Singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt speaks to Atwood Magazine about returning to her roots and rediscovering her voice on her fourth studio album ‘Mountain Music,’ a soul-stirring exhale of intimacy and vulnerability wrapped in warm blankets of tender, wondrous folk sound.
Stream: ‘Mountain Music’ – Nina Nesbitt
I’m very shy, I’m introverted, and I’m quite insecure. This album is all about accepting that, and not being afraid to embrace being a bit quiet, a bit awkward, a bit weird.
After a decade in the music industry, Nina Nesbitt was ready to put her artist career behind her.
The Scottish singer/songwriter had recently a billion streams and just released her third studio album, Älskar, in late 2022, but she felt a creeping sense of ennui as 2023 loomed. “I wasn’t really spending any time making music,” she recalls. “I wasn’t spending any time playing instruments or singing. I was spending time coming up with video ideas and filming TikToks… I wanted to just dive back into making music, so I thought, instead of just moaning about it, go and make some music then!”
Just like that, Nesbitt put her own project on ice, taking a permanent hiatus as she began songwriting for other artists, working behind the scenes with everyone from Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards to newer names like Tyler Lewis and DYLAN.
And through those collaborations, she rekindled that special spark: That inner light that drives us to make art, to express ourselves in song, to channel our emotions into words, and bring those words to life with sound and color and feeling.
“I got so much satisfaction from that and just felt so creative again; I felt recharged. I think when you’ve been doing music for a long time and you like so many different genres, it’s hard to pick one,” says Nesbitt, who began her own journey in the pop space, and has been making her way out of that world ever since. “It was really inspiring to see people just fully embrace their lane that they were in. So I thought, what is mine?“
To answer that question, Nesbitt returned to her roots.
She listened to the songs she loved when she was 15 years old – half a life ago – and wrote stream of consciousness lyrics alone in her bedroom, like she did as a teenager growing up in Balerno, Scotland. “I really reconnected with why I loved music in the first place,” she smiles.
And out came a wholly unexpected, breathtakingly beautiful fourth studio album: Released September 27th via her new independent label Apple Tree Records, Mountain Music is a soul-stirring exhale of intimacy and vulnerability, its stories of small town living, inner transformation, and coming-of-age self-discovery wrapped in warm blankets of tender, wondrous folk sound. A homecoming in every sense of the word, it’s 30-year-old Nina Nesbitt at her most candid and raw, reflecting on the many highs and lows of her 20s and embracing those parts of herself that she’s not outwardly shared before – and shining ever-brighter as a result.
“I didn’t think it was gonna be an album or even come out, but it ended up being an album, so I thought, I wanna share this with everyone,” she says with a glimmer in her eye.
I stayed up all night
Thinking how it’s crazy that we
That we fall in love so quickly
But the moving on is slow
I’m a master at commitment
I’m a novice at letting go
And all the songs played on my car rides
Know me better than my ghosts
See I open like a passport
Shut you out like border control
And I’m 2 years from 30
And life scares me more each day
I’ve got a man that swears he loves me
But I’m afraid that he won’t stay
So I drive out to the ocean
Just to wash my blues away
Takes me back through all the ages
Feels like I’m flickin’ through the pages
– “Pages,” Nina Nesbitt
All told, Nesbitt’s own artist project was on hold for about a year and a half; now that she’s ‘back in the saddle,’ she feels more energized and inspired than ever before, an a large part of that is due to feeling unburdened by industry expectations and external pressures; she’s no longer trying to fit herself into any boxes, conform to a record label’s prescriptive definitions, or sacrifice herself – or her art – in any way. She’s just Nina Nesbitt, doing Nina Nesbitt.
“Mountain Music feels like the most authentic and honest piece of work I’ve created so far,” she shares. “I was inspired by a lot of the American folk music I grew up listening to, and revisiting it made me fall back in love with writing music again. I knew I wanted to take inspiration, but to also write my own story. This album celebrates that small town girl, puts an arm around the big city twenty-something, and looks back at the view with me now from the calm and the quiet.”
