Molly Payton on her debut album ‘YOYOTTA’
London-based, Kiwi artist Molly Payton releases her latest project, with songs ranging from heartfelt acoustic ballads to grungy rock anthems that encourage a cathartic emotional response. Off the back of touring with a number of artists including Beabadoobee, Arlo Parks, Alex G, Tom Odell and Palace and playing sets at Primavera, Laneway, Pitchfork Paris, and most recently All Points East, the second half of 2024 will see Payton embark on a headline tour of the UK and Europe.
Hype Medium: How have you been? How long have you been back in the UK for?
Molly: Good! I got back here in April - four months. I feel like the moment I'm in the UK, I'm struggling as well, like trying to make it work. So it feels like it has gone both very quickly, but also so slowly!
Hype Medium: Yeah, totally get that! And I’d love to kick off by asking you, what were your main creative and musical influences growing up and when you first started singing and making music?
Molly: My start was so young, I think 16, when I kind of entered the industry over here as well, not even New Zealand. Just fully into the UK scene. I would argue that I had no clue. I had no idea what my influences were. I think if you go back to my interviews from that time, I would say the same things I say now, which is, you know, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jeff Buckley. I think they were the first artists that made me think about songwriting. But I had no clue!
I was just talking about this before, earlier today with one of my friends, like entering the industry as a teenager especially in the kind of alternative and rock sphere, you get so much attention. I wish I had the attention and the funding that I had at that age now - now that I actually know what I'm doing and what I like. But I guess I was just saying what I thought was cool, and I was trying stuff out, but in a very public way where I was making a song and trying a new sound, and then putting it out straight away, and made so much music over that time. It's funny, like looking back, I guess I said that those were my influences, but I really didn't know. I was just trying stuff out.
Hype Medium: Yeah, I guess when you're younger, you're just kind of like experimenting, trying things out and you don't really know who you are. You don’t really fully know your creative style.
Molly: I'm sure it's same with other people, but as a teenage girl, you're just trying on different personalities every few months and take the bits of each that you like into your next reiteration of yourself, and it's the same with music. It was just like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what's stuck, I guess, to put it in the worst way possible.
Hype Medium: Yeah exactly! And congrats on the release of your debut album “YOYOTTA” which stands for “you're on your own this time again”. Can you tell us a little bit about the themes that you write about in this album and how you land on the name of it?
Molly: It was a really, really beautiful experience for me. I mean, obviously we've just gone over the fact that I had no idea what I was doing for like the majority of my career so far. But I think I reached a point where I kind of thought it was over in 2022. At the end of 2022, I went home to New Zealand and I was supposed to go there for a tour and come back to the UK, and then, basically a bunch of things happened consecutively. I parted ways with my manager that I'd had since I started out, the label I was with at the time, so they didn't want the album whatever I was doing next. They couldn't afford it in the current climate of the music industry. And then I had to cancel the tour that I had coming up. You know, all these things started happening. And I genuinely was like “oh my god, what am I going to do? It's all failing”. And so I was at home, and I genuinely considered just pulling the pin for a bit. And obviously I'd always make music, but I was like “this is probably the end of my public releasing career”. And then my best mate, Oscar, was going through a breakup at the time. He's based over here in London, and he said “I'm really keen to come to New Zealand for a bit. I'll come stay with you, and we might as well make some music while we're there”. And I was living back at home, and I had all this really tumultuous few years in my personal life. Knowing that they'd never make it to the public, because that's where I was at at the time, I just started writing these really personal and intense songs, but also just like really pure songs because they weren't for anyone else. They were just for me, about what had happened to me when I was living over here. And then my best friend arrived, who's a great producer, and he said “well, why don't we just try record some?” and so we recorded in friend’s bedrooms and in studios for as cheap as we possibly could, like spending as little money as we could because I was paying for it all myself, and it ended up making an album.
The fact that it was just so pure, just because we wanted to do it and because it was fun, and also the fact that thematically it was dealing with, massive dump, but basically my dad went to prison when I was 18, and I'd never talked about that in music because I never felt like I could write a song about that, that other people could connect with. And I was thinking about the audience, I guess, too much. And I started to write about that. So the songwriting and also the recording process was suddenly so “just for us”, that it was easy again, and so fun.
Hype Medium: Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Molly: Back to what your question was, the themes revolve around loss and dealing with loving someone who's hurt you and not being able to turn off that love. That is the big theme throughout the album, and also the importance of friendship, and my female friendships at this point in my life, and figuring out how to push through tough times and keep going when things are wrong.
Hype Medium: Yeah, I love that, and I feel like a lot of people can connect with that message in their own ways. And like you were saying, because you didn't have that pressure of thinking that you were writing it for other people, and you were just writing it for yourself, I can only imagine that is the best way that the music can come out so genuinely and so raw.
Molly: It is, and before writing this up, I'd had writer's block for probably a year I think. I had an EP I'd released just before. I think three songs, and then I'd released a single, and I was proud of all the songs but they'd all come at a time when I really had to push to write them. I was so panicked about my career as a musician, because I entered the industry so young and not gone to university because I wanted to make it happen and take my shot and all of this stuff, and the writing and the music just suffered because of it, because I was thinking so much about how my music was going to be received and how I'd market it. I was panicking about social media becoming the only way of marketing music now, and I'd never been a social media person. I was thinking so much about that back end of it that I suddenly couldn't write songs anymore. So it was so important for me to lose that, or felt like I'd lost that at least because you never really can, but I needed to feel like I'd lost my career and get a real job working retail and earn my own money, to get my mojo back as a songwriter.
I don't think it's like the best work I'll ever do or anything, I'm not gonna make any dramatic claims like that, but I do feel it weirdly feels like this is the beginning of my career, this album. I’ve written so much music before this, but I feel like that was like me very publicly figuring out what I like and what my taste is, and then this is the beginning. And everything that comes after this, I'm just so excited to make.
