With French Musician Crystal Murray, Expect the Unexpected

When her first project, I Was Wrong, which she started writing as a 15 year old, came out, she says that people rushed to define her as a soul artist and compare her to artists like Jorja Smith. “I got super irritated and was like ‘Wait you guys didn’t hear all that I can do,’” she says. “When I talk about my music with my dad, he says ‘You’re rebellious like me. You don’t want to go in the boxes.’”

Watching Murray’s newest music video for her song “Other Man,” it’s clear to see that she’s as rebellious and creative in her look as she is with her approach to music. The song is off her new EP, Twisted Bases, out February 11, which is inspired by her first love and took cues from the soul and funk singer Betty Davis. “It was important for me to make a video of “Other Man,” because it was the only sad song of the project,” she explains. “It was important to have such a real song where I’m putting all my emotions in it. I’m talking about a toxic relationship where we are both toxic.” The first shot of the music video shows Murray suspended upside down, dressed in a cut out red catsuit, red opera-length gloves, and red hair piled into two pyramids on top of her head, Krusty the Clown style. Her eyebrows fade into her skin, and her eyelashes are spider-like (not in a Twiggy way; in a cobweb way). “Searching for other men,” she sings. “Looking from A to Z. Aroused by other flesh. I’m a beast.” In the final shot, Murray gives the camera a close-lipped grin that would make the Joker and the Cheshire Cat demur.

Her off-stage style—a collection of form-fitting styles in trippy prints—isn’t so different from what you see in the music video. “I’m a big fan of mesh,” she says. “It draws the body lines.” She’ll often switch up her hair, too, going from blonde curls to a pink and black mullet. With her talent for layering and finding eye-catching pieces, it’s easy to see why she became known for her style as a tween. “Fashion and music really link together because music is what’s inside of you, and fashion is what people see of your music,” Murray says. “It’s really, really interesting to work for a year on a project—be super inside in a tiny studio and work, work, work—and then have all these songs and be like ‘I need to put this in an image.’ I love the stage; I love making a personage.”