I’m super neurotic and always beating myself up, and I think that’s part of what drives me to write. I’m like—like we all are—a little tortured ball of angst, sometimes. So I was thinking, “Do you have to be tortured to be great? Are those things intrinsically linked?” Because my heroes were tortured. Not even just the 27 Club. Diana Washington, Nina Simone, and everybody who I think is fabulous was drunk and miserable. So I was thinking, “Do I have to sacrifice my happiness as a human being, my health, my personal life, in order to achieve greatness, and is that worth it to me?” And then I started thinking about the 27 Club. A lot of those people were my heroes. Amy Winehouse was a huge influence. Kurt Cobain… like, I grew up partly in Seattle. So it’s partly a social commentary but also me thinking out loud like, “Can I ever be great, and does that mean dying?”
- Chloe Black on 27 Club