Finding a Place in the UK Music Scene: In Conversation with Kylie Price
Recently, I sat down with the highly talented Kylie Price over Zoom. It was super insightful and deep. Photo one by Erin Isaacs/provided by Kylie's Facebook. Photo two provided by Kylie’s Instagram. Starboard Side video from Kylie’s YouTube.
I sat down over Zoom with Kiwi-Filipina, London-living musician, Kylie Price for a chat. While she was filled with the dreaded covid at the time, she was still absolutely delightful to speak with. We spoke about her leaving little ole New Zealand for the crazy city life of London and how she has been able to feel more at home with her music in the UK than New Zealand. It was an absolute honour to get to virtually meet Kylie and speak about an array of different topics. Oh, and to fangirl over both of one of our favourite musicians: Noah Kahan.
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Hey Kylie! So, you’ve been living in London for three years now, that’s pretty crazy.
Kylie: Two and a half years in, so yeah, it goes very quickly. Time in London goes quickly.
That’s amazing. How do you enjoy it? Do you love it? Find it a bit different?
Kylie: I really didn’t like it to begin with. I knew when I was moving over, I didn’t like it because we’d come over in 2016 and granted, we came over end of October, so it was turning into winter, so it was all grey. So, when I arrived here, I knew I didn’t like it. It took me a good year; I’d say, to feel like I wasn’t the new kid on the block and just to figure out the Tube and how to get to places and where things are the distance to things, because it’s very different to Dunedin, which you can drive around pretty quickly. I’m liking it a lot better now than I was.
It’s definitely different to home, for sure. Obviously, you released your new song, Starboard Side (RGB Sessions) on the 15th of August, which is about London, isn’t it?
Kylie: It is about London. It’s about a group of girls that I fell into here, we were very fortunate that a lot of our friends had moved over, so there was a big cohort of people when we moved over and the girls in that group, I got to know, and they were just so accommodating and a lot of them were Aussies and they knew what it was like to travel all this way. They’re my best friends, they’ve all gone back to Aussie now, but they’re still my very best friends, so Starboard Side is just all about having somebody who is like your Starboard Side, looking out for the iceberg.
I love that! I love the song, it’s so beautiful.
Kylie: Thank you! Thanks for listening.
So, I’ve done a little bit of research, and I know you initially started doing country music. What made you change into more mainstream pop music? Was there any specific reason?
Kylie: I think I always struggled with never being country enough for country and then I wasn’t pop enough or mainstream enough to be mainstream, so I was kind of in this limbo area. I did all the country awards back home and I did the circuit, it was great, it gave me such a lovely platform and helped me on stage, all of that stuff. Country has been cool for me before everyone else jumped on board. Then, I just found that, it was my second EP, Bones, that I just wanted to swap mandolins out for synths, and you know, banjos for electric, clean, rock sounding guitars and that sort of stuff. So, I just saw the production side going more mainstream, but my songwriting, I think has always kind of been similar in that sense. Now, I’m not seeing a return to country, but I am seeing, especially over in the UK that you can have a foot in both, and a great thing I always talk about with the UK is that they are so inviting for singer-songwriters. No one ever says “what genre are you?”, they always just say “what music do you play? Are you a singer? Are you a musician, do you play guitar? What sort of music do you listen to?” and so I found that really refreshing. New Zealand is quite small; it has a very niche sound. For me, I felt like I didn’t really have a place in the New Zealand industry, so it’s kind of sad, but it’s okay. It’s all good. I haven’t left the country [music] as such, I think as I did it for so long, I’m invested in it. It’s how I learnt to sing and how I learnt my guitaring, so it’s always going to be in my music. The likes of Noah Kahan and his latest album, even Maggie Rogers and her latest album, they’re very mainstream. They also have quite an Americana, loosely country feel to them, so I think those two bringing out that you can do both has been really great.
It’s awesome that you can experiment with all sorts of genres and find what feels like you, instead of just sticking to one thing.
Kylie: The UK has given me a lot of ground to try new things, so yeah, I’m very privileged.
When I was looking at your website earlier, I did see on the artwork for Stay, in one of the corners, that you have Noah Kahan’s I Was/I Am cover artwork on there. He’s incredible, isn’t he?
Kylie: Yes. He’s done a lot especially in my type of music, and the type of music that I want to be putting out. He’s been really inspirational, and I saw him earlier this year in London and what you see is what you hear on the album and it’s exactly what you hear live. It’s so lovely when an artist replicates what they’ve recorded, almost to a T, live, and there’s no disconnect from that. I’ve loved him since I heard Young Blood in 2017.
[We chatted about Taylor Swift prior to this question, hence leading to this one]. Do you take any inspiration from Taylor Swift and put that inspiration into your own songs?
Kylie: I really like the imagery, especially Folklore. That kind of era of Taylor and again, [felt like] that album was what she’s always wanted to make, I felt, anyway. Things like that, kind of like Noah as well, I kind of like, listen to it and you might hear different ways that they deliver a line. I don’t know if Taylor is never not influencing something in the world, in one way or another, given who she is. I do like listening to stuff and breaking it down.
How have some of your own personal experiences shaped you as a singer-songwriter this far?
