Irish alt-pop artist Lucy McWilliams releases her new single "Plastic"
After the enormous response to her much-loved single ‘Slow Dancing’ earlier this year, emerging Irish singer and songwriter Lucy McWilliams makes her eagerly-awaited return with her tender new offering ‘Plastic’.
Blending her usually warm and embracing aesthetic to a more grizzled guitar-led direction this time around, ‘Plastic’ sees her conjure some wonderfully euphoric moments to deliver one of her most anthemic efforts to date. With her rich and emotive vocal performance spread across a vibrant production throughout, she continues to cement herself as one of the more exciting names on the rise right now.
Having previously supported Inhaler and Two Door Cinema Club on tour, as well as a sold-out Dublin show, Lucy wil play the coveted Other Voices, Dingle on November 29th.
Adding about the new track, she said, “I wrote this song coming from a place where I was upset with myself for allowing a version of me to take over that I wasn’t comfortable with, wanting to be loved. I realised how easy it is to downplay your emotions to fit into a version of yourself that you think is more loveable. It’s exploring the desperation of love, and the anger you can have towards someone who holds it.”
Ireland has a rich history when it comes to storytelling. And so, it’s perhaps no surprise that Dublin-born singer-songwriter Lucy McWilliams makes music steeped in candour, her sweet vocal lithe and mellifluous as she sings about the joys and pains of letting yourself be open to love. Her songs – which, at the time of writing, have over 16 million streams on Spotify alone – do not sit neatly under one genre; expansive indie, slinky R&B, swaying acoustic pop, ‘90s-rom-com-style rock, all find a home in her sound. “I think the sound changes a lot, because singing is my instrument,” she muses, “I’m really influenced by what’s around me, what I’m listening to, but I think the themes I’m talking about through my music are always the same.” What unites McWilliams’ music is a knack for heart-on-sleeve dissection of her thoughts; be it singing about loneliness, relationships, mental health, these are magic songs that, at their core, are about the act of loving.
For the 23-year-old artist, who is now based in London via a few years at university in Berlin, that storytelling link with her home nation is almost subconscious. The main connection she makes between Ireland and her songwriting is from back when she was 11 years old, watching a recording of Amy Winehouse performing at prestigious Irish festival, Other Voices. “I was like…’what is this?! Why do I feel sad?’ and that was when I was like: ‘I want to do this’”. It’s no wonder, then, that rooted in the devastating romance of an artist like Winehouse, McWilliams’ own work swirls with the possibility and ache of love: “It’s almost always just focussed on love and opening yourself up to someone,” she says, “How it’s better that you give and hurt than just don’t give.”
Through her adolescence, she started writing songs. Her teachers encouraged her, and by 15-years-old she was taking the endeavour seriously, devoting time to studying songs and figuring out how to actually write. “I was inspired by obviously the more classic singer-songwriters: Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Stevie Nicks, Alicia Keys and The Cardigans – you’d just listen to them and think ‘how did they come up with that?!’. The way that they talk about love and hurt is so simple, but so poignant, and everyone can understand what it means. I think I sometimes try to overcomplicate things, but it’s actually really simple.”
Soon after, while studying music in Berlin, she started a band, and began to get used to the process of writing and rehearsing in a group. This is something that she credits to her ability to be so vulnerable in her work now: “I’m lucky that when I write with people there’s a mutual understanding – I’ll open up to you, you can open up to me. I guess that makes it easier.”
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