Casey Dienel has never been one for tidy boxes—whether in genre, gender, or narrative. With My Heart Is an Outlaw, she turns big pop sounds inside out, layering them with sly humor, sharp-eyed storytelling, and a palette drawn from diner coffee cups, drag queens off-shift, and the flickering light of a Gus Van Sant frame. Across the record, she dissects power, queerness, and emotional labor with a poet’s precision and a filmmaker’s gaze, making room for both the tender and the unsparing. We spoke with Dienel about her new single “Your Girl’s Upstairs,” the cinematic and literary ghosts haunting the album, and why every verse is a chance to see the world from a different angle.
If “Your Girl’s Upstairs” were a scene in a movie, what would it look like—what’s playing, who’s there, what’s the mood?
I think it’s the scene in Your Own Private Idaho where Mike’s locked himself in the Hans’ hotel bathroom to have a bubble bath. I’m the person at the threesome wondering how much longer is polite before I can go home and read my book. River Phoenix plays me. Cillian Murphy plays Hans. Scott is off-screen, but King Princess plays him. The mood is horny, annoyed, and hungry for French fries and a Coke. From the fountain, on ice. Not from a can.
What’s the weirdest or most unexpected note a collaborator gave you during the recording process?
Adam Schatz, who produced the album, often told me to “sing it stupid.” I’m allergic to repetition. I’m usually not interested in singing something the same way twice. What he reminded me of is that the melodies I write are exciting and intense. So in the studio, we had a little look between us when I was veering away from what I’d written, to get back to “singing dumb” again. Maybe I wouldn’t sing it exactly the same, but I learned to be proud of what I wrote.
Which fictional character (book, film, or TV) do you think would get this song immediately and why?
Orlando, the eponymous character from Virginia Woolf’s book. A nonbinary time traveler composed of many selves, prefers nature to people and poetry above all else. He can’t conform to anyone’s expectations of him, as a man or woman, as a poet or a lover.
What’s a line from the song that people keep quoting back to you? Are there any lyrics you’re particularly proud of?
People tend to want to pick apart is “She played house, played dead, played anything to keep your head from crying.” Maybe that’s because unfortunately, a lot of us know how it feels to get to that point in a relationship. You can have two really wonderful people who, for whatever reason, just don’t bring out the best in each other. When it gets nasty is when one person lords over the other, be with with an actual threat or emotional lashing out. I’m interested in control. Why do we want it? Where is the illusion about what’s under our control? As a writer, that’s a bubble I love to pop.
In popular song or TV shows, it’s all about the marriage plot. That’s the happy ending. But it isn’t that way for everyone. For some, domestic partnership is about labor and power. Who has more of it? What are you doing to share it? I’ve found even in the most liberated relationships, it’s hard to unlearn the possessiveness and jealousy hard-wired into us. From my observation, few things threaten a possessive man more than the idea his ‘girl’ might be happier in a queer relationship.
What I’m proud of in the song is that each verse is its own little perspective exercise. In verse 1, you get this very compacted scene. But in verse 2, the scene is more internal. The narrator was once in the girl upstairs’ shoes. They know how delicious autonomy is. They would never trade places to go back there again.
If this song had a signature scent, what would it be?
Celine’s Reptile.
Who’s on your mood board or sonic vision board this time around? Any unexpected influences?
For this album, I was interested in mid-career works for the greats like Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” These kind of big American albums that also feel very “live” and stadium-ready. Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” George Michael’s “Faith.” Adam and I spent some time dissecting those records, and Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.” It felt really interesting to play with classic sounds and cast them through my point of view. I hadn’t let myself go that broad or butch before, not sure why. But it was like putting on a pair of well-worn jeans. Just felt right.
I’m always influenced by other filmmakers and artists. As mentioned, the biggest influence is Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, but also: Joe Brainard, Cookie Mueller’s Pool Painted Black about Provincetown, the early work of Nan Goldin circa “Ivy wearing a fall, Chantal Akerman’s Nuit et Jour, Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I, and William Eggleston’s the Democratic Forest. I think something in the statue aged colors, the way Eggleston and Goldin can capture and elevate really humble stuff. A cup of coffee. A diner. A drag queen off her shift. That is the stuff of my dreams. That is the color palette I hear in these songs.
What’s your go-to comfort song when you need a little sonic healing?
Not gonna lie, I love a good wallow. Some days it feels good to put on “Farewell Transmission” by Songs, Ohio and bawl my eyes out.
If My Heart Is An Outlaw were a mixtape, what would be the title of Side B?
Jedi Worriers & Other Sapphic Delights.
Themes of queerness, emotional labor, and autonomy show up powerfully—how conscious are you of weaving politics into your work, or does it come naturally?
It comes naturally. To be nobinary, to be queer — our experience is politicized, whether we like it or not. In just this summer alone, the U.S. administration shut down the LGBTQ youth suicide lifeline, began removing trans service members from the military, and congressional Republicans proposed budget bills to block Medicaid and ACA plans from covering gender-affirming care. These actions are not abstract to me. I have friends whose lives were saved by access to that care.
I want people in my community to know this music was made for them by someone like them. I want them to see themselves the way I do; as beautiful, sexy, and magnificent. I don’t think you can or should separate the art from the artist, and I don’t mind at all if my own politics bleed through. I think, given everything the U.S. government is doing to dehumanize queer people, it’s the least I can do.
Were there any specific visual, literary, or cinematic influences that seeped into the writing of the album?
So many. I really wanted each song to feel like its own short film or story. I think in terms of lyrics, there’s a debt owed to Raymond Chandler, Lydia Davis, and Annie Dillard. The greatest short story writers. Grave Paley, too. Dillard, in particular, has a book called The Writing Life which became a meditation for me on how to approach lyrics. Not only in terms of which words or images to use, but the actual structure. Is the chorus doing enough? Is it too simple or not simple enough? Sometimes, there is a song like “Tough Thing” which needs to stay lyrically simple because there is so much else going on in the arrangement. But then, a song like “Sucker” which is all about working under late-capitalism experiencing a layoff over Zoom, there was so much room to get more specific. As a Massachusetts native, I was finally able to squeeze in a reference to the Great Molasses Flood. But sometimes in a song, it’s like you keep around a pocket of marbles for a rainy day. Each marble is a memory: the first time you kissed your girlfriend, what top she was wearing, the way the club smelled like old tequila and poppers and your shoes kept sticking to the floor from spilled drinks. That is the stuff I am always trying to remember for later, and these songs are full of marbles like that.
As for other influences, I was interested in art where contradictions are allowed to live side by side. Where things don’t have to be one thing. Soft and hard, edgy and tender. Love can makes us all go sappy but it can also put you in a rather fierce state of mind. I’m thinking Gerhard Richter’s paintings, later David Hockney, the Bloomsbury Group, and always, the work of Derek Jarman and Olivia Laing’s writing on Jarman’s work. I think if there is one artist I would most aspire to emulate, it’s him. His ability to see creativity in everything from a pile of fabric to a packet of seeds. That’s how I hope to approach my work and life in general. Making very small moments in time into something widescreen and enchanting.
