Vocal powerhouse Marie Naffah has shared her new single ‘Run Away With Me‘ taken from her forthcoming project – Trains. Here, we interview Marie about the single, Trains and the evolution of her sound.
Hi, how is everything with you? The last few years with the pandemic have been a whirlwind, so it must be good to finally get back to doing live music again? It must have been hard not being able to.
You know what, it really was, I actually feel like it hit me later. I was so lucky during lockdown – nothing serious happened to anyone I knew or anything – so I feel very fortunate in that respect. I also got to release a load of music. I was amazed by what you could do digitally. After so long, gigging again, I realised how much I had missed it. It’s the place I feel most myself and my most powerful. I actually almost mourned those years without now I’m back. It’s so nice, because listeners seem to feel that as well.
I feel like there’s a joy and appreciation for music now. People seem to be taking this moment to be really reflective of how grateful they are to be in that environment. People are listening more.
Completely, completely.
Obviously, the new single is ‘Run Away With Me’ – can you talk about that one? There’s such a hopeful note in that song about inspiring people to go out travelling again and kick back to normal life, so can you talk about the process of writing that one?
Yeah, so for all the tracks that are coming off this EP – Trains – ‘Run Away With Me’ is the second single that I released. They were all kind of born on train journeys, which is why the EP is called Trains – it’s got nothing to do with Great Western Rail. I basically wrote the song staring out of a train window, having that feeling of being the star in your own movie. I’m a big old romantic at heart. I listen to loads of old school romance solos – whether it’s The Beatles or Aretha Franklin, I was listening to a lot of real classic love stuff. I thought, I want to write one of those, I want to just be soppy, and it’s very easy to sort of feel a bit lame, or want to hide behind it, but people love a good old love song.
There’s a reason why people love Elvis and the greats. There are so many soulful elements in your music now. I know that you were inspired a lot by your trip to America and spending time there. Can you talk about having that element coming into your music? I imagine it’s probably a bit of a surprise even for you?
Yeah, completely. That’s funny that you asked that, I started as an acoustic folk artist, I’ve been doing it for a really long time. I was doing some shows out in New York and I met a manager – who became my manager for a little period of time – who was amazing. He knew the studio where I needed to go and record, I was such a Londoner in America and Indiana felt so far away, but he said ‘trust me, it’s an amazing studio’. It was a converted post office, it looks like nothing from the outside and inside it’s every musician’s dream.
It was in the middle of nowhere – there’s nothing for days. They had these amazing live rooms with fairy lights and carpets everywhere. I went and I spent three days recording there. I made my first set of tracks, which wasn’t really an official EP, but I made it with some real kind of soul and Americana jazz artists – the most incredible artists I’ve ever seen, let alone worked with – and there was something in the spontaneity of soul and the rawness of how we recorded it. We recorded it all to tape, without all the fiddly bits that I had associated so much with making pop music. I thought, ‘that’s how I want to make music.’ I grew up on soul music, my Spotify is quite embarrassing, when people ask me what new music I’m listening to, I’m still listening to Elvis, no new music. I have always wanted to make music that has that old school timelessness, but is contemporary like modern music. I want to bridge the gap.
I feel like there has been a movement back towards that sound during the pandemic, and that style of recording. Artists seem to be moving back to recording in analog ways, it feels like, when you’re missing that live element, people have infused that into the music instead of the studio versions.
Completely. I think that thing about wanting to go back is exactly right, this shift away from digital. I’ve definitely experienced that – this idea that having to put stuff online all the time, you can see people going off it, you can see that with fans and friends as well. People don’t want to be on their screen all the time.
On this project, the other single ‘I Want More’ seems to be as much about a love for live music as a love song – did you have that in mind when you’re writing it? Did it happen naturally that it sort of became both things?
Yeah. It often happens with my stuff, I think my super intense relationship with music and the music industry often comes out in quite a romantic way. I remember once I wrote something about being really jaded and my boyfriend said, ‘it just sounds like everyone’s like, what did you do?’ I do think that I am very aware that my relationship with the music industry is so personal to me. It’s important for me to write about things that are personal to me, but I want them to have relevance to lots of listeners. Having a romantic element was intentional on my part, it didn’t have to just be applicable to a romantic thing, it could be also a professional thing, or a self worth thing. I wanted it to be multi-faceted what you want more of, whether it be a boss, your partner.
It must be interesting then seeing how different people interpret it. When you leave things a little bit more open ended and a little bit more lyrical, people can read themselves into things in a way.
Yeah, completely, someone said they wanted more religion and that had never crossed my mind. That for me is so important , it’s nice to hear someone else put a new life for them.
You write the songs and then they go out and have a new life of their own… I know you’ve got two more songs left to release on this project, so what are those looking like – I know they’re all keeping in the same conceptual framework?
I’m really excited, we’ve got one coming out next month. I would say both of them are a bit more serious. I think I really wanted this EP to be as honest as possible and the EP is a product of two years of being in the pandemic, so the moods that I experienced are very different than the moods I experienced when I was on the West Coast of America. I was a little bit more introspective, let’s just say.
I think these first two tracks were very uplifting. I think these are quite powerful songs. I’m really excited about the genres, I’ve kind of played with a bit more, I’ve pushed the electronic side of my music quite hard. This next song I’ve really worked hard to create incredibly honest lyrics – they are definitely some of the most serious lyrics I’ve ever written. Without sounding too cliche, I was listening to a lot of people like Leonard Cohen and thinking how raw it was, softening the blow doesn’t make for good music – I feel I try to write music that is as real as possible. We’ve got that and then track four is a song called ‘Mrs Tambourine Man’ which is taken from a Dylan song and it’s a kind of critique on how the industry has changed quite a lot. It’s still the world I inhabit and the world I live in. I felt quite strong. It’s funny because I recorded another last track, which is very sunny and very happy. I might release it later in the summer, but taking that other one out felt loyal to that time, because the industry did change massively. It did impact me in a good way and I wrote about it a lot, I thought about it a lot. It was a really fun song to write, so I’m really excited. I think this EP has really spanned different genres.
How does it feel releasing this project – the debut EP was literally released a month into the pandemic, but took years to get to – in comparison to the last?
I think, in short, gigs just make everything so much better. I really, really missed the adrenaline rush you get after a release. I think a release day for an unsigned artist can be actually really flat, you spend a long time creating the song – I’m not one of those people who churns out a lot of songs – and you brought in all these ideas and then it comes to release day and you’re sitting there on Spotify and you’re like, ‘cool.’
Waiting for Spotify for Artists and hoping to go viral on TikTok…
I was actually just having the conversation with someone earlier, saying that what is difficult about TikTok is it reminds artists all the time that they’re up against the whole world. I don’t want to be standing in a room and shouting at people to listen to my music, I want people to choose to opt in. That’s why I I love my newsletter with all my heart – my team will tell me that I spend way too much time making a newsletter full of playlists and restaurants, but I know those people have opted in. I know that doesn’t mean they read it every month, but at least I know that they’ve come to a show or they’ve listened to the stuff. It’s that feeling of shouting into the void that I think can be really hard work. I think it works for some people – certain things work for some artists and some artists hate gigging – whatever floats your boat, but I think you have to be quite real with what you like and what you don’t.
That’s where you’ll get the most engaged fans and the most authentic music. I’m just excited for the rest of the project – we’ll be shouting about it! Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today, I really appreciate it.
Thank you, it’s been so nice.