I’m driving down these old dirt roads
I see the hills up on the right
White grass, artificial ski slope
Im speeding by the east coast train line
I’ve got a friend talking on the phone
He said he’d help me pass the time
I’m where the humour is dry as a bone
But it rains here every night
I’m coming home, I’m coming home…
To see the faces that I know
Been away for way too long, I’m coming home
I’m coming home, I’m coming home…
Where the trees always growin’
Wanna see where time has gone, I’m coming home
I’m coming home, I’m coming home…
So put the kettle on the stove
Leave a light on so they know I’m coming home
Thematically, Mountain Music dwells in an emotionally potent space of candid reflection and dreamy reverie – its twelve songs acting as diaristic windows into her world.
“It’s really difficult to sum up in a few words,” Nesbitt admits, “because I do feel like a lot of it is a massive look back on my ’20s. I just recently turned 30 and I think knowing that birthday was coming up, I was doing a lot of reflecting and reminiscing, and I felt like I could just see things clearer for the first time. I think I’ve spent so long trying to fit into a certain box or be a certain type of person to be accepted, or to be the person that I think people want me to be – especially in this career, I think so often people who are super confident and loud and so sure of who they are, they’re the ones that succeed. And I think deep down, I’m actually quite shy. I’m very shy, I’m introverted, and I’m quite insecure.”
“So this album is all about accepting that, I think, and not being afraid to embrace being a bit quiet, a bit awkward, a bit weird. It was definitely the most difficult few years of my life, the past few years, with a lot of personal ups and downs… I feel like anything that could happen to you in your 20s, has happened to me or close friends of mine. We’ve definitely all been through that together, whether it’s heartbreaks, family situations, losing people, just trying to figure out your own identity… all those stages that I feel like everyone goes through, and just trying to navigate that in these crazy times.”
“I feel like writing this album really held my hand through it… I do feel like I’m in a place now where I’m quite happy where I’m at, but in my 20s it was definitely very turbulent and a lot of time just wondering if I’ve made the right decision doing this as a career with no plan B.”
Atwood Magazine recently caught up with Nina Nesbitt for a candid conversation about songwriting, reconnection, turning 30, and finding her voice all over again with her fourth album. Dive into Mountain Music in our interview below, and catch Nesbitt on tour in the UK this October!
“I didn’t even know I was making an album; it was just purely the absolute love of writing music again,” she beams. “I think it’s nice to know that if you lose that spark, you can get it back.”
Mountain Music is out now via Apple Tree Records!
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:: stream/purchase Mountain Music here ::
:: connect with Nina Nesbitt here ::
A CONVERSATION WITH NINA NESBITT
Atwood Magazine: Nina, before we dive into Mountain Music, I want to start today by talking about your last LP, 2022’s Älskar. How has that album grown with you over the past two years? What's your relationship like with it today?
Nina Nesbitt: It was a really difficult album to make because I made it in a completely different way to before. It was mid-pandemic and I was making it in Sweden, which was a country I couldn’t actually get into at the time. So it was like a very interesting, creative experience. Quite challenging, but I’m really glad how it ended up. And there’s a lot of songs on there that I love, and I do feel like it was definitely quite a bridging album. I feel like there’s some albums that are totally cohesive and feel like you’ve reached a destination. And then I think there’s other albums that I’ve made anyway, that feel more like on the journey, like a stop off on the journey.
And I think Älskar was definitely the journey to Mountain Music. I think the one before that, The Sun Will Come Up, felt like a real ‘this is a pop album’ and Älskar, I felt pulled in two different directions, not in a bad way, but definitely the balance between the pop songs and the more folky sound. So it’s definitely helped influence this album. And yeah, it was an interesting album because I thought it would be solely a pop album to begin with. And then it came out two years later, then it was written, so I’d already written quite a lot of the folky stuff. But yeah, I think it was definitely an album that informed this one. And I think it represents the messiness of where the world was at the time, really, and where I was.
