“I feel like I’m not ready for an album yet,” Caity Baser tells Apple Music. “When I make an album, I want to sit down and really think about it. I want to have such a creative vision that it’s just undeniably an album.” It’s this distinction that qualifies Still Learning—described by the Southampton-born, Brighton-based singer-songwriter as “comfortable chaos”—as a “mixtape”, albeit a well-formed and cohesive one. It boasts credits from hitmakers including Jon Shave of The Invisible Men, Whyjay & LiTek, Jamie Scott, Future Cut and more. “There’s lots of shit going on, but I kind of like it that way,” says Baser, reeling off a litany of topics and situations she addresses as part of this project. “I talk about friends, family, my fans, relationships…just all sorts of things that you go through as a human being and my interpretation of it all.” Baser, who has seen her career skyrocket since going viral on TikTok in 2020, has spent the last two years in flux, adjusting to a level of success that earned her a nomination for the 2024 BRITs Rising Star award, but opened up a gulf between her and the friends she knew before she was playing sold-out shows up and down the UK. She also emerged from her first heartbreak, having fallen in love with someone who “just wasn’t ever nice to me”, an experience that inspired songs like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Bicker”. The record ping-pongs between between doo-wop-influenced melodrama and punchy, pop-rock choruses (“the vibe when I was doing my writing camp was bad bitch Meghan Trainor and Katy Perry”), tied together with the kind of snappy, unapologetic lyrical form that Baser has down to an art. “I did English Language for GCSE and A-level and ‘point, evidence, explain, link’ is actually how I write a song,” she says. Ultimately, Still Learning is a powerful reminder not to let life get you down—and if it does, you can always write a song about it. Despite the strife and the pain captured in her lyrics, Baser is in a much better place now than she was before. “I’m having the best time,” she says. “Even when I go through situations like that, I can always see the good and the positive. Although I’ve been through some shit experiences, I always come out at the end of it laughing.” Here, she goes into more detail about the real-life events behind each song. “I’m a Problem” “It was my first time in LA, I was really jet-lagged and I was fuming. Everyone was just pissing me off and telling me what to do, and I was like, ‘I wasn’t made to be told what to do. Thank you very much, everybody.’ Everything was annoying me and I was in a really weird space, and because I was so far away, I was just like, ‘I’m going to really express how I feel.’ So then I made this song, and you know what? Nobody was into it when I first made it because I think I just came on absolute energy. After a while, when it simmered down, everybody loved it. But it’s just sort of about telling everybody that’s telling you what to do to shut the fuck up, and be a bad bitch.” “The Plot” “I gave [co-writers] venbee and GRACEY the brief of ‘don’t-give-a-fuck energy, living for the sake of living, causing drama and being silly’. Me and venbee are best friends, so this is essentially what we do on a daily basis—go out and cause a ruckus. They made the chorus and then I came in and just put the verses down, literally in five minutes. We recorded it and that was it. We never touched it again.” “Showgirl” “My best friend broke up with her boyfriend, who was an absolute tool—didn’t appreciate her, didn’t really respect her. But you know when your friend’s going through something and you’re just like, ‘I have to just let you do it and then, when it’s over, I’ll talk some sense into you’? She called me and she was like, ‘I just want to go over and see him. I just want him back. I’m just not good enough for him.’ So I basically was just like, ‘I’m coming over. I’m going to do your makeup. I’m going to do your hair, we’re going to put sexy outfits on and we’re going to go prance about town and have the best time ever.’ We did actually have the best night ever and then the next day she was like, ‘I don’t need him. He’s so weird.’ And I was like, ‘I know.’ So it’s basically just about getting your friend out of that rut of a breakup, especially when it’s someone that’s so silly.” “Pretty Boys” “It was ages ago now, but I went on a date with a boy just because he was pretty. And then, 20 minutes in, I was just like, ‘Oh my god, you are literally the most boring thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’ It was just no conversation, no fun. The date ended and I called my friends and I was like, ‘Have you noticed how all ridiculously good-looking boys are just really boring?’ And they were all like, ‘Yes. Oh my god, you should make a song about it.’ So I did.” “I Love Making Bad Boys Cry” “This was [co-writer/producer] Jamie Scott’s idea. He had the chorus and he was like, ‘It’s really good but it just hasn’t got that cheeky bit at the end that you would have, Caity.’ I just sang, ‘I love making bad boys cry’, and he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s perfect.’ It’s sort of a piss-take song to listen to when you’re getting ready to go out with the girls.” “Why Can’t I Have Two (2468)” “It’s about wanting two people at the same time. I liked them both for different reasons. You know when it’s like, ‘You’d be perfect if you had that part and that part, but you don’t.’ I love to exaggerate a situation and say all these ridiculous stories, but half the time they’re just fabricated to make them interesting. I literally take the piss out of everything, even myself.” “X&Y” “Again, this was somebody else’s idea—[London DJ/producer] Digital Farm Animals came in with the chorus and I did all the verses. It’s about when you get with someone and maybe you were together, maybe you weren’t, but then you end and they’re going around saying, ‘That’s my ex’, and you’re like, ‘No, I’m not your ex, you’re my why?’ This is the oldest song on the record, I wrote this two years ago.” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “This is about falling in love with somebody that isn’t right for you. When it’s right, all you’re supposed to feel is happiness and peace and excitement, but I was falling in love with someone that was awful and I felt horrible all the time. I felt stressed, I felt confused, I felt angry, I felt happy. I felt all the emotions. It’s just touching on how psycho you can turn if you are relying on somebody else to make you happy and they don’t even give a fuck about you.” “Bicker” “I wrote this about arguing with someone, even when you haven’t got anything to argue about, just because you want to cause a scene and you want some attention. Or someone picking a fight with you and instead of just being like, ‘Shut up’, you enjoy fighting because you actually feel something.” “Grow Up” “This about breaking up with somebody and then having them ask for all their stuff back. Pathetic things like birthday presents or a fucking doorstop, and you’re like, ‘LOL, OK.’” “Oh Well” “I fell out with all of my friends for so many reasons that literally weren’t even my fault. I’ve really grown up a lot in the last few years because I’ve been put in so many situations where I’m forced—in the best way—to be an adult, and I feel like I can’t really relate to a lot of my old friends. People were just saying, ’You’ve changed, Caity’, and I was like, ‘Great. You haven’t.’ At the time, I was really sad. The whole time I was singing it, I was crying my eyes out because I hate how people can go from being everything to nothing when you’ve grown up with them. Life was so simple and now it’s really not. Everybody’s growing up at different paces and there should be no pressure on each other to remain the exact same as you were because it’s just impossible, and you shouldn’t make people feel guilty because they can’t maintain that. I’ve been on a sort of cleanse the last year. I’ve gotten rid of so many things that have made me feel shit about myself and I’ve let in a few new things that just make me feel so amazing. I don’t accept negative vibes anymore because I don’t deserve them. Nobody does. And I think this song is a real big signal for that.” “Choose Me” “This is a love song to myself, because I love myself. I think there’s so much pressure to be with somebody and be in love and post about it everywhere, but the best relationship you can have is with yourself. I had such an unhealthy one with myself for ages. I literally hated myself. It was just the age I was at, becoming a woman, body changes, feeling lots of things…I finally realised that you don’t need to rely on somebody else to make you feel loved. You can have everything inside of you rather than with somebody else. I think that’s a really important message for loads of people, especially young girls that are listening to this song, that think the best thing in the world is having a boyfriend, even if they’re not right for you. The most important thing is just being happy and loving yourself, because you can’t love somebody when you don’t love yourself. And whenever I don’t feel like that, I just listen to this song and blast it from the rooftops.” “I’ll Be Here for You” “This is a song for my fans, as a thank you because they’ve always been there for me and helped me through so many things. They don’t know it, but they’ve healed me. When I go on tour and I sing these songs, singing them every night and hearing people sing them back to me, it’s so validating and makes me feel so amazing. I don’t thank them enough, and I can’t ever thank them enough, but this is a love song to tell them that I’ll always be there for them, like they’re always there for me.”