Irish pop-rock rising star Orla Gartland hits the ground running with her 12-track sophomore album, ‘Everybody Needs a Hero.’ Filled to the brim with bratty yet introspective lyrics, danceable beats and luscious harmonies the singer/songwriter’s second LP is a must-listen. Orla Gartland sat down with Atwood Magazine to talk all things being unabashed, gritty production and the story behind every track.
“Late to the Party” – Orla Gartland ft. Declan McKenna
Pop-rock has never sounded better than in the hands of rising star Orla Gartland.
The Dublin-born artist captured audiences’ hearts with her lush debut album “Woman On The Internet,” chart topping track “Why Am I Like This?” featured on Netflix’s Heartstopper and the debut of super-group FIZZ. Gartland has now returned to her solo project mastering the art of her signature groovy guitar ballads, upbeat tracks paired with gut-punching lyrics, and simply being bratty, brash and unapologetic. Her latest project, Everybody Needs a Hero was released via her own record label, New Friends Music.
Flying through the stratosphere as her superhero alter-ego, Gartland harnesses her inner strength to create the layered, audacious, noise rock soundscape of Everybody Needs A Hero. In finding this alter ego the process of this album took place in two distinctive chunks where many songs were “ kind of picked up and put down, again and again.” Taking a break to pursue indie rock group FIZZ, it became the perfect opportunity to take a break from the album and turned into the opportunity to have “as close to a fresh set of ears as possible.”
Speaking to this unconventional writing process, Gartland tells Atwood Magazine, “It was just really freeing. When you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s good to identify the patterns that you fall into and then try and break them. For me, I start on guitar, it’s my instrument, I feel very comfy on guitar, it sort of feels like another arm. But because I do feel very at home with my hands, when I’m writing, they always go to the same chord sequences. I just can’t help it.”
The singer/songwriter challenged herself to write more piano-led tracks and experimented with sounds she had always wanted to expand upon, making Everybody Needs a Hero her most experimental, genre fusion and boisterous album to date.
Someone asked
Is it worth it?
Did you tell them that I’m perfect?
SometimesI sit down and I wonder
Have I turned into a monster?
It feels mad
Doing the same damn thing over and over
And take my hand
It all becomes clear
I’ve been playing God
I wanted to be the one to control you
How you look, how you act
What do you think about that?
That’s the sound of letting go
And man does it feel so good
That’s the sound of letting go
Oh do you hear it?
– “SOUND OF LETTING GO,” Orla Gartland
Gartland takes listeners on a sonic journey filled with layered harmonies, introspective lyricism, rich melodies, goofy moments and wild and spunky rock tracks.
The artist shared that while creating the album she was listening to artists like Talking Heads, Kimya Dawson, The Japanese House and Soccer Mommy, all vastly different artists but Gartland explains that those influences are “Not a conscious decision, but all those things always creep in without you knowing sometimes.” making the LP a perfect storm of vibrance, melody and a “little chaos.”
Visually, the album has included loud makeup, brazen costumes and all around fun and spikey graphics. Gartland shares, “[The album] is about trying on a bolder version of yourself. It’s about not apologizing for yourself and showing up as loud and proud.” She goes on to explain “Sometimes it is a character. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I am that person. Sometimes it feels like something I need to rise to. But that’s what I like to do, and that’s what I want to encourage other people to do.”
Overflowing with that loud candor while still acknowledging and processing the complicated feelings that come alongside really loving someone Gartland strikes a perfect balance between being yourself and being there for someone. The LP takes listeners on an emotional rollercoaster walking through the big feelings that come alongside a long-term relationship.
The artist explains, “The type of song I seem to write again and again is ‘I love you, but…’ The flip side of every coin. Feeling close to someone is such a beautiful thing. But there are cons. There has to be a con. There just is. That’s how life works.”
These dualities, that are inevitable in life, manifest throughout this sonic exploration of the self.
I cut my hair the way you say you like it
Have I got no free will?
I took the long way home
to make a point about it
Now I’m late but what a thrill
You can’t be my responsibility
What if I want someone to take care of me?
When I put it like that it sounds so bleak
And I want you but not like this
Been trying to be everything
But I can’t be your rock
and your lover, your mom
And I’ve tried
Now I’m not anything
Just a painting that’s meant
to blend in with the wall
I’m tired
If I’m your everything, who am I?
