Interview: Olivia-Louise
If smooth vocals mixed with garage beats, old R’n’B references and contemporary lyrics are your thing then Olivia-Louise from Chester, UK will be right up your street.
You never really consider that such great song writing can come from poetry but that’s exactly where Olivia started, “I started off writing poetry at a young age, and as I grew older this developed into song writing. I used to sing the songs to myself but never really took on singing seriously until my early 20's.” But on reflection her well thought out words do have a type of poetic nature to them.
For the 26 year old growing up with garage and R’n’B has been a main influence in her music, “so I guess that's where my heart is. There's something about that music that I feel so comfortable writing too. My favourites were Lil Mo, Nivea, Ashanti and I like to transfer that same vibe across onto garage beats just to give it a different sound.” Imagine the 90s feel of Lil Mo stirred together with some garage, perfect right? Her collaboration with Moony, ‘Be a Man’ is evidence of this with the R’n’B vocals paired with the bouncy garage production.
Another of Olivia’s tracks ‘Physical’ has a similar sound and features DJ Q who she speaks very highly of. “Working with Q is amazing! He just completely allows me to be myself on the track and really understands my sound and vibe, he's very talented and humble, we basically contacted through emails and Twitter!” the most exciting news is that we can expect to hear more of this in the future, “we are actually working on a few bits already so later in the year you may be hearing another collaboration.”
Grime music has also played a part in Olivia’s musical life, “when I was younger I made music with some grime MC's and was spending so much time in the studio with them I started picking up their flows, but sang them. They called it 'spingjng' a mixture of singing and MC'ing.”
Olivia says that “I like to experiment with different genres so that I stay sane if I spend too much time doing the same thing it bores me.” Interacting with different types of music she says keeps her music sounding fresh.
The music Olivia writes has a certain aesthetic that she hopes is relatable, she believes that people are in the music for the wrong reasons and are promoting the wrong messages. “I figured if I've been through something and put it in a song I can't be the only one feeling that way? I also like to sing about issues surrounding woman and our perspectives on situations.”
When speaking to Olivia she mentioned how she thought the music industry lacked a certain ‘realness’ because of shit TV shows like Xfactor but went on to say that, “I love how the UK music scene is progressing, everybody's really working together and collaborating to push each other higher, from artists to DJ's to producers I've really felt the support, the spirit is tight!”
Anything that promotes self growth is something that Olivia believes in, “I love yoga, socialising and spending quality time with my daughter. I want to take her traveling around the world someday”
On a final note we asked what’s in the pipeline for Olivia-Louise? “I have a joint EP with French producer Gautier called 'Star Stuff' coming out in the first half of this year. The EP is a very personal one for me, and relates to my growth spiritually in love and life over the past year or so, it's very future RnB. I'm also working on another EP to come out late in the year with 'Moteleola' which will be neo soul, chill hip hop vibe and in between I've got lots of UKG and funky tracks dropping”.
For someone who cites Lauryn Hill and Erykah Badu as inspirations, has been involved in the early days of grime and listens to 90s R’n’B we’ll be keeping an eye on Olivia, and so should you.