Speaking of the messiness of life, I read that, at some point over the past two years, you quit being an artist, only to come right back into it. There's so much pressure put on being a music maker, especially a recording and touring artist these days – because it's not just ‘being a recording artist or a touring artist’ – you have to be a marketer, you have to be forever online, you have to be a content creator. There's so much more that goes into the ‘resume,’ that you can’t just make your music and leave it at that. What was behind that decision and I guess what brought you back?
Nina Nesbitt: I think a lot of what you’ve just said there was behind my decision to take a break because I felt like I was spending maybe 90% of my time doing social media and just stuff that wasn’t why I’ve started this in the first place. And I know with every job or with this career, like there’s stuff that you’re not gonna wanna do. I get that, but I just felt like I was getting worse as a musician because, I wasn’t really spending any time making music. I wasn’t spending any time playing instruments or singing. I was spending time coming up with video ideas and filming TikToks.
I think you can base a lot of your worth as an artist on your views and your engagement and your follower numbers. And it’s like I honestly think it’s all completely random because I’ve seen songs of mine go viral that I think, how’s that happened? It’s not even my best song or songs by my peers that I’m like, why that one? I think it’s a great song, but I know they’ve got better. I don’t know, I just think things connect sometimes for other reasons than the quality of the art. It could just be, it’s easy to package up in a relatable video or yeah, it just feels a little bit soulless at times.
I wanted to just dive back into making music and I thought, do you know what that is? The world we live in, it’s 2024, whatever it is now, 2023 last year. I thought, instead of just moaning about it, go and make some music then, so I quit doing the artist thing for a bit, started songwriting for other people for a year and a half. Absolutely loved that. Got so much satisfaction from that and just felt so creative again, I felt recharged.
And I worked with so many different artists in so many different genres. And I think just seeing these younger artists come through as well and being so sure of who they are and what their genre is, what their sound is, that really inspired me because I think when you’ve been doing music for a long time and you like so many different genres, it’s hard to pick one. But it was really inspiring to see people just fully embrace their lane that they were in. So I thought, what is mine? And I thought if it wasn’t down to trying to have success of some sort, what would I wanna do?
And it’s this album – so I wrote it in this room, mostly just me and a guitar or me and a piano. I really reconnected with why I loved music in the first place. I listened to the music that I listened to when I was 15 and just reignited my love for it. So yeah, I didn’t think it was gonna be an album or even come out, but it ended up being an album, so I thought, I wanna share this with everyone.
Do you have any favorite artists whom you worked with over the past year who are worth sharing? Who are some of the artists you worked, with who really inspired you?
Nina Nesbitt: I worked with Perrie Edwards from Little Mix. We have a song coming out, and her voice is just absolutely amazing. She just sounds amazing singing anything. And it was so cool hearing her sing something we’d written together. That’s the voice you hear in your head when you’re writing. That was cool. And then I’ve worked on a few R&B things like Tyler Lewis who just released her first EP, Flo, worked with DYLAN, who’s a new pop girl who is from the UK and she’s just so confident in what she does and full of energy. And yeah, I think it’s just inspiring working with these new artists sort of coming through.
You’ve talked about getting back to the music that you wanted to make yourself and finding inspiration. Can we talk more about what that music was and what that vision was? What were you drawn to, that you wanted to create more of?
Nina Nesbitt: So I actually read a book called The Artist’s Way, which is quite a popular book for anyone creative. I would recommend it to anyone who’s a bit blocked for whatever reason and it has like a workbook that you do. I didn’t do all of it, I have to admit, but one of the exercises I think was something like go back and listen to what you love listening to when you were younger or go and do five activities you used to love when you were younger. So I went and listened to the albums that I listened to when I was like 14, 15 that got me into music. So some of them were Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, those kind of albums. Mumford & Sons, Lucy Rose, all those kind of like bulky artists from back in the day that are still going to be fair.
