ME: I was first introduced to your music a few years back when I saw you perform as Declan McKenna’s beginning act at Heaven in London. Was that as great a gig for u as it was for us in the audience watching you?
GIRLI: It was! I loved playing with Declan on that tour, the audiences were so friendly and hyper and the Heaven show was so charged with adrenaline - I remember doing a crowd surf that flopped pretty bad haha.
I was immediately taken aback by the topics you spoke about and just how direct you were with your lyrics and music. What topic would you say you enjoy writing about most?
i enjoy writing about shit that makes me angry, because that stirs up the most passion and directness in my singing and lyrics. sexist bullshit, love gone bad, shitty friends, arguments - those make the best songs for me.
do you think it’s important that with art of any form that we speak up against issues like sexism?
i think art is the most powerful tool to make people think and act, so raising important issues with it is important. but people can also choose what they wanna make their art about too, and you can’t force people to create on a topic that they’re not inspired by. i do think it’s important to use influence, like social media presence, to speak up around issues; even if your art doesn’t explicitly talk about them. if people follow what you do and look up to you, then you could have a positive influence on them, which is important to bear in mind.
I also love singing and making music and sometimes forget my own lyrics even if I sing the song every day or wrote it years back. Have you ever messed up live to the point where you think ‘how did that even happen?
yep, absolutely. i mess up lyrics that i’ve been singing for 4 years perfectly sometimes. it’s like forgetting your phone lock code - you think “how the FUCK??”.
I also noticed how interactive you were with the crowd when I saw you live. Is that an important part of your performances? If so, why?
yeah, a huge part of my live shows is audience interaction. i want my shows to feel like a big room of friends and likeminded people, dancing and singing and sharing and feeling safe and accepted for whoever they are. i don’t want the crowd to feel like they’re down there and i’m up here, and that i’m untouchable. as people listening to my music and connecting with my songs, the fans and crowd are as important as me, the artist who made the songs. i don’t want there to be a divide between us.
where did the name GIRLI come from?
i was inspired by Debbie Harry from Blondie. she named Blondie after what she got cat called in the streets of New York. Girly can be used in a mocking, derogatory way to describe femininity, and I wanted to turn that on it’s head and reclaim the term in a powerful way, to be like “yeah my name’s GIRLI and i’m anything I wanna be, not what you expect me to be because of my name”.
What is one message you have for young female fans?
The same message I have for all my fans - be you, be beautifully individually you, and don’t ever let anyone tell you to be any different or make you feel ashamed or embarrassed for being the person you wanna be. Be strong when you want to, be weak when you want to, cry when you want, laugh when you want. Just be you.
Although we take inspiration from many things, I find your songs very unique for many reasons. Was there anything that strongly inspired your music as a whole?
Speaking out against bullshit has always been the central thing that’s inspired me, and inspired me to start making music. I was so frustrated at being put in a box and judged by people at school that I started writing songs and started my first band when I was 15. Skip forward to me as a young adult and the way I express myself has matured greatly, but I’m still very much inspired to make music when someone fucks me over, or upsets me, or has bullshit offensive views. Music as a form of rebellion from when I was a teenager has always stayed with me a little bit.
You released your album ‘Odd One Out’ this year! That must of been really exciting. How long had you’d been writing it for?
Odd One Out came together with songs I wrote throughout 2018, as well as a couple songs from 2017. I mostly wrote them over one Spring/Summer when I was going through so many highs and lows at once and each song acts like a diary entry, a window into a different part of my life that was happening at that time; falling in love, struggling with my own mental health, losing friends, figuring out my identity.
Finally, you recently had a very christmassy mean-girls themed concert. I’ve never heard of anything like it but I love the idea of it! Where did that idea spring from?
There’s so many shows and events going on around Christmas, so I wanted to find a way to spice it up and make it different. My booking agent and I came up with the idea of putting on a mock ‘Winter Talent Show’ like they have in Mean Girls, but making it ‘GIRLI’s Winter Talent Show’. The tagline to the event was ‘Don’t Call Me a Ho-Ho-Ho’, a feminist play on xmas words!