Butcher Babies vocalist Heidi Shepherd is here to tell you something you should probably already know – there are other genres out there, and a lot of musicians within those genres are doing some pretty interesting things.
In an interview with Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio, Shepherd talked about drawing inspiration from other genres and also mentions that pop artist Doja Cat is "way more metal than most metalheads I know." Which I guess isn't super surprising given her controversial nü-metal reimagining of "Say So" on MTV in 2020.
"I love Doja Cat. She's way more metal than most metalheads I know. That girl is so cool. There's so much respect to be given to all artistry. And I feel like sometimes we're told, 'Oh, you're only supposed to like metal, you're only supposed to like metal.' But I feel like you're really doing yourself a disservice if you only jam to metal all the time.
"I can go from the heaviest deathcore — 'cause deathcore's, like, my favorite [laughs] — I can go from the heaviest deathcore, like Slaughter To Prevail, you know, the heaviest stuff, to Lainey Wilson, who's one of my favorite artists out right now. She's dominating the country charts, and she's just like us. I read something today that she tried out for American Idol seven times. She failed at The Voice. And then she went out there and she's the biggest thing in country right now. I just love success stories like that, and I can find total inspiration in drive like that and to just keep knocking down doors. I find inspiration in that kind of stuff too."
And sure, the hook here is the Doja Cat bit. But Shepherd is absolutely right – if you're going to continue to evolve as an artist, you gotta listen to anything and everything that's even remotely interesting to you. Unless you're in a band whose whole schtick it is to be OSDM worship. Then go break out those Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse longboxes and get to work.
