The Honest Truth
NYLON|August 2017

Songwriter and hitmaker Julia Michaels is embarking on her solo singing career, and making sincerity the next big thing in pop.

Aly Comingore
The Honest Truth
The palm of Julia Michaels’s right hand bears a small stick-and-poke tattoo that simply reads “I love you.” I first catch a glimpse of it as the 23-year-old songwriter flips through the menu at the small Los Angeles restaurant where we meet for breakfast. I see it again when she whips out her phone to find a video of her puppy, Samson, adorably howling along to a fire truck siren. And again as she laughs about her recent trip to Las Vegas, where she walked the red carpet at the Billboard Music Awards in 100-degree heat. As she takes a bite of her egg sandwich, Michaels is all jokes and smiles, dressed in a breezy leopard-print dress that billows dramatically when she gestures, something she does often when she tells a story or gets excited about a topic of conversation.

“Sometimes I forget to tell myself I love myself,” Michaels explains when I ask about her tattoo. “So it’s a little reminder to love myself and breathe. Everyone has those days—me probably more than most.” That little reminder helped inspire “Issues,” her first single—and bona fide hit—as a solo artist. The track, which dropped earlier this year, is a slow-building ode to love that finds Michaels boldly embracing her own anxieties and imperfections. On it, she belts lyrics such as “I’ve got issues/ You’ve got ‘em too/ So give ‘em all to me/ And I’ll give mine to you” in a voice that sounds both self-assured and heartbreakingly fragile.

This story is from the August 2017 edition of NYLON.

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This story is from the August 2017 edition of NYLON.

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