Introducing… Starling

Starling: “I definitely think you’re getting the real me”

We introduce a young artist that is using her brooding pop confessionals to document the many challenges of modern life

Name: Harriet Starling

Age: 25

Location: London

Style: Dark pop with flashes of colour

Look out for: New EP The Body, out now

To listen to The Body, the new EP from Starling, is to receive an insight into the life of the young London songwriter. A deeply personal collection that documents having her drink spiked on a night out in New York (In The Dark) and a painful breakup (Yellow Shoe Shine), it’s as if writing and performing as Starling, rather than her full name of Harriet Starling, allows for an increased level of honesty and freedom. “I definitely think you’re getting the real me,” she says. “It’s just a magnified version of myself through Starling, she doesn’t give a fuck.”

Her news songs continuing the brooding pop of her debut EP, The Heart, but also highlight the increasing assurance of her writing. “I’m more confident in what I have to say and I think more expressive and of the moment,” says Starling. “All of these things happened to me and most of them are 100% my lyrics so it feels a lot more personal. Though the first EP was pretty personal, I just wasn’t so sure of myself.”

Working with writers like Sterling Fox and Eg White, building songs from the words in her vast collection of notebooks and the melodies hummed into her iPhone, is it hard to open up so much? “They’re people I trust and genuinely get on with and I would go out with,” she says. “I feel that they’ve got my back and it’s often a good way of dealing with drama. I wrote In The Dark the morning after that night had happened and it was actually quite cathartic to be in the studio, it’s such a beautiful thing to be able to write about what’s happening in your life.”

It’s clearly an approach that works, as the multi-layered and revealing songs on The Body pay testament too. We can’t wait to see what part of her psyche she lays bare next time around.

Interview: Duncan Haskell

Find out more at starlingsworld.com

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