As he brings The Y’All Tour to the UK, glaive talks Douglas Jardim through the songs of self-discovery that have anchored his life.
Defying genre since the sweet age of 16, Ash Gutierrez’s pensive pop catalogue shows no signs of greying any time soon.
His youngest years may be behind him, but fleeting adolescence has evolved into musical maturity, a newfound joie de vivre in story and sound. This was not always the case, the lauded merits of glaive's DIY electronic, hyperpop-adjacent projects overlook the internal struggles of a rather atypical teenager by Google Search standards.
When BEST FIT last spoke to Gutierrez in 2021, a string of EPs lay in wait. He mused on reflections of growing pains, frustration with falling into the entertainment business:
“Listening back to my old stuff on SoundCloud, I realise it sucks – the lyrics don’t even matter if the sound isn’t good,” he cringed. Fans of glaive’s early emo rap experiments may beg to differ, erase their existence and there’ll be no i care so much that i don’t care at all or May It Never Falter. Piercing bodies of work projecting maximalist beats and quippy bars into the internet ether, where they now sit comfortably among the most influential of cloud rap uploads.
Today, at 20 years of age, Gutierrez is not afraid to discuss his darkest days, the truth behind the lived experience transfigured into witty lyricism on songs like “astrid” and “touché”. Not least the laments over the loss of his idol Lil Peep.
“I used to be pensive and quiet and really sad, and then I was pensive and loud and really depressed,” he tells me. “I’ve always thought about everything that was happening when I was a kid. I didn't have a way to process all the things that I was thinking, so it overwhelmed me, all the time. I've used this analogy with my friends before, but I feel like sometimes I'm a water bucket, and the water's almost all the way full, and probably from when I was 17 to 19 it was fully overflowing. I was losing it, but now I've got it maintained.”
His third studio album, 2025’s Y’all, was formed by a radical change in the lifestyle of the North Carolina artist. “I have created a more normal life, and it's super awesome, it definitely goes into making music.”
A coming-of-age companion piece to his prior output, where glaive opens his heart to his hometown. “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying”, is a sugar sweet song capturing the terror of falling for someone. Album closer "Bennie & Kay” is a very special ode to the loss of his grandparents in the space of a year. “I think the reason I got better at song writing is because I think a lot, and I read a lot, which helped.”
Referencing a photo of the famous Juventus soccer player Alessandro Del Piero, the cover of Y’all elicits celebration. He shoots, he scores. This winning feeling, of happiness, the embodiment of a new mode of life within the last two years. He is set to play his album with a run of UK tour dates, and one in Utrecht, Netherlands, in February.
“All I really care about is writing really good songs and looking really cool. That's what I'm trying to do in life, it's my mission.” For Gutierrez, what makes music age well is words. Words are what people can attach their feelings to, writing really hard and being genuine certifies longevity.
His Nine Songs selections chart a course of accidental discovery, all vastly different in style and form: female-fronted pop-punk, Michigan rap, and Daniel Bedingfield. “It just hit me one day, it went from radio, straightforward songs with a billion streams on Spotify, to 10 songs on SoundCloud that have, like, Arabic titles.” A self-confessed big radio child, Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” was his favourite kind of radio song, emotional guitar anthems with a little electronic element.
Gutierrez’s parents and closest friends are the glue that holds glaive together, his growth in songwriting can be attributed to their influence in the bridge between child and man. For it is the iPod belonging to Gutierrez’s father that introduced his son to radio pop.
A recent obsession with the British side of his family sprung from the Britpop band recommendations of his mother, who is from the Lake District. On a trip to the Cotswolds with long-time collaborator kurtains, they watched Oasis: Supersonic together.
Upon dissection, his selections share one recurring characteristic that connects the divide – genius song writing. He credits Slaughter Beach, Dog’s indie rock hit “104 Degrees” as the reason behind his love of Haruki Murakami books. Babyface Ray & 42 Dugg’s “Ron Artest” gave new impetus to that winning feeling.
While the cogs are in motion for glaive’s next album, though very much so in its infancy, Gutierrez recognises his evolution. He admits that before Y’all, he could never really put into words his exact feelings, that maybe he just didn't have the emotional intelligence to say exactly what he meant.
