Bishop Briggs Kicks Off 2025 With Incredible Deluxe Album Release And Live Tour Dates
Interview by: Dennis & Dahlia Kelly
Days away from embarking on another stellar tour, and a day prior to the releases of the deluxe version of “Tell My Therapist I’m Fine”, and her new music video for “Woman Is King”, Bishop Briggs took time out of her busy schedule to talk with us about all the exciting updates we can all look forward to.
Dennis: Thank you so much Bishop for once again taking time off your busy schedule to speak with us today. We really appreciate it! So, you’ve got some great news to share with us, a new deluxe version of “Tell My Therapist I’m Fine” out on March 7th, a video for “Woman Is King also out on March 7th, and a new U.S. tour which will see you returning to Chicago’s Metro on the 22nd, we can’t wait to see you again! How do you feel about the release of the deluxe version coming out?
Bishop: I can’t wait! So there are two new songs and it feels like perfect timing because it’s right before International Woman’s Day. It initially started with becoming a mum; spending a lot of time at the playgrounds, meeting other mums there, and outside of the playgrounds. I was so inspired by them that I wanted to write a song that made people feel empowered. In an ideal world, the partners of those women would be playing it in their cars super loud for their partners saying ‘You got this!!’ So, that was definitely my goal.
Dennis: Was the second new song the one you wrote with K.Flay, by chance?
Bishop: Oh, my gosh, I wish! She’s my angel! We did write another song that almost made the cut that I hope will come out on something later, but the second song is called, “Lightning” and it is really my first-ever love song, and I’m really proud of it.
Dennis: I can’t wait to hear it! “Woman Is King” is such an incredible song! There needs to be more woman empowerment songs, now more than ever with rights being stripped away, left and right, and state by state. May I ask how things have been in your world, and in and around the music scene by you?
Bishop: Well, I’d like to hope that the music industry is forever evolving. Speaking of K.Flay, part of why we even became friends was because it would either be her or me, one female artist at the festival. She would either get the gig or I would, and so we became friends and that is not the case now; we’re enemies… no. (laughs) Now there are lots of women and there’s a mixture, so I hope that it’s evolving and I think there’s still so much work to be done about the predatory behavior that still exists in the music industry.
In terms of politics and everything that’s going on here with women’s rights, I think the groups that we really need to be talking about and focusing in on are the groups that are of the minority and that are getting their rights taken away left, right, and center. It’s definitely a bizarre feeling because I’m not an American citizen, but you know I pay taxes, I’m married to an American and I technically have a little baby who was born in America, so these things are all just human rights issues at their core.
Dennis: And they’ve all been vicious attacks, too. But we all need to get together and fight this every step of the way!
Bishop: Yeah.
Dennis: Getting back to “Tell My Therapist I’m Fine”, now that the album has been out for about five months. How does it feel that the album’s been out and the world has had time to take the songs into their hearts?
Bishop: Oh my gosh, well I’ve been rehearsing them because I’m about to go on tour as you know, and I think that always takes it to another level. I definitely had to rehearse and practice them for my album release show. But to be putting them into the set where there’s older songs interspersed with the new songs, it just makes me so excited for all of it.
Dennis: I am too! I saw you at Lollapalooza, but never before at Metro, so this is going to be lit! So we’ve got Blink-182’s Travis Barker to thank for a lot of the direction that “Tell My Therapist I’m Fine” ended up going in. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, please?
Bishop: Yeah, that was the most surreal thing ever and I did pretend to be normal while I was at the session and I acted like I had been there before, but it was pretend.
Then at the end, when he played drums, I just had to be totally honest, I had like a tear coming down “This is the biggest honor in the world” because it really was just so surreal.
I remember leaving that session being like, ‘Wow, I loved singing in that way, I loved writing in that way! I can’t wait to give this to another artist.‘ It just felt so far from what I had done.
To give an idea of the time frame, this was before lockdown, so it really was a long process, and I played the song for my sister who had around that time had just started chemo and the chemo wasn’t working and it was just the worst time ever, and I played the song for her and she had a huge reaction and the music, she played me growing up was very much the Warped Tour energy there was a lot of My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Good Charlotte, Blink-182.
And so, consciously or subconsciously I was chasing that throughout the making of the album, chasing that reaction and really longing for it in my head, just imagining her. So that’s really how it all came to be, but so surreal, so surreal.
Dahlia: “Tell My Therapist I’m Fine” has such a raw emotional depth, was there a theme behind it?
