Once upon a time a former boyfriend turned to Pilar Victoria on a date and said, “You know, I never really imagined myself dating a brunette. I always thought I’d be with a blonde.”
As Pilar relates the story, “He looked at me and said, ‘You’re the first brunette I’ve ever dated,’ and I said, ‘Oh. Let me write that down.’”
Write it down she did, and it has become “First Brunette,” a swinging pop number that will be released January 25.
“I’d like to say that it’s kind of like a love letter to the brunette community,” she said. “I think there’s not enough appreciation for girls with brown hair. There’s not many songs written about girls with brown hair, brown eyes, and I just wanted to make that connection with girls who felt they weren’t appreciated enough.”
I’m the first brunette that you ever dated
keep it that way
Babe don’t be persuaded
By someone else
I just wanna be your last
“First Brunette,” with a driving beat, edgy strings and Pilar’s lovely soprano voice, is, she says, “like a love letter to under-appreciated brunettes.”
Not that she has anything against blondes.
“As a little girl I always admired blondes, and Barbies. I just never felt that there were many brunette figures that I could admire. This song was a way for me to connect to other brunettes and give them something of their own.”
She wrote the lyrics and Grammy Award winning producer Rick Nowels, who she met when she was 15, did the instrumentation and production work. They have written 12 songs together. “First Brunette” is the third they have released.
Pilar is now 17 and has been putting her music out since she was 13. “I wasn’t allowed to have social media at the time, so I just kind of kept it a secret from my parents.”
Her first song was “Wilted Flower.” It cost money, which she didn’t have, to put music on a streaming service, so she put it out on TikTok.
“I posted it right before I went to bed and the next morning I woke up with a million views. That’s what kind of started everything going.”
She produced “Wilted Flower” in about two hours at her nearby music school. “It was one take harmonies, one take vocals.”
The version she put on Spotify in 2019 is the same version she put out through TikTok that same year.
For all of that, “Wilted Flower” plays like a fully mature pop ballad.
Getting it onto Spotify, where it has accumulated almost 3 million streams, meant an end to secrecy.
“I had to pay $20 for the music distribution service. I’m like, ‘Hey, can I borrow your credit card?’ ‘What do you need my credit card for?’ So, they found out what I was doing.”
Since then, she has performed as an opening act for NewDad in England and signed for a six-track EP, Hi, My Name Is Pily!, with Apple Music’s Platoon. The EP has earned 12 million streams. She has also been featured on Spotify and on the Zane Lowe show.
Pilar is a multinational. She was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to an American father and an Argentine mother. The family moved to Argentina for a while and then, when she was 3, to Texas, where she lives now.
Spanish is her first language, and she doesn’t want to lose that. She and Rick are planning a string of singles leading up to an EP this summer. It will have a mix of songs in Spanish and English.
She began writing songs, she says, because “I always struggled expressing how I felt in the moment.”
“I found that songwriting was the right way, the perfect way for me to go back to those moments and express how I felt.”
For musical influences, she cites Lana Del Rey — “I hope to be a Lana Del Rey some day.” — The Marias, Suki Waterhouse and Stevie Nicks.
“I solely see myself as a musician,” she said. “I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Songwriting was the one thing that I felt good at in school because I never really played sports. I wasn’t on any teams. I didn’t really do many clubs or anything. I’d get home from school and just write and play my guitar. I write songs that I want to sing and perform myself, and I want to build a career out of that.”
Connect with Pilar Victoria on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts, see where her career goes.
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