The Kid’s Gotta Lotta Moxie: Elena Charbila’s journey to becoming Kid Moxie, an L.A.-based cinematic electro-pop artist extraordinaire, is one that is long and storied. Originally from Athens, Greece, Charbilla was a child actor who was familiar with TV work from an early age.
When she started dabbling in music, she played bass in goth and rock bands, and eventually landed bigger gigs backing the likes of Canadian jazz singer Michael Bublé. Having left Greece and starting to establish herself, Charbila made the decision to do her own thing and Kid Moxie was born.
“I just figured, about 10 years ago or so, that I wanted to take control and play my own music,” she says. “My own notes. Write my own scripts, and perform them the way I wanted to. That’s when I started doing my solo stuff.”
Naturally, her sound has evolved. She admits that she cringes when looking back on some of her “homemade, riot grrrl pop.”
“It doesn’t feel right for what I want to be now,” she says. “So I would say now, I do retro-futuristic pop, or cinematic pop. Every song is based on a scene that’s playing in my head. I love soundtracks – that’s what I’m into and what I also do, apart from my pop stuff. But even my pop music is very cinematic. Even if it has words.”
Kid Moxie never lived in Athens as an adult, though she’s aware of strong synthwave and goth scenes in Greece and across Europe. She first moved to San Francisco for school, before settling in Los Angeles.
“I’m so, so in love with the city,” she says. “My new album is about love, sex and L.A. That’s what I like to say, because those are three things that have really shaped me in many ways. I fell in love with L.A. – it was like instant. I love the feeling, even if it’s an illusion, that anything can come true. I live in that space way better than any sort of harsh realism that ‘you cannot do this,’ ‘there’s a limit to this.’” No. This city is like, ‘You can be whoever you want. ‘I feel like everybody comes here to become something different than what they were before, and that’s why I came here – to become closer to myself, actually.”
It wasn’t long after she moved to Los Angeles that Elena Charbila became Kid Moxie.
“When I first moved to L.A., I noticed a bottle of Moxie Cola in the garbage, and the logo was so interesting to me,” she says. “I loved the ‘X’ especially. I was looking for a band name at the time, and I was like, ‘I need to do something that has Moxie in it because it just sounds powerful and badass, and genderless.’ I wanted a name that was genderless, feeling like I was experimenting a lot. I was like, ‘Kid – Kid Moxie,’ it all came together. I didn’t mind people thinking I’m a dude from the name.”
So the foundation was in place, and Kid Moxie was up and running. Still, as much as she loves L.A., she doesn’t yet feel connected with the scene here.
“I don’t really feel part of any music scene, to be honest,” she says. “I feel like I’m in my own little bubble, especially the last few years. I never really felt like I belonged in a collective as much. It was always feeling very individual. It was me, my laptop and the city. But that’s where I felt more like myself, more productive and creative.”
