Interview: Grace Bland chats about her single "She Kinda Looks Like Me" & her songwriting process

Grace Bland, a singer-songwriter from Dorset who's featured on our blog before, kindly agreed to chat to me this week about her recent release of her track “she kinda looks like me” as well as what she’s up to during this strange time for music. We’ve already reviewed one of Grace’s previous releases “Human” on the blog, which you can check out here: https://hotpinkmusicuk.wixsite.com/hotpinkmusicblog/post/exclusive-review-grace-bland-human

and our love for this song cemented our love for Grace and her music.

Grace started to sing at age seven, starting to write her own music at around eleven after receiving a keyboard for Christmas which led to her discovery of her love for composing. Around this time, she started listening to a lot of Gabrielle Aplin which inspired her to start writing music in the folk-pop genre. She explained that a lot of her first songs resembled a lot of singer-songwriter ballads as well as folk/indie pop. Her songwriting and music career really took off however after Grace entered Open Mic UK in 2018 and 2019, achieving regional finals in her first entry and the grand finals in her second, which led her to meet the studio she still works with today. Despite success with performing, Grace told me her favourite part of what she does “is still songwriting, songwriting is probably my favourite as it’s where I started and what I love doing. I think the most rewarding part (of being a musician) for me is completing a song...when I take it to the studio and complete that- the feeling of having a finished record and then being able to perform it is a really nice progression to have.” As a very talented songwriter, I wanted to know Grace’s favourite part of writing the music she creates, as each song she has released is beautifully different. She explained that she loves when an idea she has really starts to go somewhere even when it started as just a thought during the day or a lyric she’s written down. Grace told me that most of the time her ideas come from when she’s sitting at her piano via a set of chords or the first lyric of the verse and that her favourite part of the songwriting process is the drive to finish the song, especially those tracks she knows she’ll love when she’s finished writing.

As previously mentioned, Grace released a new track called “she kinda looks like me” recently and myself and Kay are massive fans. We wanted to know where the song’s origins came from as the storytelling within the lyrics is very impressive. The inspiration for the song came from an idea Grace had about a person starting a relationship with someone who has similar attributes to a previous partner, hence the title and the key line “she kinda looks like me”. She explained, “I wanted the whole events of the song to take place in the protagonist's car, so it was all in a bubble and the song sort of alternates between the protagonist driving to her partner‘s house and a day in the near future when she’s speaking to her partner about their disloyalty.” The song really captures Grace’s aims and feels like a window into somebody’s life which is very unique and amazing to experience as a listener. The song itself is different from Grace’s previous releases while still maintaining her signature vibe. I wanted to know more about the songs process and what differed between writing this track and previous songs. Grace told me that she started to write this track last year in late 2019, starting with the melody for the verses. She wanted to get the hook right so took time writing it, and when Grace wrote the line “she kinda looks like me” everything clicked for her. Grace then took the track to the studio and again worked hard on the instrumentation as herself and her producer wanted to get the sound perfect. She explained “(the track) is slightly different to Human (a previous release) stylistically as I wanted to have that spacey electro-pop feel but at the same time still incorporating a lot of organic instruments. There’s a lot of live guitar and bass on there and things like that, that make it feel cohesive with the rest of my work so working on that was really fun.” Grace added that herself and her producer Matt worked really hard to get the sound they both wanted as as she previously mentioned the new release is very different from Grace’s other works like Human. The point of her previous release Human, was for it to be a very “human” song, with organic music and very emotive lyrics. Despite “she kinda looks like me” taking longer to perfect, Grace still told me that the challenges of getting the music how she wanted was also the highlight as it felt like a huge achievement after completion. Grace described the song as one of those projects that ran for quite a while as she was working on the song at the same time as writing and recording other tracks, so finally releasing the song means a lot to Grace.

We also got a chance to chat about gender inequality in the industry, specifically why women are getting discouraged from starting a music career. Firstly, we spoke about how Grace feels lucky that her first experiences of music were heavily female based and that she’s thankful that her part of the industry has plenty of role models for her to look up to. Because her music career started with her listening to a lot of female artists, she feels like there are plenty of people for her to feel inspired by and are doing what she’s doing. We spoke however about other non-performance parts of the industry. Grace said “in an industry that statistically employs more men in roles outside of being an artist, I think more encouragement and positivity for women to join various roles in the industry would be a really good thing. I think just more encouragement from everybody in the industry towards women to join either in the role of an artist or a producer or an engineer or an A & R scout (would be good) because those are the roles that I feel are potentially in a more male-dominated world.” Grace went onto explain that even though her career led her into a space with lots of other women doing what she does, she’s noticed other areas of the industry are much more male-dominated than her own. We spoke also about how as a performer when she meets a female working in one of the male-dominated parts of the industry it is very exciting for her and women in general. She also mentioned how things such as online workshops in these parts of the industry that are female-run can be very encouraging to women debating careers doing those jobs and that more representation can lead to more equality.

After mass success, especially on streaming site Spotify with her music, I wanted to know what Grace’s advice would be to anybody debating a career doing what she does. Grace told me her advice would be to be confident about what you want to achieve as early on as you feel comfortable setting that for yourself, is a really good place to start when starting up your career. Grace added “one of the first things that I did right when I started going to a series of masterclasses run by MAS Records.. was to do some goal setting for where you want to be in six months time and then where you want to be by the end of five years time. And I try to keep doing that every few months just to keep it ticking over so I know what I want to be doing." Grace also added that belief in your own ability is a big thing, especially if you don’t feel confident in yourself as other people will be believing in you too.

Next for Grace in her career, is to release more music and to get gigging once it’s safe and okay to have gigs again. Also, Grace hopes to release more content onto social media too. All links to Grace can be found below so that you can keep up with her and what she’s up to. Grace is seriously one to watch!

Ruby x

Links to Grace:

Spotify (she kinda looks like me):https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hSonM7oHGBK4nQl1kTHEv?si=w_8y7UEuTR2ci0xBPJaC5A

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graceblandmusic/?hl=en