Role Model: ‘I’m Not Trying to Be a Pop Star!’

Tucker Pillsbury, a.k.a. Role Model , does not enjoy being pinned down. He knows he makes pop music, but don’t call him a pop star. He’s comfortable drawing on country music — even Toby Keith — but definitely don’t call him a country artist. He’s not even sure about his own stage name, despite his growing fame under it. As he tells it, he spends most of his strong new album, Chuck Timely & The Hourglass , dodging labels, blending vintage influences from Fleetwood Mac to Stephen Bishop in search of something new.

Pillsbury recently sat down for an in-depth Rolling Stone Studio interview, discussing his secret Madonna influence, his girlfriend Dakota Johnson’s one-take cameo on “Love I You,” his nerve-wracking first day acting opposite Natalie Portman, and much more. (Watch the whole interview above or on YouTube.)

The box people try to put you in is “pop star,” and it seems like that’s not necessarily the box you wanna be in. Well, it’s tough because I do say that I make pop music, and I think as soon as you say that and you’re, like, thrown into this list of names of all these people who make pop music, all of a sudden there’s just constantly this debate of who’s going to be… who is the pop star? Who’s the pop boy right now or whatever? Main pop boy, yeah. Yeah… I just don’t want to be in that race, ’cause I’m not trying to be a pop star. And I think you can hear it in the music. Being a pop star is not interesting to me. I don’t want to do that. But I love pop music, and I love making it.

Is part of it you just don’t wanna wear the outfits? It’s the shiny outfits for me — and the background dancers.

There used to be a lane called Heartland rock — John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, with Jackson Browne as a kind of L.A. predecessor. I feel like that’s part of the lane you’re steering into. You and Noah Kahan are really in there right now. Yeah, everyone you just named was on the playlist and was fully referenced all throughout the album. Those are the heroes. Maybe that’s my, my… Maybe we bring back Heartland rock.

I think your team also maybe calls it lake-pop? Yeah. There’s one guy at my label, I remember him just being like, “It feels like it’s lake music, like lake pop, pontoon pop music.” I think there’s pieces of the early 2000s, like Toby Keith or whatever, and that lake Americana country, but lyrically, those songs don’t really speak to me. But sonically, I love that feeling, and so I think that was a cool thing to play with, is apply a different type of songwriting to that sonic landscape that’s usually used for beer cans and dirt roads and stuff. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

You didn’t wanna write a Toby Keith, America’s-gonna-kick-your-ass song? Yeah. I’m not, I’m not sure I’m feeling that.

Your relationship with country is interesting to me. A lot of the people drawing on those references in recent years have been more in the country realm, and if a song like Sally were marketed a bit different, it’s not inconceivable you could be seen as a country artist.