A girls’ night out can lead to a hangover or two, but for the dream pop singer-songwriter Imogen Valentine, the aftermath was a new song, “Same Font Different Man.” The New York-via-London artist released the single this week while announcing the upcoming deluxe edition of her EP “Little Miss Optimist.”
“I came up with the concept after a wine night I had with some girlfriends,” Valentine says in a Zoom call, with no trace of a British accent despite growing up in the UK. “It was just sort of thinking about what had been spoken about throughout the night when the topic of men came up, and I thought it was interesting that everyone sort of had a similar story with a similar through line or commonality. It wasn’t all the same, but it rhymed a little bit.”
She wrote in her iPhone Notes app: “Same font different man” and she texted her lifelong friend, her fellow songwriter Isabella Kensington: “I just thought for whatever reason she would like the concept.”
Valentine enlisted the producer Chedda, whom she had worked with a few times before, because “I think we just had a gut feeling he was the right guy for it. And I came in with a couple references. I had been listening to a lot of hyperpop this past spring, and he sort of started fleshing out the production while Isabella and I wrote the song. He was working on one side of the room in the studio, and we were just writing based off what he was creating.”
In the accompanying music video, the New York-based artist is seen pecking away at a typewriter, wearing a camisole nightgown, sipping wine and watching an old-school TV.
“I love going on Pinterest,” she explains, “and I had seen an old photo of this woman in the 1950s with a typewriter and I loved it. I think a lot of my visuals tend to have a slight retro tinge. I love the ‘90s, and obviously this one leans a little bit more ‘50s, but I love kind of having a nod to the past and something a little bit nostalgic. So even though it was a hyperpop-leaning production, I kind of wanted to still have it, at least visually, to have this nostalgic tinge to it. I also just really liked the idea of juxtaposing this really modern glitchy production with a more nostalgic visual.”
Valentine wasn’t around professional musicians at home as a child, but she was surrounded by music.
“Without putting my parents on blast, I wouldn’t say either of them are particularly musically inclined. Both of them have said to me, ‘We don’t really know where you got your singing voice from.’ But my dad loves to play the guitar, and my mom is from Puerto Rico, so I grew up with some influences from there. And I feel like they both have really good taste in music and I think tried to immerse us in it.”
Early favorite artists included “the divas,” she says: “I loved Madonna. I remember I got an iPod Touch and my mom downloaded a bunch of Madonna songs and I was obsessed with her. She’s iconic. I loved Lady Gaga. Beyonce was a really big one for me, too. I remember I would organize talent shows at my school just so I could sing Beyonce. I’m trying to think who else? A lot of Coldplay. I mean, I remember listening to a lot of Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, my both my parents really liked jazz. And then there’s this artist from Latin America called Juanes, which I remember listening to a lot as a kid too. So it was maybe a little bit of an eclectic mix.”
She says she believes Lana del Rey has been her “biggest inspiration.” “I think she was really the reason why I wanted to become a songwriter, when I discovered her music and her art.” She also cites the Spanish singer Rosalía, Latin Mafia and The Marias, the LA band who sing in both English and Spanish.
Valentine moved to New York to attend NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, where she graduated with a degree in recorded music and a minor in Spanish.
“For whatever reason, I was always really set on going to NYU,” Valentine says. “I think I saw ‘Gossip Girl’ when I was 13, and Blair Waldorf, even though she didn’t like NYU, went to NYU. Through that I discovered that Tisch existed. That was a very monumental moment for me, even though Blair Waldorf rejected Tisch.”
She released her first EP, “Ouch!,” just two years ago, then “Little Miss Optimist” in 2026. She says the deluxe edition, to be released later this year, “sort of feels like the conclusion of the Little Miss Optimist era.” It will include two new songs.
“It’s a different sound from [‘Same Font Different Man’]. I think one of them leans a little bit more psychedelic and the other one’s definitely more indie pop. I think one is more of an extension of the world of Lady Karma, without giving too much away, but I think it sonically and thematically feels like it’s digging further into that world. The other one’s more indie pop, but also I think touches on themes of girlhood and friendship and whatnot.”
She’s performed at noted rooms in NYC such as Baby’s All Right and Bowery Palace, formerly Bowery Electric, and Pete’s Candy Store. On Oct. 2 she’ll play at Purgatory in Brooklyn.
More songs are on the way, possibly as standalone singles.
“My next goal is to hopefully create an album, my debut album. Touring and creating an album are the next two big goals that I have on the docket.”
In the era of streaming and a trend towards EPs, why is making an album a priority?
“Maybe it’s just for me, growing up sort of still in the era where you downloaded a whole album — it wasn’t you’re listening to it on vinyl, but you’re downloading a whole album on your iPod or on iTunes or whatever — I just think it makes me feel maybe a little bit like a little kid, where you get to kind of sit and listen to this body of work and immerse yourself.”
Photo by Steven Salgado
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