Hero Magnus (Live On Substack)
Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Brooklyn singer-songwriter Hero Magnus who is currently working on their debut album.
It is unknown if Hero Magnus is currently eating beignets, a deep-fried French pastry that can be found in New Orleans. Orleans and Hero Magnus have a lot in common; both are vibrant and have an energy that is hard to find elsewhere. Magnus now resides in Brooklyn where there is no bridge in between the creative spirit. The industry city is helping Hero Magnus put together their debut album.
Growing up, Hero Magnus wanted to be the first girl on Mars. There is a chance that can still happen. Whatever life form that may be up there deserves some good music and Magnus can oblige. On the off chance there are felines residing on the planet Magnus’s “Scruff” can an anthem for our independent friends.
As a teenager, Hero Magnus worked at the legendary studio Inner Ear and was engulfed in the punk scene. Since then, Magnus has gone on to make friends, fall in love, and began songwriting. Magnus has a way with words that would make your English professor consider plagiarizing it as their own. Whether it is a song from their cat’s perspective, admiring someone at a museum, or therapy Hero Magnus offers a little bit of something for everyone.
There is a chance that you know Magnus, not due to their songwriting, but their now renounced nano-celebrity status they achieved on popular social media platform TikTok. But there is so much more about Hero Magnus you need to know.
In our interview we discuss their incredible website, love of gel pen scents, therapy, and so much more!
1. Mustard is grateful and appreciative to have you join them at Music Shelf. How is everyone doing today?
Every so often, I awake at 5am to the sound of a small bird who chirps loudly outside my window, riling up all the other birds around our neighborhood and creating a cacophony of chirps. I feel like him.
2. Mustard has observed that you are a gently dramatic gay manic pixie niche internet nanocelebrity that is easy to please. Could you share how you reached and achieved this status?
I actually won the title on Jeopardy Junior in 2016, but it’s a lifetime honor.
3. According to your website you have since renounced your niche internet celebrity status. Mustard is curious how you approach social media and the internet following this renouncement?
I like the internet. Thanks to Tumblr, I developed serious opinions about Catherine MacKinnon and Monique Wittig at age 13. Shoutout gothhabiba.tumblr.com. In 2020, like approximately 1 out of every 2 people, I started making TikToks. Some music stuff, but mostly queer theory and Jewish culture and other discoursey topics. I took the job super seriously, scripting every single video and even learning how to do eyeshadow.
My friends on TikTok rocked, but the endless doomscroll void of information / non-information started to stress me out. As I wrote in a too-informal email to a professor: “When my videos do poorly it hurts my vanity, and when they do well it makes me feel like I've downed eight shots of espresso and I'm going to die or get canceled.” Oof! I decided to take a semi-break from yapping, and do some offline thinking.
What do I love about the internet? Long-form writing. Cool music videos. Finding people on Instagram and then accidentally meeting them at lesbian bar The Woods. Girls in Doc Martens coming to my shows. The Cut. Meeting condiments who want to interview me. So, I’m getting ready for a new era of internet presence. Keep your ears perked!
4. You have one of the coolest websites Mustard's human intern has had the pleasure of visiting. Could you share more about how you designed and set up your website?
Thank you! I wanted to make something simple and stylish to sum up my whole life. P.E. Moskowitz, NYC writer and legend, has a very helpful website, so I used the same website tool they do — it’s called cargo.site now — and just built it myself. Creds to Dominique Richards for the photos. I added a ‘short wave’ and a ‘wiggle’ to the graphic in the background, hence the wiggling.
I used to keep a google doc called “external validation” and would copy any positive academic feedback in there. Now I can put all of that stuff in the ‘Praise’ section on my website.
5. Mustard loves the contrast in being gently dramatic. How do you approach dramatic situations gently? What advice do you have for those who found themselves involved in drama?
Being gently dramatic is about noticing when your life is starting to resemble a trope and leaning into it without being corny. For example, recently I went to see the movie Challengers. Now everything around me is from the movie Challengers. Psychosexual drama comes in threes — this summer near you! I can practically hear the Trent Reznor oontz in the background of my life.
My more earnest advice is that a lot of drama is unnecessary. Most of the time, your peers are trying their best and/or acting in a way that has nothing to do with you. So remember the circle of things you have control over, and focus on handling yourself well within that circle. WITHIN my own personal circle-of-agency I aspire to be the little girl cat with the bow from The Aristocats.
