at least a decade to incubate. Born in the Bay Area and raised in Atlanta, much of Knight’s childhood was dedicated to competitive dancing, before she sought out voice lessons. She loved choir —particularly the poeticism of lyrics —and felt perfecting covers of other people’s songs might better fulfill her than the rigmarole of dance events. When her vocal coach suggested the pre-teen attempt to write music, she arrived at each lesson with a new song. By 13, Knight was performing at open mic night competitions around Atlanta...and winning. “I was surrounded by adults [at these open mics], and it was really validating,” she explains. “I had just become obsessed with songwriting, and I was so motivated to keep going.” Knight recorded her first EP in her early teens, a “sonically heady” project peppered with dark-pop elements. Then she just...stopped. Her family had relocated to San Diego, and Knight’s anxiety became debilitating. All the moving around had left her with few friends, and high school was torturous. When an old music industry contact (now manager), reached out with a link to new songwriting platform Voisey, Knight had completed her education online and was working 50-hour weeks at Chipotle. After two years of writer's block, Knight was composing, two-four songs a day. “It reminded me that I am good at this,” she remembers, “at that time songwriting felt like a fluke period of my life —like that’s all I had in me. Then the app's creator called my manager and asked him if he knew who I was.” When she became the number one trending artist on the app around the world, Knight prepared for lift-off. She was invited to London by industry legend Denzyl Feigelson to record in Mark Ronson’s studio. Upon her return, she adopted the name ‘Poutyface’ —derived from the hook of a Voisey track —quit the grocery store and moved to LA. When lockdown hit a month later, she released her first hit song: an unsettling counter-lullaby, relevantly titled “Deathwish.” The then 18-year-old quickly caught the attention of digital tastemakers, and soon after, Island Records.“It was definitely happening quickly, but I felt like I could do it,” Poutyface says. “I leaned into the fact that I needed to take a really DIY, homegrown approach: if my label wants something from me I want to be the one to provide it.” Raised on a rotation of famously unfiltered 90s icons, including Alanis Morissette and Rage Against the Machine, Poutyface has emerged with similar punk sensibilities. Her output delivers a healthy dose of nostalgia with heavily bass-anchored melodies elevated with dustings of screamo grunge distortion. Her latest offering, “NEVER FUCKIN KNOW,” is Bikini Kill repackaged for the digital gen, chronicling a drunken night that went awry with the skin-crawling detail of a TikTok confessional. Coincidentally, when Poutyface chose to leak the track on TikTok it accrued a million views within days. “If I have something from my own life to back lyrics I will always go there first,” she reveals. “I want my songs to be built on a narrative at the core.” For this reason, Poutyface feels both timeless and current. Possessing a self-assurance that’s rare in teenagers and musicians alike, Poutyface’s power lies not only in her uniquely feverish story-telling but flagrant rejection of the industry’s star-making formula. She doesn’t need to follow the roadmap of other artists, because the 19-year-old is not like other artists —Poutyface is the anti-pop star. “I’ve learned that I’m always changing, and there’s trust in me that I’ll change the way that works for me. I’ve given myself room to be bold."