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"  Photo: Jeff Elstone By her own admission, Zola Jesus is not a typical pop star. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not Beyonc\u00E9,&amp;quot; she admits laughing. &amp;quot;There can only be one Queen Bey.&amp;quot; Zola Jesus, n\u00E9e Nika Roza Danilova, grew up in rural Wisconsin and spent a lot of time alone. &amp;quot;I had a very rich imagination and a rich inner life,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;From a very young age, I just learned how to entertain myself.&amp;quot; But Danilova has gotten used to crowds. As she gears up for a North American tour to promote Taiga, her latest studio album (tickets for the tour go on sale Friday, July 18; the album drops on October 7), we caught up with the unconventional pop star to talk about embracing her inner Beyonc\u00E9, overcoming stage fright, and Mariah Carey.  You were born and raised in Merrill, Wisconsin, population 9,661. I read that you referred to yourself as &amp;quot;a delusional kid that never spent a lot of time around other kids your own age.&amp;quot; Were you drawn to people older than you or are you just a loner? I would be in school and that&amp;#039;s when I would socialize with kids, but it wasn&amp;#039;t a huge part of my life. I had a very rich imagination and a rich inner life. There are 100 acres of forest. So from a very young age, I just learned how to entertain myself.  So how did a family of Russians end up in Wisconsin and not a metropolis like LA, NYC, or Chicago? My parents are American, but their parents moved from outside of Odessa to a farm in North Dakota because it was very similar to outside of Odessa. And then they eventually moved toward Wisconsin. It&amp;#039;s all rural and farmland and isolationist, which they like. I come from a deep isolationist group of people...I think so many humans associate the open road with a sense of fear or anxiety because it&amp;#039;s a strange agoraphobia, where they&amp;#039;re like, &amp;#039;There&amp;#039;s nothing there,&amp;#039; and that frightens us. And I guess from a young age I learned to be inspired by that. Did you have a lot of friends growing up? No. [Laughs] I mean, you have friends from school but the social world was not anything that I considered, you know? I just wrote music, sang, read, was on the Internet once the Internet was a thing. At what age did you realize you wanted to become a musician? Birth. From the time I could talk, I was making up songs and walking around the house singing. What do your parents think of you becoming a musician? Not really a typical career choice for most people, especially Russian parents who want their kids to become lawyers, accountants, or doctors. They descended from this really weird group of people that were nomadic and moved around to farm. It&amp;#039;s complicated, but because of that, my whole family is just not typical Russian.  So you&amp;#039;re preparing to release your fourth studio album, are you finally comfortable with who you are as an artist and who you are as a person? I think I&amp;#039;m coming to terms with the fact that I am who I am (laughs). So who is Zola Jesus? Not Beyonc\u00E9, though I try (laughs). There can be only one Queen Bey. I strive to make pop music. I love it when artists are not afraid to say &amp;quot;pop.&amp;quot; No! You want to change the world and have a legacy and at the same time, when you&amp;#039;re a visual artist, you have a different medium, you work in sculpture, you work in painting\u2026 for me, pop is my format. It&amp;#039;s the chord progressions, it&amp;#039;s the emotional captivity of the listener. That format is, for me, really inspiring.       Why did you name this album Taiga?  Taiga represents a boundlessness. It represents a massive, uninhabited scope of the world. There are hundreds and hundred of miles of taiga that no one lives in and to me, that&amp;#039;s amazing. It reminds me of where I grew up and that there&amp;#039;s still a place to go when everything goes to shit. But, in a way, it&amp;#039;s savage and innocent at the same time because it hasn&amp;#039;t been infiltrated by humans trying to conquer it and trying to build their metropolis on top of it.  I pulled a quote from 2012 where during your last tour you said: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m starting to feel a little overwhelmed with ideas, it&amp;#039;s been getting a little stressful knowing I still have so much touring to do when all these ideas are starting to fill me up.