Kat Cunning: idle hands / Idol Hands
Photo courtesy of Universal Music Group/Republic Records
Actor, dancer, and singer Kat Cunning appreciates the good things in life.
Cunning’s new music video for their single “Could Be Good” depicts just that. The song is a retelling of the day they met the girl they wrote it about, and the visuals are of Cunning revisiting nature in their hometown in Oregon—”peaceful, candid moments with no makeup on”. Cunning describes how the pandemic allowed them to “receive the world,” when they were so used to putting energy out all the time. The trip to Oregon to see family and revisit nature came after being quarantined in New York, so finally being able to just be in a car, enjoying “the pace and patience and peace of being on a road trip and looking at America around you”, was a refreshing experience that Cunning shared with us.
It really is refreshing to be able to watch someone be who they are, when we ourselves are too concerned about what others think of us. Kat Cunning, who identifies as non-binary (they/their/them), doesn’t ever want to compromise their message. They don’t want to be concerned about being a role model, because they’re just taking space to be them, and people can choose to stay or go. As Cunning describes it, “We’re just here telling stories, representing, and taking space.” There’s so much we miss from one another when we think too broadly about how our actions impact others. To Cunning, it’s “our micro-interactions with other humans [that are] super effective,” and it’s “our experiences and our presences [that really matter].”
When Cunning was answering the first couple questions during this press conference, they admitted that they hadn’t read the questions beforehand. But their answers to the questions were so in-depth and introspective that I couldn’t believe that was true. I remember telling a friend how amazed I was by that, since it was something I could never imagine doing, with my constant fixation on how I am viewed by others. And thinking about it now, that ability to just open your mouth and share your message—with no ands, ifs, or buts— must be what it’s like to be so in tune with yourself and how you are living and taking space in this world that everything you say is exactly what needs to be said.
Which is why it doesn’t surprise me when Cunning confessed that they probably would’ve gone on to be a writer, if they hadn’t decided to be a musician. Maybe “a poet or a prose-type writer in some way that was really creative,” Cunning said. “And hopefully that is still my retirement plan.
Hopefully I get so rich and famous that I'll be like, ‘I don’t tour anymore, I just write musings on life,’ and then people can turn them into mugs or whatever they want to do with my thoughts.” You listen to their music now, and you love the way the words sound when they’re sung, and you pretty much know Cunning has an undeniable talent (not to mention the fact that they act, dance, and sing, on top of writing).
(And to convince you even more of their talent, Cunning writes all of their songs in one take. It’s the only way they write. “Lyrics either fall out of my brain or they don’t come at all,” they told us. Which, to me, just proves that Cunning has an unequivocal message to share with the world.)
The variety of art forms that Kat Cunning uses to tell their story mesh together in unexpected ways. For example, the interaction between their dance and their music. Cunning began as a ballet dancer, and they were part of the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College in New York. They described the intensity of that discipline from dance being so important to their career: “I feel like the intensity of loving something that much and giving my life to it, and having a relationship to pain and pleasure through dance is… those are huge themes in my music.” Cunning uses music as a means to go back to dance in their own way, like by casting dancers with diverse bodies, because that wasn’t something they saw enough of during their experience as a dancer. The music video for their song “Confident” was actually Cunning working with dancers that they knew from school, despite the fact that Cunning told them they would be leaving dance forever. Cunning called them up to try and dance together, just to see what would happen. So in the end, “I never left dance,” Cunning said. “It will always influence anything I try to make happen in my life.”
That being said, for Cunning, the creative process for acting and music stay on separate sides of their brain. “Music is a way more introverted experience for me,” they said. “It’s usually in one sacred room with one other person and I’m not performing at all.” Cunning explained how they’ve written many intimate songs that haven’t been released yet, because those first writing sessions in a studio were so intimate to them, since those sessions were hugely different from when they were used to performing for an audience where they had to “reach to the back row”. So they’re trying to pace those emotional and poetic songs out a little rather than letting them go all at once. Cunning told us, “I myself started to look at my project and I was like, where’s the other half of my personality that, like, wants to just get ratchet on a dance floor and hump somebody?” There are so many sides to a person that might get hidden once you fixate too much on a single aspect of them. We all have different parts of ourselves that are still genuinely us.
Yet, Cunning added, with acting, it’s a much more different experience, because while with people, “there’s a whole other side, always, that sometimes you have to gain intimacy and vulnerability with somebody to mind that… in acting, I can just be like, no, today I’m just gonna be the type A side of myself that’s like a really good girl from Minnesota who… whatever. And that’s all real. But I don’t get to share it every day, you know? Music, however, is terrifying because it’s always me. And every time a song comes out of my mouth, I better be behind it, you know?”
For upcoming artists who want to work toward making the industry a more inclusive place, Cunning emphasizes “not compromising as you’re starting out on that vision anyway. And being willing to niche yourself out for who you are and hope that that core community will grow with you... It is definitely not always easy to be out as a non-binary person in a cis world. Day-to-day, I still feel like getting people behind the niche things that are me is something that I just have to be persistent about. Even parents, when they want you to be successful, they’re like - don’t be weird, it will make your life harder. And so I feel like that happens with anybody who believes in you and wants to see you thrive. And so it is a constant ‘reassuring the world’ that I’m gonna be me and it’s gonna work and having faith in that.”
Actor, dancer, and singer Kat Cunning is a storyteller, with much to say about the human experience. Their debut EP “Idol Hands” will be released on July 16. The name “Idol Hands” was inspired by Cunning’s desire for their first EP to “represent things that really matter to [them], overall, as a statement of what you can expect from [their] whole career. And one of [their] most consistent obsessions is religious iconography.” Which they just know is going to be a theme throughout their whole career.
And also, Cunning told us, “because some of these songs were written in the pandemic, I love the pun of ‘idle hands are the devil’s playthings.’ Like this is what I did with my hands when they had nothing else to do.”
Stay up to date with Kat Cunning and their music on their official website (which also includes links to their official social media accounts and music streaming platforms).
