Sinéad Harnett joins Nadeska on Apple Music 1 to discuss her sophomore album, 'Ready is Always Too Late'. She talks about her Thai upbringing, her experience creating during the pandemic and how she ended up connecting with VanJess, EARTHGANG, Tiana Major9, Masego, and more.
Sinéad Harnett Explains How Her Personal Experiences Inspire Her Music...
I definitely spent a lot of time alone growing up. My mum's Thai. She had very strict rules and really wanted me to do something academic. And because she moved from Thailand when she was 20 and literally had nothing, she was working all the time. In that kind of loneliness, that's where the sombre tones came from, and obviously, when I'd listen to Lauryn Hill or D'Angelo growing up and I could hear, like, a little bit of pain in things that they were singing as well. It, resonated with me, so I think I had a bit of darkness that I wanted to share from young. And then when I became an adult and started having relationships, I was meeting some questionable people, so... Always material. And you know, there's always complexities in, families and friends and stuff, so yeah, it's that stuff which inspires me, 'cause it always moves me and what moves me is what writes my songs. Like, I can never just go to the studio and be like, "I'm gonna write a song about this." It's always like, almost like writing a diary.
Sinéad Harnett On The Message Behind The Title Of Her Album...
The first track is called 'Ready Is Always Too Late'. This was about me really feeling this man, being like, "Wow. This is great. Wow. Imagine where this can go?" And that feeling being completely unmirrored by him. And then so, I don't know, the theme of the song was like, if you keep telling me, "Let's wait until we're ready," I don't think you're ever gonna be ready, 'cause why aren't you ready for me now? I kinda started feeling like this is my whole blessing and curse because I've never pushed myself too far too soon, because I've been like, "Let me wait until I'm ready." So even things like becoming the artist that I've always wanted to be and, you know, there's so many ways that we are held back from becoming our best selves, you know, trauma, bad patterns that we learn as kids, things that we're trying to unlearn.
Sinéad Harnett On Becoming More Self Aware During The Pandemic...
It was the first time that I put myself first, because I couldn't say "yes" to anything. It was really good to just have time to get to know how I was, to learn to love all my idiosyncrasies. We've all got them. We're all weird in our own way. And then through doing that, I actually realised who cares, like, I'm one person, you're one person, everyone else is a person, who really cares about "I"? Like, it just made me look at the "we". Almost through putting myself first I was like, this world is not okay, like there's so many cracks, there's so many things that we need to do as a team. So I went from being like, "I need to tell everyone that I'm a singer. And I need to move forward," to being like, "I'm not gonna post a selfie, okay? Because there's nothing of value, there's no value that's gonna bring to the world. I need to look at what going on, and so I, I don't know, I feel like everyone activated their activism in 2020. So writing music felt a lot more special, because now it wasn't this chore or this you-have-to-do-this. I wrote when I felt like writing, and then I did research on the terrible wonders of the world when I wasn't inspired. So it was really a good balancing year and quite devastating, because all of the world's problems were, like, in our face.
Sinéad Harnett On What She Learned From Her Debut Album...
So you know how hindsight is very annoying, because you realise things once they're done. When I look back at that album and who I was when I was writing it, I was very lost and very reluctant to face up to who I was and start to like myself. So I feel like all of those lessons, some of them weren't actually bad. Some of them were really positive, like there's a song on there called 'Leo Bear', which is about when my nephew was born and I was like, "Oh my gosh, take a bullet, love exists." Like, this is the deepest love I've ever felt. But yeah, the greatest one that I learned was I can't love healthily at all until I learn to love myself.
Sinéad Harnett On Making New Music During Lockdown...
I actually think when we're talking about 2020, being indoors for that long meant that my only way to connect to fans and peers and artists that I love was social media. So people like Masego and VanJess came about because we were just all... well, first VanJess jumped on it and, um, because we'd worked with the same producers that produced that track, Mike Brainchild and Sunny Kale, and then I sent a version to Masego and in about 30 minutes he sent back his verse. And I actually feel like without the pandemic, would I have had the guts to be like, just knocking on his door and be there? Similarly, with Johnny Venus of EARTHGANG, we got talking on Instagram because we were huge fans of each other. I couldn't stop playing his track, 'Collide' with Tiana Major9, and obviously his partner in EARTHGANG. He couldn't stop playing a song of mine, so I feel like I knew I wanted to do more real instrumentation. I knew I wanted to up the level of confidence just in the tone of my lyrics, and so I think that energy is what attracted Lucky Day.
