Liang Lawrence: “I think I can do sad, I’m working on all the other ones”
The singer-songwriter talks big inspirations, her third EP and wanting to collaborate with Spacey Jane.
Photo: Press
While originally born in Devon, Liang Lawrence has danced all over the world thanks to her father’s job, finding herself drifting across New Zealand, Japan and San Francisco — to name but a few — and is most likely the reason why her accent remains somewhat untraceable, even with the underlying twang of Devon.
Discovering her love for songwriting through YouTube covers and the likes of Alanis Morissette and The Cardigans, Liang has been carving her own path in the music industry, and her new EP, It’s A Funny Thing, is set to send her to new heights.
We caught her just before she set off on tour in support of grentperez, before preparing to head on her own headline tour next week.
First of all, what was the last song you listened to?
Oh my goodness, I’m obsessed with this song right now: There’s Your Trouble by The Chicks. I was literally just speaking about them! I’m obsessed.
Is it on repeat at the moment?
Yeah, that and Hand In My Pocket by Alanis Morissette.
Oh, yes! That’s a good one. I always have a select few songs I’m currently obsessed with.
I usually have like two albums that I’ll just keep going around, then the next month there’ll be two new albums, and I’ll be like ‘Okay, this is great’.
You featured as Radio 1’s ‘Future Bop’ the other day. How did that feel?
That was crazy. I was in Radio 1’s offices, and I was really scared. I felt really sick. I didn’t really process it until the day, because I’ve been lucky enough to be on BBC Introducing as Radio 1’s ‘Track of the Week’ earlier this year… And that was crazy!
So I think, like, I’d been like, ‘Oh, great, this is so cool’. And then I went into the offices, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m going to be on BBC Radio One’. And I started to think about how many songs people write a day, and how mine specifically got chosen. Then I was like, ‘What the hell?’. Kind of thought all these things at probably the wrong time. I shouldn’t have thought about them when I was in the office, about to go in and speak to Jodie. But it was amazing. She was really lovely as well. Like, it was just very nice to speak to her about my project.
It must be really cool to hear yourself on the radio – I can only imagine it’s such a surreal moment.
Yeah, we pre-recorded at like 5pm that day and then it came out at 8pm, so I went out for a drink in between and then I was on my way home listening to it on BBC Sounds. I was on the train and I was like ‘whoa’ – I’d only had one and a half ciders or something, but that’s enough for me.
Amazing. I think you’re one of the best songwriters right now. In fact, you’re in my on repeat – twice – so you know that is genuine. What’s your favourite lyric you’ve ever written?
Gosh, I think it’s probably in this new project. There are a lot of favourites in this new project, but I love this new song that’s coming out called If It Isn’t Killing Me and there’s like a section of it where basically the second verse goes into the whole thing, where like you let the Grim Reaper into your house and it’s a whole metaphor for being like, oh, sometimes you do things that you know are bad for you, because it's a false sense of comfort, and you just have to do them like that. That’s it. You just have to accept it. I think the line is like ‘the Reaper doesn’t knock, I told him where I hid the key’. I love the imagery of that. Then it goes into him like hanging his coat over your coat when he’s coming in, and you’re like, ‘Oh, would you like a cup of tea?’. Like, it’s this whole scene. I really love that kind of image that gets built in that verse.
I think you have a knack for great metaphors.
Thank you so much! I think you can delve into a world so much deeper when there’s a metaphor. My closest co-writer, Coby — who is also my guitarist — and I talk about this a lot. Like, when you have a concept and a metaphor, you can go so far with it. Sometimes you can go too far. That’s the balance in the song that you need to sometimes rein in, but it’s so much fun. That’s what I find most fun – when you’re building this whole world, and you’re talking about one thing, but then you’re talking about another thing, and then you can just, like, use all these words, and it means something completely different to what it might sound like.
Yeah, that’s really cool. Do you have a favourite love song of all time? Do you have a go-to?