– “Who Am I?,” Orla Gartland
Orla Gartland is larger than life and unflinching in this musical manifestation of finding love and feeling secure in it, sharing, “It’s about taking up space, ultimately. It’s all an attempt to move away from being palatable and nice in every way, visually, musically, as a person, all of it really. It’s a quest to being loudly and proudly me, whatever that looks like.”
Join Atwood Magazine as Orla Gartland takes us on a journey through the universe of her boldest album, Everybody Needs A Hero!
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:: stream/purchase Everybody Needs a Hero here ::
:: connect with Orla Gartland here ::
‘Everybody Needs a Hero’ – Orla Gartland
:: Inside Everybody Needs a Hero ::
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Both Can Be True
I wrote [this track] towards the end of the writing process. I wanted to start the album with a statement of intent. The whole record is about all the different feelings you could have about one person, about one relationship, and holding space for the wide spectrum of feelings. Starting with “Both Can Be True” is just saying ‘I can feel all these things at the same time. I can love you, and it can also be really complicated and difficult. And the two things are valid. They don’t cancel each other out.’
SOUND OF LETTING GO
That is a song about the beginning of a relationship. I think I can be a very ‘walls up’ person. I [find it] hard to open up and be vulnerable. And that is a song about being on the cusp of doing that. Feeling yourself falling for someone, knowing that it’s a good thing, feeling yourself fighting it a little bit. I wanted it to be this big bang, like an actual sound. […]I think this is a song about being right on that edge. Consciously taking the step over and allowing yourself to be vulnerable and take all the risks that go with that. When you open up to someone and you become closer, there’s a lot of risk there, you could get hurt more easily, but it’s a song about trying to push past that stubbornness a little bit.
It’s also quite a manic sounding song. It’s a lot of percussion going on. It’s very charged and quite dark. I think a lot of the writing process for this album, it’s about having a lyrical idea, and then having a set of chords or a musical palette in mind. A lot of the time, it’s just about matching the two. Going through, seeing what you have lyrically, seeing what you have musically, and being like ‘that feels like the right mood, those two things should collage together.’ That kind of happened with this song. The mood of the sentiment and the mood of the music are a pair here.
Little Chaos
It’s a song about wanting to be loud and proudly yourself in whatever way that means to you. It’s also just about that thing- it’s not exclusively a female thing, but I would say it’s often a female thing. That female urge to be palatable and nice. Once I notice it in me or in someone else, I’m so aware of it. I think a lot of this album and this era of my life that I’m in as a person is really trying to fight that. If someone described me as nice, and that was the only thing they said, I would be so upset! This song is kind of trying to be like, ‘I’m all of these things. I’m funny, I’m annoying, I’m a really loyal friend. I’m stubborn.’ It’s all the good and bad, I have that and I want to show up in a relationship with all those things. You can’t pick and choose. You can’t just have the nice bits. You have to have the jaggedy edges. So I think in that same vein with the music, the drums are big, the energy is big, I think it just matches the sentiment, in a way. It’s about being loud, so the song might as well be loud.
Backseat Driver
I realized after the fact, and this is actually so cringe to me, but I was learning to drive when I wrote this album. So there’s just loads of driving metaphors. But that particular metaphor was about how I found myself lying a lot. And I didn’t like it. But I noticed it was happening. It was kind of the ‘no worries of not’ girly in me. I was lying to avoid confrontation with people. I wanted to write about that. One of friends who I wrote this with suggested that backseat driver is almost the name that you give this compulsive voice in the back of your head that’s telling you that it’s easier to just tell a white lie. So it’s a bit of a playful take on that.
The Hit
It was towards the end of writing that this one came up. I felt like I had both ends of the spectrum. I had tiny songs like “Both Can Be True,” and I had big songs like “Little Chaos” so the middle needed to be represented. “The Hit” and “Who Am I?” are sister songs in my mind. They both exist in the middle, and they fill the gaps. They make sure that the whole album isn’t ‘tiny, massive, tiny, massive’, because that is quite a jarring thing to listen to. I do feel very proud that this album does jump around a lot, and I think my first album does as well. But you don’t want to completely wig people out. There needs to be some thread that runs through it that isn’t a different genre every song.
I just wanted to create something that just had some really nice textures and just felt like a bit more of a warm cuddle. There’s a lot of abrasive energy on this album, and I’m very proud of that, but sometimes you just need a comfort song that you can put on and isn’t going to just shock you at every turn.