I love Lucy Rose’s new album as well and it kind of led me onto their new stuff. So that was inspiring. But I think I just tried to strip back to the beginning before I even signed with the major label. Just what did I love doing purely because I loved doing it. So that was inspiring listening to a lot of those artists. And I actually got this brief through one day that was like a Bon Iver brief and I thought, there’s no way Bon Iver is gonna take any of this ’cause there’s such great musicians. But it just inspired me to get out of my own head and try something new. And that was a track “Treachery” was actually originally written for that brief.
And it just reignited that kinda love of folk. And I think at the time as well, there was such a resurgence of folk and country and I was hearing a lot of new artists that I hadn’t really listened to before. So yeah, I think everything just came together at once.
It's been such an exciting journey to be a fan of yours for this long, and I truly from the heart think that Mountain Music is my favorite Nina Nesbitt album yet. Can you share a little bit about what this record actually means to you? I know there's so much weight in it, it's such a personal record. If somebody's just going into it for the first time, what do you want them to know about this album?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, I think it’s really difficult to sum up in a few words. ’cause I do feel like a lot of it is a massive look back on my ’20s. I just recently turned 30 and I think knowing that birthday was coming up, I was doing a lot of reflecting and reminiscing and I felt like I could just see things clearer for the first time.
And yeah, just maybe I’ve had a lot more confidence in who I was. I think I’ve spent so long trying to fit into a certain box or be a certain type of person to be accepted or to be the person that I think people want me to be, especially in this career, I think so often people who are super confident and loud and so sure of who they are, like they’re the ones that succeed. And I think deep down, I’m actually quite shy. I’m very shy, I’m introverted, and I’m quite insecure.
So this album is all about accepting that, I think, and not being afraid to embrace being a bit quiet, a bit awkward, a bit weird. And yeah, it was definitely the most difficult few years of my life, the past few years, just with a lot of personal ups and downs. And I feel like writing this album really held my hand through it. So I really hope that people can listen to it and think, oh, I feel less alone. I feel like someone gets what I’m going through – it feels like an album that I can put on and have a cry to, or just feel like I have someone there.
Absolutely. Well, welcome to the 30s club! I've been here for nearly two years myself now, and I have to say the 30s, at least for me so far, are a lot less turbulent than my 20s.
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, definitely. I hope so. Been a month!
Happy belated birthday! I do consider Mountain Music another coming-of-age album, and I would say that the transition out of our 20s is as big as our transition into them in the first place. Can you share more about the turbulence you've been talking about, and what were your remedies for getting through that time?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, I definitely agree. I feel like it’s almost like a second coming of age, and especially nowadays, I think we generally grow up a lot slower, especially if you are living in a big city where you can’t really buy a house and settle down like we used to. I feel like everything’s later. I honestly feel like the 20s… 30s are the new 20s for me anyway.
And I think just being younger and having these ideas in my head of who I would be and what I would have at a certain age, and then getting to that age and thinking, oh my God, I feel so far from that still was definitely an interesting one. I do feel like I’m in a place now where I’m quite happy where I’m at, but in my 20s it was definitely very turbulent and a lot of time just wondering if I’ve made the right decision doing this as a career with no plan B.
That’s definitely a thing. But I’m glad that I persevered. But yeah, just honestly, I feel like anything that could happen to you in your 20s, has happened to me or close friends of mine. And we’ve definitely all kind of been through that together, whether it’s heartbreaks, family situations, losing people, just trying to figure out your own identity. Moving, like I moved out of London a couple of years ago, which was a huge move. And I live in a field in the countryside. Just all those stages that I feel like everyone goes through and just trying to navigate that in these crazy times.
