featured image shot by Charlotte Cunningham
“My last year of college, I really wanted to break out of that, so I started doing stuff for myself… it’s been a very crazy journey and a huge learning curve.”
Shireen Amour mixes her ancestral roots with her love of music, crafting a unique experience for her audience. Overcoming stage fright, Shireen has possessed the capabilities to enamor her listeners with thoughtful lyricism and cool melodies. We got to sit down with Shireen to catch up with her whereabouts and more!
DEATH OF A RABBIT: Tell us about yourself!
SHIREEN AMOUR: I just put out my first larger body of work and started releasing music under this name for about a little more than a year now. The EP I put out is called In The Dark, [which] came out [in] May of this year. I’ve been working on it since I graduated college. I’ve been writing on the piano since I was a child, but I had really bad stage fright so I never showed anyone my songs. I never really sang in front of anyone after middle school. Before that — I don’t know how I did it, I was so outgoing. But I kind of developed stage fright after middle school, and my last year of college, I really wanted to break out of that, so I started doing stuff for myself, like trying to figure out logic and writing on different mediums other than the piano. And that’s how I guess this project started, was with “Sundial.” That song started it all for me. It’s been a very crazy journey and a huge learning curve. I’m also Iranian American; my parents are Iranian immigrants. They moved here separately and then met through my aunty, which was really cute. My dad plays a lot of instruments, self-taught, and my mother has a beautiful, beautiful voice. So I grew up in a home filled with music and adopted a love for it at a very early age. I started playing piano when I was five, classically trained in piano. I’m really grateful that my parents put me through that. I’m also going to veterinary school!
DOAR: So you grew up around music, but then took a break, and then college — was there a singular moment in college where you were like, “Wait, I gotta bring this back”?
SHIREEN AMOUR: During that middle period of being insecure, I was writing a lot. I wrote like a hundred songs, but it was just for myself, and then I met my friend Max at community college — he’s produced a lot of my music, a lot of the songs on the EP he’s been featured [on] — he was like, “We should try recording something.” So honestly, that was a huge step. It was a big moment for me, where I had to get used to recording my voice, singing in front of someone, and playing it back. That was really scary for me, but he really pushed me and gave me a lot of confidence. I don’t think there was a singular moment, but I think over time, I got more comfortable, especially working with him. So by the time I got to UCLA, we had been working on a song which we put out together that was under a different name that no longer exists, but the song is still out there. And I think that kind of started a lot for me to be like, “Oh, this is actually really fun.” It was really cool to hear a song that I wrote and put a lot of time and love into that I made with my friends. [We] played it on the speakers at the climbing gym I went to because my friends worked there and they played it as soon as it came out. So yeah, that process kind of reignited my love for it and my dreams of even being a singer and being perceived in that way.
DOAR: I heard in another interview that you did that you would describe your genre as Shirfox. Would Shirfox still be the genre you prescribe yourself and, if not, what would it be? And how would you describe the genre?
SHIREEN AMOUR: I think Shirfox still resonates! That was my nickname for a small group of people and also my Instagram handle back then. I don’t know what year that was, maybe 2012 or something, but Shirfox very much embodies a lot of that nostalgia.
DOAR: What does the genre sound like?
SHIREEN AMOUR: Definitely a lot of Persian influence; I grew up with a lot of Persian party music. It’s old though, so it’s a lot of Middle Eastern synth and just really funny lines, like chanting and name intros. I’m a piano girl so synth piano really resonates with me. I love like glittery textures for my ADHD brain, it scratches it. I think a lot of synth, weird production, a little bit cunty, playful, and fun. And then, of course, there’s always got to be some depressing stuff in there, too.
DOAR: The blend of Persian and indie is very unique. Did you always appreciate your Persian side? I’m wondering if you came to appreciate it more when you were doing your music or if it’s always been a strong appreciation.
SHIREEN AMOUR: I love that question. I think I’ve gone through phases, it’s definitely fluctuated a lot. Obviously, I was surrounded by a lot of Persian people growing up. I went to Persian school every Sunday, did Persian dance, learned how to read and write, I was a TA, and eventually a dance teacher. That was a lot of years of my life. Those friends that I made at that school are still my best friends and I love them. So I was very lucky to grow up here in San Diego, a good amount of Persians here, lots of good Iranian food. But there was definitely a point in time, probably when I started gaining a conscience, being perceived by other people, where I was self-conscious of it. I grew up around a lot of white people and Asian people, like South Asia. I also played volleyball, which is pretty white. So I feel like there’s a point in time, maybe in middle school, where I started to be bullied and have weird vibes from people, where I was a little bit hesitant to share my culture. Before that, I’d always been very open. I mean, I was still very open with my close friends, but I wasn’t super loud and proud about it. But I feel like a lot of people kind of go through that. But as soon as I started becoming my own person again after high school, I started finding a love for it again.
