When I first met Eden xo Malakouti in 2012 she was playing in a band called Jessie and the Toy Boys; she asked me to vomit glitter in her video for "White Girl Wasted," even though I'm not white and have never been wasted. I gladly complied.
Eden’s the type of girl whose beauty is striking—so striking that she makes you hate yourself a little bit. But that quickly falls away the second she pulls you in for a big bear hug. Her style is a cross between vintage Hollywood glam, '90s-era Gwen Stefani, and a Quentin Tarantino movie poster. She raps in Farsi (she's half Iranian), grew up with a pet goat named Clouds, and weaves a supernatural tale when asked why she's vegan. "I was waking up in pools of sweat," she tells me when we meet for dinner. "I went to see a medium who said that there was an evil spirit feasting on my aura."
The reason for our reunion is Nina Las Vegas' DJ set at the Avalon in Los Angeles. Eden and Las Vegas recently teamed up to write a track called "Sideline." My hope for the night is to see what it's like to witness a song you wrote be performed to a room full of people. Leading up to this adventure, though, Eden and I stopped for a bite to eat at Hollywood staple Swingers. Over a meal of gluten-free pancakes and vegan cobb salads we chatted about everything that plagues singer-songwriters—dwindling income streams, the devaluation of melody and lyrics, the demise of major label artist deals, and the difficulty of getting back up after you've been knocked down.
"It's really challenging to be an artist, but it's even more challenging to make money as a songwriter when you're getting 0.00208 of a penny per stream," Eden tells me. "I've been paid more for posting an Instagram than I have on my royalty statements for songs that have been played millions of times. I mean 'The Weekend' [her second single on Virgin Records] has 10 million plays on Spotify. I didn't see that money. It's bleak."
The bleakness of the music industry is immune to the depth and scope of her talent, though. Eden is a hundred-percenter, and one with a visceral connection to her writing, as well as her voice, skills, image, and marketing strategy.
"I'm moved by the art of storytelling. I like all kinds of genres, but the connection to the vocalist emotionally has to be there. For example, I love Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Michael Jackson, Robert Smith from The Cure, Kendrick Lamar, all the way to Tove Lo when she's being honest. Habits is an amazing record... It's the overly conceptualized 'songwriter-y songs' that I can't get into as a fan. I respect them, but I don't want to hear them over and over agains—probably because as a songwriter they're predictable to me. I know what's coming before I even hear it on the radio a lot of times... But I get it because I've had to play the game too."
Despite all this, Eden has thrashed her way through the jungle of the music industry for 10 years—which is no easy feat. At 16, she signed to Epic Records as part of the all-girl punk band Shut up Stella. They were later dropped. She signed to Xenomania, one of the biggest production houses in the UK in 2009, but that also fell through. Then she reinvented herself as Jessie and the Toy Boys and signed with Virgin Records, only to be let out of her contract yet again because of internal issues at label. She is relentless but real about the battle.
"I've been signed and dropped multiple times. The pendulum would swing low, I'd be popping Klonopin like they're fucking Tic Tacs and I couldn't get off my kitchen floor. Then, oh, I got signed again, now I'm dropped again. I don't wanna die."
Like most artists who have been through the system, Eden has littlle faith in labels and the people who work for them. "They're either duds or dinosaurs," she states matter-of-factly.
Despite her struggles with the industry, she doesn't play victim; she is strong and resilient. Whether it's her "volcanic childhood," or her serene demeanour, something about her gives you the impression that she'd know exactly what to do in a crisis. At age 16 she emancipated herself from her parents; three years later she was being flown to Sweden to write with the best songwriters in the world. In 2011 she was on an arena tour opening up for Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj.
"One night in Jacksonville, Nicki couldn't be there. I don't remember why, but Britney's camp was playing with the idea of flying in Jordan Sparks to fill her slot. Then I got word that they changed their minds and wanted to offer me the slot and push my 15 min set to 40 minutes. They said that I had really been killing it and the crowd was loving me, but if I didn't want to it was OK and they'd bring in Jordan. Obviously I jumped at the chance. This was a big moment for me because I realized I have absolutely everything it takes to be a massive pop star. I had Jacksonville in the palm of my hand that night. I have had to deal with some setbacks, industry politics, and just plain bad luck here and there, but I am in a better place now and I'm working hard every day to get back to that arena on my own terms."
The kinda-cool-but-also-slightly-depressing thing about hanging out with Eden is you get to feel what it's like to wear an invisibility cloak for a night. At Avalon, a couple people talk to me, but mostly to ask if they could be photographed with Eden. Over the course of the night, her charm even helps us finagle backstage passes to sneak a quick in hello with Las Vegas.
"I feel like I just have one of those approachable faces where people just wanna have conversations with me," she laughs. "Women do it too!"
She walks me through the story behind "Sideline"—"I got on the mic and just gibberished what is now the [lyrics and melody]. I didn't think anything of it. It was such a small, meek, humble little moment in this budget-ass studio."
When Las Vegas played the track at Avalon, Eden said she could feel "the electricity with everybody moving to this piece of art." Her face lights up as she recalled the moment: "It meant so much more to me all of a sudden to hear it in a big room. I felt like I was one of the main wires in this plug, and it was crazy because I felt entangled with everybody in it, we were all crossed together and it was like this spark."
As "Sideline" bumped to a club brimming with people, Eden couldn't help from making her presence known. "I just kind of blurted out 'This is me!' It was really magical. I don't think I would have thought twice about this song if I didn't experience it like that. But then the flipside was that after experiencing this high magical moment, when we went to say hi to Nina, this dude came up to me and asks, 'Are you up next?' and I was like 'Oh no. I'm not a DJ, I'm an artist.' When I told him I sang the song that she just played he was like, 'Cool, cool, I like your outfit.'"
In the world of electronic music, the producer is king, so I wasn't surprised to hear that Eden didn't get paid for performing on the track. The devaluation of songwriting is part of the reason why the industry has taken such a debilitating blow, Eden says. "Sure, it's about the track, it is about the beat, but a vocal on a song can change everything. It can evoke a completely different emotion. It's poetry and it matters and it's being treated like it doesn't."
She tells me that Las Vegas' label is an indie she started called NLV Records, so they worked out a trade for a remix in the future. In terms of Nina's live show, Eden is impressed: "She really did take me on a journey... and she was definitely steering the ship."
Over the course of the night it becomes clear that Eden knows all about steering the ship. And after being flown around the world, picked apart, and seeing opportunities come and go, she's aborted the mass market cruise liner and jumped on her own little badass boat.
"I've been looking within. I'm inspired by culture. I have music coming up where I sing in Farsi. My last label really tried to whitewash me, but that's not who I am. That's not my story. I want to inspire young girls and boys in Iran who dream about being singers and songwriters. I draw on my own personal pain and oppression and I try to turn it into something positive. [My new] project is a labor of love and I just can't wait to share some more of my story with the world."
