FTGT Interview: Emily Beattie

© Lara Dervan

Emily Beattie is a singer-songwriter from Wicklow, currently residing in Berlin. She started publishing music with a string of covers followed by a steady output of original singles and varied collaborations. Her solo work features looping acoustic melodies, winding vocals, and sincere lyrics.

Eoghan: How would you describe your music? 

Emily: I wouldn't consider myself a sad person, but my music always somehow turns out a bit melancholy. Maybe I use it as my outlet and that's why I'm not that much of a sad person. I guess you could categorise it in the folk area; “singer songwriter folk”, which I hate saying because I try not to play folk, but it just turns out that way.

I was delighted to have the opportunity to work with D*mp. He was a “head” around Dublin and the music scene there, I always saw him at his Loose Tooth events. After I released a song myself, he got on to me about collaborating. So I'm delighted now to have stuff out that is completely polar opposite to my stuff. Working with D*mp helps me push the boat out a bit. Now I have a jungle track out somehow!

EOC: How would you describe your creative process?

EB: Weirdly enough recording as I go helps me write stuff. I love raw music and things that sound incomplete but I get really impatient, so when I record as I go, or use a loop pedal, I really enjoy it as you can see it come together in front of your eyes. Seeing a track piece itself together makes me more driven to keep working on it.

EOC: Would you say the process of making music with D*mp differs from the way you make your own music?

EB: Yeah I'd say so. Primarily I'm a singer so it's always hard finding a riff or something to begin with. I don't like starting with lyrics, I have to have a base and I don't always enjoy that process. As such, when I make stuff on my own it takes ages!

But when D*mp sends me something, it's this already well rounded track that I can put my own twist on and begin that collaborative process. Plus there's some sort of a deadline [when working with D*mp because I don't like to keep people waiting. More happens, it keeps me going a bit when I work with other people.

EOC: What is your desired outcome for you when you produce music?

EB: I'm really bad at jamming with people, so I think it's nice to have a bit of a goal. I think releasing something or having something recorded that I'm happy with is when I see a piece of music as complete. So if I have a load of unfinished stuff or ideas, I don't count them in my head as finished pieces of work.

When I release something I can think “ok, that's done, on to the next thing”. It's nice if people like it, it's really lovely hearing feedback and stuff . That [feedback] drives me to make more, but to be honest, releasing music allows for “completion status” in my own brain.

EOC: Do you produce for yourself? 

EB: Yeah, I do my own production for the most part. My friend Eoghan O’Dowd co-produced ‘Three Months’ and killed it, which makes me think I need to have more trust in working with people who actually know what they’re doing! I started off with GarageBand and a cheap mic set up in my room. With that I taught myself the basics of recording and then eventually I was like, “ok fine I'll get Logic and some nicer bits of gear along the way”.

I love messing with harmonies as well. Initially I was a bit self-conscious about my voice so I would stick on a load of harmonies so you couldn’t really tell it was me. I love walls of vocals, particularly Saoirse Miller and how she arranges music. Her music feels like you’re dying … but in a nice way where loads of angels are singing to you. Then on the other hand, Pippa Molony really leans into a rawer vocal style which is so cool. It sounds super vulnerable but so captivating. 

EOC: Who introduced you to music?

EB: My parents are both really into music and always had a record or CD playing in the house. They don't really play, but my dad always had instruments around the place from his college bands, so I always had the tools to start playing. I'm really grateful for that. I played piano as a kid, typical first instrument! It was awful but I'm thankful for it either way. I played a bit of guitar, I did a couple lessons in primary school, but it was mostly just messing around at home with my dad.

I started playing and performing in front of people when I was 14, at lunchtime in school. Around that time I saw this video of KT Tunstall on Jools Holland using her loop pedal. This was after the classic start-of-secondary-school trying to be in a band thing where it was me and five other 13 year old boys all trying to start a band together. You can imagine the egos running around in the room! But anyway, soon after I got a second hand Boss Loop Pedal on Adverts and tried doing a cover of that song. And then I realised I could be in a band on my own and started writing my own stuff.

I mentioned my parents' influence before but it was my grandad who introduced me to music. He's not alive anymore, but he always played. He was a church pianist and there was always a piano in his gaff. I would just sit and tinkle away [on the piano] after dinner at their place. He would play Chopsticks and Greensleeves with me. I wrote my song “November” about him after he died. 

EOC: What is your earliest musical memory? 

EB: It was “Nellie the Elephant” by The Toy Dolls. My dad had a record of that album, and he always played it for me. I don't know if you know the song, but it's really weird. Listen to it. I was like two years old or something, and apparently I'd clutch on to the record player in my nappy and I'd dance to it and sing along. I think that’s my earliest memory when it comes to music.

Apparently I was at a Pixies gig in the womb but I don't really remember that one.

EOC: How has being in Germany influenced your music and how does it compare to what you were producing in Dublin?

EB: To be honest with you, being abroad has slowed me down in making my own stuff because honestly, it’s distracting settling into somewhere new. I always bring my recording stuff whenever I go somewhere new but, truth be told I get a bit lazier. I hate to say it.

That said though, my boyfriend Myles is here in Berlin as well. He plays music so we've been playing a load and we're going to do some gigs here. It's nice to have someone else who's kind of pushing you along. I say that because when I was on Erasmus, I was getting really lazy, but when I came back home and played a few gigs and remembered how fun it was.

