Noelle Scaggs sounds like someone who found the exit door on the California dream and landed somewhere quieter, cheaper, and—surprisingly—louder. “I’m in Nashville now,” she says, sounding as relaxed as you’d hope. “I moved here a year and a half ago from LA, and I kind of fell in love with the city really quickly.”
Fell in love, sure. But Nashville didn’t just flirt—it threw a house in her lap. “About ten days after I started looking. Everyone told me that never happens here.” If the universe was dropping breadcrumbs, Noelle was already halfway down the trail.
It helped that friends were already in town. “I think I was supposed to be here,” she says. “I had people to plug me into the scene, and Nashville’s just... easy. It’s laid back. You can find your footing really quickly.” For someone like Scaggs—best known as the powerhouse co-lead of Fitz and the Tantrums—“easy” means she’s been to more concerts in the past year than during most of her LA years. And for someone who lives and breathes pop-soul alchemy, that’s saying something.
She’s still writing, of course, but not just with the usual suspects. “It’s funny, actually—since moving here, a lot of my work has been with artists overseas. No clue why. They’ve just been calling more,” she laughs. At the same time, she’s been soaking up Nashville’s songwriting culture—country pros with pop instincts and storytelling chops. “They’ve taught me a lot of tricks, especially when it comes to narrative,” she says. “I’ve been able to bring that into my own work and collaborations.”
Which brings up the inevitable question: how does a long-distance band still function? Especially one as tightly-woven as Fitz and the Tantrums? “At this point, we’ve been together so long, we don’t have to live in the same city to create,” she says. “Of course, we don’t have the luxury of just walking across the street to Fitz’s house like we used to. But with everything digital now, we just pass ideas back and forth.”
That was the dynamic behind Fitz and the Tantrums, the band’s 2016 self-titled album—home of their biggest hit to date, “HandClap.” But the road to that particular song was anything but seamless.
The follow-up to More Than Just a Dream didn’t come easy. That 2013 album had spilled out fast and loud, fueled by two and a half years of non-stop touring. “We were so jazzed up, we maybe took two days off and went right back into writing,” Noelle says. “We had these anthemic choruses in our heads, big crowds singing along. It was like riding a wave.”
But after all that, they needed a breather. “We got burned out. People wanted to focus on families, buy houses, have babies. You know—real life stuff,” she says. “When it came time to start again, we looked at each other and said, ‘What do we even have to say?’”
Writer’s block set in. Ideas came and went. “We’d write something, feel good about it for two or three days, then listen back and think, ‘Eh... no.’ It was an ego check.”
So they did something they hadn’t before: brought in outside collaborators. “We just needed some help re-sparking what seemed to be dying,” she says. That meant working separately, sometimes in different cities, even different states. “I came to Nashville and started writing on my own. Fitz did the same in LA.”
Then came the email. “He called and said, ‘I’m sending you this track I just wrote. Tell me what you think.’” The lyrics weren’t all there yet, but the bones were. That track would become “HandClap.”
“At first I thought, ‘This is really different for us,’” she says. “It was exciting, but I was asking myself: is this still us? Are we stepping so far out that we lose who we are?”
She tinkered with ideas, flew to LA, and laid down vocals. “It just clicked,” she says. “Everything flowed. The energy was there. And I really don’t think we would’ve gotten the record done without that separation, that breathing room, and letting ourselves admit we might need help.”
“HandClap,” of course, became a full-blown phenomenon—an earworm anthem blasted at sporting events, award shows, commercials, and pretty much any public gathering that needed to feel like it was on fire.
“It’s definitely the catchiest thing we’ve ever done,” she says, grinning.
And yet, Scaggs still thinks like an artist in evolution, not a brand. The band’s push for creativity hasn’t let up, even as they’ve branched out into side work and solo opportunities. “This has been a real growing stage for us,” she says. “We’ve been super focused on this record and promoting it, but we’re also creating as much as we can outside the band too. Just keeping it moving.”
Near the end of our conversation, she shifts from music to politics without missing a beat. This was the day after Barack Obama’s farewell address, and she’d been moved. “I loved everything he said. Especially that line—‘We dictate where we’re going.’ It reminded me of one of our own lyrics, actually: ‘It’s complicated, but we can make it.’”
Out of context, maybe. But not untrue.
Whether it's writing pop songs in a Nashville living room or navigating the long-distance life of a band still finding new territory to dance on, Noelle Scaggs has figured out how to live the lyric.
Complicated? Sure. But they’re making it.
Listen to the full interview above and then check out the video below.