I was hoping to dive into some of these songs, and it all starts with “Pages.” “The truth is I'm still kind of lost,” you sing in the verse. Somehow that was the like that really rang true for me the very first time I heard that song. “Pages” feels like the album's thesis statement in so many ways; where did it come from, and what inspired you to put it at the beginning of the album?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, I think, again, I spent a lot of time listening to those artists that really tell stories. I listened quite a lot to Zach Bryan, a lot of country artists while making this album. And I just love how they really don’t hold back on the details. It’s so personal, but somehow still so relatable. And I felt like I was just really drawn into their worlds and I kind of wanted to write my own take on that. But as someone who isn’t a country artist or American, so I was like, what is mine?
And so, yeah, I wrote the chorus for “Pages,” I then redid that first verse, but I just sat down at a piano. I think for so long I’ve kind of thought I need to improve my chords, I need to improve my musicianship. But at the end of the day, I think there’s something really beautiful about four simple chords and a story. And I think, again, a lot of the music I was listening to literally just like C, A minor, F, G, and a great story. I just want the story – that is what I listened to music for.
So for me it was like, stop trying to be clever; stop trying to be fancy and just write a story from the heart. And that’s what “Pages” was. I did a lot of part of the Artist’s Way book. One of the exercises is morning pages where you just write, you do like three pages of just anything that comes to mind. And so I had quite a lot of stuff saved up from that as well, and it just came out like a stream of consciousness. So it’s a lot of words, but I think, like you say, it’s a good starting point for the album.
At the end of the day, I think there’s something really beautiful about four simple chords and a story.
“And all the songs played on my car rides know me better than my ghosts. See I open like a passport, shut you out like border control. And I'm 2 years from 30, and life scares me more each day.” That line resonates so much, not only because it's so personal, but also I find it to be so clever and work on multiple levels. Where did that lyric come from?
Nina Nesbitt: I do wonder if maybe it’s COVID related subconsciously, because when making the Älskar album, I couldn’t get into Sweden for about a year and a half. And I was like, I’m half Swedish. My mother is Swedish, my gran lives there. I couldn’t see my family. And I was like, this is crazy. Like, I can’t even get into the country. So we talked a lot about it then. And maybe it’s just sort of sat in my brain.
But it was more just about a lot of people who I’m now friends with said when they first met me, they thought I didn’t like them, which I was really gutted to hear. ’cause obviously I never wanna come across rude, but I think I’m just quite introverted and I’m not instantly, I don’t let people in very easy. I dunno why, but it kind of just made me think of that and I wanted to capture that somehow. It’s, yeah, it’s just like the pass, the easy the yeah, the simplicity of a passport opening, but the kind of severity of border control kicking you out felt similar to my own personality, I guess. [laughs]
That song came out earlier this year together with “On the Run,” which you previously described as an “escape from the mundane.” That song is so tender and it really accentuates the folk music that you are making. To me, it definitively captures this transition out of the pop space that you had been in, embracing being the songwriter and the sharing your stories. Can you share more about where that song came from?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah. I wanted to make sure there was two songs coming out together, and I felt like “Pages” just summed up what I wanted to say, but “On the Run” summed up how I wanted to sound and the type of artist I wanted to be presented as. And yeah, I think they show the two different sides of the album. So “On the Run” yeah, definitely felt like the right kind of song to pair it with. And again, it is a two-chord song. It’s super simple, but it’s a story that felt very relevant to me. And I think it also sums up the kind of road trip that the album takes you on. There’s a map that goes with album and I really wanted it to feel like an escape, as I said.
But “On The Run” for me was kind of on the run from growing up and on the run from my imminent 30th birthday of just what I kind of said earlier of thinking you’d feel a certain way at a certain age or that you’d have certain things and realizing that you don’t and that you just wanna keep traveling, going onto living life to the full and sort of embracing that really. [laughs]
Now that we're on the other side of it, do you feel like the stress around your 30th was a whole fuss about nothing? Do you feel like it was worth all the stress and anxiety it created?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, and I think, to be honest, I feel pretty chilled now, to be honest. It wasn’t even so much the birthday in itself; it was more just, like, I’m just trying to breathe.
