I suppose I’ve just been writing about what I’ve been feeling. I thought, if this is my first EP, I want it to be what I’m feeling right now. I can look back in twenty years and have how I was feeling recorded. The tracks are about relationships and how I was feeling, and then one of them [People Like Me] is about how I feel about the music industry and social media. Specifically regarding how I’ve been feeling right now, not feeling good enough and thinking everyone is doing better than you because everyone’s posting the best things about themselves.

I always said I didn’t want to do an EP until I knew that I had people that wanted to listen and until I knew I had the right team working on it. So I have people that like what I’m doing and care about what I’m doing. I’ve got the time, I’ve got the fans and I didn’t want to release it to nobody. It definitely is different, it’s quite exciting knowing that a whole ‘thing’ comes out it’s new and different. It’s good.

Sometimes I think about what people think about me, but I’m not the only person feeling what I felt. You know when you’re going through something or you’re with a boy and it’s either really good or really bad, you find one song that relates to your situation and you just listen to it on repeat. My goal as a songwriter is to be that song for someone, obviously I’ll never know them but it’s the greatest thing. My lyrics really apply to how I’m feeling and I want someone to be able to relate to them and be like, ‘this is my situation too!’ That’s all you really want as a musician.

A mix of reasons, it’s something I felt and because people don’t really write about that. I’ve been looking for songs when I’ve been in that situation, desperately thinking, ‘what can I listen to on repeat?’, and out of all these artists I wouldn’t find anything. So I thought, if no one’s really written anything about it, I’ll write one! Girls don’t tend to write about stuff like that and in this kind of way, and I just thought, be honest, why not? We, as women, feel like we’re going to be judged when we’re honest. If guys say something, then everyone’s like, ‘Woo, yeah!’ Then when girls say the same thing, it’s almost like ‘how could you say that?!’ It’s the way people haven’t accepted female writers to say the same things. I don’t know why and there’s no real reason for it other than basic inequality.
If I wrote something like this years ago people would question, but now people won’t say anything though they might think it. Things are changing. I remember when everyone posted all the festival lineups without the male musicians on them. When I was younger no one cared about that. Nobody ever said, ‘oh, there are no women in this lineup’. In the last few years, people are noticing and people are caring. Though they’re not quite there yet, they are getting there! If attitudes are slowly changing I still think it’s a good time to see that change.

Definitely, this genuinely works for me. If I’m in a situation, there’s a boy and he’s messed me about and I’m crying because of that, the only way I’m going to get over this boy is if I write a song and try and cover everything I’m feeling in that song. I’ll listen to it on repeat that whole night and cry to it. Then the next day I’ll feel nothing. Getting those feeling out by recording them and having them in front of you to look at really works and makes me feel so much better.
It’s kind of strange I released this song called Whole of Me last year – that was the most honest one that I’ve put out so far. I remember seeing everyone enjoying it and sharing it on Instagram, it’s unintentionally funny because they don’t even know the guy it’s about yet they connected with it so much.

Owe It To You is very honest and I wrote it with this girl called Katie Ray, who I met while we were at musical theatre school. I feel like, for me, if I’d heard that song when I’d felt that way, it might have made me feel less like a bad person because it’s not such a bad thing. I hope someone hears it and thinks, ‘that’s exactly how I feel and no one was talking about it, but you’re talking about it and it makes me feel better.’ I hope that someone can understand because it’s not a song about doing bad things, it’s just a natural emotion and I want someone to feel as though it’s helped them. That’s the same with all my songs, even if it’s three minutes of their day, and they think, ‘that was cool,’ that’s all I want.

I firstly like it. I think Haim was the first thing I listened to and their production was so different, that new indie pop sound. I remember listening to it and just having my mind blown thinking, ‘wow, this is so incredible!’ I held them up as geniuses, only to play it to my dad. His reply was, ‘you do know all ‘80s music sounds like that.’ I couldn’t believe it! I think it’s really, really clever. Owe It To You is mixed in with a bit of country and that’s because Katie Ray is predominantly a country artist and writer. It just reflects the music I thought we would make, we’re both doing pop. I like the ‘80s stuff and kind of grew up on the country stuff and it touches a little on those genres. It’s my favourite one from the EP, I think.

I think it will, I haven’t put anything out yet, so I’m not sure if that will affect anything. But even from posting on Instagram, I know my stats very well and I know what time I post on which days and roughly how many likes I’ll get, already that’s gone up. People are at home and they’re engaging more, in that sense it’s nice, and if people are engaging more, then maybe that will change how musicians operate. People are looking for more.
Personally, I know I’m looking to see what’s coming out every Friday. Normally I don’t really care because before the pandemic I was just a mess of everyday stress and I couldn’t wait for the weekend. I think people are generally becoming more relaxed at home as we spend longer inside. This period of time will definitely change things. I was watching my friend gig [on Instagram Live] and all the comments were so positive, some of them said things like ‘Im clapping!’ It was really nice and lovely, this is what I want to be doing – just watch my friends sing.

My release show has moved to July. The show was meant to be around the time of the EP, but now I have until July and I can drag out this release. I’ve already started working on the next thing, I don’t know what it is, but I’ve got four songs that I like and I’m already doing remote sessions over Skype with producers trying to finish them up. I kind of know what will come out next, I just don’t know when or in what capacity.