For lots of girls, being a “pop star” is a sugar-coated pipe dream, quickly abandoned when that monster called Real Life gets its claws in. But for Kirriemuir’s Kirsty Grant, pop is serious business.
The former Dundee High pupil, who calls in from her base in London, has been working towards her dream since her school days.
Now, after a year which set a lot of others back, she’s finally seeing all that work pay off, as she prepares to release her self-made debut EP, Chain Reaction.
“A lot of the time with pop,” the 23-year-old muses, “It’s taken as being ‘just for kids’ or not being ‘serious music’.
“Whereas to me, it’s my whole life – it’s very serious. And it’s an amazing thing.”
Her upcoming record combines high-energy, euphoric beats and synths with clean-cut, airy vocals and grounded lyrics. It’s a before-the-night-out, shiny piece of pop polished up just right.
Basically, it made me want to look out my high heels for the first time since lockdown began.
And with her singles already making waves among the music buffs like The Line of Best Fit, Earmilk, Clout, Euphoria Magazine, and Gay Times, Kirsty has been dubbed “one to watch” and compared to the likes of global sensation Dua Lipa.
So I caught up with her around the release of new single Bad Boys, Good Girls last month, so I could find out what makes her tick – before she explodes.
Grant-ing an audience: Kirsty Grant Q&A
Congratulations on your newest single, Bad Boys, Good Girls. Tell me about your journey in music up to now?
Thanks! It started when I was at Dundee High. I had singing lessons there, and I was just always like: “I want to be in London. I want to sing, I want to do music!”
My mum saw I was taking it seriously, so every birthday or Christmas she’d get me a microphone or a guitar or something. I’d steal her Apple iMac so I could use (production programme) Garageband. So every day after high school, I’d come home and record covers, Miley Cyrus and things.
How did you go from bedroom covers to your own material?
For a long time it wasn’t very clear how I would get to what I wanted to do. You know, there’s not a guidebook or a course that you can do.
I moved to London at 18 and I finished my degree there, in 2019. It was only then that I realised: “Oh, I need to actually be in the real world now and try to make it.”
Cruel reality!
Exactly! And then by the time 2020 hit, obviously the world shut down – but it was actually quite interesting because I learned to do everything over Zoom. And I ended up progressing the most by far in 2020.
I was like: “OK well I need my own mic, I need my own hardware, I need to do it myself.” And every single song I’ve released, apart from the first tester track, has been recorded in this bedroom.
So it’s been a very different experience to what I thought it would be, growing up, and I’m still finding my feet and building up confidence. It’s been a year of trying to take myself seriously.
I think that idea of taking yourself seriously is interesting, because a lot of women in music, and particularly women in pop, are not taken seriously by fans or critics.
Mmhmm, yep! My experience at university – well, there was a lot of guys there. The second that you said you wanted to do pop, it was just: “Pffft!” (She waves her hand dismissively.)
You were really not taken seriously. And I remember with the very first song, the tester one I put out, the amount of people that came up to me and said: “You know, it’s actually really good.”
Cheeky!
Very. But coming out of uni and finding my groups and networking, you realise how seriously some people do take pop.
There’s people that I’m friends with who are doing music full time, making an incredible income, doing amazing things, achieving their career goals – and they’re not on every Spotify playlist or anything, but they’re still really making it.
Like who?
So I have this amazing writer friend, Ryan Lawrie, he’s also from Scotland – he’s from Glasgow – and he’s written for BTS. And he’s now got two no 1 albums on Billboard. He’s living in Scotland, he’s doing his passion, music, full-time.
And I just thought those things were so unreachable. But if you are around the right people, that really motivates you and gives you some confidence that you’re on the right path.
Absolutely. And musically, too, it’s good to have a niche right? In my head, head there are a group of ‘London pop girls’ you know? Maisie Peters, L Devine…
Love her! Love them!
And I reckon they’ve mastered, at a very young age, taking themselves seriously, did that inspire you?
Yes! I actually have a Maisie Peters tattoo. (She holds her arm up to the camera, and sure enough, she does.)