I’ve just made it out my 20s and now I’m approaching the next decade where I’m probably gonna have to make decisions that are gonna impact the rest of my life. Do you know what I mean? It just feels quite overwhelming. So yeah, I feel better now. The birthday’s happened, I have to say.
Right, you've been breathing easy.
Nina Nesbitt: It feels good. You feel a little bit more sure of yourself, for sure.
“Big Things, Small Town” is almost a country tune, and what I really love most about it is the sense of self that this song emanates. It has a dreamy quality to it and it’s just a wonderful story. There's something about this song that I've always found endearing. Can you talk to me about that track and where it came from?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, so I’d definitely say that song’s probably the album’s wildcard. And yeah, I think with every album, there’s always one song that you’re like, should this go on the album? Does this fit? And I actually had this conversation with the producer that I worked with, Peter Miles. And he was like, does this fit? And I was like, I don’t know. And so we recorded it anyway. And it just felt like a moment of fun. I think in an album that’s quite serious and maybe slightly depressing at times, it felt like a moment of release and joy. And just showing off all the great musicians that I was in the room with. Yeah, and I think it breaks it up a bit.
And I think it’s definitely inspired more by country music, I would say. But a lot of the country songs I listen to, for example, the Zach Bryan songs, he talks about Oklahoma a lot. I’ve never been to Oklahoma. But I feel like I’ve been after listening to those songs. And I thought, I’ve never heard anyone write a song about where I’m from. And I kind of just thought, oh, it’s ’cause it’s not interesting.
But then I think you can make anywhere interesting with the right story and the right songs. So I think especially “Big Things, Small Town” and “I’m Coming Home” definitely tell the story of a Scottish village. And I hope that people that have never been to a Scottish village will hear it and think, I wanna go to a Scottish village. So yeah, it was, again, very much about embracing parts of me that I’ve not really shared before.
You're from a suburb outside of Edinburgh, right?
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah. So I was born in Livingston. But I spent a lot of my teenage years in a village called Balerno, which is the inspiration for “Big Things, Small Town”. And it’s kind of what I remember most.
I think it's lovely to be able to homage the place you came from like that. And personally, I actually really like that track on the record. I think it adds to the character of the album, and it's also a fantastic story. You really get to kind of meet the place, meet people through it.
So I've talked about a couple of songs that I really love. If somebody is listening to this record for the first time, what do you hope they listen to? What are your favorite songs on the album?
Nina Nesbitt: Favorite songs? I think my favorite song on it would be “Parachute,” which is the final song. I always like the last song. I’ve not written a song about that subject before. And it’s very much about being an introvert. It was another song that was inspired by a book that I read called Quiet by Susan Cain, which is a book about being an introvert in a world of extroverts and learning to embrace that. Every single word feels really honest, and I just love everything about that song. So that’s probably my favorite. And to pick another one, it’d probably be “Pages,” to be honest. Yeah, I love that song a lot. I think it’s one of my favorites that I’ve written. So I’d go with them too.
Yeah, so the two bookends. It's funny that you mentioned “Parachute,” because I singled out two lyrics from that song that really meant a lot to me: “I built a wall as tall as the trees, one side for them, the other for me,” and then, “If I climb a mountain, I'll never reach the top 'cause playing the hero is something I'm not,” which really hits hard. Do you have any favorite lyrics from this album that you're really proud of, or that you're really excited to sing live?
Nina Nesbitt: I love a lot of lyrics. The “Parachute” lyrics definitely mean a lot to me. I like the ones that you’ve picked out – I haven’t done many interviews for the album yet, so hearing the bits that you picked out is really cool.