“Post Y'all, I've made a lot of more fun songs, because I'm having more fun in life. I love ‘Veni Vidi Vici’. There's some bars in that album that I think are so crazy. ‘It Is What It Is’, the verse where I go, “Michelle Yeoh, I couldn't cope, it's all happening at once.”
“Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne
glaive: My dad had this song and the album on his iPod; it’s one of my first memories. I thought it was super weird that I liked it, because the cover art was pink and I was a boy, and I remember being confused. But I really was blown away, and I felt very feminine. I'm like, eight years old, just being, like, ‘Damn, this song is so fire.’
I woke my dad up at 3am when I was 15, because she’d DM’d me on Instagram, and he thought it was pretty cool. Also, I met Avril a few years ago, she was super nice to my mom, but she didn’t really say anything to me, lol. Goat.
BEST FIT: Avril Lavigne is arguably one of the greatest pop-punk acts of our generation. Following this discovery, did you find yourself drawn to female-fronted rock bands like Paramore and Evanescence?
I don't think I listened to a band until I was maybe 16. I feel like most young teenagers are listening to bands, but I was just so into really intense electronic music and really kind of bad emo rap music. But I like Paramore now, I think they're cool. There's some really awesome electronic remixes of their songs. My Chemical Romance, I saw them live in San Francisco, and it was super cool. I was very slow to bands, it took me a long ass time.
Other than your dad’s iPod, how did you consume music growing up?
My parents didn’t give me a phone ‘til I was 15, they said that it was bad, and in reality, they were super right, it's pretty bad. I got a laptop for Christmas one year, it was 2016 SoundCloud rap era. When I first was able to listen to my own music, I immediately started listening to that and out-there stuff.
As a kid, I had no interest in hearing music other than what was on the radio. I loved radio music, I still think radio music is really good, except now a lot of it sounds like AI. But at the time it was really good.
“OMFG” by Lil Peep
I heard this song for the first time when I was 11 or 12? It was the first time I had heard someone say they wanted to kill themselves in a song. I was a very sad child, so I resonated. I loved how he had tattoos but seemed like a nice guy. Where I’m from, at the time, it seemed like tattoos were some evil thing.
Lil Peep is my top artist of all time, he is the best. When I started making music I wanted to make music like him. RIP.
I remember when he passed, I had just started university. It was pretty devastating news for a few of my friends.
I was so completely devastated when he passed away. I cried, I was just a kid, and I didn't even necessarily understand the emotions that he was talking about. It was probably super cringe looking back, ‘Young boy who's probably pretending to be more upset than he is.’ It was a very specific time, this very specific vibe that other people did well, but he did it so well.
What do you admire about Lil Peep’s music that makes him your top artist of all time?
He had this perfect voice, I loved his music, it was sonically so different than anything I'd ever heard. I could have picked any Lil Peep song, my favourite is called “ghost girl”, but “OMFG” is the one I always come back to.
On a musical level, it's a fun song, because the 808 is out of key, and I love that. The 808 is so fucking loud and immediately wrong when it comes in. Not specifically this song, but a lot of his songs talk about doing music, and then I started doing music, and I was able to relate even more.
I very distinctly have memories of being a young kid, I was all in. I had all my chips on him, bro, I was a big fucking fan.
“104 Degrees” by Slaughter Beach, Dog
I heard this song when I was 18 and it was the first time that I was truly struck by how wonderfully written a song can be. There isn’t really any singing, it’s more just talking. It also inspired me to read Murakami, and he ended up being one of my favourite authors.
Are Murakami’s books a big song writing inspiration for you? Have you always been an avid reader?
I'd heard of Murakami because my friend had wanted me to read Norwegian Wood. I grew up reading and then I kind of stopped when I started making music. I was listening to this song and he references Murakami. I was like, ‘Fuck it, I'm just going to read this book.’
I have a tattoo of Norwegian Wood, I think it's one of the best books ever. My friend kurtains, who's in my house right now, I'm making him read it.
I love reading. If you're writing something, so many books just have a great line, or a great thought. There's so many things you can garner from a book. I've always thought that it's the easiest way to write a song, because [musicians] just take a line from a book, or a name or an idea.
Maybe a lot of musicians read books, but if you make music, or you write music, you should definitely be reading books. It just makes sense in my brain.
“Crowbars” by kurtains
This song changed my life, kurtains is my guy.
