In Conversation With… Olivia Lane

For episode 102 of the podcast, we interview Olivia Lane about her experience on Songland, her latest EP and why she loves the UK so much…

It’s been a bit of a year. You’ve had so many releases, you were on Songland. How can you take all that in? 

It’s so crazy. I mean just thinking about where I was last year, and again I was coming out with brand new music when I was over here. It’s my good luck charm coming over here, it’s a great start to the year for me. I just really love coming over here, but yeah I’m kind of in the same spot, I’m coming out with brand new music this year.

It must be fun to try it out across the pond and then see how they respond. 

People really listen here, so it’s going to give me a really good gauge of whether they like it or not the new stuff. I’m playing a couple of new songs tonight, but yeah just thinking back to last year when ‘Hey 3am’ came out and then ‘So Good It Hurts’ and then the EP. Then I was on Songland which was the big show over there. It’s been such a wild 2019 that I feel like 2020 is going to be even bigger, and even crazier and even better.

Exactly!

Songland feels like the most scary thing as a songwriter. You’re walking out in front of Shane MacAnally and all these incredible songwriters, and you’re singing your own song and then they’re critiquing. That sounds like my worst nightmare.

You know it’s interesting, I was talking with one of my friend songwriters from the show, and we were doing a podcast the other day in Nashville and they asked ‘what was the vibe? How was it?’ He made a really good point – because it’s so true – they really made you feel like you were one of them.

That’s a real art, because obviously they’re huge people who’ve written some of the biggest hits on country radio, so for them to do that is kind of humbling and amazing.

It was so humbling, because they really gave us the power to redo the songs and they really helped us, but there was no ‘we’re the judges and we’re amazing, and you’re the whatever….’

… Which is basically every other talent show that’s ever existed.

Exactly, that’s why I think it was so cool being part of the first season, because they were trying to figure things out. Honestly, it could have gone either way, either America’s going to care or not going to care about the songwriter, but people are so into it.

I think there has been such a movement these days where people are buying into the songs and the songwriters, I think it’s something that people really like about country music in particular, that it is this movement back to having more importance on the songwriter. 

Exactly, there’s so many levels to making the song brilliant. It’s nice that they’re highlighting the different parts. I think it’s a reflection of our culture because you have to be able to be the artist that’s able to give access to their fans and I think there’s a direct correlation – they want to know more about the song, how the song was created and who did it, where did it come from, which studio you were in. Even, just as an example, Julia Michaels is behind all of that Selena Gomez stuff, and it’s like ‘wait, Julia Michaels is an incredibly powerful thing in her own right.’ To know that she’s written so many songs for another powerhouse female like that is really cool.

I feel like this project was so much more raw and real than your previous works, almost a different level to your songwriting. ‘The Cape’ is so raw and real. Did it feel very different putting this out because of that? 

It felt very different. Sometimes I try to explain it, we’re all human, we’re all complex, we all have different parts of our personality but the only story I had really told to my fans was the positive, sunshine-y, quirky, uptempo, upbeat girl, but not getting to the nitty gritty sensibility that was really such a big part of me. I wasn’t honouring it in the way I was supposed to. ‘Hey 3am’ was really the beginning of that, and that’s what I wanted my EP to reflect, I wanted to dive deeper into that girl.

Did it start off with ‘The Cape’ then and build out from there? 

The first song on that EP was ‘Let It Hurt’ – that one’s gut-wrenching, that’s the one that really goes there. Also, with Songland, ‘Perfect Skin’ was a song that I was going to put on my EP and I cut it a few times, and it didn’t work out, I couldn’t nail it, but all the meanwhile it was meant for Songland. There’s always a silver lining. I think my fans have really dug this part that I’ve explored, so it was really a good step.

Do you almost feel that the more fans you’ve got the more you can get raw with them? For many it would be the opposite. 

Yeah, it’s interesting, I guess I’m kind of a people pleaser and I love people. Something with my art, I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s just I feel it’s my purpose to write great songs and put them out there, because I know that hopefully on the other side I’m helping somebody and helping somebody get through something. The more the merrier, I think just on a human levelm I love that it brings people together. There’s so much magic in the connection of music.

‘So Good It Hurts,’ I heard live at The RoundUp, but when you listen to it in studio the production is just on another level and it makes it this entirely different song. Have you held onto many songs, just because you haven’t found the right production on that EP? 

It’s funny that you say that actually, ‘So Good It Hurts’ and ‘Friends Don’t’ were from the same producer on the EP, and the rest of the EP was produced by another producer. It’s funny because that EP in itself is an accumulation of me trying to find myself and it makes sense that there’s multiple producers on that record, because it was a process of me trying to find myself and trying to find my sound. It all ended up working out, but I was in a very big experimentation with my sound.

Your new single is called ‘Same Old Story,’ can you talk a bit about the inspiration behind it? 

I’m single right now, and I’ve had an interesting relationship with love this past year. In that self-journey process, sometimes relationships have to go too, because you realise that you’ve found out all these incredible and amazing things about yourself, but this person doesn’t line up with it. So, I had to part ways (laughs) – I’m talking about it as if it was a business – and had to breakup with him, because we weren’t right for each other. There were parts of me, I felt that I had to respect and honour. I think this song was an accumulation of those parts of me I now know, and being excited to find someone who respects and honours those. It’s funny, because I was inspired to write that song from a Kacey Musgraves show – she’s even brilliant when she talks between her songs. She was talking about how she fell in love with her now-husband and how it changed her musical direction and falling in love and how powerful it can be, and how someone can just come along and change the whole story, so that it’s no longer the ‘Same Old Story.’ I thought, ‘ah gurl, that title, I can’t believe you haven’t written it.’ I wrote it literally that next week, and it was so clear to me that that needed to be my next single. It’s still that vulnerable girl, but I haven’t really written about love – ‘You Got Me’ could be about any relationship, but it’s not a romantic love – but this is the first song that’s kind of an ode to a boy, and looking for a deep love. It’s different for me.

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Final Few

Record you’re listening to on repeat at the moment? I can’t get enough of that ‘Circles’ song by Post Malone, and then Dua Lipa’s new stuff is fire.

Favourite thing about the UK? Oh my gosh, there’s so many things… the people, and the food, Fish and Chips!

What are you bingewatching at the moment? Ooh – Cheer!

What’s your beauty essential? Chapstick, I have a panic attack if I don’t have any with me.

Complete the sentence…

Music is… the best universal language to speak.

Country music is… my home.

Olivia Lane is… dope.

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