DOAR: I was also wondering about your writing process, because in your track dissection, you mentioned how you usually write everything in your Notes app, but at least with “Sundial,” you wanted to be more intentional and write in your notebook. I was wondering if you continued the notebooking at all or if it’s the Notes app or a mixture.
SHIREEN AMOUR: It’s a mixture for sure. It depends on the type of song that I’m writing. I think with this EP, I really wanted to explore because before when I was writing, all I knew was singer-songwriter, very stripped back. It’s just me and the piano, writing based on feeling. Or sometimes I would have a song that would develop over time, but it’s very much what was happening to me in real time. For this EP, I wanted to expand and I didn’t want to write about the traditional kind of love, breakup, depression, or whatever it was that I was feeling that I would write about before. I wanted to write about more niche feelings. So I think that it depends on the type of song, like “Your Type” is way more upbeat, and I didn’t write that in a notebook. But I think for slower songs, I adopted the notebook method. That’s kind of how “Garage” was written, too.
DOAR: I love the reason of why you chose “Sundial” as the name of your song — the simplistic, unstable and a little bit unreliable nature of it. Did you see a sundial or did it just pop up in your head?
SHIREEN AMOUR: I was writing the song and that was kind of the missing piece. It was called “New Beginnings” at first, because I wanted to step into a different energy with this song. I was really tired of feeling so stagnant and weird, so “Sundial” was kind of the missing piece. I think that kind of came later in writing the song as a whole, I was trying to find something that would represent the limbo and timelapse. And I was thinking of a clock, so I looked it up and was like, “What are ways to tell the time?” And “sundial” just popped up in my head. And it was perfect. Then I think that actually changed some of the chorus lyrics too.
DOAR: That’s amazing, I love that. I also wanted to talk about “Headlights,” which is your newest single. How was it collaborating with Keyhan?
SHIREEN AMOUR: It was great. He found me through this magazine called The Persian Magazine that I’d been following a little bit before they posted about “Sundial.” He was like “Hey, I’m another Persain artist, let’s collab.” And I was like– I feel like I’m always a little bit hesitant to collaborate. But then I looked at his stuff and was like, “Oh my God, [it’s] so cool and so fun.” And as soon as I moved to LA, we ended up setting up a session, and we wrote “Headlights” and he had the production down. We were kind of building it in real time and I just wrote it that session. It was really fun. His apartment is beautiful and it just felt very homey. And I was like, “This is going to be the start of a great friendship,” and I’m excited to collaborate more with him. He actually came to my show the other day and we did a stripped back version of “Headlights,” which was really fun. A great friendship came out of that.
DOAR: I did want to ask you about that performance, how was it?
SHIREEN AMOUR: It was really fun. My body still has stage fright in it so I was a little nervous, but it was mostly my friends. I wanted people to have a good time and I was excited to perform my EP. But most importantly, I just wanted to raise money so we could do some giving back, because shit’s fucked up and crazy with the ICE raids. I just wanted that to be the main thing for me. So I think because of that, I was able to have a little bit more of a chill time performing. And it was really fun and we raised a good amount of money to directly help people affected by the raids. Hopefully we can do a lot more benefit concerts like that.
DOAR: death of a rabbit likes to focus on lyricism and poetry — I was wondering, what’s a lyric that you’ve listened to lately that you really enjoyed, or what’s a lyric that you wish you’d written?
SHIREEN AMOUR: One of my most comforting but heart-wrenching songs growing up that my mom used to sing and listen to is “Soghati” by Hayedeh, and my favorite lyric is:
دست کبوترای عشق واسه کی دونه بپاشه
This verse starts off saying “when you’re not here,” and this is one of the lines from that verse
line translation: (when you’re not here) who will feed the mouths of the love birds (without that person that Hayedeh is speaking of, there is no love to feed the birds)
This is kind of a rough translation as genuinely there’s no way to translate Farsi accurately into English without losing the poetry of its meaning, but this line just really stuck with me. I thought it was such a beautiful way to describe how kind of desperate and intense love can be.
Check out Shireen Amour’s work here!
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