Mickey Darling on Apples, Oranges, and Shia LaBeouf

Cover photo from Magnetic Magazine

Mickey Darling is a duo composed of twenty-four-year-old Skyler Molina (curly-headed singer and Aquarius) and twenty-three-year-old Austin Medrano (sexy, straight-haired guitarist/producer and Libra). Read below to find out their favorite celebrities as well as how they come up with their juicy lyrics.

OFF THE RECORD: First things first: How are you guys doing? 

MICKEY DARLING: We’re doing very well actually! Times are very crazy and weird right now, but we’re managing to keep our sanity afloat fairly well! We’ve just been mainly focusing on working on the next single while also giving time to our own side projects like “Nico Days” and “Late Night Jog” and “Sad Brad” just so we can have a bunch of things to constantly keep us interested during these times of quarantine.

OTR: Is there anything that you’re currently into (listening to, watching, reading, etc.)?

MD: Currently, I have been obsessed with an EP called “Don’t Get Dark” by an artist named “Del Water Gap” and also a song called “Josslyn” by an artist named “Olivia O’Brien”.

MD: I’m on the fourth season of Silicon Valley right now and it is definitely one of the best shows I’ve watched in a long time.

MD: And I’m currently reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and Supermarket by Bobby Hall (AKA Logic [the rapper]).

OTR: To move on to your music, what genre would you classify yourselves under? I’ve seen indie and bedroom pop thrown around, but what do you guys think? 

MD: Yeah, we usually just meet right in the middle of that and call ourselves “indie pop” just cause we feel like it gives an overall idea of the sound that we’re going for. We don’t really think we’re “indie” enough to be true indie or “bedroom pop” enough to be true bedroom pop. So we live in the limbo right in between I guess. LOL.

OTR: The lyrics to “I’m Just a Buzzkill” seem very personal. What was the thought process and inspiration behind this song? 

MD: Yeah, it was a super personal song to write. I really wanted to dig deeper than I ever had before and write about my life in a way that I never thought of doing. I went down all my memories of childhood and adolescence and teenage angst and family drama and girlfriend drama and friend drama, and I tried to put all the most important moments into a song. And in the end, the sort of catalyst of it all, was that looking back, I realized that throughout my entire life, I had been the buzzkill all along. The reason for a lot of the drama that went on in all my social circles. It was a really heartbreaking thing to realize and even harder to put into coherent words for people to understand. But it turned out to definitely be one of my faves just because of how personal it is. Like all my lyrics are super personal, but that one was on a different level of personal. I felt violated in a way, even though I was the one that technically violated myself. It was a fascinating process for me.

OTR: More questions about your songs: If you had to get rid of all the songs in your catalogue and only keep one, what song would you keep, and why? 

MD: Definitely would keep “Reverse Cowgirl”. That song is definitely our best work by far, to us. We’re super proud of that song. The music, the lyrics, the vocals, the production, the melodies. We had no idea we were capable of making something that good, to us. lol.

OTR: In your opinion, what makes a song “good”? 

MD: I think the main things that we focus on to try and make a song “good” in our eyes, is three main aspects. The first obviously just being the fact that the music is good and catchy and the hook can easily get stuck in ur head. The second thing being that we try our best to make sure our stuff sounds different in as many way as we can make it. Obviously we take inspiration from all our favorite artists and we know we’re not completely original by any means, but we try our best to take everything we love about all our favorite songs and make them our own. Put our own unique flare on the songs so the music sounds fresh and new and interesting to the average listener that’s just searching for a new feeling that they haven’t gotten from music yet. It’s a tough goal to have but it’s super rewarding when we feel like we accomplished it and we’re creating as much of “our own sound” as we possibly can. and the last aspect that I seriously focus on are the lyrics. I feel like a lot of artists mainly focus on the music and let the lyrics take a backseat, but i have this strong belief that music will capture a listeners attention but the lyrics is what keeps them coming back for more. I spend a lot of time making sure the lyrics are relatable enough so that anyone can understand and feel something to them, but also personal enough to where i feel like i’m truly getting to tell a story that i’ve experienced.

MD: So yeah, as a summary, the three main things that we think make a song “good” are: super catchy music, Your own original sound, and captivating lyrics.

OTR: What inspires your songwriting? For example: How do you come up with lyrics such as “And you’ve been practicing your deep throat / Tragedy”?

MD: I mean, the only thing that i could say to give some sort of coherent explanation is that i mainly just write about my last relationship. It’s my greatest source of inspiration and material at the moment. The relationship ended three years ago and i can still probably write another five-hundred songs or so about it. But my main inspiration as a “writer” is the author John Green. I read all his books like four or five years ago i think and i just fell madly in love with the way he wrote and how he explained things. Like, i’m a big reader, and i can’t stand books or authors that pander on about the rose color of the door handle that’s on the blue house that has an accent of lavender and a tad splash of peach raspberry on the bottom panel. Ya know? Like that kind of writing drives me crazy. I just want them to get to the point. I don’t care about what color the door is, I care about what they felt when they saw the door. I know that kind of sounds pretentious, but that’s just my perspective on it. So the reason that i fell in love with John Green and his writing, was that he would just get straight to the point in his books. No pandering. He was a forty-year-old man that perfected the art of writing like a sixteen-year-old. It still blows my mind thinking about it. So yeah, when we started Mickey Darling, i wanted to write straight to the point like John Green. I wanted the average listener to know exactly what i’m saying and what i’m feeling in every single lyric and I’m still just trying to get better and better at it. Maybe someday i’ll be as good as John Green.