EOC: What are you listening to at the moment and is it what you're trying to make? 

EB: I've been listening to a lot of Timber Timbre, Lealani and Thom Yorke. I remember a friend  showing me Timber Timbre’s “Hot Dreams”, and his voice is real gentle, kind of like Sun Kil Moon. I love finding male vocalists that have comforting voices because what I grew up with was more punky and aggressive male singers. I've been listening to Mount Kimbie, Villager, Autechre, and Curtisy's new mixtape [Beauty in the Beast] recently too. I've always liked Björk and LCD Soundsystem. I love a bit of garage too.

The music I listen to is really not similar to what I make. I'd say what I'm listening to now is a lot more upbeat than what I'm trying to make but that's always been the case, I always make something completely polar opposite to what I'm listening to. Growing up, I listened to a lot of rock and indie and stuff that my parents liked. There were a few female vocalists I always found myself listening to separately, like Kim Deal was a massive one. It was the Pixies to Breeders to Kim Deal pipeline. I love how smoky her voice is, it was never intentional for me to have a similar tone of voice to her. She has this untrained, very rough voice. I never liked the way other people sang where they would try to sound like something and it would turn out just really robotic. Kim's voice sounds like her, it’s so distinctive.

EOC: Who is your favourite artist of all time?

EB: I'd say LCD Soundsystem is at the top. I want to be James Murphy when I grow up.

EOC: The two covers you've put out, Blackbird and Hideaway. What made you choose these songs?

Em: I kind of hate them. Actually, no, I don't hate them because Blackbird was from my very first singing teacher. It was an after school club in primary school with this woman Nancy, she's not alive anymore, she died from cancer a few years ago, but she was from Maine and an excellent musician. She was the bubbliest person ever and she was nuts on guitar. She loved the Beatles so she would always show us these Beatles songs. We were always like, oh, you should go on X factor, Nancy. I was just gobsmacked, I was always blown away with how she could play.

She always pushed me, always pushed different people to sing on their own in the class. And then eventually I did and I was like, oh, this is kind of fun.

She was a friend of my mum's so when I started secondary school, I played bass in this band and she always told me to keep up music. She really pushed that. Blackbird was a little nod towards when I first got into singing.

Then for “Hideaway” I’ve always loved Karen O's solo stuff. She wrote the soundtrack for “Where the wild things are”. I don't know if you've seen that movie, but it's beautiful. Hideaway was always my favourite song and it’s literally like two chords.  

I don't hate them actually, talking about it now I love them again. It's weird, my version of blackbird gets used loads on TikTok for some reason. And scrolling through the videos, they're really dark. It's like Peruvian doctors talking about sexual health and they have my cover in the background, it was strange to find that. So I try not to look at the videos because it's kind of disturbing. At least there's an audience somewhere.

EOC: What drew you towards creating the music that you do now?

EB: There was always an acoustic guitar lying around. I never really thought to pick up drums and make heavier music. The sound I could make from a guitar and my voice was always pretty soft and humble and modest. So I've stuck with that and never really went to other genres, though I'd like to.

I take a lot of inspiration from Feist and Sun Kil Moon's album, Benji. I always like playing soft music because you could envelop yourself into it and it wasn't just shouting and playing loudly. You could let it engulf you. I think it's nice to be one with your instrument. I think I make intimate music, it's just what comes out. I don't know how to explain it but it's just what feels comfortable.

© Antonia Kenny

EOC: Is there anything that you've been really listening to recently that you've been enjoying that you'd like to share?

EB: I've been discovering a lot of electronic music outside of my initial understanding of it as something intense and fast paced. I've really liked the Eraser by Thom Yorke recently, most of it is just his voice and a synth. It's really soft and very stripped back, not overproduced or anything.

In my last couple of gigs, I've been playing a cover of Sinéad O'Connor's ‘He Moved Through the Fair’. She's always been really cool to me. I met her son Shane a couple of times before I listened to her music properly. I had mutual friends with him and he was at my 18th birthday party for some reason. After meeting him, I was like, oh, what's his mum's music like? I think that cover is going to be taking place in any set I do, it's really vulnerable and lovely, I just love singing it. In the video of her performing from start to finish she doesn't open her eyes once. She could completely shut off the audience, she's literally just sitting on her own, she could have been alone in a room singing but all eyes are on her. 

EOC: You say in your bio and Spotify that you're a “Singer, songwriter, producer and mum of 12”. We were wondering if you can name all 12 kids?

EB: I didn't realise people actually read that … Oh God! It was a mandatory field so I was like “fuck, I don't know” and I put down that.

I've forgotten all the kids’ names. They've all left me, it's unfortunate. I used to put in my age and I had to change it every year, but I will always be a mum of 12.

EOC: Last question, can you leave us with some final words, a quote or anything you want?

EB: I'm a big procrastinator, so it's kind of frustrating to make yourself make music. I don't make it nearly as much as I should but sometimes that's okay. You know, it's stressful to force yourself to do stuff because I'm terrified of the thought of music feeling like a chore again. So just embrace your procrastination?

Emily’s latest single “Three Months” featuring Myles Mullarney is out now.

Interview by Eoghan O’Callaghan

Editing by Campbell Coles