Willow Kayne: “If I can change the direction that pop can be that’s what success sounds like”
Creating a multi-sensory, ‘90s-soaked world, Willow Kayne’s already bagged an Ivor Novello and is only aiming higher from here.
Winning an Ivor Novello Rising Star award aged just 19 and with only two released songs to your name might be setting your own bar dauntingly high for some, but you sense that London-via-Bristol’s Willow Kayne is aiming for different things. “Fucking hell bruv, what a nice welcome into the music industry!” she guffaws in response to the memory, pint in hand. And as for being paired with Ivors mentor Nile Rodgers? “I had no idea what he’d done, my manager had to Uber a biography to me,” she shrugs. “We get on really well though, me and Nile - we still have our catch up phone calls. He’s a good egg.”
Lofty institutions and lauded musical icons don’t rank high on Willow’s technicolour, ‘90s-infused moodboard. Instead, the singer is obsessed with making something entirely her own - from the Charli XCX-meets-MIA sound that emerged with this year’s debut EP ‘Playground Antics’, via the meticulous, multi-sensory universe she’s building around it. “Someone asked me if I have synaesthesia and I don’t even know what that is, but I just think a colour goes with a vibe. Same with a smell, a smell goes with a vibe. At my headline shows I worked with a scentologist who made smells for each song - so all the graphics in the background were the colour of the song, and then there were unique smells that got released with each song,” she enthuses.
“When I was younger I was searching for that euphoric feeling through fucking acid and things, but then I got on stage.”
Having lost the sight in her right eye aged 15, Willow credits the resulting recovery experience during which she had to live in total darkness for two months as crucial to this outlook. “It meant my senses [were heightened] - things tasted more intense in the dark, and music sounded different, and it just spawned this whole monster of looking a bit deeper,” she explains. Meanwhile, lyrically, a teenage period spent “off the rails” has led to an early body of work that’s purposefully bratty, sassy and full of middle-fingers, from the playground chant of EP opener ‘Opinion’ to the brag-rap of ‘Two Seater’.
“Music was the first thing I did where I could turn very negative things into something good,” Willow grins. “When I was younger I was searching for that euphoric feeling through fucking acid and things, but then I got on stage. Seeing people sing what you’ve written was like, ‘Oh this is it! I’ve been searching for this feeling in the wrong places!’”
Citing influence from Gorillaz, MIA and Santigold, but then naming the Bulgarian State Television Choir as her current obsession before gushing about her ambitions to work with children’s choirs and full orchestras, Willow’s boundaries are clearly limitless. “We’re in the world of playlisting and I keep getting put in playlists that are like, ‘Misfits’ or ‘Outcasts’ where I’ll be next to an artist called Vomit Guts,” she laughs. “It’s like, ‘Guys I know you don’t know where to put me but come on!’”
But the algorithm’s loss is the rest of our gain; strap on board the Kayne train and lord knows where she’ll take you next. “I used to think I wanted to be a pop star, but I’ve realised that’s kind of limiting,” she decides. “If I can change the direction that pop can be, then that’s what success sounds like to me to be honest.”
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Willow Kayne - Playground Antics
She can rap, she can sing, she can do lip-curling bad bitch and cheeky, playful pop star - and holy hell, can she write a tune.
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