Are you primarily a singer-songwriter or a musical performer?

I mean, it’s difficult, because they’re two parts of my life that don’t go completely well together. They’re two completely different markets, and when I’m doing one, I’m doing one: I don’t write for musical theatre. I think I probably see myself more as a singer-songwriter though, just because I’ve been doing it for longer, and because I see musical theatre stuff as something that’s kind of enhanced my ability to perform as a singer-songwriter. I really, really enjoy it, I’d love to do either, but I probably just spend more time writing songs.

When did you start writing songs?

Oooh, this is difficult. So when I actually started writing song-songs, I was probably about ten years old. Some of the stuff on the current album was written when I was about 10, 11. There’s like a weird mix of stuff from age ten and stuff from age 18. Obviously, stuff that’s been reworked – ten-year-old Holly didn’t have great lyrics [laughs]. But I think there’s a film of me from when I’m really young, from before properly speaking, climbing the stairs, writing a song about climbing, where I only really knew the word ‘climbing’.

Has musical theatre influenced your song-writing?

It definitely has, because I only sang in a certain way – in a floaty way, in a very acoustic way – before I did musical theatre. As well as giving you the confidence to stand up and sing loudly, I learned how to belt, I learned how to kind of use my voice in a really powerful way, and I wanted to incorporate some of that strength into the music. So when I was writing ‘Ophelia’, which is the first song I wrote while I was in Cambridge, I was like, I want there to be a belty bit, I want there to be this really loud thing where I can just really sing, no matter what the words are.

How would you describe your sound?

It’s a question that I’m always asked, particularly on festival applications. It’s really difficult, because you can only go, “Oh, I dunno, it’s a bit folky, it’s a bit poppy, it’s a bit rocky.” It depends on how I’m feeling. The way I’m writing at the moment is slightly more rocky, and the stuff that I’m gonna put out soon is more on the rock side. But I go through massive periods of time when I’m only writing folk music. It just depends.

What are your musical inspirations?

I listen to a weird range of music. So my upbringing was a weird mixture of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd... really eclectic. But also, as I’ve grown up, weird pop influences from the Top 40, hearing samples, developing my own stuff and my own ideas of what I like in music. Sometimes I’ll listen to really bad lyrics, because I really like the bass. But to be honest, in terms of music, it’s not super influential on what I do – that’s more literature, because I study literature. I just couldn’t stop writing about books, and wanting to put almost like film music to them, so you could get this atmosphere of a book by listening to like a three-minute song.

There was a lot of Shakespeare. There’s a song on Mercury Sunrise called ‘In His Shoes’ which is kind of about... I don’t know if it was about Romeo and Juliet, or reading Romeo and Juliet. A lot of my songs are about reading. Like, ‘Ophelia’ isn’t really about Ophelia in Hamlet, it’s about what would happen if we took Ophelia from Hamlet then, and put her into society now, and how does mental illness work with that, and how does being a woman work with that?

How would you go about starting a song?

I usually write in very short bursts, when I get five or six songs done in a week. Then I practise it and develop it, but the actual songwriting happens really quickly. With ‘Ophelia’ I had this melody in my head, there’s this bit in the chorus that goes, da-dum da-dum da-da-dum, and has almost no words to it. All my songs have been really wordy, but the most important thing with ‘Ophelia’ was this melody that had almost no words – [words] just sort of framed the melody. I then put words to it, and it just happened to be “Goodnight, sweet ladies, goodnight, goodnight”, from Hamlet.

Has Cambridge had an effect on your music?

The town I came from didn’t have a huge music scene, so for me it’s magical and huge. I think that the traditional element of music does help. I mean, I loved choral music before I applied – I almost applied for a choir. There’s so much music in Cambridge, and one of the great things about the music scene is that there’s lots of people just starting, and experimenting with different kinds of music. You get to see really, really great performers as they’re just honing what they’re doing. I don’t think my style’s changed that much – I probably do most of my writing at home still. One thing I think that’s really helped is that, because everyone’s playing, you have to kind of fight to play. It really helps your confidence and your bravery.

What are your plans for the future?

Oh... I don’t know. You just have to keep putting stuff out and you have to keep contacting people, which is the only way it works. We had a lot of positive feedback for the first album, which is really encouraging. There’s something coming in May, which I don’t know how much I’m allowed to talk to you about. It’s this song that’s been written for a while, we were just working out what we were going to do to it... I’m really excited about it!