In a new memoir, the singer-songwriter Neko Case recounts a childhood of poverty and neglect: a mother who left her and a father who was barely there. But there was also music. And when there was nothing else, that was, perhaps, enough. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What struggles did Neko Case face in her childhood?
This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Last month, Nico Case peeled back some of the mystery. She's written a memoir called The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, which shares part of the same title as one of her albums from 2013. She writes about growing up poor and neglected. Her parents were teenagers when they had her, and her guess is that neither of them ever wanted a child.
By the end of her sophomore year in high school, she asked her mom for emancipation. She writes, quote, she couldn't sign it quickly enough. She didn't even have to think it over. And so Case hid a lot behind her music. One of my favorite scenes is you as a kid in the school library. Like, you remember that the beanbags were corduroy, you know? Oh, yeah. The image was so perfect.
Like, it was such a perfect image from that era. And you were hiding out with your headphones on. I think you mentioned listening to Atomic by Blondie.
Over and over and over and over. Like, only— A neurodivergent ADHD kid can do. Right.
Chapter 2: How did music influence Neko Case's upbringing?
Right. Like just a million times. Do you have words for what that was like for you? Because it felt like, OK, that's the moment that she discovers the power of music. And like in a movie, that would be the scene in which you discover like what music is for and what it does to you.
Music was always just there and I took it for granted, but I also leaned really heavily into it. I did not make a connection that music was something I would want to do or I would do because I was kind of, you know, I was just a girl. And I did not. make a connection between myself and Blondie or myself and the Go-Go's. I just knew I really loved them.
So why did it take so long, do you think, for you to, you know, open your mouth and sing? Like you played in bands, but you didn't really sing for a while.
Well, I was raised to be female in the United States of America. So, you know, I wasn't raised with a lot of self-confidence.
So what was the point where you were like, oh, I can do this?
It wasn't so much deciding I could do it. It was just that I couldn't help but to do it because the desire was so intense.
Now, the desire is the desire to make music, to write music, to sing. Like, what was the desire?
Even just to sit near it. Anything. Anything I could have.
In the book, you complain about your voice. You write that it was neither pretty nor powerful. Yeah. Oh, that's not a complaint. It's not a complaint.
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Chapter 3: What was the turning point for Neko Case in her music career?
Chimney falls and lovers blaze Thought that I was young It gets so physical.
It is so athletic, and... There's nothing else like it.
Well, even in this just few minutes that we've been talking, you like describe a little journey from a point where, you know, the world gives you a set of expectations and tells you you can and can't do things. And you seem to sort of find your way out of that, you know, either through your voice or how you experience music or even the way you write about institutions.
Like you write, you know, the country music institution was limiting in some ways.
Oh, it's straight up misogynist and racist and hateful. We don't even have to sugarcoat that one. The current country music scene of radio music in Nashville is absolutely heinous. And I watch young women try to get in there, and I love them so much, and they're trying, and I'm like, don't even bother. Let that thing die. That thing is poison. Come over here. Let's make the other thing.
And is the other thing, like, you inventing your own genres? You know, like, you've given them names over the years that are not country noir or odd rock and things like that. Like, is that the way out? Is that what you tell women? I think that what it is is...
The gatekeepers of country music are absolutely terrified that it might evolve, whereas the gatekeepers of rock and roll don't have a problem with evolution. But there's something very white supremacist about how country music works, and they're really, really dialing down on it now.
So you don't mean just then. You're talking about then and now there's a resurgence. I think it's worse now. I think it's far worse now than it has been in a long time. I mean, there was a moment, there was a good moment for women. It was a brief good moment for women in country music.
There have been a couple. Yeah. You know, sometimes people are so talented that they're undeniable and not even the gatekeepers can tell. Keep them out. Uh-huh.
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Chapter 4: How does Neko Case view the country music industry?
My mother, she did not love me. No, no, no, no, no, no.
In your mind, is that line related to the book in any way?