There’s one by The Cardigans. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the album, but it’s called First Band On The Moon. And the whole album is just like desperate love songs, and they’re going through love in the most existential and kind of freaky, but also, like, sometimes really wholesome ways. Do you know the song Lovefool?
Yes, of course.
So, that’s on that album, and there’s one song called Step On Me. And I love that song. It’s like a real, I don’t know, it’s basically just being like, ‘You could do it – you could literally step on me. Like, please step on me’.
They were very good at writing a good love song.
Step On Me immediately comes to mind as just a great love song.
It’s A Funny Thing is your third EP. How do you feel like you’ve developed from the first one?
You know what? The way I’ve written songs hasn’t really changed that much, like it always comes out of the necessity to understand myself. And I often say that my best songs know themselves before I do. It’s because sometimes I’ll be writing something and I’ll be like, ‘I have no idea exactly what that means, but it feels right’. And then two weeks later, I’ll look back on the song and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that was about this scenario’. Or like, that was about this way I was feeling. I didn’t know. So, that hasn’t really changed. I think ultimately, that’s why I write. So I don’t think that would change much, but I’m really excited about this new EP, It’s A Funny Thing, because the kind of intention that went into it was so deliberate. I really sat with the songs that I had and looked at the way they were written, and also the kind of references to death, and there’s a bit of dark humour in there. I really wanted that to be at the centre of it all.
Also, when we were producing it, it was the first time that I went in for a designated amount of time, and we just focused on that project. My first two projects we wrote and produced over months and months, and what I found is I still love those projects, but it’s really hard to create a world that you can, like, step in and out of when you’re doing it over six months, because you as a writer and then as an artist are stepping in and out of that world over those six months. So it’s really hard to grasp what that world is. I think, when you’re looking at making a project, you need to have a set amount of time where you’re just working on that project, and then you step out of it, and then that was only being made in that time.
Every time you listen to it, you’re taken back to that time. A listener also gets to do that with you when they listen to the project. Hopefully, there’s a real elevation when you listen to this project, and it does that. That’s my hope with it, basically. That’s where I’ve grown with it.
It almost sounds like a form of therapy. It sounds like you’re getting thoughts and feelings down and reflecting.
For sure. Even to the point where currently I’m going through a real writer’s block, and I can feel my frustration because I don’t have the one thing where I can truly express myself. I’m trying to chill because it will happen when it needs to happen. It’s so much of a necessity for me that when I can’t do it, I’m like ‘Oh, my god, everything’s falling apart’.
I feel like if you force it, then it can lose that sort of special element. Sometimes you need to live life and have a few traumatising experiences that make you sit down and write.
Literally, genuinely that. I think it was actually today that I saw an interview with Will Taylor from Flyte, and he said something about how he doesn’t write every day. He writes when he gets this overwhelming feeling. I’ve always said that it’s like you wake up in the morning and there’s a dense feeling in your head. You’re like, ‘Oh, my god, the only thing I can think of doing right now is writing’. That’s when you know that you should write something, and you should sit down and just get out whatever it is that comes out.
So you’re just waiting to wake up one day and be like, ‘it’s time’?
It’ll happen again. You’re so right. You’ve got to live to the max for a little bit.
Yeah, you need to just go out and be inspired by your surroundings. I like music that’s written about other people’s experiences. I’ve always found that quite interesting.
Go speak to some people, go have some real-life interaction. Oh, there’s this whole other thing – the music industry can get very insular. People can focus on being a musician. That’s great and really exciting, but also, you’re trying to write music for everyone, and the average person doesn’t exist in this world where music is this huge, huge thing. I think you can get really caught up as the artist of being like, I need to do all these things; I need to play these gigs; I need to do whatever it is that’s very music-focused. It’s like, oh no, I just need to go and hang out with people, live life, go to the pub, have conversations.
I know exactly what you mean. Do you have a favourite song from the EP?
Probably If It Isn’t Killing Me. I know that it’s not out yet, but it rings so true to how I feel so often. I love the way it sounds. I love all the guitars in it. I love the way it tells the story. I love that it’s light-hearted but also so dark.