Thematically, I think it’s just about feeling empathy. Feeling quite tied to someone, and following them down to their lowest lows, and following them back up to their highs, and kind of feeling like you’re always doing that. And when I noticed that in myself, as a friend or as a partner, that’s when I wrote this song. I was like, ‘Wow, I guess this is a well meaning trait, but it’s very boundary-less and dangerous for me.’
Simple
It’s like the name suggests, very straightforward. There’s a lot of, ‘I love you, but.’ A lot of sticky feelings on this album, quite nuanced kind of things to work through. I think I wanted to challenge myself to write a song that didn’t have that. I just wanted something that really was quite simple. I also wanted to make something sound quite American. I had this urge to write something that sounded like it could be on the Juno soundtrack track. Something quiet, cutesy and goofy. Just a love song that was very sweet and very nerdy and had loads of quite concrete things.
Late to the Party
The song is basically about baggage and history and taking all of our past experiences and bringing them to the table of what comes next. Jumping into a relationship and having to reckon with your past. I’m in my late 20s now, so anyone I know that’s coming in and out of relationships, you’re often not someone’s first. So their experiences and your experiences are informing how you show up. I was just interested by that and wanted to have a kind of bratty take on that idea. It was a bit of a challenging process in some ways, so it took a while for it to come together. But I just always just had a good feeling about it and it was worth pushing through. And then by the end, it had been such a long process that it really just needed fresh ears, honestly. I pulled in Declan. I made a little list in my mind of who I might want to feature on it, who I would trust to take a section and take up space on it. And Declan was just top of my list, and he was down. So I felt really lucky that he was up for it.
Three Words Away
This is my villain song, is kind of how I think about it. It’s not a song about f*ing someone’s life up, it’s more just being drunk on the power of realizing that you could. It’s not like I’m a destructive person that wants to do that. But anytime I’ve been in a relationship, I sometimes do have a zoom out moment like, ‘Oh my God. There’s a lot riding on this.’ Everyday we get further in, and every day we get closer to this being a really hard thing to unravel. It’s realizing that you could just come in one day and be like, ‘Yeah, I’m out’ and really f* some shit up here. So it’s not coming at it as a sad or serious thing, but coming from the place of being a bit of a character, and having some fun with it. Basically just saying, ‘I’m not going to do this, but I could.’
Kiss Ur Face Forever
Very similar to other songs in that it’s a big love song, you know, a big gesture. You know, when people are like, ‘Oh my God, that puppy was so cute I could just kill it’ it’s like that overwhelming surge of feelings that’s both really affectionate and a bit aggressive.
Who Am I?
It’s just about identity, trying to keep yours whilst you’re in a relationship, trying to exist as your own person and not in someone else’s orbit. I’m just interested by that idea. I speak about it with my friends a lot and also the female urge to do it all. That came up a lot with the lyric “but I can’t be your rock and your lover, your mom.” We have to be realistic here with what you can expect of me, and if I try and overstretch myself in all these ways, where does that leave me? There’s no time for me, then there’s no energy for me. It’s just trying to hold a little piece of yourself in a relationship and make sure that you keep hold of that.
Mine
Super sad. Saddest thing ever on the album, ever. It’s a song I’ve been trying to write for years. It’s basically a big trauma song. It’s a song about bodies, sex, intimacy, all of that. How it’s all kind of connected. It was very, quite vulnerable to put out as a single. It just felt like the most bearing my soul moment I’d ever had in a song. But I’m so glad that it is there and I think it was important for me to have light and shade on this album. “Mine” and “Late To The Party” are probably the two furthest away in energy but I want the kind of project and the kind of live show that have those two bookends, because that is just how life is for me. It’s not monotonous and jolly all the time or sad all the time.
Everybody Needs a Hero
This is a song I would say that’s about coming into the room after you’ve had an argument with someone, and you’ve been a real dick, and you come in with your tail between your legs, it’s a humbling moment. And I think because so much of the album is like, “Late To The Party,” “Three Words Away,” “Little Chaos,” like, ‘I’m just the dick and I’m annoying.’ And it’s not necessarily apologizing for those songs, but it is just trying hard to be sincere for a moment and be like ‘I really need you. I’m not this big, strong person. This is a front.’ Sometimes I am just a girl that just needs to be held. It’s just saying ‘I’m not above it. I do need you. I do love you, and I’m sorry for being a dick in the other songs.’
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:: connect with Orla Gartland here ::
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© Nicole Ngai
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