Important note: there is, of course, real evil in the world. But it usually isn’t your high school girlfriend. Or your subletter Elizabeth. Give more grace to your peers and less to The Man. You can hang out with the literal man or whatever, but never let him win. XOXO!
6. They are curious what your daily prompt for today is?
I watched the movie Broadcast News for my friend’s birthday. It’s like a 1980s version of Challengers, set in a newsroom. So a recent prompt was to write a song set in the Broadcast News universe. I love writing songs based on films and books. They come infused with so much imagination and energy already, and I just have to pick up the torch. This new song is a sort of Americana / Magnetic-Fields-y ballad. So far I’ve got: “Janeeeee / us in the trenches / me by the light of the camera lenses / you in my earpiece / swore your love dearly” lol.
7. Do you expect the market to capitalize on gel pen scents?
I’ve got Yankee Candle on the other line right now.
8. You receive a call from an unknown number. A laundry detergent company discovered your website and wants you to create them a jingle. Do you accept their offer? What does this jingle sound like?
Let’s say I accept, and I write a catchy midwest-emo-inspired jingle. It’s a local business, so they pay me $1000 upfront and promise 10% royalties. I use the money to buy a beautiful meal for the woman I am trying to court — the daughter of a wealthy business tycoon. We fall in love and get engaged. Meanwhile, the laundry detergent company reaches unprecedented levels of success due to my jingle.
The day before our wedding I dance down the street, singing happily. I bump into her father. He recognizes my voice from the laundry commercial. He’s private about his work, so unbeknownst to me, his multi-million dollar business is — lo and behold — Tide Laundry Detergent & Fabric Care. “We were number one before you,” he screams. “Your jingle ruined us!” He flies into a catatonic rage and forbids his daughter from marrying me. Literally all is lost. Why would I do that to myself? Decline.
9. You began writing songs and making music since you were fifteen. Can you recall some of your earlier work? Has any of this been released?
My freshman year of high school I had a YouTube channel where I would post short videos of my music every day. I severely abused iMovie (for my covers of Gwen Stefani and Taylor Swift) and made one stop-motion animation. My channel is still online, but I won’t tell you the name. Even I have some pride.
Later in high school, I started writing full-length songs and playing a lot of shows, solo and with my drummer Lee. My debut show of original music was when I was almost 18. That show is actually recorded and still available. It’s called Hero Magnus (Live at Boog City). In one song I’m singing about a girl who didn’t like me back and I say: “I’m not your scene and you don’t get me.” Very likely that I was talking about getting good grades and wearing glasses while she smoked from an apple bong. Iconic?
There’s something nice about having a musical archive, not just to remember how much I’ve grown but also that I am the same person I always was. Chorus of “awwwww” please…
10. Mustard wonders how your creative process has evolved since then?
In some ways I’m a more playful musician now – I’ve just written so many more songs, so each one feels less precious in some way. My own writing flows much easier, and a blank page is less intimidating.
But I’m also more serious about the craft aspects of my work, like singing and playing guitar. I used to focus almost exclusively on songwriting, but improving other elements of my musicianship makes my songs better.
I still love playing shows. I’ve gotten MUCH better at that. Come see me live.
11. In addition to being a musician you are also a journalist. What is your approach to writing a music review? Does it differ much from your songwriting process?
When I write anything that is not a song, I’ll usually write a TON — blasting out 3000 words for a 500 word piece, for example — and then I’ll wade through it, concentrating my words down to the very best. With songwriting, I usually get the bones of a whole song in one go. I revise lots afterwards, but the first go and the last are usually more similar.
Not to ascribe too many mystical properties to the creative process — both require discipline and consistency, like anything else worth doing — but singing and songwriting feel like they take place in the body. It is always more physical, and often almost spiritual for me. My best moments in journalism or prose-writing, I might feel for a single moment like I’m digging my organs out to slap them on the page. But I have a full-body experience basically the instant I start wailing at my guitar. Both have their merits
12. Mustard is curious if you were given the 100 dollars you asked for on "Do You?" What items would you purchase with 100 dollars?
Wow, another deep Bandcamp cut. I love the research and attention you put into these questions, Mustard. This is why you’re my favorite condiment. I recorded “Do You” in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in DC. They have a beautiful studio any library member can use. I was sixteen and it’s the first recorded song I ever put anywhere, I think.
