Jenny On Holiday’s day is neatly divided by drinks. “Today I am at my label office drinking cups of tea and answering your questions,” she says. “Later, I will be going to the pub, so the focus today is on different types of drinks.” Right now, life seems to be made up of small pleasures, steady routines and the excitement of something new finally taking shape.
That something new is Jenny On Holiday, the solo project from Jenny Hollingworth, best known as one-half of Let’s Eat Grandma. The name sounds breezy on purpose. “Jenny on Holiday is my pop alter ego,” she explains. “Except, really, I’ve always made pop music, so it might be better to say that she is just me but on holiday from Let’s Eat Grandma for a bit.” It’s not a dramatic break or a grand rebrand, more like stepping outside for some fresh air and realising you might stay out a little longer than planned.
The timing matters. Let’s Eat Grandma’s most recent album was powerful, personal and heavy in every sense. “Writing our last Let’s Eat Grandma album, 'Two Ribbons', was a very meaningful but emotionally taxing process,” Jenny says. “I struggled a lot during that period of my life, but now, as years have passed, I feel I am in a very different place.” That distance has made room for something lighter; not shallow, but buoyant. “‘Quicksand Heart’ is about striving to live and love fully and find joy in life despite its challenges.” It’s pop with the windows open.
"Jenny on Holiday is my pop alter ego"
Despite the solo tag, this wasn’t about frustration or escape. “I wouldn’t say I had a solo itch per se,” she says. “More that after making three records together and both experimenting with writing individually it felt like the right time for us both to branch out and try something new.” Writing alone changed how she trusted herself. “Writing alone requires you to develop even stronger writing instincts than when you write collaboratively,” she says. “Ultimately, the story and emotion of the song are coming from me, and so I have to be the one to decide when it’s finished.” No committee meetings, just gut feeling.
It took a while for the album to show itself. “I wrote a lot of songs I didn’t put on the record,” she says, casually. Then it all fell into place. “'These Streets I Know', and then 'Good Intentions', soon after that. Writing 'Good Intentions' was when the sound and world this record was going to have started to click.” From there, the emotional centre snapped into focus, guided by an image she couldn’t shake.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve experienced the world in quite an emotionally intense and vivid way,” she says. “It seems to me that something at the core of me is very sensitive and in some way fragile.” While writing, that sensitivity became strangely physical. “For a number of months last year, while writing this record, I had this really visceral feeling that people’s hearts were made of different materials. I thought to myself, ‘My heart is made of quicksand', and it seemed to encapsulate exactly what it feels like to be me.” Unstable, sinking, impossible to stand still on, but also alive.
That image carries a darker edge, too. “That quicksand heart metaphor is also about a feeling of being defective in some way,” she says. “Like my organs themselves are made up of materials human bodies should not be made of.” The difference now is acceptance. “Making this album has felt cathartic for me, and I think that perhaps writing about the messy parts of myself has made me feel a bit more accepting of them.” Instead of fixing herself, she’s learning how to live with herself.
