Birdy

While some 14 year olds may be trying their first swig of cider in the local park and worrying about what to wear to the end of term school party, 14 year old Birdy instead had a top twenty UK hit with the Bon Iver cover, ‘Skinny Love’. She also had it breaking the airwaves across the world for a couple of years selling thousands of copies in the process. She performed another cover which was used in an episode of ‘The Vampire Diaries’, collaborated with Mumford & Sons for ‘Learn me Right’, wrote a song for the smash hit animated movie ‘Brave’ and wrote a song for the movie ‘The Hunger Games’.

While all this was going on she released her eponymous album, featuring mainly covers, hitting an impressive number 13 in the UK album chart. She sold-out 3 nights at the Sydney Opera House, has reached over 138 million views on her YouTube channel and over 1.1 million likes on her Facebook page. Phew!

In her current phase, fans will see Birdy come to the forefront as a songwriter in her own right having written/co-written all of the all 11 tracks on her new album ‘Fire Within’. For the past year while working on the album, she has had the help of some great industry heavyweights in the likes of Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic frontman who has worked with Beyonce, Adele and J-Lo), Rich Costey (Muse, Arctic Monkeys), to name a couple. Her talent hasn’t stopped at writing and singing as she also played the guitar in the recording studio for the album and also for her live performances.

The album is a musical triumph of love and passion which sees her vocals taking on a more mature tone to them. Mostly low and mid-tempo songs, her words play on the heart strings when singing about love, unreciprocated love and heartbreak. There are many stand-out tracks on the album and although ‘Wings’ was the first release in August this year, I don’t think it is certainly not the only gem on the album. ‘Heart of Gold’, ‘Maybe’ and ‘Strange Birds’ are three of many diamonds among them all.

With these songs I think we will be hearing a lot more from Birdy, and I think more than a swig of cider is in order to celebrate. One to keep your ‘birdy’ eye on!