birthday girl musings (Patreon)

SDC - how we doing?

Three (3) quick bits of housekeeping before I jump in:

• Gold tier patrons: your belated JAN live stream + zoom hang will be this Saturday, Feb 15th at 3pm GMT so save the date & time if you’re around & join me for that! Thanks for bearing with, my whole fam came over to London to celebrate my birthday last week so I have been SWAMPED

• Thank all of you sweet angels also for your gorgeous feedback on the last demo, ‘now what?’. That song feels really good to me, it has that ‘here’s-my-frickin-soul-on-a-plate’ type feeling I’m so often trying to chase

• My Europe tour starts one month from today - tickets are still available for Copenhagen / Stockholm / Oslo / Warsaw / Vienna / Milan / Zürich / Munich / Cologne / Amsterdam / Brussels / Paris / Glasgow / Manchester & London :) I’m not sure when I’ll be back for headline shows in these cities so plz don’t miss out! Tickets for that run + my April/May US & Canada tour here

so HECK, I turned thirty one week ago today. Do I feel any different? No. But do I feel the significance of it? Well, yes. The MILESTONE of it all has really felt hammered home by how incredibly spoilt I’ve been the last week; endless gifts, surprises & all my favourite people in a room for a party on Friday. People from completely different parts of my life together for one night - everyone from old school friends to my touring crew to my own frickin parents - and I loved it. Is there any feeling more humbling /gently traumatising than waiting for people to arrive to your own birthday party? Is there any feeling more joyful and pure than loads of people you love showing up for you? I think not

Despite this popstar career y’all know me for I live a pretty solitary, gloriously boring life day-to-day; I potter away at home or my studio alone, I do my work, I do my silly little hobbies (*working on the hobbies thing). Sometimes I’m social but I really love my own company too so I’m comfy spending evenings alone. And even though a huge part of my job involves standing on a stage and literally saying HELLO EVERYONE LOOK AT ME I actually found it really uncomfortable being the centre of attention at my own party! Perhaps it was some overly-humble Irish shite or looking into the whites of the eyes of all the people who know me best, people who I can’t put on any ‘act’ for.. it really just felt like I was in no way performing that night. I was a regular ol’ slightly shy, extremely overwhelmed girl who couldn’t quite process the gravity of the whole thing. It felt good to trust fall back into the arms of my favourite people, to take the help in organising things, to let the night be whatever it needed to be. I felt very lucky. I hope I can bottle that feeling for the future.

Re: career - turning the big Three Oh has me feeling very reflective on this past decade of music; the journey so far, the sheer fact that I’m still doing this mad job (and not just still *hanging in there* but doing it in such a big way, the year ahead containing more headline touring than I’ve ever done before!). When I was 18/19 and first came to London a few of my artist friends got signed to record labels and I remember feeling deeply fearful that I was getting left behind. It created a strange social divide in some of my friend groups at the time; initially we were all living month-to-month in this big expensive city, crammed in shared houses & scraping by but with that strong communal sense of being all in it together. Then suddenly a few of them had 6-figure label advances land in their bank accounts (totally bizarre experience to have as a young person btw, I sort of feel for them in hindsight) and whilst some of them were more sensible with their cash than others I really did notice the us-and-them of it all when we hung out. Some people started buying expensive drinks and getting cabs back from nights out, the rest of us on still on the night bus. At the time I thought my motivation for coming to London was to try and get signed to one of these labels, so it was hard not to feel a sense of missing my chance.

10 years on I see that I just had to stay the course, do my thing and it would fall into place at the right time (and on my terms too - something I didn’t even know was possible back then!). I understand now that getting your moment in the sun as an artist before you’re ready can be more of a curse than anything and by GOD was I not ready. Instead my slow-but-steady climb has allowed me to get better at the actual CRAFT of it all (songwriting, performing, all the business-brain stuff that is required) as I went. The industry has changed so much in 10 years and god knows I often struggle to keep up but somehow to this day I hold onto the same naive belief I had 10 years ago: that good music will be heard.

You all found me somehow and by virtue of being here on the SDC you have stuck around! I say it often but allow me again: your collective support is the reason I’ve been able to do this on my own terms. The security this gives me (my only financial cushion btw, I don’t come from money) gives me the confidence to take the big risks like putting my 2 albums out independently and heading out tours that lose money. Parts of this industry are broken beyond belief but somehow, I'M STILL OUT HERE ! It’s a huge privilege, one that’s not lost on me and one I’ll keep working hard for. So thank you for everything SDC and happy frickin birthday to me, I guess.

Love love!

OG xx