Bishop: Oh my gosh, that’s such a great question. There’s a song on there called “Growing Pains” and I actually wrote it in the last session I did. I was nine months pregnant, and weirdly, to get into the session, I had to scale a fence since the gate wasn’t opening.
Dahlia: Oh wow!
Bishop: So I had to climb a fence, which I don’t recommend. I was not a small pregnant person either, as most women aren’t. And as it turned out, the session was moved to a different location, which shows the determination I had to write this song. That song really became the theme of the whole album which is, what if life is supposed to be a classroom where we’re supposed to learn lessons and some days are harder than others.
The people we meet along the way; some of them might be peers, and some might be teachers that we’re supposed to be learning from. What if that was an easier perspective of life than feeling like a failure if you’re not living the “American Dream”? If you’re not happy all the time that’s where people lose themselves, feeling that they’re not reaching some sort of standard of what their happiness on some sort of consistent basis is supposed to be. So, I hope that that’s what you felt from that song because it is the theme for the whole album; that was my goal.
Dahlia: Your music is rock, pop, soul how do you describe your sound in your own words?
Bishop: I think the best way to describe it would be to talk about my influences, because I grew up listening to a lot of Motown music, like Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Otis Redding. That was a big part of my goal as a writer, and I had a brief stint in a gospel choir. This idea of a soulful experience, a soulful introduction to music.
Then when I started writing, I got really into Janis Joplin, and so again, I hope in describing these influences it kind of describes how I came to be because I like to have the energy of these people when I’m on stage and when I’m writing. I like to have that around me and I do think it makes a big impact on how you end up sounding.
Dahlia: Thank you. River was your breakout hit, when was the moment you realized your career was taking off?
Bishop: I know this isn’t a therapy session, but like, I don’t know, have I taken off? Who’s to say? Has it happened yet? I don’t know. But because this isn’t a therapy session I will say, “Absolutely um, of course, I have taken off and it feels great!” It all means so much.
When I’m in a session writing music or at my house writing music on the piano, really the only thing that I can point to as like a spiritual experience, kind of feels like there’s something magical and mystical happening and I’m like this vessel for that to be written down.
So, people connecting to that music, and as a fan of music myself, I always wanted people to feel what I felt with music which was less alone when hearing these people that I idolized were going through things that I was going through. It made me feel less alone.
If there is any connection with River in a community sense, that corner of it means so much because it means that we’re all connected in sort of a deeper way. It means everything, truly, it means everything, yeah.
Dennis: Speaking of community around your music, your tour is coming up very soon, on March 11th, in Phoenix.
Bishop: Yes!
Dennis: Then you’ll be back in Chicago at Metro on March 22nd and we’re very excited to see you again!
Bishop: I can’t wait to show Chicago to my baby; I have so many fond memories and have eaten the best food of my life there. So I really hope to show the baby around, I have to ask for recommendations for things to do with our baby.
Dennis: For sure, we can get some for you! Now, you’re ending the tour in Boston on March 29th, do you have any additional plans that you can announce at this point?
Bishop: Maybe sleep (laughs).
Dennis: (laughs) I can relate.
Bishop: I’m always going to be writing and releasing more music, and I hope to release some new things that surprise people. So I’m really excited for the music video for “Woman is King” which is coming out tomorrow at 7am pacific time.
Dennis: Awesome! We can’t wait to see it and I can’t wait to see you again back here in Chicago! You’re going to make The Windy City, the Weepy City with all the emotion you’ll be pouring out for everyone at the Metro, it’s going to be a great time!
Tour Dates:
Mar 11, 2025 – Crescent Ballroom – Phoenix, AZ
Mar 13, 2025 – Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA
Mar 14, 2025 – Pappy + Harriet’s – Pioneertown, CA
Mar 15, 2025 – Great American Music Hall – San Francisco, CA
Mar 17, 2025 – Wonder Ballroom – Portland, OR
Mar 18, 2025 – The Showbox – Seattle, WA
Mar 20, 2025 – Summit Music Hall – Denver, CO
Mar 22, 2025 – Metro – Chicago, IL
Mar 23, 2025 – Newport Music Hall – Columbus, OH
Mar 25, 2025 – Irving Plaza – New York, NY
Mar 26, 2025 – 9:30 Club – Washington, D.C.
Mar 27, 2025 – Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA
Mar 29, 2025 – Paradise Rock Club – Boston, MA
Biography:
Bishop Briggs sits at the precipice of a new chapter in her already illustrious career as a singer, a songwriter, a sound-shaper, and a performer. With her third studio album, Tell My Therapist I’m Fine (out October 18th), the artist—whose songs have been streamed more than three billion times—plunges like never before into the highs, lows, and confusions she’s faced over a rocky few years.
