Kim Deal speaks to Stevie Chick.

Hair-raising adventures: Kim Deal swears The Breeders have a Christmas song.

How was The Breeders’ recent tour supporting 21-year-old pop superstar Olivia Rodrigo?

“We did four nights at Madison Square Garden! Being the opening act to a big thing like Olivia basically means playing to people who are trying to find their seats. But it was an exciting adventure. She’s a fantastic singer, and she’s been very supportive of us. She talks about how, for her, there’s ‘before hearing Cannonball’ and ‘after hearing Cannonball’, and how we broke her little brain.”

In 2013, you told me you were releasing solo 7-inches, because “no-one can afford bands any more”.

“After five of them, I thought about putting the singles out as an album, so people didn’t have to keep getting up to turn the 7-inches over, but felt weird about selling people the same songs again. I decided to write a bunch of new songs for the album, but then the 20th anniversary of Last Splash happened, and then The Breeders recorded our All Nerve album. Once all that was done, I started writing solo songs again. I’m always writing.”

What determines if something you write becomes a Breeders song or a Kim Deal song?

“They put themselves in the sorting hat – they sort of say what house they’re going to be in. For instance, Summerland has a ukulele on it, and I knew that would really bum [Breeders bassist] Josephine Wiggs out in such a deep, profound way it could never be a Breeders song. And when I wrote Coast, I could hear the horn part in my head, and I tried to get Kelley [Deal, Breeders guitarist] to play the horn part on guitar. But it didn’t sound as fun; I knew it would be more fun to have the horns. But again, I knew Josephine wouldn’t like that, so…”

Tell me about Are You Mine?. The title suggests it’s a love song, but it’s more complex than that, isn’t it?

“My mother had Alzheimer’s. I was caring for her, and one day she stopped me in the hallway and asked me, ‘Are you my baby?’ And there was something so sweet about it – she didn’t know my fucking name, but she knew that I looked more than familiar. It was more than, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ – she meant, ‘Were you my little baby doll?’ It just showed that the strand of motherhood actually can endure. Even with the mind completely gone, and all notion of what a family might be gone, there was still some umbilical cord there. When she said, ‘Are you my baby?’, it was a beautiful sentiment that I wanted to live in – I wanted to think about it, to understand it. And it’s a good love song, too. I was so lucky. She was so sweet. So the thought of it is just so warm and great, to live in her asking me that, and then just thinking about it.”