I love her. I met her once and I showed her, and she was like: “Oh my god, this is the first tattoo!” She is just the sweetest.
What does it say?
“Best I’ll Ever Sing”. That song… I was on the bus going somewhere, and I’d never heard of her before, but that song came on and my heart just wrenched. I listened to it on loop the whole bus journey, and the whole way back as well, and it was just the best thing I’d ever heard.
People like Maisie seem unreachable at times. But if you can in the right circles, then you know people who know her or who have worked with her.
Who are your biggest influences musically?
Even before Ariana Grande properly got big, she was the person whose picture I’d take to the hairdressers, to try and copy her hair.
I looked up to her. She taught me so much about my voice, just from trying to copy her. And that’s a thing I learned recently about singers – if you’re a good singer, you can mimic other voices quite easily, and you can then adapt techniques and put them into your own voice.
And then there’s people like Little Mix – I just love bubblegum pop!
Nowadays I’m listening to a lot more London-based artists instead of those worldwide phenomenon types. People like GRACEY, who aren’t a household name but I really appreciate their art.
Would you say you’re primarily a singer or do you play instruments as well?
Singer, 100%. My mum literally took me to piano classes every week for five years and I could not play a single thing. So definitely no instruments. I don’t have the brain for it.
But you write your own songs, right?
Yes, exactly.
Cool! So let’s talk about the new song, Bad Boys, Good Girls. You seem put really upbeat music with really sad stories.
That’s the key! Yeah that’s my favourite thing to do, is take proper ballad material and make it into an upbeat song. But this song was super, super fun.
It was co-written by Ryan (Lawrie). And a lot of the times we’ll have the song title before the song. The co-producer JULEZ was like: “What about something to do with the bad boy?”
So we got the conversation going and I voice memo-ed into the writers group, and we started just sharing a bunch of funny stories about typical bad boys that we’d come across and – hopefully – avoided.
And I think that was the key to why it was so upbeat. Because although it’s really sad that all of us had these really bad experiences with guys, it came out really fun because we were having fun.
You said earlier that you’d wanted to move to London since you were pretty young. Did you feel there were options for you up in Scotland, or did you feel that you had to move there?
I’ve thought about this before, actually. I did have it in my head already that London was the place to be. Every artist in the UK that I had heard of had come out of London.
But as I’ve got older, especially this past year, my perspective has changed a lot.
Now, in 2021, after Zoom, anything is possible. I’m working with my producer and he’s in Germany, you know? So now I think anything is possible, but back then I did definitely think: “I can’t make it if I don’t leave Dundee.”
Do you see yourself doing a hometown gig in the future?
I’d love to! That would be the big ‘pinch me’ moment. I remember I went to see Little Mix at Slessor Gardens and I thought: “One day!”
One day, fingers crossed! Back to the work – what is your favourite line that you’ve written?
One of the lines in a session that took me from a zero to a ten in about a minute flat and is on the EP was: “Doing all our things alone; the things we did but now we don’t.”
Tell me more…
You know how with a relationship or even a friendship, you can have all these traditions? Like every Friday night you go to this place, or do this thing. And if there’s a break up or whatever, you don’t want to just stop doing all those things. But then you realise you do them alone now.
The lyric hurt my heart – so that’s how I know it’s good!
It’s got a good rhythm in it too!
Yes! Even a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have put much value into that, but having grown in confidence with my songwriting, I’ve learned so much isn’t necessarily the words – it’s how it flows.
So true. We’re coming to the end now, so here’s one last question: What’s something you want to answer but I haven’t asked?
It sounds silly, but I kind of wish people knew how much goes into everything. When people come across a song, they click, they scroll… it’s just very passive. But that’s been a year of my life.
I’ve put every penny, every resource that I have into it – into finding the right cover art, the right mixing engineer, the mastering engineer.
Every single lyric has been thought through a million times. There’s been about 60 vocal takes to get that one you’re hearing.
And I just would want people to know how much I put into it. There’s a lot of my brain in there.
Kirsty Grant’s debut EP Chain Reaction will be released this month on all major streaming services.