Katy J Pearson has had a great year. Since releasing her third outing, ‘Someday, Now’, in September 2024, it’s been a blur filled with shows, festivals, and just having a great time. “I feel like I’ve got to do some really wonderful, amazing things,” she smiles. Speaking to Dork with a voice barely recovered after last weekend’s Green Man – where she was enjoying herself as a punter – this is what most of the year, and her third album, has been about: embracing Katy J Pearson.
This era of the Bristol-based singer-songwriter has found her far more assured and confident. It’s helped her get to grips with who she is as an artist. Well, as much as a creative person can. “I don’t think you ever truly understand yourself as an artist,” she says. “But you can try and create some kind of pathway that gets you as close to that as you can and what you want to say.”
“My songs aren’t so about my early 20s suffering”
‘Someday, Now’ was a turn from her Americana-tinged, folk-leaning start, without sacrificing the earnest and emotional infrastructure that offered a sweet embrace. Instead, it welcomed Katy’s poppier side, one that’s been bubbling away in her syrupy melodies. These pop tendencies were pushed aside after a rough start to her career. In 2015, Ardyn – a band formed with her brother – was signed to a major, who chewed them up and spat them out the other side.
Eventually, Katy found her way back to music and released her debut ‘Return’ in 2020 on Heavenly Recordings. But in the fray of pandemics and making up for lost time, including 2022’s ‘Sound of the Morning’, as well as a truckload of touring, she became disenchanted and exhausted.
‘Someday, Now’ was Katy retaking the narrative, ensuring everything – from the band to the producer – was on her terms. That decision is still shaping things now.”
The time that’s passed – mostly her twenties – has paved the way for a wiser outlook. “I’m almost 30, which is ridiculous, but I’m happy about that – Stevie Nicks was 31 when she joined Fleetwood Mac, so anyone who’s a woman in music, and is panicking, needs to stop.”
“You can’t expect everything you want to happen, but you can trust in it”
As the saying almost goes, life begins at 30, and this vibrant seizing of life is the fresh energy around Katy’s outlook – and output. “I can hear that my songs aren’t so about my early 20s suffering. I mean, there is still suffering in there, but, you know, there’s never not… life is suffering,” she cackles. “But I think there’s a lightness to some of my songs.
“The most important thing I’ve realised is that I’m so much more in touch with myself, and my emotions,” she muses. She sees her 2020 debut ‘Return’ as being “a bit more removed” from herself, “I was young and I didn’t know who I was.” The difficulty in being a young artist, and a young person in general, is that you sometimes can’t quite figure out what you’re saying until you’re past the moment. “You’re a bit of a mess at that age,” she laughs. But now three albums deep, and into the twilight of her twenties, it’s like emerging through the fog. “I’ve noticed over time that I’ve really come into my own,” she says. “I think I’ve just got better as an artist and songwriter, and that’s so nice.”
With that comes the eventual reckoning with performing these emotionally shifted songs. Immersing yourself in the moments and the sentiments night after night can often conjure an array of feelings, from embarrassment to anything else untoward, not to mention the instant reflection. Mentioning cuts from her debut album, Tonight in particular, which became a staple at her shows, it’s a time of her life she’s moved beyond: “I really have to find somewhere in myself to play it like I played it when I first wrote it, and that’s just the way it goes,” she shrugs.
While being in the past is one aspect of a live show, often, just being present at all can be a challenge. Between the anxiety, adrenaline, and all the emotions that charge through a live set can be as blurry as the last year has been for Katy. “What we do as performers… It’s so easy to not be in the moment with it, and it passes you by,” she says. It’s a part of what made the time between her first two albums such a disjointed period. “For example, if I call up my mum, sometimes I go, Oh, my God, I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. I’m feeling insecure in my career – probably because I’m just burnt out – and she’s like, write down what you’ve done in the last year or two years. So often we forget to acknowledge what we’ve done and always chase the future.”
“I am the biggest Maccabees fan ever”
From a set on Jools Holland to a televised spot at Glastonbury this year, the affirmations have been racking up. Another she’s set to add to the list is opening up All Points East this weekend. Headlined by The Maccabees – as well as featuring Bombay Bicycle Club, CMAT, The Cribs and many more – Katy already has a decade-long connection to their frontman, Orlando Weeks, which runs through from her formative years to last year, and ‘Someday, Now’.
“I am the biggest Maccabees fan ever. I think Orlando knows now, but I tried to keep it under wraps for a while,” she laughs with her head in her hands. “Because I was working with him so much, I didn’t want him to think I’m a freak!”
First hearing the Maccs at 13 at her friend’s house, the road from teenage fan, to signing to her first label at 19 and then sharing a publisher with Orlando – who suggested the pair write a song together (“Me and Orlando looked at each other, and we’re just like, let’s definitely not release this. This is really rubbish!”) – to becoming firm friends, has been winding. That’s not to mention meeting her third album’s producer, Bullion, via Orlando. Katy opening up the reunited Maccabees’ finale show is, all told, a fitting one.
This year, things coming full circle for Katy has also involved a wealth of career progression. “I went on tour with Wet Leg, and they’re really good friends of mine, so that was a fun experience. I got to play Brixton Academy with them, which was really scary but fun!” she remembers. Touring over the last year also involved her first-ever headline run through Europe. “I came off that tour and I was like, that was the best tour ever,” she beams. “The crowds were amazing, and being in these cities that I played a lot supporting people, it was so nice to go back to these venues as a headliner and be like, Oh my god!”
The future looks much brighter for Katy, more so than she could have envisioned a few years ago. It’s this renewed sense of self that she wants to take with her into the rest of her career, as she explores that understanding of who she is as Katy J Pearson, the artist and the person. Aspiring to be in the realms of Cate Le Bon, Julia Jacklin, and Sharon Van Etten, she’s aiming for the same prolific, creative confidence and assurance in steadfastly following her own path.
“When I was younger, I had all these bucket list things that I felt I needed to be validated as an artist, but the whole music industry, if you get caught up in it, you’re just going to be miserable,” she says. “So all I can do is just keep making art, and hopefully it gets better the more I make it.”
It’s this sage advice she offers any younger artists who ask for her wisdom – music isn’t a game for the faint of heart, nor weak of spirit. “You’ve gotta have that resilience,” she nods. “It’s a lot of ups and downs, but if you can try and channel the purity of why you do it, and throw everything you can at these albums, then you know what will be will be, you can’t expect everything you want to happen. But you can trust in it, and the things that are meant to be will be.”
In the 10 months since ‘Someday, Now’ was released, for Katy J Pearson, it feels like that titular ‘someday’ is every day that has passed. They’re each mini doses of the life and world she wants to continue inhabiting. “It hasn’t felt like a slog at all, it’s felt like a real lovely experience,” she says. “In a way, it’s gone too quickly, because I’ve had fun… I guess that’s a good thing?” she laughs.
Katy’s already looking ahead. She’s impatient in the best way – still fuelled by the spark of ‘Someday, Now’. “I’m so ready to get on with the next one,” she reveals. “It’s not because I don’t love what I’ve just done, I just love being in the studio and writing songs. I’ve also absorbed so much more life experience and gone through many other different things this year – it’s so exciting to think about the next chapter.”
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