Hype Medium: Well we're so glad that you came back and made this album, and obviously the songs that you've released recently just sound so incredible! One of them being “Get Back To You”, which is just absolutely stunning. Can you tell us a little bit about how that song came about?
Molly: That's probably the oldest song on the record. Most of it I wrote when I went back home and lived at my mom's house and when Oscar arrived. But that song, I was 19 when I wrote it and I was in my first proper relationship, and that first verse specifically are some of my favorite lyrics I've written. It was kind of about when you throw yourself into this first relationship, and you're in love for the first time, and you forget all of this trauma that you've had before. If anyone has had hard experiences with their family, you know you want to prove to yourself that you can be the kind of person that is just easy in love and can just move on with their life and move forward and forget all about it. But obviously your brain is a way of reminding you of things. After I exited the honeymoon period of this relationship, every time I relaxed, my brain would just be like “Oh, but what if you know this man that you're with is like the first man that you had a connection with? Which is your dad” It’s just about wanting to be in this relationship and be present, but always being reminded of the first experience with men that you had as a child.
Hype Medium: Yeah wow, thanks for sharing that. It's a beautiful song and I love the lyrics of that one. And we absolutely adore “Accelerate” as well. What was the songwriting and production process like for that one?
Molly: That's my fun song. A super fun, easy song. Similar thing - it's about just throwing yourself into love. “You make me accelerate” - it's just wanting to fucking go for it and forgive everything that's hard and fall in love and be happy. I love that song. I think that was one of the last songs for the album. I listened through the album, and there's like lots of rocky stuff and there's lots of acoustic stuff and it felt well rounded, but there wasn't really anything that I just thought would be fun to play live. So I wrote “Accelerate” in like a couple hours, and we recorded it with the band, and it was a really fun experience from beginning to end. And the music video as well was like the most fun I've ever had on a shoot. We went to the outskirts of Dunedin, and a mate of mine, his dad collects vintage cars, and knew a guy who owned a speedway. And we just had the most fun you could have shooting a music video with a really small crew. It cost like $4,000 or something all up including everyone's fess right, which when you watch the music video is fucking crazy. Because in the beginning of my career, I was doing all these music videos and they cost so much money, and to do something that was that fun with a crew that good and an end product I love so much, it's just great. I think this whole album has been a lesson for me in that you actually don't need money to make good things. You just need people who like the music and enjoy what they do, and you just need to enjoy it.
Hype Medium: Yeah, 100%! And do you have a main highlight or core memory working across the album?
Molly: I guess for me, it'll always be the people I work with. I just always feel so lucky to have the people around me that I do in music. Like I'm not like a crazy good musician by any means, like I love music and I love every instrument, I love playing it and I like writing, but the musicians and the directors and the producers that I have met in the last couple of years. Especially going through what I went through, like getting dropped, I so could have easily just fallen out of music and fallen out of love with it and been like “you know what? This is shit, and I hate it”. But I was lucky to be around Damin McCabe and Reuben Scott at the time, who are just two very talented musicians, and Oscar Keys as well, another really great New Zealand creative. Just people who genuinely love what they do so much and don’t do it for money and do it because they want to make the best thing they possibly can. While I was going through all this and I was around them, just seeing them do what they do made me want to do more music. Reuben Scott, for example, he played guitar, drums, sings and was just there throughout the whole process. And getting to make music with people like that, that's what makes it great for me.
Hype Medium: Yeah absolutely, people who are passionate and can also align to your vision and see what you want to do and bring the best out of you as well.
Molly: There's so much joy in it, even I meet writers and stuff doing interviews like this. People who just care about music, it's such an important thing. I think in this day and age, it's hard living in a time where people aren't paying for art the way that they used to, and for me, people aren't getting compensated for what they do but they do it anyway. I'm always just grateful to be around people like that - it makes me happy.
Hype Medium: And what’s next for you in 2024? I know you've got some shows in the UK and Europe coming up.
Molly: Sure do! I played All Points East fest last weekend which was great. I got put on at the same time as beabadoobee which I hated. All I want is to see “This Is How Tomorrow Moves” live! I love her. And also, fucking crazy playing a set and watching probably 10,000 people walking in a big crowd, like sheep past the stage. But no, it was such a nice experience. It was the first time playing with my new band, so it was a really lovely vibe. And then we've got our first tour starting. First show is actually on the night the album comes out, which is awesome. And then I think I'm going to come home for like a couple months over summer. I will not be doing the English winter. I do not want any part in that. Hopefully, do some shows, play the album around my hometown, go down to the South Island, maybe go to Australia if I can afford it, because I'm independent now, and I table these things with a grain of salt because I am paying for it myself and it's very expensive.
Everything is crazy expensive which is actually bonkers. This is the first time I've done a full tour and pay for it myself. And let me tell you, I should have appreciated it more when I was younger. The amount of times I've had to say in the last few weeks like “I wish I had appreciated what I was doing”. When I was like 16 to 18, the venues I played, the tours I did, studios I was recording in, I just thought, that's what music was like. No wonder I thought I was going to be big. I recorded it at Roundhead when I was like 18, I did my mini album there, and I just did not appreciate that. I was showing up late to the studio, I was just chilling, I didn't really give fuck, I didn't really know what I wanted to do - which is fine, because I was like 18. But god I WISH I could do the things now - I would just love it. But yeah, I would love to do some New Zealand and Australia shows again with my band back home. That's my plan. I've just got to figure out how to pay for it
Hype Medium: Yeah, great! No, I can't wait. We'd love to see you live at a show sometime soon.
Thanks so much Molly! Make sure to keep up with her on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify or Apple Music.