Well, that song was a real event. I was really at a bus stop in Honolulu fleeing Hawaii and I saw it happen and I just felt so helpless. You felt helpless to protect the kid. Yeah, but the kid also was being very resilient and she was, you know, entertaining herself. She was very spunky and cute and
Her mom was just an asshole. I mean, reading your book, I did think, oh, Nico, that line resonated with Nico for a reason. Because of struggles with your own mother. Do you mean for people to read the memoir that way?
Well, I mean, I told the story. I just... I've never written a book before, and, you know, I didn't set out to write a memoir. I wanted to write fiction. But, you know, it was at the height of the pandemic, and Hachette said, we'll pay you to write a memoir, though. And I was like, okay, a memoir it is. And that's not a complaint, or, you know, they didn't hold my heels to the fire or anything.
I just thought, okay, well, it'll just be a little challenging. Because... talking about yourself or writing about yourself to yourself isn't the most exciting thing ever. You know, you spend a lot of time with yourself. So I don't think of myself as like, oh, people are really going to want to know this.
So, I mean, that's one of the reasons I tried to pick more interesting stories from childhood that were scenes maybe of good things too. Because I didn't want it to just be you know, oh, poor me, especially because it's not unusual. It's most people's experience. I mean, you know, my situation with my mother is pretty bizarre.
But neglect or abuse or things like that, those are most people's experiences. Or growing up really poor, like, that is most people.
Mm-hmm. I think your experience is actually pretty unusual. Yeah, it's pretty... Damn weird. Pretty damn weird it is. When Case was in second grade, her father told her that her mother had died of cancer, which was surprising because Case didn't even realize her mother was sick.
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Chapter 5: What themes are explored in Neko Case's memoir?
Uh-huh.
Like, that's like Virgo organization.
Interesting. Yeah. Because I feel like one glib way to read a memoir like this is, oh, from family trauma and a mother who didn't love you comes immense creativity. Like, how wonderful. What's wrong or right about that interpretation?
Well... The mythology of people needing to suffer to make beautiful things or just art or creative things in general is not true.
You mean they don't need to suffer? Because it feels like reading this book, your suffering is related to how you think and work through things and organize things.
No, if I had had a supportive upbringing, I would be able to read music and play instruments and... would probably be a lot further along. You don't need that.
So to you, it just feels like pure baggage. It's like a thing you've had to tolerate, but you could have been a singer some other way.
It's an absolute trunk of shit. The things that I admire about myself are despite those things. You know, like, I still am a trusting person. I still really want to see the good in people, and sometimes I will make mistakes and trust people I shouldn't. And I could beat myself up about that, or I could just go, no, you still want to believe people are good.
And I think that's a more important quality than trust. whether or not you're wily enough to spot a jerk a mile away. You know what I mean?
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Chapter 6: How does Neko Case connect her personal experiences to her lyrics?
And when you say it's taught you so much about yourself, what do you mean? Because in the book, there is one way in which you very much inhabit the experience of a woman of that generation, just like, you know, at the hands of careless and arrogant and brutal men, like a teacher, older brothers, fellow musicians. And then there's a sense I imagine of being trapped in that.
So what have you learned about yourself? In this era of gender fluidity. Like, how do you think about yourself?
As neither. I am neither. I still call myself she, her. I'm used to it. It doesn't bother me. And partly because the world hates women so much, I will not abandon it. I just won't. but I also understand that the world hates gender-fluid people and trans people, LGBTQ people, and I understand the importance of not abandoning that either.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So you don't see the world... You see the world as making some cultural progress in how we think of what's a man and what's a woman in some corners, but not a lot of progress politically or socially.
Politically, we are... Socially, I don't think what, you know, the president and his people represent represents the American people. I don't believe that Americans in general have a hatred or a problem with people who are not white, who are LGBTQ, who are immigrants. I just don't think they do.
To shift away from politics, since we get a lot of it over here in D.C., although this is related, the thing— Well, I mean, a human being's right to be is—I mean, that's just everyday life.
Like, politics and everyday life just—they just aren't separate. Not that I want to talk about them, politics specifically, because I just refuse to be afraid.
Do you feel like that's something you found at this age? Because you've said, oh, there are times in your life where you haven't had self-confidence, you've been depressed, or you've kind of lost your mind even in one section of the book. Is it easier to not be afraid now?
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