Photography: Ben Cole
“Fabulous”isnotjustatitle,it’sastatement.Inatimewhenauthenticityoften feels like a performance and AI risks making everything replicable, what does it mean to say I’m so fucking fabulous without irony, but with full awareness?
I think you’re absolutely right. We’ve become a culture that uses the word ‘authentic’ as a buzz word for influencers and brands to sell us more shit we don’t need. Being genuinely authentic to yourself, both inside and out, shouldn’t factor in anyone else’s opinion. It is truly fucking fabulous to be genuinely happy in your own skin, and the only opinion that matters in that is your own. We create our own meaning, and define our own character.
This project lives in a liminal space: not a single, not yet an album. Why did you choose this suspended format between an EP and a personal manifesto? Is it a way of claiming creative space without waiting for permission?
Well firstly, I’ll confirm, there is an album, and I’m SO excited to share it with the world. It’s a labour of love. With this first release, I wanted to show new fans that what I intend to do is not limited to the sound of a single, nor its genre. Brixton, for example, draws inspiration from one of my favourite songs of all time, ‘Loaded’ by Primal Scream. I think putting Fabulous out as a standalone single would have been misleading in terms of who I am as an artist. Yes, it’s big and gay and fun, it’s glam rock and it’s pop, but it’s one corner of a musical kingdom my brain has been imagining up since I was a little girl.
Your imagery blends extreme glamour with every day normality. Evening gowns, orchestral arrangements, theatricality placed inside ordinary life. Is this an aesthetic construction, or an inner truth that refuses to adapt to context?
It’s ingrained in my bones. I grew up in a working class family on the edge of a council estate, but went to school in a really affluent area amongst kids who brushed shoulders with the super rich. My whole life has been spent slightly displaced, not quite in, not quite out. My mum and grandma owned a wedding dress shop in the village where we lived, and so despite financial struggles and grief and addiction, there was always this fantastical world of tulle and safety pins and craft where my dreams and ideas would manifest. I guess when it comes to both my wardrobe and my sound, I’m trying to say “if you can’t join them, beat them.”
Your voice is rough, deep, never do mesticated. How much control and how much emotional surrender is there in the way you sing? Is your voice a form of protection, or of exposure?
I think it’s both and neither. In the studio, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, all those operatic stacks and harmonies are me, recordings layered and painstakingly arranged, I’ve lost count of how many late nights were spent in the booth perfecting the vocals with producer David Pramik.
It’s a bit of a different story when I’m on stage. I value performance and energy in the room over perfection at a show, I’m married to British post-punk culture, and I’ll often end up singing in the pit amongst fans, letting my guitarist shred it up for a bit, or playing with crowd response. On stage is where I let control surrender to emotion. It’s what it’s all about for me.
In the tracks completing the EP, desire, distance and restraint emerge clearly.
What is your relationship with love and need? Is it something that fuels your writing, or something you’re constantly learning to keep in check?
It’s complicated. And a rabbit hole. But I will say that I wrote ‘I want love, but not that much’ from an observational POV for a friend who had just ended things with her partner. In fact, it’s something I’ve done for nearly every one of my friends who have been through a bad break up over the last few years. I suppose being an outskirts kid makes you pretty good at being observational.
Your personal story speaks of loss, early responsibility and resistance.
Was there a precise moment when you realised music wasn’t just expression, but a vital necessity?
Not particularly, I just always, always sang. Everywhere. Made up melodies, sometimes nonsense, it just always was. I suppose the fact that my voice was always there gave me a sense of constancy—I knew I wanted to be an artist, knew what I wanted my life to look like, and that there was a chance I could make that real because I could really sing. When everything else fell apart, I could still do that, you know?
You chose to study production and take full control of your sound.
How crucial was it to stop relying on the technical gaze of others in order to define yourself as an artist?
Absolutely vital. It changed the trajectory of everything. I don’t need to tell anyone how difficult it can be, as a woman, to be listened to and respected when it comes to creative direction and control. In any industry.
More than being able to physically and sonically create competitively, it also allowed me to speak the language of a producer. Being able to tell a mix engineer, “oh, that vocal in the second verse needs subtraction around this frequency because it’s clashing with something else” immediately demands more respect than saying “something about my singing doesn’t quite feel right”.
Learning these things was a way of showing up for my future self, and fuck me am I thankful for it now.