No one knew my music at all, and some people knew his. He made the first good song out of either of us. It was called “bullets”, it got likes on SoundCloud and it was like, ‘Whoa.’ Neither of us had ever tasted any success, and he definitely tasted some with that song.
Then his next song after that was “crowbars”, and he featured me, and I don’t really know why. It started everything for me. I have some bars of all time on this song. “Boring like the state of North Dakota” is just classic. His part is honestly really good and my part is pretty terrible. I love this song, I love that guy, slowsilver03 baby...
Maybe my music career would have worked out completely the same if that didn't happen. But I love to think that really did change my life, that one song, although it's not the biggest song, definitely it’s not my best vocal performance, I think it was an important song in my lore. If it was on an iceberg, it'd be pretty deep down there.
You repaid the favour with a feature, “Live & Direct” on May It Never Falter, as well as “Modafinil” on Y’all.
We definitely started off as really good friends, we both went and did our own thing for a year or two, and then we just reconnected. “Live & Direct” was the first song that we made together in ages. He's at my house right now. We're making an album together. If I had to bet on one guy, that's the guy, you know?
“You Are the Answer to My Security Question” by Cloud District
I had a long period of my life where I only listened to electronic and rap music, and this was the first song I listened to that was a band.
This song, along with The 1975, really inspired my first album. The beginning, with the talking is so nice on the ears. It's a very emotionally charged song, it's a fucking beautiful song.
The production, it just sounds like they're having a fun time, but they're super depressed doing it, if that makes sense? They're enjoying making music, but still, at the end of the day, they're not having a good time, which I always thought was really cool.
That song really made me want to make guitar music. At that time, I was not listening to electronic music at all, I was just listening to bands. I just found out about them, I was like, ‘This is such a new world.’ I was the biggest Modern Baseball fan. I was so into Midwest emo music and basically just bands, guitar music. I was like, ‘I want to do this,’ and I did it.
In what ways did The 1975 inform your relationship with band music?
I love their music still, I think Matty Healy's great at writing. He seems like a fucking moron, but he's a really good writer. I'm pretty jealous of some of the songs he's written. I made a song called “as if”, but it's very literal and it's kind of pseudo-intellectual sounding.
Both of us definitely think that we're really good at writing songs, maybe at the time I wasn't the best songwriter, but it definitely inspired me to want to sit and write a song. Just make a song about how you feel, make the first line how you feel, and then figure out the words that rhyme for the next three lines.
“For You” by Bladee ft. Ecco2k
I heard this song when I was, like, 14? I sent it to a girl I had a crush on named Angie, she thought it was trash and told me she liked ‘normal music’. I genuinely thought/still think that “Dirty, when I’m in New York I go to Jersey” is the best lyric ever. I met Bladee and Ecco at a music festival, I didn’t really say much, I was pretty nervous. I would have been 16 at the time.
Your respective fanbases seem pretty aligned, as cloud rap listeners. Have you entertained the possibility of a collab?
I love Bladee. I don't think Bladee necessarily knew who I was.
That song is so good, I don't think I would ever make a song with him. I think he's really fucking sick, and it's cool that he's from Sweden and his English isn't very good. I've always thought that was really cool. Yung Lean, all that, I have always thought that they were the coolest thing ever. If they want to make a song, maybe I would do it. But in my mind, it’s ‘y'all have your own vibe going on, don't include me.’ Please just keep doing what y'all are doing because that's you, I feel.
Did you keep up with a lot of the Drain Gang releases, as a teenager?
It probably went from Lil Peep to their music, that was my natural transition, and I thought it was really normal. I still think their music is not as out there as everybody thinks. It might just be because I've been listening to it since I was, like, 12, but I think that's super fucking awesome.
Bladee is a beautiful songwriter, I think a lot of people don't give him credit for how amazing of a songwriter he is. I love how spiritual his lyrics are. At first, the beats were really fun, and he was kind of bad at rapping, and it was just super autotune.
It was great, but now he's a genuinely amazing songwriter, maybe I'm a great songwriter, I think I'm really good, but that's hopefully the career trajectory that I'm picking as well. I just get really really good at songwriting, and maybe I become Swedish or something.
“Ron Artest” by Babyface Ray, 42 Dugg
This was my most listened to song in 2023. I had sort of slowed on listening to only band music. I was at a pretty low point in life, and this song made me feel like I won something, which I honestly really needed at the time. It’s a crazy song, it's nuts.
