FEATURE: Spotlight: Lucy Blue — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Lucy Blue

___________

ONE upcoming artist…

I would love to interview this year is Lucy Blue. I have fallen for her music quite hard. It is a striking and great sound that I really love! There aren’t a huge number of interviews online. The emerging and hugely promising Pop artist is someone that everyone needs to keep a watch out for through this year. She released the magnificent Fishbowl E.P. last year. Hailing from Dublin, I am always interested what the city is producing. I don’t think people pay as much attention to areas outside of England and the U.S. The E.I.R.E capital has always spawned fantastic artists. Lucy Blue is someone who is going to make Dublin proud! Every year seems to see more and more terrific and original artists come through. 2022 has taken that to new heights already! NME recently named Lucy Blue as one of their one-hundred artists that will define and rule 2022:

“Gentle and wise indie-pop confessions full of both tricks and treats

From: Dublin, Ireland

For fans of: Daughter, Phoebe Bridgers

Why you’re going to love them: Dreaming of all the people she could be to impress the person she wants to be noticed by, Lucy Blue crafts soft, shapeshifting stories with butter-smooth vocals and stripped-back, twinkling production. Well, that’s what you get half the time – before she switches gears with distorted beats and harmonies on earthier, rock-inflected coming-of-age love songs too. Unpredictable and spellbinding in constantly changing ways.

Key track: ‘See You Later’ EK”.

Despite the fact she has not been releasing music all that long, she has gained some great media coverage. Ears and eyes are definitely tuned the way of the sensational Lucy Blue. I feel that she will get chance to play a live a lot this year and put out some incredible music. Before coming to another feature, we get some helpful and informative biography from Lucy Blue’s official website:

“Lucy Blue is a 19-year-old singer, songwriter and producer from Dublin, Ireland, who builds unique musical worlds from wide ranging influences covering the likes of Frank Ocean, PJ Harvey and iconic skate bible Thrasher Magazine. With mature observational lyrics about lost love, overwhelming angst and the lives of childhood friends – in a way not dissimilar to the early work of her cinematic idol Harmony Korine – Lucy’s ambitious, coming-of-age pop revels in the outsider spirit and vulnerability of being a teenager finding her way in the world.

Lucy is also an incredibly visual person. For every song the Irish singer, songwriter and producer creates, she sees a space in which it exists. Sometimes it’s a room (a karaoke bar in Tokyo, her mum’s living room), sometimes a night-time bike ride, sometimes even an ominous dark place full of lily pads floating in water. With her soft Dublin accent Lucy explains how these images take over as she writes her music; how they usually come right at the start, shaping the session and the resulting song completely. “It just helps me so much with music,” Lucy says. “I need to tie what I’m hearing to an image. It helps my brain.”

With a predisposition for taking on the emotional stories of her peers and a talent for processing them into something positive, Lucy Blue is an essential young voice in music: just a girl from Dublin fated to soundtrack our lives”.

Music Week highlighted Lucy Blue’s incredible Pop music in March last year. They included her as one of their ‘artists making waves’. Nearly a year later, it is clear that she has definitely and consistently lived up to the promise:

“What impact do you want to make?

“I want to make just one kid feel the way my musical heroes made me feel about music. I don’t know what the best thing about my music is, that’s for others to decide.”

Who are your biggest influences?

“Some of my biggest influences musically would have to be Van Morrison, Cocteau Twins, Prince and Joni Mitchell. Also, I just want to be like Gwen Stefani during No Doubt. I’m so inspired by film as well, it’s so intertwined with music for me. Visual artists like Harmony Korine and Davide Sorrenti inspire me a lot.”

Tell us about your debut single...

“See You Later is a song I wrote two years ago after leaving school. It’s about loss and watching someone die.”

How do your songs come to life, what’s the process like?

“My musical process can differ a lot of the time, but I would say I’m a songwriter before a singer, so lyrics are always my favourite part. I wrote the majority of my debut EP in my bedroom when I was 16 and 17. I made demos at home and that’s when I first started getting into producing, it was just a really good creative outlet that I needed. The songs just show how or what I was feeling at that time in my life. I guess they’re the purest form of songwriting I’ll ever have.”

Do you have big plans for 2021?

“My EP is coming out this year, which I’m so excited about. I’m really passionate about this project as it’s songs I’ve been writing since I was 16, so I can’t wait for the world to hear it”.

There are a couple of other bits I want to put in here before wrapping up. CLASH wrote about her track, See You Later, back at the start of last year (sorry to hop around with the chronology!). Although she is young and has her best musical years ahead, there are touches of musical greats in her DNA:

“Lucy Blue is something to behold.

An independent spirit, the Irish born artist grew up flicking through old issues of Thrasher Magazine and downloading Frank Ocean deep cuts, gradually finding her way in live.

Leaving home and travelling to London, music has become a form of journal, an intimate space where she can truly express herself.

We're hearing elements of classic songwriting - Joni Mitchell, for one - against lush production, lyrical maturity, and a desire to face towards the future.

New single 'See You Later' is simply exquisite, an astonishingly beautiful piece of songwriting that is so suggestive, so alluring in its cinematic sweep.

There's a hushed intimacy to the production, as though you could hear a pin drop behind Lucy Blue's vocal.

She comments...

I think this song may sound like a love song but it wasn’t really what I intended at the time. Not that I have anything against love songs they’re the best. I was thinking about people who had lost someone who they love. Thinking about what they must’ve felt like looking at or holding some knowing they were dying.

I like the idea of people interpreting the song in whatever way they want though. That’s the beauty of songs it means whatever you want it to mean, I’m not protective about things like that”.

The last thing I want to highlight is a little interview from MTV. They spoke with Lucy Blue back in August. As the creator of such beautiful and accomplished music, it is great knowing as much as possible about someone like her. Although I am bringing in some information and details we know already, it is great reading Lucy Blue discuss her influences and how she started out:

“for those who don’t know about you and your music, tell us a little bit about who you are and where you’re from...

I’m Lucy Blue, I’m 19 from Dublin, Ireland and I make songs. I’ve been writing and producing for the last few years and my debut EP Fishbowl came out this year! It’s a super personal project to me and a self expression of a time in my life. My favourite things to do really are making music and visual art.

who are your biggest musical influences?

I would say my biggest musical influences are Cocteau Twins and Van Morrison. There's so many more like PJ Harvey, Joni, The Blue Nile.

tell us about the writing and recording process of your new release…

'Taxi Driver' actually came about really quickly. I wrote it with an artist called Matt Maltese and it was just a weird idea we had that felt funny but we ended up loving the song. We wrote and recorded the finished vocals that day which is not always the case. It just felt like a really nice process.

what has been your biggest career highlight so far?

I got to play my first ever festival at Latitude last week which was so sick. But to be honest releasing Fishbowl felt like a really personal highlight for me. It had been a part of me for so long so letting it go felt cathartic in a way. Being able to share the music with people and affecting them in anyway means more than anything”.

A very bright young artist who is rightfully being tipped as someone who is going to make big impressions this year, go and follow her on social media. I love what she has achieved so far and, still a teen (unless she has turned twenty recently), it is impressive how matured and developed her music sounds! She has a lyrical and singing voice that has age, wisdom and something very special about it. I am very confident in saying Lucy Blue is someone that…