Griff on touring with Taylor Swift, stage fright and her debut album
Over the course of about three years, Griff has gone from keep tunes in her room to visiting the world with Coldplay and Taylor Quick.
Her ascent has been dizzyingly rapid. She dubbed her debut album Vertigo because of this.
However, neither the BBC, which included Griff on its new talent hotlist in the same year, nor the Brit Awards, which named her a rising star in 2021, have been surprised by Griff’s success.
Born Sarah Griffiths, she signed with Warner Records in 2019. During the pandemic, her “lockdown content hustle” helped her emotionally vulnerable pop songs go viral.
Black Hole, her breakout single, led to a flurry of support slots for artists such as Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran.
“The test is to attempt to prevail upon 80,000 individuals who are not there to see you,” she says.
“I discovered that people just want to dance and have fun.” Therefore, I would cut my slow songs, make it a fun time, and refrain from taking it too seriously.
For a the vocalist stage (“something doesn’t add up about the examination the judgment that actually startles me”), the experience was groundbreaking.
“I think I’ve discovered that nerves never disappear,” she says. ” Like, I become ill to the stomach each and every time.
However, hearing others sing your words back to you is a one-of-a-kind high.
“Sometimes, without asking, an entire arena would fire putting their lights up. When that occurs, you really feel as though, “Oh my God, I’ve got this audience.”
Her debut album may have been delayed by all of those tour dates, but it was well worth it. The fans who had discovered her in stadiums all over the world were ready when Vertigo came out last week. It debuted at number three on the UK chart.
Griff told me when we last spoke in 2020 that she had never been brokenhearted.
Songs that seemed to be about relationships often talked about friends she had lost touch with or the foster kids who moved through her parents’ Hertfordshire home.
On the other hand, Vertigo appears to be a straightforward album about breaking up.
“It could have worked out, yes,” she affirms. ” Yet, I feel that is normally what you experience in your mid 20s.”
How did it compare to the scenarios she imagined in her adolescent songs?
“It’s simply harder, perhaps, than you naturally suspect.
“It’s harder to describe feeling disappointed or rejected than you might think.”
She does, however, have a talent on record for revealing the flaws in relationships with unflinching clarity.
“You’re terrified of affection/All things considered, would we confirm or deny that we are all?” On the title track, she sings.
The collection’s most sincerely stripped melody is Space traveler, in which Griff hesitantly (and wryly) liberates a darling: ” You said you needed space, right? Continue then, space explorer.”
Initially a hazier, synth-weighty song, it changed totally after Coldplay’s Chris Martin requested to hear a portion of Griff’s work underway.
“Chris, generous, plunked down for a night and paid attention to a lot of tunes with me – and he got Space explorer as one that I simply had to dial back and strip back. So I inquired if he would be willing to assist me with that.”
They immediately reserved a studio and recorded the melody live, without a tick track, permitting them to wait on the tune’s most personal sections.
“Now, basically, all you hear is Chris playing piano and my voice. It’s only one take.”
He also made other contributions. Griff says visiting arenas with groups like Coldplay “subliminally” impacted her songwriting.
She smiles and says, “I don’t think I went in thinking, ‘Right, I now need to write like A Sky Full Of Stars.'” However, the big, sing-along choruses of songs like Miss Me Too and Tears For Fun are made to be “euphoric and congregational,” she explains.
Congregational is a watchword.
Griff grew up as an individual from Hillsong, the non-traditional Christian megachurch that started in Australia in 1983 and has purportedly counted Justin Bieber, Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez, Drake and the Kardashian sisters among its individuals.
The community gatherings’ are more similar to stage performances than the conventional eating regimen of songs and lessons – and they showed Griff the force of music.
She also felt a sense of belonging at Hillsong that she didn’t get at her school, which she once called “probably 97% white.”
For quite a while, she dismissed her legacy – her Chinese mother came to the UK as an exile, while her dad was the child of Windrush-age guardians. She believed, however, that a career in pop music was out of the question.
“I did not consider that to be my space to occupy. I assumed I must be a R&B or a spirit craftsman, since pop doesn’t feel like it invites anybody that seems as though me.”
That is beginning to shift. Cat Burns, a British-Liberian singer, is in Griff’s top 10 this week. He says that Raye’s success is a good sign, but there is still a long way to go.
She asserts, “I still believe the UK has yet to see an artist of color who really, really breaks international.”
“There are minutes, and there’s little flames, yet for reasons unknown we neglect to stoke the fire and support long visiting professions.
“Everyone is responsible for determining why and determining how to support it.”
She is encouraged by the praise for Charli XCX, who, like Griff, is British-Indian in origin and makes her own music.
She also praises the remix of Charli’s song Girl, So Confusing, in which Lorde and Charli discuss how their friendship was complicated by the music industry.
“That tune was so effective to such countless young ladies on the grounds that the opposition is genuine,” Griff says.
“We’re in an industry that really does, like, pit you against each other, whether someone is telling you about [sales] numbers, comparing you with someone else, or bitching about you. You’re expected to be picture perfect and support everyone. It very well may be so harmful.
“Furthermore, I feel that is the reason that melody was so special, in light of the fact that the young lady dynamic can be so perplexing, working inside a universe of sexism.”
She is fortunate to have the right people on her side. Not simply megastars like Chris Martin and Dua Lipa, however individual new kids in town Holly Humberstone and Maisie Peters.
“We’re continuously monitoring one another. ‘ Are you still alive?’, ‘ Yes, I’m still alive!” She chuckles.
More importantly, Griff has Taylor Swift’s support, at least in terms of her profile.
Griff accepted Swift’s invitation to perform with her at Wembley Stadium last month after she had promoted her music on social media.
The American superstar addressed the audience, “This girl, she is so creative on every single level,” sounding like a proud mother.
Given the magnitude of the production, Griff claims that the atmosphere backstage was “surprisingly calm.”
“What was truly decent about it is that everyone on that visit knows that they’re essential for history.
There’s such an appreciation to being a piece of it. And I think that’s a really lovely environment to be in.”
So, has she ever thought about appearing as the headliner of her own stadium performance?
“It’s peculiar, my goal line of progress continues to move the more I’m in this,” she says.
“My definitive objective is simply to compose tunes that outlast me – however on the off chance that that includes acting in arenas, that is really motivating.”
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