Before talking to the artist formerly and futurely known as Pink about her newest project, we were instructed not to call her by the colorful moniker she’s gone by for her entire career. For You + Me, a collaboration with folk musician (and longtime friend) Dallas Green, the singer is returning to her birth name, Alecia Moore. Fair enough. We spoke to Pi— err, Moore and Green about their new album rose ave., why their friendship works, and the worst varieties of alcohol they sampled during the recording process.
Alecia, what drew you to Dallas?Â
Alecia Moore: I liked Dallas since the moment I met him. It’s cool to meet a guy who I can fall in love with, and who my husband falls in love with as well. We’re best buddies.
Dallas Green: We became friends that first night. I opened some shows for her in the U.K., and we stayed pen pals. We were always talking about sitting together.
Why did it just happen now?
DG: I knew her big album cycle had finished in January. I assumed she’d be home, so I sent her a note, and she was like, “Yup, got this week off.â€
AM: It’s rad that we’re such good friends. I put a lot of pressure on myself when I walk into a songwriting thing. Like, “I’m gonna feel like such a dick, like a useless waste of skin.†But this time, if it didn’t work, I still got to hang out with my friend for a week. Dallas was having his own internal struggle about the whole thing. I told him, “Whatever, there’s beer, there’s wine, there’s whiskey.â€
What were you struggling with, Dallas?
DG: I didn’t want her to hate me! I didn’t want to show up and have nothing to offer. I’d never collaborated, never gone into a room before with someone and just tried to write songs. Alecia only collaborates.Â
AM: I’m lucky. I’ve created a space where I get to work with people I love. A lot of artists in my position go with whoever is gonna get them that No. 1 [hit], and sometimes those people aren’t very nice. They aren’t a super-nice hang. But with Dallas, we were doing it with ourselves, because we really wanted to. I felt giddy, like I was 8 years old again. My cheeks were sore from smiling.
One of the things I like about the album is the way your voices fit together.
DG: We both have such a range that either of us can take the low part and either of us can take the high part. We were able to find out which way made us comfortable. I love the parts on the record when it’s like, who is that? It’s rare for a male and female duo to do that. It almost sounds like one voice.
You guys both sound like you were really happy.
DG: We were just in Venice, at a funky little home studio on Rose Avenue. That’s where the title comes from. It was just myself and Alecia.
AM: That’s why I love the name You + Me. It was just us.
And it only took you a week to record the album?
AM: We did eight songs that first week, then I had to go on tour, then we came back for two days. But if you count the amount of time we were actually working and not just at the bar, it was more like four days.
It was a week of heavy drinking?
DG: I drink a lot of whiskey.
AM: Whiskey and wine.
DG: And beer.
AM: Some nasty beer. Pineapple shit. Don’t ever drink pineapple beer.
I didn’t even know that was a thing.
DG: I went to the liquor store one day, and the guy there really sold me on the pineapple beer. It was awful.
AM: Dallas gave some to me, I thought he was mad at me, that’s how bad it was.