I never received the $100 nor the chipper nose. Today I would probably put it towards 100 different colors of nicely scented gel pens.
13. In 2021 you released your debut EP "Make Me A Man." Could you share what it was like to put this EP together?
Make Me A Man is so special to me. I wrote all the songs in a class I was taking about sexual minorities in ancient history (formerly called “History of Sodomy,” but apparently they had to change the name after too many helicopter parents complained). I started recording in summer 2020, when I was living with my friends and spending every day eating hunks of cheese and bread and laying in the garden outside. I recorded everything in my room. My friend Rachel played bass on most of it and Ari mixed it from afar. So many other people were involved in the process too. I still think Iphis is one of my best and most beautiful songs ever. It turned out exactly as it should.
14. Mustard loves the story told on "Museum Person." Was this song based on actual events?
I’ll never tell. But I will say that I hope my blonde friend who loves Jackson Pollock is having a nice day!
15. On "Therapy Song" you mention providing someone with a map of your mind. What style of map would you say your mind is?
It’s like the map of a big mall. There is a beautiful glass elevator and a movie theater on the top floor. The You Are Here star is at Claire’s.
16. They are the ship and you are the harbor. How often do they come to visit your port?
Probably any night, except for the nights that their ship planks have been replaced slowly with new ship planks until not a single of their original ship-planks remains. In that case I would just be unsure whether they were even the ship I knew :/
17. You followed up Therapy Song with Scruff which you've described as your cat song. Could you share more about your relationship with your cat and how they inspired this release?
Colette is my cat, and she lives at home with my family. She lives in the basement because she’s afraid of our dog. I used to wish she would be brave enough to venture upstairs to our common living area. But she has no way of knowing that the dog won’t simply eat her. How could she? Nobody was empathizing with her enough so I wrote the song.
18. Mustard's human intern is lactose-intolerant and can relate to your cat being sick. What is up with lactose? Are there cat products that are dairy free?
I myself do drink milk but I sympathize greatly with Mustard’s human intern. Does this mean they cannot actually eat any mayo, which is a good complimentary condiment to mustard? Anyway, lactose actually isn’t very good for cats and often makes their stomachs sick. You can definitely feed your cats fresh salmon and they will love it. I have also impressed cats with canned tuna.
19. Mustard wonders what is on the horizon for Hero Magnus?
Right now, I’m living in Brooklyn and working on my debut album (!!!). I’m making it with James Duncan, who is not only a fantastic musician and producer but also one of my oldest friends. I’ve also collected many other wonderful creative people to lend their talents to this project. So so grateful.
My album is about the constant surrender and abandonment of one home for another. In the last three years, I’ve lived at school, on a farm, at home, in Nashville, in LA, in New Orleans, and finally in New York, where I am now. I feel beyond blessed for all of these experiences. But there’s tension between falling in love with a new place — and retaining some core of yourself as everything around you changes. That’s what this album is about. It’s also got birds, death threats, lesbian pregnancy, and a little country twang. I do have the name but I can’t tell you yet ;)
I have a lot of exciting things planned for this release, and I’ll also be playing some sick shows this summer in New York. Last week I opened for Jake & Shelby, and in July I did a show at Off-Off-Broadway theater The Tank with writer Wanda Noonan. Follow me on Instagram to stay posted about future shows!
20. Where can readers listen to your music?
Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, or any other streaming or download service you use.
If you want to support my work financially, you can always buy my music for any amount on Bandcamp.
One more thing? If you like my music, tell your friends about it. I can trace all my favorite musicians to a good friend who recommended them. It’s going to be a big year – get in on Hero Magnus early ;)
Talking in the aisle
Do you have your own musuem person?
Are you lactose-intolerant?
Do you have a cat?
Is this your first introduction to Hero Magnus?
Music Shelf with Mustard is a publication that interviews independent musicians from all across the globe. It is read in 32 states and 19 countries. Check out previous interviews here.
Music Shelf with Mustard originally began in early 2021. Inspired by independent musicians on social media application TikTok Mustard knew they had to do something to help share their music. Shortly after Music Shelf with Mustard was born. Its goal is to highlight independent artists from all across the globe. Mustard appreciates you taking the time out to read this interview.
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