I don’t know if you know this, but the EP is named after the tagline of that song. So the song is If It Isn’t Killing Me but the tagline through it is It’s A Funny Thing. I was thinking of a title for the EP for so long. I was like, ‘Oh, my god, it needs to be clever, it needs to be interesting, it needs to be deep’. But then all these weird, deep titles just felt so gross and like I was trying too hard. I saw that tagline and I was like, ‘Oh, that actually encapsulates everything that this EP is trying to be’. It’s trying to get you to think about all these things that are difficult. It’s also like, at the end of the day, it’s a funny thing, you know, what are you gonna do?
I feel like titles can be the hardest things sometimes, because it needs to be good.
I try to just go on a whim and then don’t think about it ever again.
Mac DeMarco did that album last year with all the song titles as random numbers. He made it impossible to say what your favourite one was.
I wonder what his intention was behind that.
I’ve got no idea, but he is a bit weird, so I’m not surprised.
Most artists are.
If you met someone and they’d never heard your music before, and you could only show them one of your songs, what would it be?
Oh, my god. That’s such a good question. My struggle with that is that sometimes I really love an acoustic live sound. Ultimately, all my songs always start on an acoustic guitar. I think if the song is good there, it’s guaranteed to be good elsewhere. Every song can be played on the acoustic guitar, and you can get pretty good feeling out of it. I would say it’s so good at capturing whatever you need to. It’s the only instrument I know how to play, I’m not even very good at it – I’m running out of chords.
Do you have a favourite song of yours or do you not tend to listen back?
I have phases where I’ll be like ‘what do I even sound like?’ and then I’ll listen to everything and I’ll be like ‘I shouldn’t have done that’.
It must be really weird to perceive yourself in that way.
Well, actually, today we were putting together the live show, and so I had to listen back to all my music, and I listened back to unposted letters for the first time in ages. That was one of my favourites for a long time before this EP, really. It was definitely up there as one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written, and I listened back to it, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, there’s so much… Like, wow, you were really going through it’. I listened to my lyrics and I was like ‘oh’.
That’s one of my favourite songs. I think I listened to that continuously after my last break-up, so thank you.
I remember when we made it. I cried – I cried when I’ve never, ever cried in the studio since or before, and it just overwhelmed me. It was because it was a song that I had written in my bedroom, and I meant every word of it. I think when I listened back to it, I was like ‘wow’.
You can really tell that you were going through it.
It was just pure honesty. A lot of people have said similar things to me, that it’s one of their favourites. I think it’s my second top-streamed song or something.
(not) a love song is first, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. I think it’s just because I’ve been listening to a lot of Alanis Morissette recently, and I keep describing her lyrics as if she just thought them and then put them in a song – there was no filtering, there was no trying to think about metaphors really well. I mean, I’m completely projecting this onto her.
You Oughta Know is one of the best songs – it’s so aggressive and angry in the right way. It’s definitely like she’s just writing down the exact way she feels.
That’s like one of the most impressive things about her. Getting that emotion across is actually so hard. Like, I think I can do sad, I’m working on all the other ones.
I think with unposted letters, it’s kind of like a diary entry. It feels like you’re very vulnerable in it, and opening yourself up to that. It’s quite relatable to a lot of people, especially the younger generation… and for anyone going through situationships.
So maybe the answer to your earlier question – if I could only play one song – would be unposted letters.
What made you want to start making music? Was there a catalyst?
A real catalyst for me was – did you ever watch Dodie Clark on YouTube?
Dodie?
Yes! I think I was like eleven or twelve when she was posting loads on YouTube. I just used to be obsessed. Like, I was amazed. I was amazed that she was just like making music in her bedroom, and that was the thing for me. I was like, ‘Oh, you can just write songs, and you can create things’. Literally, all I needed to get was a ukulele. So, I bought a ukulele. I have two because I was obsessed. I haven’t played them in so long, but that was a real catalyst for me, like all of those bedroom artists just doing it because they wanted to.
