Photos by Kathy Rosario
Photo Assistant: Ashley Conario
Makeup & Hair: Samantha Lepre
It’s a tale as old as time. One minute you’re floating in the pool with your bestie, sipping margaritas, and before you know it you’ve filmed a documentary about witchcraft. Wait… what?
The thought process that led to GG Magree and Vanessa Hudgens’ documentary film “Dead Hot: Season of the Witch” will surely be repeated as Hollywood lore for years to come.
“Vanessa and I moved in together during the pandemic,” Magree explains. “We both got single and thought, ‘OK, great, let’s live out our best single girl life together.’ It was the pandemic so you couldn’t really do anything, so we drank a lot of margaritas in the pool and watched a lot of ‘The Simple Life.’ We’re both super into witchcraft and as everything slowed down, you were almost forced to do shadow work… so we imagined we could do a crossbreed of ‘The Simple Life’ merged with witchcraft, feminine divinity and how to connect to your spiritual self.”
We’re willing to bet that Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie never imagined having this sort of legacy while they were struggling to figure out how to feed hogs back in the early 2000s, but Hollywood is a crazy place.
As “Dead Hot” started to come together, Magree knew that the time had come for a film like this. Not only did she want to make something fun, she wanted to take away some of the taboo that lurks in the perception of witchcraft.
“The thing with witchcraft is that it has such a dark name,” Magree says. “When I tell people that I’m a practicing witch they’re always like, ‘Don’t hex me!’ We wanted to bring that element to life and the best way to do it was to show two best friends going on a spiritual journey. And, you know, I’m a wild witch. I live my life to the full maximum extreme.”
During the height of the pandemic, many of us felt like the world was burning down around us. Magree found solace by focusing her energies inward through the practice of witchcraft. She cleared the negativity by connecting with her higher self and her spirit guides through meditation and placing trust in her intuition.
“The whole goal with witchcraft is to literally get to your highest self, [the place] where you vibrate the highest,” she explains. “And I think that is such a beautiful thing. What people don’t understand is that witchcraft is led by love. The entire thing is about how you can make yourself the best version of yourself.”
Introspection and intentionality are the keys to witchcraft, but they are necessary components for songwriting as well, so it’s no surprise that a gifted musician like Magree would be allured by both. As a DJ, Magree looked to her earliest musical inspirations while crafting songs. Growing up she listened to a lot of Nirvana, Bush, Parkway Drive and Nine Inch Nails; these bands formed the sonic foundation of Magree’s writing. Later on, she began to explore electro sounds through the Australian bloghouse scene, Chromeo, Teki Latex, the Bloody Beetroots and more. Something beautiful was born when the two worlds collided.
“It’s those hard bass lines that make you want to bounce off the walls, but they also have those crazy synth sounds that are so aggressive, and it’s such a nice mixture with rock music,” she explains. “I’ve always been more into the heavier-leaning stuff—punk, rock, hardcore—and the electro-sounding music like dubstep and bass. I’ve never been one for light music [laughs].”
Magree has developed daily rituals for both her spiritual journey and her songwriting. She tries her best to write every single day. While her music sounds anything but light, she usually does her writing with an acoustic guitar. Once she figures out a chord structure she’ll get locked into a flow and the words will come to her. Intuition is key throughout her writing process—if she doesn’t have a song complete within an hour and a half she scraps it and starts over.
“This is probably going to sound a little bit selfish, but I write for myself,” Magree says of her process. “I write what I love, it’s never to have a hit. It’s never to give people what they want. I know that my music isn’t for everyone—and that’s OK—but the people who do love it really love it.”
In her latest single, “King,” Magree is bridging the gap between witchcraft and songwriting. The song is an exploration of gender and power dynamics within society, delivered over grinding synths.
“Equality is something I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting for, and I wrote ‘King’ because I was just done with people being like, ‘Yes, Queen! Go, Queen!’” she says. “I’m like, ‘No, bitch, I’m a king. There’s no hierarchy for me, there’s no masculine, there’s no feminine—everyone is equal.”
“King” addresses the same issue that ultimately led to witchcraft becoming taboo centuries ago—patriarchy’s fear of powerful women. The prospect of women finding power within themselves has always been met with scorn and suspicion. While a lot has changed since the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century, similar roots can be found in some of the more regressive laws and actions today.
“Women became healers, women became powerful, and when they became more powerful than men, they just burned them at the stake,” Magree says. “It’s exactly what is happening in the world now, and it makes me so fucking sad. I can never wrap my head around the fact that every single person in this world still does not fight for equality.”
GG Magree planned on spending the pandemic drinking margs and hanging out with her bestie but ended up finding so much more. She looked inward and emerged with a new project, a renewed vigor to write songs, and the urge to fight like hell to make the world a better place. Magree has found the most powerful version of herself, and no one better dare to get in her way.