I would say one of my favorite lyrics is, “We fall in love so quickly, but the moving on is slow. I’m a master at commitment. I’m a novice at letting go.” I really like that lyric in “Pages” and “Parachute.” I love the post chorus bit that says, “bring me the clouds and I’ll be the moon shining so bright, but only for you,” it kind of sums up finding that one person that you can totally be yourself with and be embarrassing with and not care. And it’s like they are the clouds shutting out the world and you, you can shine and be yourself with them. I just think it’s a nice image. I like a lot of the lyrics and find it hard to pick specific ones, but I think there’s a topic on there for everyone, hopefully.
It's a nice way to kind of close the album, too – I feel like “Parachute” fittingly lands you on your feet, and there's something hopeful about that finale.
Nina Nesbitt: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s the song of self-acceptance and also I think the album sonically was a lot of that as well. We recorded it live to tape with a bunch of musicians, so a lot of that was letting go and not hearing my voice be auto tuned, not hearing all the pop plugins and yeah. So I think it makes sense to kinda have that message at the end.
Is this the kind of music that you were making when you first started, when you picked up a guitar for the first time?
Nina Nesbitt: I think these songs are the songs I wanted to be writing. I definitely wrote like really bad versions of these songs [laughs] and then I had some of my early songs, like I had a song called “Nose Strings and Shoestrings,” which seems to still be a fan favorite. I had a song called “The Apple Tree.” They were definitely folkier songs. So I definitely, yeah, I started out in this realm and then I switched to pop after my first album, ‘Peroxide’, I switched for ‘The Sun Will Come Up’, but I just love all genres. I find it really difficult to settle on one and pick one and that’s why I’m trying to do songwriting a bit more so I can get that out in the system and stick to stick to one area as an artist.
Do you think you need to stick to one area? I mean, is there like a prescription for it?
Nina Nesbitt: No, I don’t think so. I just think as a person I can’t dance for starters, but the pop music’s never gonna have choreo. I just feel more comfortable performing these songs, so I think this is naturally probably what I should be doing, but who knows. [laughs]
What do you hope listeners take away from Mountain Music, and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?
Nina Nesbitt: I think I would love for people to hear it and hear themselves in it and apply the songs to their life however they want to. Yeah, I would love it to just be an album that they put on and think, wow, she really gets me. I don’t feel like I’m going through this alone. So that would be my hope. And I’ve had some really lovely feedback on the first lot of songs. So yeah, I just hope, I hope people listen to the album as well. Hope they actually listen from start to finish. That’s the dream. And for me it was just so nice creating something with no pressure, no expectancy.
I didn’t even know I was making an album. It was just purely the absolute love of writing music again. And I think it’s nice to know that if you lose that spark, you can get it back. And that’s definitely something that I’ll take with me. And I think just trying to stay off social media as much as I can and stay off, compare myself to other artists and worrying about everyone else and just sort of like hyper focusing on being creative was really nice. And I think I have to try and keep doing that.
I think there’s nothing wrong with posting and wanting to be online. It’s just I’m trying to create more and consume less, ’cause I think otherwise what you’re creating is just the same as everyone else. And I dunno, your brain’s filled with information you don’t need.
This is true. Before we part, in the interest of paying it forward to that next generation of artists, who are you listening to these days that you would recommend to our readers?
Nina Nesbitt: I haven’t been listening to a lot of new music, but I’m loving Amble, they’re an Irish folk band, I’ve been loving them. They have a song called “Lonely Island.” I absolutely love John Vincent III. I feel like anyone who likes folk music knows John Vincent III, his music is so beautiful and his songwriting’s amazing. And then one last one would be out of the folk world, Tyler Lewis, who I wrote a song with for her debut EP that just came out. The songs called “Under the Rug.” And she’s got one of the best voices I’ve ever heard in my life. She can do all the Beyoncé runs and more. I’m very excited about her.
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© Wolf James
© Wolf JamesMountain Music
an album by Nina Nesbitt
