Interview: Nerina Pallot

Nerina Pallot: “Because I am my harshest critic, my standards are high.”

The singer-songwriter reveals all about her new fan-inspired record and her plans to take beloved album ‘Fires’ on the road

Nerina Pallot, the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter known for her emotive lyrics and deep artistry, returns with her eighth studio album, A Psalm For Emily Salvi. Over a career stretching back to her 2001 debut Dear Frustrated Superstar, and including her commercial peak, 2005’s Fires, Pallot has consistently demonstrated her ability to add a modern edge to her timeless sound, allowing her to move forward while somehow also remaining anchored to influences such as Elton John, Carole King, and Kate Bush.

Beyond her own albums, Pallot has also penned tracks for artists like Kylie Minogue, including the title track of Aphrodite, and lent her versatile voice to covers, such as a haunting rendition of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Inviting listeners into her sonic and emotional world, her latest effort draws on gospel, pop, hip hop, and folk. Inspired by a heartfelt message from a fan, and a writing trip to the middle of nowhere, A Psalm For Emily Salvi celebrates connection and resilience.

Join us now as we gush over Pallot’s seventh album I Don’t What I’m Doing before taking a deep dive into the new record and finding out about the Fires 25th anniversary tour…

Discover Nerina Pallot’s Songwriting Survival Kit

I’m such a huge fan of your last record that I was actually a little worried about listening to the new one, but it’s just as wonderful…

“I’m so glad you like I Don’t Know What I’m Doing. That has made my day, because I kind of feel that that album got swallowed a bit by being a post-pandemic record.”

The songwriting on tracks like Master Builder, Alice At The Beach, and my favourite, There’s A River was so strong…

“You write these things and you think, ‘Am I going mad? Am I being self-indulgent? And is this just gonna mean nothing to anybody?’ So I love it when someone tells me that a song means something to them. Once you make work, it stops being yours and you just hope that you’ve raised your musical children right and they’ll go out into the world and behave.

“That song… it was so painful during the pandemic, being apart from family. My baby sister had her first son, and I was longing to hold my nephew. My sister and I are the only two full-blood siblings in my family. So when I saw the first photos of her son, he just looked like my son. Because she was in Australia, I didn’t get to hold him for years. Then my niece had her first baby. There were all these babies that, because of the pandemic, I was desperate to hold and I couldn’t. There’s A River was basically a song for all those babies I was dying to go and meet.”

Do you always have those moments of, ‘Why am I doing this?’ at the start of the writing process, and is that something you have to talk yourself out of to get going again?

“Yeah, and it’s never-ending. I feel like I’m getting away with it all the time. I feel like I’ve been getting away with it pretty much since I wrote my first song at 13 and I don’t know what I’m doing. It was, ‘How dare I do this?’ And now I’m like, ‘How have I dared do this for all these years and no one’s called me out on it?’ So, yeah, always. Every single time I sit down to write a song, I’m like, ‘Who do you think you are?’”

Does that mean you need outside input to do it? Or you’re used to that voice in the back of your head and have to get on with it?

“It’s twofold. That voice is there about everything I do in my life, even if it’s going to the shops to buy a loaf of bread. I’ve always been someone who second-guesses themselves, but I have this deep, physical urge in me to make work, to write, to create something. It’s not always to write a song, I really like making things – even if it’s making a cushion.

“All humans have it, even the ones who say, ‘I’m not remotely creative,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, you know when you make a really nice cake that you’ve been dying to make and you go and you buy your ingredients? That is creativity.’ It’s anything where you start with nothing and, at the end of the process, you’ve got something. So that urge, it’s in all humans. For me, luckily, the urge to create is greater than the urge to self-destruct, but there’s sometimes a very fine balance.”

What can you tell us about the origins of the new album, A Psalm For Emily Salvi?

“She’s a real human being but her name is not Emily Salvi. We both alighted on a pseudonym that I felt embodied her spirit, because I didn’t want her being doxxed. She’d written to me a few times over the years, and these messages were always amazing. We have similar sort of philosophical/mental struggles with the way the world is, there’s always a simpatico.

“At the beginning of this year, I was packing my car to go away for a week to write in the middle of nowhere. I said to my husband, ‘I’m not getting anywhere with any of my writing. I need to go somewhere where I’ve got no Wi-Fi, nothing.’ I needed to go and do that writer-in-the-woods thing. It was the dead period between Christmas and New Year, so I wasn’t doing the school run and stuff.”

What happened next?

“As I was packing my car, Emily sent me this incredible email. It’s almost like she knew that I was really struggling to write. I’d been struggling to process a lot of… not just the grief of losing a lot of people in 2022, but this unsettling fear. I think all of us, we’re unpacking our lives after this long dormancy.

