SCARLET Shares new single COLD SUMMER | We Talk Recording At ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS & Timothee Chalamet.
Collage Artwork by John Burbidge
SCARLET hails South East London, producing and writing all of her work from her bedroom while still currently in college. She has had the opportunity to record at the famous Abbey Road Studios at just age 17 demonstrating her drive to pursue music as a career. Her new single - Cold Summer - is not one to miss. She has refined her sound to reflect her diverse nostalgic musical influences, which include Lilly Allen, which can be heard on her new EP.
Your latest release Cold Summer is incredibly nostalgic and brings you back to summers and young love that you’ve captured so well. How did writing a song about the film ‘Hot Summer Nights’ differ from your regular process of writing?
Thank you, my main goal with any song is to capture some kind of emotion and nostalgia was this song's emotion :) I actually made part of the chorus with the lyric ‘It’s a cold summer’ before I had watched the movie; I was on Instagram and I think I just saw a very visually pleasing video of a ferris wheel and thought ‘yes, cold summer’. So I made that but then I didn’t really have any ideas for the song, so obviously I had to go and have a Timothee Chalamet movie marathon break and watched Hot Summer Nights for the first time and then the whole song kind of leaked out of me. Having the story of the film as a strict guideline really helped me with the lyrics and story of the song, because I think it’s very easy, when writing a song, to go off track from the initial lyrical idea but this time there was none of that; for me the most exciting part of writing and producing this song was having that strong visual reference from the film as I gain a lot of my inspiration for anything I create from everything I see on Instagram, blogs, music videos, magazines and so on, so having a whole movie worth of visuals really gave me that extra push and help with evoking emotions like nostalgia.
Your sound is distinctive and has an iconic British quality to the different genres it blends together. What type of music did you grow up listening to that influenced your musical style? We definitely get some Lilly Allen vibes on Moviestar, while Cold Summer has a softer Billy Eilish vibe.
I grew up listening to anything and everything: my parents would play their House CDs from Ibiza in the car and the kitchen, and then on Saturday mornings I would always wake up to them playing Disco and Soul music (and I still do lol). My sister showed me Drum and Bass when I was around 10 or 11 because that was when she started going rave (she’s 5 years older than me) and then I fell in love with it, I remember on our summer holiday to Florida we would be sitting on the bus going to the Disney parks just banging out Mr Happy by Dj Hazard and it was straight up vibes. I also loved Bon Iver, Lily Allen, and Ed Sheeran (specifically his No.5 Collaborations Album) growing up, I think they had more of an impact on me making music rather than the mainstream pop that I loved. As I’ve grown older my music taste has developed and I take inspiration from literally everything but I think that has to do with how varied my music exposure was when I was little.
Although your sound is light and whimsical some of your lyrics are tongue-in-cheek. Do you feel that this is important to your lyricism?
I think it’s important to just have fun with the writing and not take it too seriously, because I used to and I look back at those songs like ‘lol who do you think you are?’. I respect artists whose lyrics are really poetic and beautiful, for example, Frank Ocean, and I’d love to write like that but at the moment that's just not my style. I feel like my lyrics are very straight up and not ambiguous at all but to me there might be a deeper meaning and it’s not actually about what the lyrics are literally saying but that’s just my interpretation of the song, music personal and isn’t the same for everyone. Back to the question though haha, yeah, I try to be sarcastic and ironic within some phrases of a song to break it up a bit and not be too serious about anything, a bit like me in general lol.
Should we be anticipating any upcoming music videos?
Hopefully, I have so many ideas but we’ll just have to wait and see :) (if anyone’s reading this and is a film producer/director or whatever hit me up!)
How did you get into producing your songs as well as writing them?
When I went to college, they taught us the basics on how to produce and then I ran with it. I had been writing (or at least attempting to) for a couple years before college but I didn’t like any of the songs, so once I learnt how to produce, writing suddenly became a lot easier and more enjoyable because I felt like I had so much control. I’ve never liked having demos with just me and my guitar (unless that’s the idea) because most of the time when I have an idea for a song I have the whole song in my head, like what kind of synths, bass, if there will be samples of my voice, e.t.c. so then having production as a skill I could have the whole song set out to know if I liked it or not and I could do that just from my bed, whereas I couldn’t do that before and I would just get frustrated and then I wouldn’t even try.
When you produce and write are you more focused on the lyrics or the emotions you want your listeners to relate to and feel?