&amp;quot; I think most artists prefer to be on stage in front of an audience, are you the opposite? I used to be so terrified of touring and being on stage. Singing is when I feel the most free, but also it&amp;#039;s when I feel the most responsibility to myself. But since making this record, I&amp;#039;ve really felt very empowered and very liberated\u2026I&amp;#039;m so ready to tour. I&amp;#039;m so ready to get on my soapbox every night in every little town and go: &amp;#039;This is it! I believe that this is what you should be listening to right now.&amp;#039;       Tell me about the first single, &amp;quot;Dangerous Days.&amp;quot; 10% of my writing process is writing a song in five minutes, that to me feels like the perfect pop song. That comes very easily to me. 90% of it is trying to destroy it because I&amp;#039;m ashamed of making pop music. With &amp;quot;Dangerous Days,&amp;quot; I trusted my gut and I was like: &amp;#039;I believe that this song doesn&amp;#039;t need to be destroyed and it shouldn&amp;#039;t be destroyed. In fact, it should just be what it is and I shouldn&amp;#039;t be ashamed of that.&amp;#039; And, I&amp;#039;m very proud of it, it&amp;#039;s a jam! So what&amp;#039;s the song about? It&amp;#039;s about this time we&amp;#039;re in right now where there&amp;#039;s so much media around us and you can&amp;#039;t easily trust what you hear. I just feel like everything is so tainted and people aren&amp;#039;t really thinking for themselves. They&amp;#039;re not making judgments based on their own life experience, they&amp;#039;re making judgments based on what someone else tells them. It&amp;#039;s dangerous to go and listen to what they say because, I feel like, you shouldn&amp;#039;t always listen to what people tell you, instead think for yourself. So I like this idea of making a massive pop song with a message. it&amp;#039;s not like &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s celebrate, take a drink&amp;#039;\u2026 Poppin&amp;#039; bottles with Zola in the club\u2026 nothing wrong with that type of music. What are your ambitions for this record? Give me an ambition! I wanna change the world\u2026 I want this record to empower people the way that I feel empowered right now. The way that Taiga empowers me.  You&amp;#039;re a modern-day Russian messiah! Let&amp;#039;s do a few fun questions. Do you have a hidden talent? Oh man I don&amp;#039;t know\u2026 I mean your parents must have taught you how to cook some Russian food. No?  My grandmother made some good-ass borscht. I asked for her recipe once and she was like: &amp;#039;Stew some beef bone, add some carrots, get some beets.&amp;#039; And I&amp;#039;m like: &amp;#039;How much? Of any of it?&amp;#039; and she&amp;#039;s like: &amp;#039;I don&amp;#039;t know\u2026just figure it out!&amp;#039;  Finish this question: I can&amp;#039;t go to bed unless I&amp;#039;ve\u2026 I&amp;#039;ve had a glass of red wine. How cool is that? It&amp;#039;s a little ritual\u2026 Your worst personality trait? I&amp;#039;m an over-thinker.  So you over-think everything you do?  Everything. I&amp;#039;m gonna be over-thinking this interview as soon as I leave.  Do you have a style icon? Tilda Swinton. Come on! She&amp;#039;s amazing. She&amp;#039;s so classy. How would you describe your personal style? Sci-fi/tribal. Who would you love to collaborate with?  Zaha Hadid. She&amp;#039;s what they call a &amp;quot;starchitect&amp;quot; right now. She&amp;#039;s killing it! Yeah. She has a really strong vision. Her buildings look like they&amp;#039;re from Mars. They look totally insane. She&amp;#039;s incredible.  If you could have dinner with anyone famous? Dead or alive.  Catherine the Great.  Going back to your roots. Yeah! I like her! What would you ask her?  I don&amp;#039;t know\u2026 She just seems like a badass and a fighter. And a little polarizing. And finally, what is your go-to song at karaoke? I would probably do &amp;quot;Always Be My Baby&amp;quot; by Mariah Carey because that song is deep in me. [Starts singing: You&amp;#039;ll always be a part of me/I&amp;#039;m part of you indefinitely\u2026] Related: &amp;#039;Manic Pixie Dream Girl&amp;#039; Inventor: I&amp;#039;ve Created a Sexist Monster Related: Paris Hilton Masterminded Her New Unicorn and Cotton Candy Music Video Related: Why This Is the Sexiest Movie Scene Ever "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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