![]() Over its first few days online, the video gained a few hundred views, then a couple thousand, then “it just… kept going,” Cottrill recalls, her voice trailing off. It was all so simple, so impromptu, that she thought nothing of it. As she boogies in baggy sweatshirts, with a constellation of red acne dots spread across her forehead, she looks like just another girl in her room, goofing around. It shows her sitting on her bed and lip syncing alongside various knick knacks-including a figurine of Gizmo from Gremlins-and a Dunkin coffee. In the summer of 2017, Cottrill filmed the “Pretty Girl” video with her computer’s camera. But back then, at the very end of 2017, she had just played a show with Tyler, the Creator in which she struggled to emit much of a presence, singing quietly over instrumentals playing from her laptop, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. She had been thrust into the spotlight after uploading a makeshift webcam video for a plinking synth-pop song called “ Pretty Girl” to her YouTube page the video has since collected more than 36 million views. That Claire was friendly, but also insular and guarded. It’s my first night traveling with Cottrill and her band as they make their way from Oklahoma to Chicago, and the Claire commanding a massive stage and belting Beyoncé is tough to square with the Claire that I interviewed a year and a half ago, when she had first become a viral phenomenon. ![]() ![]() After the show, she is pleasantly surprised with her performance: “Oh my god, that was so much fun!” Though she confidently handled her opening set for the chart-topping pop singer Khalid, her mannerisms were small, partly because of an autoimmune disease that can make it hard for her to move, and partly because the power of her music-a blend of polished melodies and indie rock introspection-comes from the heart, not the body. As Clairo, Cottrill performed tracks off her eclectic, guileless debut album, Immunity, exuding an unruffled chillness. Except the party is taking place in the bowels of the Chesapeake Energy Arena, and minutes earlier, Cottrill was singing her homespun songs about romance-blooming, unrequited, and everything in between-in front of thousands of people.
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