Kylie: It’s quite a big question. If I think of the sort of singer-songwriter I want to be, the main thing I always think about when I’m writing or delivering, or interacting with anybody is to be honest, be relatable and to be transparent, so those are three things that I think encapsulate my music well. That’s just from writing about things that are real to me, or, if they’re not directly something I’ve gone through, my friends have gone through it or I’ve witnessed or observed. So, in terms of my life experiences, I just think being honest, relatable and transparent is a way to bring people together and make them feel less alone. Especially with my experiences in London. I’m the first person to say that it is incredibly lonely in some respects. That’s okay. I’m not the only one who will be lonely here. Nobody talks about how hard it is to make friends when you’re 30. That sort of stuff. I am lonely, so I will write about it. That’s what I try to do, anyway.
I just want to say thank you for that. I moved here alone, I moved to York eleven months ago and I understand that feeling of loneliness. When I heard Starboard Side, I was like “oh my god, I feel this so much.”
Kylie: The amount of people who are like, “I resonate with that so much, I felt really lost moving to the UK.” One of my friends messaged me and asked, “is it okay if you’re still lost at 38?” and I was like, “We are all a bit lost, no matter how old we are. You just keep doing you.” Lonely is universal, nobody ever wants to say that they feel lonely. I’m not sure why. Noone wants to feel that they are lonely because it’s a vulnerability that we’re not always taught it’s safe and okay to show. I was lonely, I told Ben about it, and we wrote a song. That was Starboard Side.
It’s going to be a well-loved song, even from people who are yet to hear it.
This is a question I thought of today, and I don’t know where it came from. It’s a bit of a long one, but, basically, if one thing were to happen tomorrow that would completely change the trajectory of your life for the better, what would you hope would happen?
Kylie: There are two things that popped to mind, I’ll say both of them. One of them is just somehow, that I kick-off on TikTok overnight and, we’ve seen it happen. We’ve seen artists release one song [ and it] absolutely flies off. People go crazy over that one song and the next minute: they’re touring the world and writing with people and charting. It happened with my friend, Kaylee Bell, it was all because of her video of when she was on The Voice. She sung her song, Keith, with was written about Keith Urban and that’s the whole thing. That blew up on TikTok. So, that’s the thing that started it for Bells, so something like that I think is massive and I also know how small of a percentage it is. I’m not putting all of my eggs in one basket in terms of TikTok. Something like that that could get you in front of a mass of people and just kind of, get you out of that, I guess, that ocean of millions of artists who kind of are also in the same spot as you. They can kind of give you that lift. The other thing would be to write with Noah, I don’t know how that could ever go bad and especially with the songs that he writes, I just think of the chats that you would have anyway, in that room. I think I’d just come out of there so much better for it. Those are two things that came to mind. Being able to propel in front of a big audience of people and then writing with one of my favourite artists, that would be insane.
I think you’ve done really well already with getting yourself out there and I see you’ve got quite a good following. From an outsider’s point of view, you’ve got a good following. With the Noah thing, you never know. Your voice and his voice would go good together.
So, I was wondering about the process of writing and recording of your songs?
Kylie: It’s slightly different, but kind of the same thing sometimes. So, say, writing Starboard Side with Ben, I had started writing that song and I had a session with him. I went over to his house, and he has a studio, and he also produces. He’s a really great producer. So, we wrote and then recorded the song. So, it was vocals and guitar. Then we refined it a little bit more over a few more sessions. There is like, a full production version. It’s just not coming out yet. So, there is one, it’s just not acoustic. I do a lot of writing with Duncan Brookfield who is phenomenal and he’s also my MD for my band and we would write from scratch, or we’d write from a drumbeat. It would kind of go a little bit off kilt to write a little bit differently and all of that stuff is like, full production. Not just acoustic and vocals. It’s slightly different, but kind of the same at the same time.
It varies with each song.
Kylie: Yeah, it also depends on how your producer likes to work. Also, if you’ve got a couple of writers in a room and an engineer, or a producer, they’re building the song, while you’re writing the song. It all comes together that way. Usually, it would start off with me having an idea and showing it on guitar and then going from there.
Brilliant! The last question I have here is what does a typical day in your life kind of look like?
Kylie: Well, I also have a full-time job. If it’s a normal working day, it’s doing that and then kind of slotting in my music emails and stuff. I usually try and get up at 6am so I can reply to emails back home before the New Zealand workday finishes. Then, I’d start work here, then afterwards, it’d either be a gig or going to a show or going to the studio or doing more emails or working on a single release. There are some days I take the day off work because I have a really important gig. The other week, I had a songwriting session in the morning at Universal, and then in the afternoon, I was playing a gig for McLaren Headquarters, like the Formula One team. Days can differ. Then, there are days where you’re just filled with covid and that’s okay as well. London kind of breaks up the monotony of what normal looks like, I think. Well, the UK in general.
I am out of questions, sadly. Is there anything else you wanted to add to the interview?
Kylie: I think you covered everything well. Thanks Ash, thanks so much for your time!
You have been so delightful to talk to, so thank you so much!
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To keep up with all of Kylie’s amazing adventures, make sure you check out all of her socials below. You won’t want to miss a beat!