It depends on the song really, for Cold Summer it was a bit of both but more so the emotions. Lyrics contribute to emotions but they’re not the main thing that creates the emotion, so with this song I concentrated more on the instrumental: having the atmospheric but rich synths layered with delayed guitar riffs and soft percussion for the dream-like choruses and then breaking this dreamscape up with the straight strummed guitar and drums in the verses to create the nostalgic yet realistic feelings of the song (mirroring the dreamy idea of summer love but then there’s the reality that it ends).
Talk us through your musical process from your bedroom. Are you a lock-yourself-in-your-room-until-you-finish artist or do you try a few different things and piece them together over time?
To be honest I haven’t got a clue, every songs creative process is different to each other but for me it mainly depends on how much of the song I can hear and see, so if I basically have the whole song in my head then it’ll be a lock yourself in your room until it’s finished song but sometimes songs won’t just come to me and it’ll take some time for me to finish it and all of the other songs (which are the majority) are just left to gather dust until I come across them again in a year or so’s time lol.
When you were just 17 you had the incredible opportunity to record at Abbey Studios. Can you tell us more about how this experience came to be and how it felt being in the legendary studios?
I think it was this time last year I went to a networking event and met some producers and engineers from Abbey Road Studio Institute, one of them being Bruno who then invited me to record some of my songs at Abbey Road. I brought my band with me and then I started going there for quite a few months, with my keys player Connor, just recording and sitting in when they were producing the songs, and then I got some work experience there in January so at one point I was at Abbey Road more than I was at home! It was mad. Just being there was very surreal let alone going multiple times and recording. Going to Abbey Road was amazing but at the same time it made me realise how much I love producing my songs myself and how much of a control freak I am haha.
What was your experience of studying at ELAM? Do you feel that being surrounded by lots of young talent influenced and evolved your sound?
I loved ELAM. Being surrounded by such talented people 24/7, I felt inspired everyday and it also pushed me because everyone is so good at what they do, it was like ‘Nah I need to be the best’ so then I would work harder on my craft even though no one’s ever the best at anything. My sound 100% became easier to find at ELAM, I didn’t even have a clue as to what I wanted it to be before college, but even so I think I only really found my true sound that I’m in love with during lockdown, and that’s on self reflection
Back in 2018 Tom Grennan gave you and your fellow ELAM students a BRITs masterclass. Was there any key advice that you took away from Tom that still resonates with you?
If I’m being totally honest, no.
You have collaborated with your designer sister Sinead Gorey, Converse and Refinery29 and are about to debut Cold Summer on IGTV with fashion label MINGA. What is your connection with fashion and how does it relate to your musical identity?
I love fashion so much, it’s my favourite way of expressing myself on a day to day basis and it’s so fun to play around with (when you have the time). I haven’t 100% figured out how fashion directly relates to my musical identity yet, but all I know is that I like to walk down the high street and have people looking at my outfit, and if it’s in a good or bad way, I do not care.
How did you find making music during a lockdown? Did you find you had more personal space to explore and experiment alone or did you feel restricted not being able to be physically near your band?
Lockdown was definitely the best thing to happen to me musically. Before lockdown, I was very confused as to what music I was making and the sound I wanted to create; going to a college every day where the musicians and artists made predominantly RnB, NeoSoul and Jazz I think I felt a bit caged, but I didn’t know it at the time. I always knew that this music (the music I make now) was what I wanted to make but lockdown really allowed me to make it, and literally the first month of lockdown it all flew out of me. I think I wrote around 50 songs.
How do you envision the future of live music to be in a post-Covid19 world?
I don’t even want to think about it :( near future live music events won’t be the same at all, most likely all remote gigs, but a few years from now hopefully all back to normal.
If you could collaborate and work with any artist who would it be?
This question always trips me up. Frank Ocean, The 1975, Tame Impala, Bon Iver or Billie Eilish/Finneas. I can’t pick one sorry. They’re all too sick, and there’s even more on my list lol.
A lot of new artists have had success getting hits on Tik Tok are you on the platform?
I am on TikTok but I don’t use it to promote my music, I probably should but I get too caught up in the scrolling, also I don’t understand the algorithm so I get no views.
What are your career goals and aspirations, do you want to be an independent artist with a management team or are you hoping an A&R will sign you up to a record deal?
I’d love to stay independent and have a management team, but having that support of a label would be great. It all depends on the type of label it is, but at the moment I’m happy with anything :)