For many hyper-online sapphics, the name Fletcher is synonymous with the “lesbian breakup curse” of 2022 TikTok, the musician’s controversial breakup hit “Becky’s So Hot,” and all the juicy drama that surrounded it. But for Cari Fletcher, the 31-year-old behind the mononymic pop persona, being an artist means giving herself permission to shed these past selves when they stop feeling authentic.
“I’m not the same person that I was 10 years ago, and I am happy about that,” the singer tells me over Zoom. The New Jersey-born artist keeps her camera off for most of our interview so that she can find her words with the freedom she needs to fidget, unscrutinized. What she has to share is difficult for her to say. Fletcher has spent much of the last year metaphorically and literally camera-off searching for her new voice in Northern California, away from the harshness of social media, going for long walks in nature, and making pizza with her neighbors.
If her 2024 album In Search of The Antidote marked the blurring of the barrier between her artist persona and the softer self she shares with friends and family, then her forthcoming album Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me? bursts that fourth wall wide open. Set to release on July 18, the LP poses the question of what might happen if she shared her deepest truth with the world, her fans, and herself.
As Fletcher prepares to bare her soul to her audience and the world, she tells me she’s been sitting on a scary truth, one that will be out by the time this article goes live: She kissed a boy, fell in love, and is currently dating him. Amid the pervasive scrutiny being placed on queer people more generally, the judgment that gets brought to bear on sapphic women who explore their sexual fluidity, and the JoJo Siwa of it all, sharing that truth can feel terrifying.
“I’m cycling through some of the same feelings I felt when I came out 10 years ago of shame and guilt and fear and anxiety, and wondering how people are going to react and going to receive me,” she tells me. “Definitely I feel nervous, but I also know that my only obligation in this lifetime is to wholeheartedly show up for myself and create a safe space for myself and as a ripple effect, hope that that creates space for other people to be themselves and to step into that.”