The album’s darkly comic title disclaimer winks and riffs on Bishop’s powerful introspection and emotions which propel her new collection of unstoppable songs. It’s a body of work inspired by her recent past, but informed by a life steeped in music and music-making, and a record only possible at the hands of a confident and seasoned artist like Bishop Briggs.
From a young age, Bishop wore the musical traditions of the world the way most people learn to walk or ride a bike. Born in London, Bishop moved to Tokyo at age four, her parents immersing her in the sounds of artists like Aretha Franklin—the queen of soul’s voice a beacon and salve during a time of change—while honing her performance skills at the city’s karaoke bars.
When she moved to Hong Kong six years later, at age 10, “the anxiety and angst came in,” Briggs says. “So it was like, ‘Gotta turn to Queen, gotta turn to Janis Joplin.” Those artists—and, later, bands and singers whose calling card became the Warped Tour circuit—gave her permission to find and harness release and unlocked what would later become core elements in the soulful, trademark punch of her singer-songwriter career.
Bishop moved to Los Angeles after high school, and, with her second-ever single, “River,” scored multi-platinum sales and a major-label contract. Christening herself after her parents’ hometown of Bishopbriggs, Scotland, she released her 2018 debut album, Church of Scars, which introduced the world to her anthemic hooks and high-energy emo catharsis. Her 2019 sophomore album, Champion, added thundering electronic and hip-hop components to the mix.
On Tell My Therapist I’m Fine, the riotous live performer commits to her formative Warped Tour inspirations, channeling the reckless velocity of heroes like My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco. Bishop says that’s not unintentional, citing Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker as the catalyst who set things off when he invited her to his studio. “It was a dream come true,” Briggs says of the session, which produced “Isolated Love,” one of the album’s first songs. “That song gave me a lot of the emotional direction for the entire album.”
Emotional direction in sight, the album needed its emotional core. Bishop found it in the form of personal reckoning: “Good for Me” revisits a moment, deep in the pandemic, when she watched her sister, manager, and best friend die of cancer at age 30. That was the moment, she says, that everything changed.
“It’s based on being in the hospital room with my sister, when everything seemed to just stop,” she says. “Up until that point, everything we did revolved around chasing this dream and all of a sudden, none of that mattered. It was all about this person in front of me. When I started writing for this album, I found her spirit really channeling through me.”
Seeking to honor that change and the space her sister still holds in her life, Bishop says much of Tell My Therapist I’m Fine tackles a split—the dismantling we all go through when change rips us apart, the “what came before” and the “what comes after.” It shows up thematically on songs like “Growing Pains,” which she wrote and recorded six months after her sister died, when she was nine months pregnant with her first child.
“In a way, the song is a letter to my son, trying to describe what life can be about, what its chapters might look like,” she says. “The song is about accepting all of it: the deep, deep sorrow and the extreme joy.”
Bishop found a creative partner who helped these songs and more come to life in multi-instrumentalist Andrew Wells. When the pair connected in an LA studio, they birthed a rawer, more organic sound together, blending the punkish intensity of their emo heroes with her own evolving commitments to social activism and mental-health awareness. “Mona Lisa on A Mattress” presents a gleeful, acerbic postcard from a truly bad romance.
“Shut It Off” turns breathless energy into a rejection of mansplaining censors, while the Black Mirror-leaning “I’m Not a Machine” (produced by Leroy Clampett) sings the cri-de-coeur of a would-be fembot. Album closer “Undone” is a mini rock-opera, opening with a floating, torch-song verse before shifting gears a minute in and triggering a full-out gallop to the end, the refrain “I’ll come undone” repeating as a kind of promise.
And “Here Comes the Flood,” which she wrote with John Feldman, is what she calls “a cathartic watershed.”
Ultimately, throughout Tell My Therapist I’m Fine’s nooks and crannies, its emotional highs and lows, its propulsive new sounds and emotionally walloping lyrics, Bishop says it’s the connection—to herself and to others who helped her through the fire these past few years—that convinced her that she, too, would be fine. “A reoccurring theme with anyone I wrote with on this record is people who understand the evolving, ever-changing process of grief,” she says.
“And there’s this quote in Buddhism that talks about how every single moment we become a new person, which is actually closer to the truth than most of us realize. It’s freeing to accept that you have changed, you will change, and you’re changing right this second. And maybe, amid all the pain, joy, and grief of life, this is something to really embrace. You’ll never fully know yourself—you’ll always be learning. And sometimes, you need other people to show you the way.”
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Links:
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