In a new memoir, the singer-songwriter Neko Case recounts a childhood of poverty and neglect: a mother who left her and a father who was barely there. But there was also music. And when there was nothing else, that was, perhaps, enough. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Just a quick note, this episode contains some cursing that you might not usually hear on this show. Nico Case is one of those musicians that people have really strong personal attachments to, especially indie music lovers of a certain generation. Like, I know two people who have named a child after her.
Nico Case is a lead vocalist of the indie pop collective The New Pornographers, and she's also had a long solo career. But what's most distinct about her are her lyrics, which are often oblique. Like a song seems to be about a car crash, but maybe it's about incomplete grief. You have to listen a few times before you get closer to it. The paper said 75
And then there are lots of times when Kay seems to be writing about herself, but it's not entirely clear. Were they trying to tell me something? Were they telling me to run?
This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. Last month, Nico Case peeled back some of the mystery. She's written a memoir called The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, which shares part of the same title as one of her albums from 2013. She writes about growing up poor and neglected. Her parents were teenagers when they had her, and her guess is that neither of them ever wanted a child.
By the end of her sophomore year in high school, she asked her mom for emancipation. She writes, quote, she couldn't sign it quickly enough. She didn't even have to think it over. And so Case hid a lot behind her music. One of my favorite scenes is you as a kid in the school library. Like, you remember that the beanbags were corduroy, you know? Oh, yeah. The image was so perfect.
Like, it was such a perfect image from that era. And you were hiding out with your headphones on. I think you mentioned listening to Atomic by Blondie.
Over and over and over and over. Like, only— A neurodivergent ADHD kid can do. Right.
Right. Like just a million times. Do you have words for what that was like for you? Because it felt like, OK, that's the moment that she discovers the power of music. And like in a movie, that would be the scene in which you discover like what music is for and what it does to you.
Music was always just there and I took it for granted, but I also leaned really heavily into it. I did not make a connection that music was something I would want to do or I would do because I was kind of, you know, I was just a girl. And I did not. make a connection between myself and Blondie or myself and the Go-Go's. I just knew I really loved them.
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