Alice Gold
Pop chanteuse Alice Gold may look as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the hordes of female singer/songwriters currently in the charts, but this self confessed ball-breaker has seen a thing or two and with a second chance to take a spot at the top, she isn’t taking any prisoners.
- How would you define your music to someone who hasn’t heard it?
Soulful, psychedelic, pop.
- What song are you most proud of on the album and why?
I’m probably most proud of my next single, Cry, Cry, Cry. It’s very pure, I remember just writing it very rapidly and being very excited about it.
It’s all about the need for expression, whether that’s talking about feelings or just crying. I find expression of all sorts just very cathartic and very important and I think so many people are just very quite inside and people don’t always talk about their fears.
- You’re obviously very strong and independent, so is the point of Cry, Cry, Cry that you can cry without sacrificing that?
Yes, it epitomizes that really, it’s kind of saying ‘Let it go, release yourself from the shackles we put ourselves in!’, and as a strong, empowered woman, it’s ok to be weak sometimes and express yourself, the two aren’t a contradiction and they can sit comfortably together.
- You nearly made it once before under your real name, Alice McLaughlin, what went wrong with that?
Nothing really went wrong, I was signed to EMI and it was just the worst label. It got taken over and totally messed up, there was no money for development or anything.
It wasn’t just that the company had problems, I wasn’t with the right team of people and it wasn’t really the right time I guess. They were really trying to push me in a direction that wasn’t me and what I’ve done with this album is to completely do it myself.
I’ve got a new record deal on the basis of the work that I did independently and that’s very important to me and this album. I’m not manufactured, I think many female artists around today are being pushed and told what to release and that exists in the music industry.
I avoided that completely by signing to the best possible label, which is Fiction, ran by Jim Chancellor and home to Elbow and Snow Patrol. He’s a real music lover and that’s important to me, I didn’t want to be pushed in a direction I didn’t want to go in, I’m quite strong minded and I just wanted to do things my own way.
- So why the name change?
It was a new start, and a way of getting away from a lot of people in the industry who knew me. I also got a lot of complaints, believe it or not, about people not being sure of the spelling of McLaughlin.
It was kind of clumsy and I just wanted something strong and simple, I’ve got blonde hair and it was very simple, there was no great depth to the name change except that with this album I knew it was all my best work, all my ‘gold’ records.
- Are you pleased that it’s happening now you’re in your late twenties as opposed to when you were younger?
Absolutely, I do feel like I’m a little bit older than my contemporaries and I feel like I’m really bloody enjoying it because of that.
I really just love playing my music with my band, they’re just wonderful guys and I’m having a ball at the moment.
- How do you think that life experiences have shaped you as an artist?
Fundamentally. I’ve lost people, many people have but a lot of the songs on the album have that as a backdrop. Trying to figure it all out, life and those strong emotions that we all go through, is everything.
It’s the last seven years of my life in this album and it captures love and pain because it’s fundamentally those life experiences that shape your outlook. Losing someone really makes you realise what’s important in life and that comes across very much in my album.
- What’s the story with the Winnebago?
Oh that was fabulous, just a really special time of my life. I had a lot of sadness after my mum died and I was just desperate to get away so I bought I one way ticket to Nashville where I threw myself into the music scene, met a lot of lovely people and started a romance with one of them.
He was a poker player and he just loved what I was trying to do. I was trying to find a band so I could record and do the classic road trip thing but I didn’t have a social security number so I couldn’t buy the lovely purple bus that I wanted. He kindly, behind my back, set up a poker game and I won.
So he took me to this warehouse and one of the things he’d won over the years was a 1978 Winnebago so he said ‘go on my insurance’. I did it all up, I got a new soundsystem and some new plastic bits in the engine and just took off and it really was that lucky.
He was really great. He now has a wife and children and we’re still very good friends. He was an angel in my life then because I was very vulnerable at the time.
I was very head strong, I just wanted to do my road trip and have some solitary time and he just loved what I was trying to do so he helped me do it. You meet some beautiful people along the way who just get you and he was one of them.
- Was travelling alone when you were that vulnerable daunting?
Yes but you know what, I didn’t have one bad experience. The only bad experience I had is when I locked myself out of my own van and I had to break in and climb through the window at the petrol station with my arse hanging out.
