Loveland, due July 10, is Suki Waterhouse‘s third album, but that doesn’t mean she’s finding the creative process any easier. “The more you know, the less you know,” she says in a new episode of the Rolling Stone Studio. “There’s so much more expectation on yourself.” Either way, it’s her best work yet, a major-label debut full of hooks, organic production, and razor-sharp lyrics that grapple, in part, with what Waterhouse calls “a seismic change in myself” — becoming a mom.
Her collaborators on the album include producer Aaron Dessner of the National, hit songwriter Amy Allen (she co-wrote Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso“), Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, and, for one track, Mick Fleetwood on drums. In the new episode of the Rolling Stone Studio, Waterhouse sits down with senior writers Brian Hiatt and Angie Martoccio to break down the making of Loveland and more. Here are some highlights from the discussion.
“Back in Love” is about emerging from the identity crisis she experienced after giving birth to her daughter two years ago
“For me, it felt like the first time I kind of realized: I’m back in love,” says Waterhouse, who welcomed her first child with longtime partner Robert Pattinson in 2024. “I can be all these things at once, and I am. And actually the things that I was afraid of, I don’t think I have to be afraid of anymore. I think being a parent has given me more love. It’s actually helped me refine my own happiness.”
Taylor Swift once described Waterhouse as “the wildest person I know who I would also trust to keep any secret”
“I actually remember where I was when I saw that she’d written that,” Waterhouse says. “I was lying in bed somewhere on tour. Like, how has this happened?” And what, exactly, did she do in front of Swift to earn the distinction? “I wouldn’t be telling you that. I wouldn’t be able to say. I think I’m wild in spirit. I’m not — look, I’m not too crazy.”
Waterhouse traded favors with Mick Fleetwood, who plays drums on her album
“I had this kind of crazy idea — I guess it was sort of like Daisy Jones and the Six,” she says, referring to the series adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 book, in which Waterhouse starred. “How could I ever get Mick Fleetwood to drum on one of my songs? So I reached out to Mick and said, ‘Would you be interested, possibly, please, would you ever be interested in drumming on “Morals”?’ And he films everything, so I got so many videos sent from Hawaii where he has his studio. He did a bunch of amazing takes.” Fleetwood, it turned out, has a collaborative album of his own in progress. “It was like, ‘You drum on my record, I’ll do a song for your record.’ He flew his producer over to New York, actually, and we did all the vocals in New York too.” She’s still never never met him in person: “He was leaving Hawaii for the Harry Styles show. That was the only time I think I would’ve been able to catch him.”
Aaron Dessner was totally into using a demo vocal that Waterhouse recorded while sick
Waterhouse traveled to Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, where Swift, Noah Kahan, Gracie Abrams, and many others have recorded. “It’s such a strange and surreal thing, pulling up to Long Pond, which is obviously such a famous studio where so many of my heroes have made such incredible music,” she says. “I kind of fell asleep in the car and opened my eyes and there’s that beautiful cabin in the woods.” When Waterhouse told him she wanted to use demo vocals instead of a pristine take, he agreed right away: “He’s like, ‘Oh, sure.’ Some other producers would be like, ‘No, you’re using my amazing microphone, not the SM7.’ But he was so cool about it. And he said, ‘Yeah, [the National] have a song where our singer was really, really sick as well, and we loved it, and it was great.’ He’s so egoless. It’s so different when you work with a producer who’s also an artist.”
She’d still return to Daisy Jones and the Six for another season
“Of course,” she says. “I think we all would. That was the best time ever. It was one of the best times of my life, making that show.” (Also settled: Fleetwood has seen it. “He definitely has. I think they’ve all seen it.”)
Her first big-venue gig, opening for Father John Misty, was a disaster
“I was in the deep end, definitely,” she says, of her 2022 tour with the mercurial singer-songwriter. “I learned so much, honestly, by just failing a lot. I did such a bad job. It was like my worst show. I didn’t really know how bad the sound was, and I was really excited. I got off stage and my managers were like, ‘That was really bad.’ So it was actually quite harrowing. But I had a great time.”
She loved interviewing BTS
“I had a script and I went very much off-script, and I kept poking them and asking them stuff,” she says of her Spotify interview with BTS earlier this year. “They were so down for me. They’re hilarious — they have such a sweet banter with each other. Way more relaxed than maybe I would’ve thought… They love music, they have great taste in music, and they’re hilarious. I really enjoyed it.”
She had a carefully curated rap playlist for childbirth
“Ludacris was on it. Some Biggie Smalls. Ja Rule — quite a big favorite. Busta Rhymes. But I do remember the doctor being like, ‘You guys are really chill.’” That soundtrack was only part of the production, she notes: “Rob was having to hold so many things, ’cause I had a video camera, a UE Boom [speaker], like three different types of cameras that I was trying to get him to capture on. And I think he lost the UE Boom after. But he was just holding so many things.” (True to form, she later asked Dessner to create a 50 Cent vibe for her new song “Almost.”)
Asked to name the greatest songs ever made, Waterhouse cites T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” first — because she walked past Marc Bolan’s grave every day on the way to school
“I would get off the tube at Barnes station every day,” she says, recalling her school years in London. “He died right there. So I would have this moment every day walking past his grave in my school uniform, and I would always stand there and listen to his songs. His music reminds me of being a teenager and walking to school and feeling kind of like part of him every day.” Next is Judee Sill’s “Jesus Was a Cross Maker,” which prompts a revelation: “I was trying to make a movie about Judee Sill. I spoke to a bunch of her friends. I have a lot of unheard recordings from her.” Then “Some Velvet Morning” by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra; the Magnetic Fields’ “Asleep and Dreaming,” which she once got to sing with Stephin Merritt himself (“I actually can’t believe that happened. He’s like the sweetest man ever,” she says); and the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.”
The album closes with “My Favorite Weirdo,” which is Pattinson’s favorite track
The heartfelt closer is about Waterhouse and her partner being apart for work. “Since I’ve had my daughter, we’ve both been on this whirlwind, and he’s been making lots of movies, and that means not always being together, which is something that I find difficult and grapple with,” she says. “That song is reassuring to me. It feels like it has this knowing that we’ll be back together again. We can both be doing our own thing and be apart, and we’re strong enough — we have that thread between us.”
