Katy for Kings is an up and coming singer from Essex – an artist who at the age of 20 has already found their voice and a loyal following. Here, we interview Katy for Kings on her influences and journey so far.
How are you doing?
I’m doing really well. Thank you.
It must be so nice for you to finally be able to release music again and getting back out there. Have you managed any live shows?
I actually haven’t yet, it’s definitely something I’m looking into – I haven’t since releasing the new music. I’m very open to it, but at the minute everything’s still a bit up in the air.
Congratulations on your recent releases, including ‘Impersonator’ – they’re such great tracks and such a good kick off for 2021. Can you talk a bit about them? Are they songs that you’ve had in the back pocket for ages or ones you wrote over the past year?
So ‘City’ we wrote the summer I turned 18, that one was really being kept in the back pocket because it didn’t seem like the correct starting place for me to just come out of the gate and release that song – I don’t know why, sometimes it just isn’t the right time. We definitely kept that one on the back burner. ‘Impersonator’ is a bit of a strange one because I wrote it and then I originally didn’t actually like it that much, I didn’t want to go forward with recording it. For everyone in my team, it was their favourite song of mine, so I don’t think they would have let me not record it.
In terms of your musical journey so far, you’ve kicked it off with some amazing tracks. Can you talk about your musical journey in terms of your influences and who you grew up listening to?
Yeah, sure. I started playing guitar seriously when I was 14 and the reason for that was because I told my mom that I wanted a Taylor Swift album for Christmas – I think it was Red – and then they bought me all of the Taylor CDs up until that point, so then the obsession started. It was pretty intense, because obviously, I knew who Taylor Swift was but I wasn’t in a circle of people that spoke about her a lot. I felt like I discovered someone who was already a complete and utter superstar.
She’s obviously a big influence on your music, but there’s so many other sounds in your music – were there other things you kind of grew up listening to as well?
My dad is a scouser, so I was heavily bought up around the Beatles, there’s always music in the house. I don’t know how we never got noise complaints from the neighbours, because I’m writing songs all the time. There was a lot – some Rolling Stones, some Fleetwood Mac, like, mainly just the hits. One of my favourite songs of all time was ‘I wish I was a punk rocker’ by Saturday. I played that one in one of the last shows before lockdown, which was a strange full circle moment. When we played that song my dad was in the audience.
When did you decide use your own voice and start writing material for yourself; how did that all come about?
It was a bit strange, because I started out in musical theatre when I was seven or eight. I wasn’t really taking it seriously at that young of an age. Then I started becoming really serious about that and went on to voice lessons. For some reason, like I said, just got obsessed with Taylor Swift and how she tells stories and stuff and I thought ‘maybe I could try it’. Honestly, the first year was just me trying to replicate Taylor Swift.
I mean, at the end of the day, she’s been pretty successful, so if you can replicate her, then you’re on to something pretty good.
Yeah, I could relate to her, like so many other people being a young girl. It was just me trying to figure out life.
Obviously, with your latest single, you’ve been working a lot with John Fields – what has he given to your music?
I mean, John is an incredible human. I thin he really understands me in a whole other way aside from music, I think he gets where I’m coming from. He really takes the time to look at the lyrics and understand the point of view for the song and then work around that. So it’s never really just hearing the song, I think he always takes time to understand the perspective of the song and just step out for a minute – how should this sound rather than how do I want it to sound? I really appreciate that because I don’t have the first clue when it comes to production.He seems to just take it from my brain and put it on a computer.
I’m just really excited to hear more music from you. Thank you so much for taking time to chat with me today.
Thank you so much.
