Harleymoon Kemp is an up and coming UK country star who just released her debut single ‘Space.’
Your journey all links back really to your childhood, music has been around forever. How much do you feel like this journey was meant to be?
It definitely feels part of the journey, all of my family are in music, we play music all the time and I’ve been playing songs since I was ten years old. It’s been an ongoing development, so when I started writing songs for other people, I just became more and more confident with my writing and then had a bank of songs that I’d written, some on my own and some in Nashville that hadn’t been cut. I thought that I loved those songs and wished that someone would record them. I thought I’ve got to step up and record these songs.
You talk about Nashville and the inspiration you get from being there. When was your first trip? Has country always been a big influence for you?
Yeah I think that I was always writing in that style, not knowing that it was country music initially. I liked writing poems and storytelling. I learned to play guitar and then I learned about three chords and the truth in country songs, where I didn’t have to be the best guitar player to do it. I just had to have those three chords and then I could take the story where I wanted. The story always led me through the song. I was writing and ended up showing my songs to a publisher and he was like ‘oh my gosh, there’s a writing camp in Nashville next week, let me see if I can get you on this camp, I think you’d be perfect.’ I’ve obviously written some country sounding songs and I’m so in love with Nashville the TV show. Then, all of a sudden, I get accepted into this writing camp and I’m going to Nashville. I just fell in love with it and met some amazing writers and wrote some great songs there, I just loved everything about it and I realised that my style was very country-inspired.
It’s interesting because when you actually dive into country as a genre, so much of it is about the songwriting and it is more about the story aspect. People often don’t realise it’s a fit with their songwriting.
Totally. I mean the next song that I’m about to release is called ‘She Looks Like Me.’ It’s quite specific about running into this girl, who you become a bit absorbed by her and you’re looking at her and all of a sudden, you realise that it’s your ex’s new girlfriend and you realise that she looks exactly like you, your style and look – that heartbreaking moment of why can’t you stop looking at her, you wish you could stop looking at her, but you can’t. You know it’s not a friend. There’s one specific moment that you can delve into and write and it was so good to release that.
‘Space’ is now out in the world, which must be incredibly exhilarating and liberating.
Yeah definitely, I wanted something that kind of started as a crossover – it’s not totally country and it’s not completely a ballad. I think it’s so easy to write sad songs that it is quite nice to have romance and love in a song. I wrote this song in Sweden actually, with a couple of writers, it was actually a pitch for someone else.
How do you decide which ones to keep and which ones to give away?
I always was writing to give songs away, but I just had this catalogue of a playlist on my iTunes of songs that I had really loved but I didn’t know who was right for them – I didn’t know who would take them. ‘She Looks Like Me,’ for instance, is so detailed and so specific that I didn’t know who would be right for the song. I think it is my story.
The response to the track has been incredible.
It was so unexpected because I just released it from the passion of music, I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to go to number one, I just had these really beautiful songs that I love and our part of my soul and I love them. I just thought I’d release them as a creative outlet starting point and then we put out ‘Space.’ It was such a confidence boost that I could do this.
You’ve mentioned one of the tracks but other than that do you have much else in the pipeline for this year?
Yeah, I’ve got a song called ‘Love on the Radio,’ they’ve all got different touches to them – the next one is a really sad, lonely song. ‘Girl Going Nowhere’ by Ashley McBryde was the inspiration for the production. ‘Love on the Radio’ I wrote with two best friends and it was so much fun to write, it’s really easy and fun.
Final Few
Record you’d take to a desert island?
It could be Queens of the Stone Age ‘No One Knows’ or an Alanis Morissette song.
Record you’re listening to on repeat at the moment?
I’m always listening to Norah Jones ‘Come Away With Me’…
Complete the sentence…
Music is… therapy.
Country music is… my life.
Harleymoon is… feeling very overwhelmed.