OTR: How did you come up with the name “Mickey Darling”?

MD: Two years ago, I (sky) worked at a restaurant as a server, and I met this beautiful girl that worked with me that was named Mickey, except she spelled it Mikki (ew, I know, right?). But right when i heard her introduce herself, i thought it was the most brilliant stage name. I hadn’t heard it in a big pop stars name or a big band name, so i immediately thought that it would be perfect. So I wrote it down in my notes and then completely forgot about it. Then a few weeks later, I was at work and they were giving this weird powerpoint presentation to all the server that worked at the restaurant and on one of the first slides, it said the CEO of the companies name was “Taylor Darling” and i was so blown away at how beautiful and adorable the last name “Darling” was. So I wrote it in my notes and then completely forgot about it. Then fast forward a month or two, and me and aus were working on “Shia LaBeouf” and we realized we needed a name for the band before we could release the first single. So i sent him all the random names and ideas that I had in my notes and he sent over his. And the first text he sent back was something along the lines of “MICKEY DARLING has a nice ring to it”. And that was it. I knew right there when i read it, it was the perfect band name for us.

OTR: Why “fusk”?

MD: Lol, well I don’t actually cuss in my real day to day life. I never have really used curse words in my life growing up. (i just always thought they sounded weird coming out of my mouth) I would always use “filter words” so like i’d say “what the crap?” when i was younger or something silly like that. Over the years, i would come up with new filter words that sounded better or funnier so i could say cuss words without actually saying the cuss words. One random day like four years ago, i just accidentally said “what the fusk” and it was so weird because i had never thought of anything like that. But i immediately fell in love with it and then i’d just as “SK” to the end of literally any cuss word u can think of, and it would just sort of take the punch away from the actual cuss word. Lol, idk. Its super sully, but it sort of became an odd trademark of mine and now i can’t picture life without it. But i do cuss in Mickey songs because that would just be so weird it it was like “FUSK UR FEELINGS, and FUSK WHAT YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH!!! CAUSE IT’S MY PITY PARTY BABY!!!”. Ya know? lol.

OTR: Moving on. Apples or oranges?

MD: I think they’re both equally great in their theory and both for sure have their moments where they can easily outshine the other. But I definitely eat oranges way more than apples. I only really eat apples if I’m eating it with peanut butter, but I hardly ever do that anymore because I always hate myself afterwards. So i guess, for the sake of the question: ORANGES!

OTR: Who would you say is your favorite celebrity: Pauly D, Shia LaBeouf, Em Rata, or Shane Dawson? If not, who is? 

MD: I’d definitely say Shia LaBeouf is one of our favorite celebrities. Other notable celebs that we are fascinated with would have to be Matt Healy (from the 1975). Zach Fox (the comedian). Kenny Beats (the producer). Pete Davidson (Ariana Grande’s ex-boyfriend) (lol). and Drake (actor on Degrassi).

OTR: Are you more afraid of the ocean or of outer space?

MD: Well, i’ve never been to space so i cant accurately say how terrified i would be. and i’ve never been trapped in the middle of the ocean before, so i can’t really say how scary that would feel. But depending on the circumstances, i feel like i would much rather be in the ocean than in space. Cause at least i can breathe while floating in the ocean, although i am genuinely terrified of all the scary stuff that is in the ocean, but i just feel like space would be kind of boring and lonely after a while. I’m sure at first it would be fascinating, but i’m also sure that all that fascination would get real stale real quick. Idk, i guess i’m more scared of the lack of entertainment that space has to offer.

OTR: What are your feelings on Friends, the TV show?

MD: I’ve actually never seen Friends before. It seems like a good show to get lost in. I most likely will never watch it in my lifetime, but i can’t say i’m upset at that fact either. I’m sort of just in the middle about it. I’m glad it exists, but i’m not mad that i haven’t or will never see it. 

MD: And if by chance ur asking this question because i reference Friends in the bridge of “Protein Shake”, then i’ll clarify that Friends was the only popular one-syllable show that i could think of for that line, but the line was true. It’s just that the actual show that I was really talking about but couldn’t fit into the tiny rhyme scheme was Gossip Girl. Which was such a fantastically boring show to get lost in.

OTR: What are your favorite colors?

MD: Probably like a pastel pink or pastel blue. 

MD: I think aus’ fave color is like a seafoam green or something sexy like that.

Thanks again, Mickey Darling, for chatting with us! Make sure to check out their Spotify below!