My favourite rapper forever is 42 Dugg, which people really don't agree with. I had a really long, pseudo-intellectual conversation with somebody about how I genuinely think 42 Dugg is the best living rapper.
I found this song because I was listening to 42 Dugg on shuffle. I've DM’ed 42 Dugg, like, 10 times, and he's never responded. I feel like I rep him so hard. He needs to DM me back, to be honest, but it's okay, I understand, he's rapping, he's doing his own thing.
Why do you think rap music continues to play such an important role in your life, and your artistry?
A lot of the rap music that I love doesn't sound anything like the rap music that I make, which I think is probably a part of why the rap songs I make sound very different than what I listen to.
I love Pooh Shiesty, I used to really like Gucci Mane, I still do, I guess. I genuinely think that a lot of rappers are geniuses, Kodak Black is probably a genius. I don't know what you classify as a genius, but he’s one of the best modern songwriters.
There's so many good bars and I'm so jealous, a lot of them are doing it just off art and soul, they're not thinking about it like, ‘it's a good bar’. It just comes out, and it feels so natural.
“If You’re Not the One” by Daniel Bedingfield
This is a deep cut! How on earth did you come across this UK number-one from the 2000s?
Kurtains and I were in the Cotswolds, I don't know how he found the song, but he was just playing it.
I realised a lot from this song, it’s so simple. The entire song doesn’t matter, I cannot tell you another lyric apart from “If I’m not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?”; it’s the best lyric of all time, and the way he sings it, it's crazy.
I’d never heard Daniel Bedingfield, I heard his sister, his sister's lit. He's not as lit, but that song is actually absurd. I've never been so blown away by one lyric like that. I listen to that song just to hear him say that. I don't particularly think the rest of the song is super amazing, but that one part, ‘oh my God, dude’. He was out of his body, in another dimension, when he thought of that.
Me and my friend are making an album together, we’re having a really British phase, and my mom is from the UK. She sent me a bunch of Britpop bands from her youth, and I've been listening to a lot of music like that, so a lot of songs could have gone in that place. But I think, just based on how much of an emotional reaction I had to that one lyric, I had to put it in here. In my mind, I wish I wrote that lyric, but I never would have. It's on another level.
You share your name with a “Britpop” band, called Ash. Have you listened to any of their music?
They honestly have, like two good songs. They're definitely not reading this. I think they're much older. But Ash, man, how did they think of that name? It's genius.
What does a British glaive album cycle look like?
At least where my mind's at right now, is that I want to record it in the UK. Y’all is about my North Carolina side, my dad's side of the family, I suppose. But I want the next album to visually and, I guess sonically, explore this British side of my family.
I asked my grandfather, who's on my British side, if he would help narrate it, so hopefully that will happen. I don't know what it's going to be called, I'm nowhere near that thought process. But I want to be British. I'm not gonna be doing a fake British accent, I'm gonna be singing normal, but I want the production to draw inspiration from this song, and then Britpop.
This album I was cosplaying a soccer player. Probably for the next album I'm going to cosplay Liam Gallagher, and smoke cigarettes and shit.
But I think also it'll be interesting because I'm not British, and it's the same way that I found out about soccer two years ago. So I have this interesting relationship with it, it's new for me.
“She’s Electric” by Oasis
This song has changed my life recently, my mom is British, and I never really cared about them, but I think my next album will be super British. I love Oasis. I just found out about Oasis, which I know is blasphemous to 99% of the world. I knew the big Oasis songs, and they have made some of the best songs ever.
When we were in the Cotswolds, we watched their documentary. Liam’s probably the most interesting person ever. I guess maybe it sounds to me like a Beatles song, like they were just writing something that already existed, it fits so perfectly.
"She's electric / She's in a family full of eccentrics,” I just love the way that it flows. I love the melody, I love the production, I love his voice in the song. The demo is really good as well.
Were you able to catch Oasis on their massive reunion tour last year?
No, I want to go so bad, but I was finding out about them as these tours were going on. I think it was very much a coincidence, but they're doing a show in Japan, and me and my friend are thinking about going to Japan, so we might catch one.
I'm very much so enamoured by those boys. They're riveting, and I think everyone thinks they're riveting. Definitely British people, more so than American people, think they're riveting.
glaive is on tour now, and plays O2 Forum Kentish Town on 8 February
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