“She said in this email, ‘Have you considered psalms?’ I will say this, and I feel slightly embarrassed, but I’m not embarrassed… I’m very spiritual. It’s a really important part of my life. I’m not a religious person, because I have questions about organised religion, but I do believe in something bigger than us, and I also believe that humans are really quite amazing.

“Emily wrote and said that psalms are an amazing sort of structure for writing about grief, loss, and anger. They exist as this weird part of the Bible where humans are reckoning with God and trying to find meaning in the world when God is often so vengeful. So why would we believe in anything bigger than ourselves, when there’s so much death and pestilence? They’re songs of grief, and then struggle, and then resolution, and then ultimately, acceptance… Emily said, ‘Have you thought about that as an idea?’ I went off to the middle of nowhere, in the snow, with this amazing email, thinking, ‘I’ll write backwards from here.’”

Nerina Pallot: “Every single time I sit down to write a song, I’m like, ‘Who do you think you are?’” Photo: Tommy Reynolds

At that point did you know what a psalm was and how to incorporate that into your writing, or did you have to do any research?

“I was raised very, very staunch Catholic, so I’d read Psalms, but I hadn’t read them properly since I was a kid. I got a Bible and I read them. Some of them are very obscure, but there is a structure, and there are some beautiful metaphors.

“I’ve stolen one of the famous ones for the first song on the album [Pressure]. The very first line is an inversion of Psalm 23. The original is, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…’ It’s about, ‘God is with me, even in death.’ I think all of us, to some extent, struggle with the voice inside our head, and we are often our own worst enemy. Actually, the biggest thing I’ve grappled with in my life is the idea that your mind is your existence and how we live with our minds, how we struggle with our minds sometimes, and how can we make friends with our minds…

“So the opening of the album is, ‘Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of this life, I fear no one but myself…’ I’ve realised as I’ve got older, I’m terribly prone to self-sabotage. Sometimes awful things happen to people through no fault of their own. But my experience of when I’ve had periods of misery, it’s nearly always self-inflicted. I turned 50 this year and I’ve tried to promise myself that I would be less evil to myself.”

Is that self-sabotage ever for creative gain? We’ve spoken to other songwriters who almost will bad things to happen so they can get a good lyric from the situation…

“I don’t think I’ve self-sabotaged in order to get a song, because I don’t enjoy the process of self-sabotage. I don’t enjoy the feelings of shame, regret, or what could have been. I know some people do. They love all that. They love and court the drama. I think some people just use, ‘Oh, I’m an artist,’ as an excuse for douchebag behaviour.”

And when you found yourself in the middle of nowhere with the idea of the Psalms, did the writing then come easily?

“It definitely was a catalyst. I didn’t come away with any fully formed songs, but I came away with the beginnings of things. When I got back, I think I’d written the album within four months, pretty much done and dusted. It was a pivotal moment where I was like, ‘Okay, I know what I’m doing now, so let’s go finish this work.’”

What does that process of starting and completing a song look like?

“This album was quite a free process. Some songs were written in one sitting; they came together very fast. Madison was like that; it took me about half an hour. Regrets was the same, very, very fast. Songs like Pressure, I constructed over months. I came to that really from a groove, which was more a production-write, even though – in some ways – it’s the most important song. I saw someone on the internet describe it as ‘doom disco.’

“A couple of years ago, I got very obsessed with the song Mirror by Kendrick Lamar. I had to listen to it every day. Pressure was my nod to that. I do love a lot of what I think of as good hip-hop, because there’s a lot of shit rap. I think Kendrick Lamar makes amazing records. So I wanted to explore that area of groove.”

Would that mean you’re writing on a DAW?

“Pressure, for example, was written around a loop. It was pretty much all constructed in the computer, apart from the chords. I wrote the chords on keys. I would pull up a loop and I would try different chords. There were other sections I jettisoned. Even though this song is quite personal, I approached it the way I’ve approached writing for über-pop things in the past, where you pick your best sections and put them together.”

Nerina Pallot: “For me, luckily, the urge to create is greater than the urge to self-destruct.” Photo: Tommy Reynolds

Are you aware of what you’ve done before and do you try not to repeat things?

“I’m always afraid of repeating myself, and I do repeat myself. I try not to, but when I talk to songwriters, depending on their instrument, I think a lot of us have certain places we tend to go to. On guitar, I tend to be very simple because I’m quite limited technically, but piano is a bit freer, because I’m technically proficient.

“But what I do find on piano is there are certain voicings that have always been pleasing to my ear, which does mean that I tend to find melodies in a similar register. I’ve been trying to really work at not doing that. But you also have to honour your fans, because they like you for a reason. So you know, if I was to go off and make a I-IV-V rock record where there’s just three chords and it’s very primary colours, I don’t think they’d like it, and I wouldn’t like it because I wouldn’t be being myself.”

