London-based singer/songwriter Dylan is a big fan of colours, it turns out. Following on from her debut EP ‘Purple’ – “which was all about finding my place in the world and finding my sound” – she’s just dropped her second effort, the fiery ‘Red’. “After leaving school and home, I found myself in a much bigger world than what I was used to,” she explains. “It’s all about leaving everything I thought I knew behind and trying to understand emotions. I have never been very good at dealing with feelings, and I was desperate to understand why people treated each other a certain way, and why they felt a specific thing for another person. Red is all about passion, love, friends, anger, and heartbreak. It defines everything I have been experiencing and feeling in the last year; a transition from being wrapped up in the security blanket of school to having to face life on my own for the first time.” Give the four-tracker a listen below, and find out more about it from Dylan herself, track by track.
Your Issues
‘Your Issues’ (that some of you may know as daddy issues from my live shows). This is a pretty brutal song. I wrote it with the incredible James Earp after an ex tried to come back into my life claiming that ‘he loved me’ and that he ‘never did anything wrong’ and blamed everything he ever did on either me or (this is really brutal I’m sorry, but I’m just being honest) on his Dad. He treated me like pure SHIT, he put me through so much it was dumb. I’m typing really AGGRESSIVELY right now. Let’s just say I wasn’t the only one in the pathetic three months we were together; there was definitely more than two of us in the relationship. SO therefore when he came running back two years later, I was having none of it. This song is a real kick in the teeth for him I expect. It’s a real screw you song. It’s for anyone that’s ever been cheated on. You’re not the problem, Hunny.
Good Enough
This is my favourite song on the EP, I think probably because it changed everything for me. I wrote it late last year after getting out of a very stupid situation, that quite frankly, I shouldn’t have been in in the first place. I’ve had very bad luck with ‘relationships’ (again, that’s a strong word for it) and what happened just before this was just the icing on the cake. I was fuming. Mostly because I thought there was something wrong with me. If this was a reoccurring situation in my life surely it had to be my fault. W R O N G. Shortly after everything fell to pieces I decided to go home and write everything that said person had done in the back of my songbook. It was at that moment I realised that it wasn’t me at all, yet I had spent years thinking everything was on me every time something went wrong. At the end of the day boys will be boys, and being this young doesn’t help. Life is exciting, and you can’t blame the people that messed up either. But I was bored of blaming myself. So the next day I stormed into the studio with Adam Argyll and wrote Good Enough. I felt so much better. It came together really quickly; the song now is practically the same as the demo. The song is very unapologetic and angry, yet it’s beautifully empowering at the same time.
Wish You Weren’t Mine
‘WYWM’ was the first song I wrote for the EP, it’s definitely the boldest and cheeky. It’s very straight to the point – no hidden meanings. Weirdly enough, the idea came to me in the bath (where all the best ideas begin) while I was very ill, with no voice. But I HAD to get it down, so I grabbed my guitar and wrote it butt naked on the side of the bath. At the time, I had just ended (what was hardly) a relationship with someone that was just not for me. It was very bland and unexciting (for both parties I expect), and I felt very restricted, which led to me constantly finding myself daydreaming about other people. Effectively the song revolves around bad sex. I hate to say it, but it’s true (sorry). It’s a very honest song that I think maybe the song people relate to the most; at least I hope I’m not the only one feeling that way hahah. James Earp produced it for me, and it took a long time to get the right feel there, but I think we’ve got it now. I think it says what needed to be said sonically.
Guilty
Being obsessed with lo-fi music, I wanted to create a slightly more laid back track as the glue for the EP. I wrote guilty with one of my close mates (Ines Dunn) about the ins and outs of tragic teenage parties. You see, with the way the world is now, there is a huge amount of pressure to be ‘cool’, and you can see straight through it when people are faking. I’m slightly socially awkward, so I used to kinda sit and watch it all happen. Of course, I could have just not gone, but then I didn’t want to miss out (FOMO). Guilty is a realtime picture of these crazy house parties from my point of view, watching the girls dress up in these tiny dresses to watch the boys in tracksuits drool over them. Most of the ones I went to were BYOB which meant the alcohol went dry pretty quickly, leaving the ‘cool’ and the naive, to turn to other substances. As much as these parties always ended up being a complete disaster (the most memorable I seem to remember someone drank bleach with an ambulance turning up shortly after) you didn’t want to miss them. It was a guaranteed good time. They were thrilling. Hence them being my guilty pleasure.
Dylan’s new EP ‘Red’ is out now.
Dylan’s new EP ‘Red’ is out now.