Then I picked up a guitar when I was like fourteen because I was like, ‘I don’t like the sound of the ukulele anymore, I’m sorry’. And then, yeah, it kind of just went from there. But it was like, the writing side of things, really. It was just like, I don’t know, I think I was seeing Dodie express herself and tell these stories. I was like, ‘I can do that if I want to’. Then I did. And then it was like, ‘Oh, this is actually really nice’.
I say this all the time, but music is the only thing that I’ve ever really been proud of. I’ve done school and been to uni, kind of did all that, and tried hard, as hard as I could, and came out with achievements, but I was never as proud as I am just writing a shitty song in my bedroom. I’d spend hours doing that – it’s the only thing I can get lost in, you know?
I think the whole YouTube thing made it more accessible for the average person. Also, like when Riptide by Vance Joy came out, and that became the pinnacle of YouTube covers. That was the ukulele song.
I think I have a YouTube cover of me doing that when I was like fourteen. I have so many archived.
Oh, is that one not online anymore?
I’ve privated a lot of them. There’s a couple that I’m like, ‘you know what? That’s important lore’, then there’s some where I’m like ‘nah’. [Laughs]
Will Joseph Cook jumped on a version of (not) a love song. Who else would you collaborate with if you could?
Ah, my god. I always just say this and, like, Spacey Jane – I love them. I just think they’re so fun; I love their sound, I love their vibe. I haven’t seen them live, but I’ve got tickets to see them in October. I think they collaborated with BENEE? Ever since then, I’ve been like [gasp] ‘I wonder if they would ever collaborate with me?’ [Laughs]. I love the idea of collaborating with a band, like a full-sounding band, basically. I love that indie sound; I grew up listening to it. I don’t really see it for myself, so I think collaborating with an artist where I can go exist in that sound for a bit would be fun. ‘Cause I listen to that sound so much as well, like I love their stuff.
I was gonna ask you what your proudest moment is, but is it just releasing music as a whole?
Hmm… Yeah? I would say… yeah? I think it’s funny with my career – and I hate that word – ‘cause I never intentionally set out to be ‘an artist’, I just wrote because I needed to. So I didn’t ever set really big goals and aspirations, I still don’t really have any. Like people set goals for venue size and stuff, which is really awesome, and I don’t know if it’s my lack of confidence making me not want to do those things, because I’m like, ‘what if I never achieve them?’, then I won’t be disappointed. I think I’m just proud whenever I make a song that I love and it feels like it’s better than the last.
I feel it with this next project – I’m so proud of this project, I just kind of want it to be out, and there’s no other moment in music that I’m really proud of. I don’t know, maybe I’ll play a huge show one day.
Do you think you’d feel most proud when you’re holding a physical copy of your debut album?
That would be… You know what? Doing a project like that, and if I feel I can do it well, that would definitely top everything. Up until now, it’s always just been versions of that, and it’s been like a song I really like, most proud of that. An EP that I put out; really proud of that. So, if I get to an album point, the album conversation is a whole thing – every day I’m having this conversation in my head, but like, yeah, that would definitely top it, if I can do it the way I want to. It will be a very proud moment.
I think physical copies are super important – there’s something special about holding your work.
We just made CDs, and I got early versions of them. We played it in the car, and I was like ‘whoa’.
That must be so weird.
It is so weird.
I imagine it’s a full circle moment: as a child, you’re playing your CDs and now, as an adult, that’s your CD. My last question for you is: if you could choose one song to soundtrack your life, what would it be?
Oh my goodness. I was gonna try and look through, but I feel like that’s not the way. Oh man, I suddenly don’t know any songs. I feel like it’s definitely by the Eagles. And it’s just ‘cause that’s been a through line through my music taste for my whole life. Maybe New Kid in Town by the Eagles. I remember listening to that – and I think because I grew up moving around a lot – for the first time when I was like ten and being like ‘oh my god, it’s me, they’re talking about me’. Now, every time I hear that song, it’s really nice. I love the Eagles, I love the way they storytell, I love their sound. I just love them, I love their harmonies.
And nostalgia is always great.
It’s A Funny Thing is out September 26th via The Other Songs Records.
