Q: Hey, can you tell us a bit about where you come from, and what made you want to start a career in music?
A: Hi! Thanks so much for having me. I was born and raised in West London, and grew up learning and playing classical and jazz music from the age of about 5. I picked up my Dad’s acoustic guitar when I was 14 and started to teach myself how to play from YouTube and Guitar Tabs, learning covers of my favourite songs, from The Beatles to Lucy Rose. It was after I posted my first cover of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love that a friend from my GCSE music class asked me if I wrote music and could he record a live session for his YouTube channel. I hadn’t ever written a song before but I really wanted to record the session with him, and so I wrote my first song. It was through this process that I fell head over heels in love with songwriting, and the rest was history.
Q: And what other artists have you found yourself listening to lately?
A: I’m loving Gretel Hanlyn and Hannah Jadagu – both incredible artists making brilliant music!
Q: Who were your first and strongest musical influences?
A: When I first started writing music, I loved folk and indie. I adored Bob Dylan, Gabrielle Aplin, Bon Iver, Arctic Monkeys, Bombay Bicycle Club, Peace. I then started to become obsessed with more electronic-influenced music, such as the Japanese House and London Grammar, but Lorde has been the single biggest influence on my music to this day.
Q: You have just released your new EP, ‘jaded/faded’. Is there a story behind it?
A: ‘jaded/faded’ was formed over the first lockdown, and really just captures my 2020 and how I was feeling. I had just left university and felt very lost in life, and I was also ending a relationship as another one unexpectedly began. There was a lot going on, and this EP summarises my thoughts and feelings during that messy year.
Q: What is the message of your music?
A: I tend to write a lot about mental health, and it’s all quite angsty, but I think I ultimately just want the listener to feel connected to something – whether that’s themselves, me, a feeling, just something.
Q: What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
A: That’s tricky! I hope the lyrics resonate and that the production makes them want to move. I think that’s what I want people to get from my music – to be in their feelings but to be able to have a dance whilst they do it! I’d say my sound is pop mixed with a bit of dance and electronic, although my recent writing has definitely gone back to my roots and I’ve started incorporating more of my indie influences, which I’m really loving.
Q: Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfilment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more?
A: Oh, definitely. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tough and frustrating process, and it’s easy to get caught up in stuff, but when I listen back to the bounce on the walk or train home after a session and it’s something I really, really love, I feel electric. It makes it all worth it.
Q: Could you describe your creative processes? How do you usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song?
A: That can take a few different forms but I usually start by sitting down at my little home studio space, and see what ideas come. It always takes a little while, and I’ve become a lot more inspired by taking the demo to others at an earlier stage in the process. I used to be really shy about showing my music to anyone if I didn’t feel that the song was complete enough, whereas now I’ll take it to my producer if I’ve only got a verse, and we flesh the idea out together. It’s a lot more fun and less lonely that way, and it creates far more possibilities for the direction of the track.
Q: What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
A: There are a lot of tough aspects to the industry, but there was a 2 year period where I had to wait to release music due to waiting for other collaborations to be released first. It was really hard to wait that long without releasing my own music when it was sitting and waiting, but it was the right strategy to hold off until the collab was out.
Q: On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
A: I’m really proud of the EP and the support it’s received so far has been amazing – from NME, to Wonderland, to Radio 1. But I think one of my proudest moments has been when I did a last minute performance at All Points East with Franky Wah last year – I performed to thousands of people in a huge tent with about 2 hours notice, and made it just in time from Brighton. It was a wild day and one of my favourite moments of my career so far!