People kept stopping me and I was like ‘but it’s mine!’ but that was the only bad experience, the world feels like a more scary place than it is, people are really quite nice.
- Do you think it’s possible to be ‘real’ when you’re being constantly styled for photoshoots and interviews and being put under the spotlight?
I’m going to give it a bloody good try. Someone tried to put false eyelashes on me the other day and I said ‘no way’, I’m very much my own woman and I’m coming to this in my late twenties rather than my early twenties like a lot of my contemporaries.
I’m a bit of a ball-breaker really, I’m genuine and I’m not going to be changing in any way at all. I have my own vision for what’s going on.
- What’s your biggest ambition?
My biggest ambition is just to keep releasing music that I absolutely love and doing honest and good songwriting and if I can keep doing that for the rest of my life I’ll be happy. Also, I might as well like to buy and old vintage Porsche.
But no, if I can just maintain my position and not disappear next year then that’s great, that’s all I’ve ever wanted really and that’s why I’ve fought through and carried on believing in myself.
Alice Gold’s debut album Seven Rainbows is out 4 July.
FemaleFirst Antonia Charlesworth
Pop chanteuse Alice Gold may look as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as the hordes of female singer/songwriters currently in the charts, but this self confessed ball-breaker has seen a thing or two and with a second chance to take a spot at the top, she isn’t taking any prisoners.
- How would you define your music to someone who hasn’t heard it?
Soulful, psychedelic, pop.
- What song are you most proud of on the album and why?
I’m probably most proud of my next single, Cry, Cry, Cry. It’s very pure, I remember just writing it very rapidly and being very excited about it.
It’s all about the need for expression, whether that’s talking about feelings or just crying. I find expression of all sorts just very cathartic and very important and I think so many people are just very quite inside and people don’t always talk about their fears.
- You’re obviously very strong and independent, so is the point of Cry, Cry, Cry that you can cry without sacrificing that?
Yes, it epitomizes that really, it’s kind of saying ‘Let it go, release yourself from the shackles we put ourselves in!’, and as a strong, empowered woman, it’s ok to be weak sometimes and express yourself, the two aren’t a contradiction and they can sit comfortably together.
- You nearly made it once before under your real name, Alice McLaughlin, what went wrong with that?
Nothing really went wrong, I was signed to EMI and it was just the worst label. It got taken over and totally messed up, there was no money for development or anything.
It wasn’t just that the company had problems, I wasn’t with the right team of people and it wasn’t really the right time I guess. They were really trying to push me in a direction that wasn’t me and what I’ve done with this album is to completely do it myself.
I’ve got a new record deal on the basis of the work that I did independently and that’s very important to me and this album. I’m not manufactured, I think many female artists around today are being pushed and told what to release and that exists in the music industry.
I avoided that completely by signing to the best possible label, which is Fiction, ran by Jim Chancellor and home to Elbow and Snow Patrol. He’s a real music lover and that’s important to me, I didn’t want to be pushed in a direction I didn’t want to go in, I’m quite strong minded and I just wanted to do things my own way.
- So why the name change?
It was a new start, and a way of getting away from a lot of people in the industry who knew me. I also got a lot of complaints, believe it or not, about people not being sure of the spelling of McLaughlin.
It was kind of clumsy and I just wanted something strong and simple, I’ve got blonde hair and it was very simple, there was no great depth to the name change except that with this album I knew it was all my best work, all my ‘gold’ records.
- Are you pleased that it’s happening now you’re in your late twenties as opposed to when you were younger?
Absolutely, I do feel like I’m a little bit older than my contemporaries and I feel like I’m really bloody enjoying it because of that.
I really just love playing my music with my band, they’re just wonderful guys and I’m having a ball at the moment.
- How do you think that life experiences have shaped you as an artist?
Fundamentally. I’ve lost people, many people have but a lot of the songs on the album have that as a backdrop. Trying to figure it all out, life and those strong emotions that we all go through, is everything.
It’s the last seven years of my life in this album and it captures love and pain because it’s fundamentally those life experiences that shape your outlook. Losing someone really makes you realise what’s important in life and that comes across very much in my album.