Glüme wants it all. Born & raised in Los Angeles, it all started with a Judy Garland biopic. When a six-year-old Glüme heard her parents arguing about money, she knew what to do. If the Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy Gale could become a star and buy her parents a house in the real world—Glüme could do it too. She stopped going to school, started taking dance lessons and started booking auditions.

Baby Glüme landed roles in 102 Dalmatians, Kingdom Hearts, and a Hayao Miyazaki film, but her airy voice & melancholic aura wasn’t exactly what the Disney Channel was looking for. “There were all these happy, girl power albums, but they were all written by men. Guys would say to me, you need to be more empowering, more uplifting. I don’t have any of that to say.”

Fast forward…Glüme hears Chromatics on Spotify Shuffle. Immediately, she knew that Johnny Jewel’s production was the only way the music in her head could be translated to the outside world. Her years as an actor had supplied her with enough connections to get a meeting with the president of Warner Brothers & Rihanna’s lawyer, but she couldn’t track down Johnny Jewel. Then, out of nowhere, Glüme wound up in the ICU for two weeks. After dozens of tests, she was diagnosed with Prinzmetal Angina, a rare heart disease. It felt like a door had closed.

“I didn’t like the vision of myself as a sick person. So I went on The Internet.” Between getting sick & living through the pandemic, her entire existence was online. She submerged into Instagram and dove headfirst into TikTok. Lying in bed for days, scrolling through her own profile, it resembled a real life. It looked like she was having fun. Laughing in parks & looking glamorous. “My online presence was my truth even though it was a lie. I have this self at home who is sick & then this self on The Internet that’s doing amazing. The world wasn’t working for me. But online, I could live the life I wanted to live.”

She started making music alone with a laptop & a microphone. After a few months, her friend Huntington joined the project. The same computer that she was living through vicariously was quickly becoming her ticket to the outside world. Out of the blue her & Huntington saw a “Submit Demo” button pop up on the Italians Do It Better website. Glüme impulsively sent in a demo, & thirty minutes later, she got an email from Megan Louise that simply read… “Johnny loves your music, call me at this number.”

She never dreamed her new life with a chronic illness could include filming music videos dressed in latex vogueing on the roof of a vintage car, singing her own lyrics into the fogged camera lens. “I called my cardiologist, asking if I was going to kill myself by doing this. He didn’t hesitate – ‘You’ve worked for this your whole life. You have to do it.’”

It was reminiscent of a type of self-fashioning Glüme learned at a very young age. Seeking refuge from an absent mother-figure, her early years were spent in therapy. When she told her therapist that she didn’t know what being a woman looked like, Glüme was handed a Marilyn Monroe biography. “My therapist told me that Marilyn invented herself. When she said that, I felt better.” In a process similar to applying a filter to a selfie or cropping a photo, Glüme was born.

She is self-proclaimed as the Walmart Marilyn. She is not IV drips or a victim trapped in a sterile doctor’s office. She’s a shooting star. Framed by the most vivid reds with the face of a doll. She’s not nights spent home alone, in pain. She is Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, & Audrey Hepburn. She is the choreographer, the editor, the dancer, the writer, & the audience. “Sometimes I don’t know which is more authentic. When I don’t want to be known – that’s when I’m the most Glüme. But I love her, whoever she is. And I don’t know if she’s sick.”