It must also be hard with lyrics. For example, There’s A River from your last album has a lyric about lists and so does You Could Be So Pretty on this album. As a listener, you think it must be a callback, whereas you’re perfectly entitled to mention lists in as many songs as you like…

“Well, it’s really funny you pick up on that. That was not the thing I thought you were going to pick up on. I thought you were going to pick up on, ‘I must confess,’ because I say that all the time. It’s one of my favourite figures of speech. It’s on Mr. King on my second album [Fires].

“Without giving too much away, the list is to do with one of the inspirations behind There’s A River and You Could Be So Pretty. It’s a person, and they’re famous for their list-making. They’re someone very dear, and it was my way of nodding to their lists and leaving little Easter eggs for the people who I’m writing in mind for.”

Your music also manages to be both current and timeless, and your use of language is one of the things that makes it feel current – for example the use of a word like ‘Insta’ on You Could Be So Pretty. Are you doing that because it’s natural, or are you purposefully choosing to include that type of modern word?

“I want to be honest in my writing and use the vernacular. I love poetic language as well, but yeah, I don’t mind that that will probably date that song. So in ten years, when nobody’s using Instagram, they’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah!’ It would be like listening to a song about Myspace now. But then that has its own charm.

“I did start to think about, ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ But I felt like Instagram, in that way, was more a metaphor for all of social media and how it’s damaging, especially young women’s perceptions of themselves. So I did think about that for a little bit, and then I thought, ‘No, I’m gonna leave it in there,’ because it says exactly what I want it to say.”

We’d also describe your music as being wise without being preachy…

“Thank you. The records I love are those things. They’re like friends, they hold your hand. When I was a teenager, I really got into Carole King and Joni Mitchell, even though they’d happened 20 years before I was born. They were really old records then, but they never felt like old records to me. They felt current and made sense to me, negotiating teenagehood and young adulthood and they felt like friends. They felt like they were a bit screwed up as well, and if I went on the journey with them, we’d all figure it out together.”

So when the shoe is on the other foot and you’re the songwriter and the artist, do you like to have that conversation with Emily and others about what your songs mean to them?

“Yes, because I still am a girl in my bedroom. My parents moved home a few years ago and they had loads of boxes of my crap from my childhood. When I was eight or nine, I was designing my album covers with the titles of songs that didn’t exist yet. I’ve always been up in my room; I think all of us have this part of our psychology that never really changes. So I’m always immensely grateful that anybody wants to hear the songs from up in my room.”

And do you have conversations with people during the process, or is it only afterwards?

“It’s after, because I struggle so much with creative confidence. I did a session yesterday, where, in some ways, I was the most experienced person in the room, but I literally spent the morning before we started working in terror. I was thinking that they must all think I’m an idiot. We made really good work. I’m really happy with it, but that’s where I’m at, every time. I love going to the studio but I also feel terror, like, ‘Why am I here?’ And so the only way I can survive making a record is if I just do this and go, ‘Just chill Nerina,’”

Is that why you do the production too?

“The production thing is partly me being very pig-headed about it, but also, I was fortunate enough in my earlier career, when the budgets were available, to work with really big producers. What I realised is, some people weren’t really doing very much. They were just letting the artists be themselves.

“I went to one producer hoping that they could wave a magic wand and that somehow, I too would walk out with a worldwide smash. Then I realised that actually, that’s not what they did at all. So then I thought, ‘Oh, that means it’s got to come from me,’ so there was that reckoning.

“Also, since I’ve been an independent artist, I don’t have the budget to go to a big-time producer. I don’t really sit back worrying about it because I’ve had that experience. I have worked with some of the really big producers in the world, so I feel quite fortunate to have had that experience. Sometimes I would like to repeat it, but it’s been partly out of necessity, rather than just pure wilfulness.”

Nerina Pallot: “I think some people just use, ‘Oh, I’m an artist,’ as an excuse for douchebag behaviour.” Photo: Tommy Reynolds

Do you see a very clear distinction between songwriting and producing?

“It depends on the song. [With] some songs, they tell you exactly what they’re going to be, you can’t let them be anything else. Like Madison. That just wanted to be a mid-1970s singer-songwriter, classic production… Don’t fuck with that, it’ll never forgive you. Songs like Call Your Momma, I could have done many different things with that. I tried different ways around it and found that way in. It really does depend on the song.”

As someone with the self-doubt you’ve talked about, it seems quite masochistic that you’re only answerable to yourself…

“I think what it is is that I wouldn’t believe the other person. Because I am my harshest critic, my standards are high. It’s probably to my own detriment. I probably could have made better records, but in my head, they wouldn’t have been better.”

