Interview: Honey talks about her career & how to encourage female & queer artists
- hotpinkmusicuk
- Jul 30, 2020
- 4 min read
Local musician Honey, whose real name is Daisy, is a Norfolk born indie-pop artist. Honey and her guitar create beautiful tunes with poetic lyrics and catchy music. Myself and Kayleigh have been a fan of her and her music for a long time, loving her style. We got an opportunity to speak to her a few days ago about her art, career and opinions on gender inequality in the industry. It was great to learn more about Honey as a musician and what makes her tick.
Honey started her career two years ago in her first year of sixth form when she performed for the first time at the Norwich Arts Centre as a part of their Sonic Youth's programme. Around this time was also when she began writing and recording her own music too. We talked about her songwriting, Honey explaining that she had been writing songs for a while, but two years ago wrote her first proper song, that she thought was 'good enough.' She told us that she "got quite good feedback from it, so I just kept doing it." We discussed her favourite track she's written, which she told us was her song 'Crying on the X1', a song yet to be released. Her favourite track that's out right now though is her most recent 'Makes me sick!' a track that we added to our playlist a few weeks ago. Honey told us that her songs are inspired by Jamie T and that her uncle, before he passed away, played the guitar which inspired her to pick it up. In terms of live gigs, Honey described to us that her favourite part is "when the audience get into it and start singing along... I love when you start a clap and people actually join in- it's the sickest thing!"
As a well-performed artist, we wanted to talk with Honey about what gender inequality she'd experienced in her career. She spoke about how she's never headlined a gig before and how the gigs she plays are always dominated by male artists. We also went onto discuss things that discourage women from the industry, such as this years Reading line-up in which there were only six women. Honey commented that "if young, aspiring female musicians are seeing that as an example of the people who are making it onto that kind of platform, it's obviously discouraging as if there are only six women there, it's going to be such a competitive crowd to try and get into." Honey further went on to comment that the industry is 'not a level playing field', which nowadays we can see a lot more clearly. On the flip side, we discussed how to encourage diversity within the industry. The three of us discussed influencer culture and how it's important that artists with bigger platforms are promoting smaller artists from minority communities, as those with a big following can get thousands of people to flock to smaller musicians. Honey explained that this also leads people from minority backgrounds to find people more like them, as well as promoting diversity throughout the industry. Honey also spoke about how represented she feels in the industry as a queer musician too, telling us "I feel more represented now than I did when I was younger, however, it's still not there fully." She explained that she wished all the queer musicians that are at the forefront now were there when she was younger and when she was growing up, as she wasn't aware there was such a scene. We also discussed how it is now much more normalised to come out as a queer musician as the industry is becoming a very LGBTQ+ friendly space, meaning there is more hope now for younger artists, a very positive thing for our scene.
Very kindly, Honey gave us some advice for women looking to start a music career to share with you. She told us that aspiring artists should "gig, gig, gig and write, even if the writing is bad." Honey told us that she writes all the time, even if nothing comes from it, but one-liners can be revisited to become full songs. She told us that people should just get their recordings out there even if they're just on Soundcloud, as then you can get them on your local introducing through the uploader, which she told us gave her a lot of exposure. Honey also advised joining programmes like Sonic Youth's in Norwich as they also provide experience, which is essential. All of these things are brilliant tips that will definitely help to kick start a career and provide exposure to your music.
Next up in Honey's career is an EP containing all the new songs she's written during Lockdown, as well as to start gigging frequently in Manchester since part-time moving there for University. She's also learning how to produce and we cannot wait to hear what she learns on her up and coming tracks. As always, you can find links to the lovely Honey down below and we really do recommend giving her music a listen and her social media's a follow!
Ruby x
Comments