And has it meant that you’ve scaled up your skillset as a musician and producer during the course of your career?

“Yes, because I’m so terrified of other opinions in the studio, I’m so shy about it, that I’ve had to learn how to do it. I can’t write if anyone’s in my house, I have to be on my own. I’m too embarrassed because I think everything I’m doing is shit when I’m doing it. So in my little room, my studio, I’ve had to learn to play different instruments.

“I’m better now, but there were points when I was younger where I was too embarrassed to ask other musicians to hear my songs, because I just thought they were so bad. So I thought the only way I could do this was if I learned to play everything and then, when I get it to a place where I’m slightly less embarrassed, I can play it to other people.”

Does that mean releasing songs isn’t the most fun part for you?

“No, it’s not, and I wonder if that’s why I got sick on the week of release? One of the most freeing and liberating things has been the death of the music critic. It’s not that I want everyone to love everything I do, but I find it really weird that people were paid to critique other people’s work. I don’t mind if a fan gets a record and doesn’t like it, that’s fine. You’re allowed that opinion because at least you’ve engaged with the work in a hopeful way. You’ve hoped to be a fan, and you’ve come away not a fan. That’s important. That’s consumer feedback.”

Now you’re at the point where the record is out and the songs are with the listeners, can you sit back and relax or are you completely stressed out about it?

“No, it’s done now, so there’s nothing I can do. It’s out there. Emily has heard it and is really happy with it. My feeling was as long as she didn’t go, ‘What have you done Nerina? I can’t believe I’ve inspired such a pile of shit,’ it’d be okay.

“It’s not mine now. It’s belongs to everybody who’s listening to it. And my feeling is, I make records because I love making records, but also because I think, ‘Well, what if I give someone a new favourite?’ I don’t expect someone to put the album on and love every song. That would be weird because there are very few records where you love every single song.

“I’ve always said I’ll make ten albums. I really like the idea that, over the course of ten albums, a fan might have one favourite on each one, and then they can make a compendium and they’ll have what they consider as their killer, favourite Nerina album across that catalogue.”

The other thing we have to talk about is taking Fires back out on tour. Has that been a confronting experience or one you’ve enjoyed?

“I loved it. I did it at the Palladium, and it was such a joy. And I mean, it’s not like I’ve ignored that record. I’ve always played about half of it on tour. I don’t feel like time exists… When I was rehearsing it, and when we were playing it, and in the moment, I felt like I was there. I was back to being 29-year-old me. There was no distinction, I suppose because that album was so honest. It’s interesting that it’s my most commercially successful record because, in many ways, the writing was accidentally commercial. It was very confessional, very much about my life at that point.

“So when I tour, it’s a real privilege. Maybe it’s that point in time when you’re new to your larger fan base… I don’t know what it was, but there was a zeitgeist in the room in the Palladium. We all went back in time, it was quite weird and quite lovely.”

It’s interesting that you say it was accidentally commercial in terms of the writing, does that show that you can’t fake it?

“I can’t fake it, but some of my more successful friends can. I wish I could. That’s part of the beauty of pop writing because as much as I’m obsessed with Kate Bush, I do think Max Martin is one of the greatest pop writers in the history of the world. In a way, Max must be faking it, because the songs he’s writing seem to hit a chord with teenagers, even though when he wrote Baby One More Time he was already in his 30s – and a bloke.

“But how did he know a way to speak to teenage girls? He figured it out. So there’s the great kind of faking, and I’m in awe of those people. That’s not what I mean by ‘accidentally commercial.’ They’re setting out to be commercial. There’s no embarrassment about it. Whenever I’ve set out to be commercial, it’s not ended well. And whenever I have been commercial, it’s just been farting around in the studio and being like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s funny. I didn’t mean it to be commercial, but I guess it is.’”

Will you change the songs at all from 20 years ago?

“No, I do it faithfully. So I’ll be doing Fires as Fires; you’ll come to the show and, if you’re a fan of Fires, you’ll close your eyes and you’ll hear those songs as close to the record as they can be.”

And will you get to play songs from the new album as well?

“Yeah, I will. It’s a show of two halves. So the first half, I do Fires in order. I love this idea of someone who loves that record coming in, sitting down, closing their eyes, and then that’s the whole record as they know it. Then there’s an interval, and then I do songs from across my career and a few covers and stuff, it’s like a big night out.”

A Psalm For Emily Salvi by Nerina Pallot is out now, and Pallot will be performing her critically acclaimed album Fires, as well as songs from the new album, next February. To find out more, head to nerinapallot.com

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