The history of music is full of individuals who got their start at an early age – from an Austrian composer who wrote his first symphony at the age of five to a bright-eyed Canadian teenager whose YouTube cover songs made him a star. While traditional wisdom would suggest that talent comes with experience, the truth is that plenty of artists make waves well before reaching adulthood. And frankly, it’s a little embarrassing for the rest of us. Sure, you might be a half decent guitar player, but Michael Jackson had a number one single before he was 12.
The latest musician to make us ashamed of how little we’ve accomplished in life is 18-year-old Bridie Monds-Watson, better known by her stage name SOAK. Since releasing her first EP Trains back in 2012, the Irish singer-songwriter has garnered plenty of attention for her beautiful, enigmatic vocals. The BBC, iTunes and Spotify all recently included her on their lists of artists to watch out for in 2015, and her debut album Before We Forgot How to Dream is scheduled to drop in May.
“It was never like a plan,” says Monds-Watson. “I wasn’t a young person thinking I was going to be Beyonce. I just kind of did it as a thing that I enjoyed doing. It was a way for me to sing songs and write things that I wouldn’t say normally … just stuff I made in my bedroom.”
Monds-Watson is on the phone from New York City, where she’s in the middle of her first US tour. Although she’s no stranger to live shows, she admits that her schedule has gotten a lot more hectic since signing a record deal with Rough Trade Records.
“I think just before Christmas last year it got really quite intense and busy, and everything has gone quite fast.” she says. “I feel like I shouldfeel more pressure than I actually do. But I’m a pretty relaxed person in general and I don’t take things too seriously … I love being busy, and there’s so much opportunity, which is great.”
While it’s shaping up to be a colossal year for the young singer, the reality is that music has always been a big part of her life. “Growing up, my parents played tons of Pink Floyd and Joni Mitchell and Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan,” she says. “Some nights, one of my parents would look after me and my siblings and put on really aggressive Beethoven or Mozart, and we’d all run around the living room … so I’ve been subjected to tons of music growing up. A lot of the people that my parents made me listen to have been massive inspirations for me, and are artists and bands that I still listen to now.”
From these early beginnings, Monds-Watson soon began writing songs of her own. “I don’t stick to any formula,” she says. “Sometimes I write the guitar first and then I write the lyrics, and sometimes I do it the opposite way. Usually I just carry notebooks and write loads of stuff down. I write a lot about everyday experiences, or experiences that meant something to me … A lot of my music is about growing up and things that happened between me and my mates or me and my family.”
Growing up is certainly a major theme of her upcoming album. A collection of songs written over the course of her entire adolescence, it’s a very personal project that she calls “a good representation of my life”, and one that covers “a lot of things that people my age go through”. At the same time, Monds-Watson readily admits that hers is not what you’d call a typical teenage experience. “When I think about it in a calm moment, it’s quite amazing and unexpected and incredible,” she says with a chuckle. “Everyone who’s my age usually just spends all their time with their mates. I guess that’s not my life at the moment, and hasn’t been for quite a while.”
Being away from home is never easy for anyone, including Monds-Watson, especially given what most people her age would normally do. “I miss my friends,” she says. “Every opportunity I get to be home, I spend all my time with them. And I obviously miss my family. I think just in general, because I’m doing such a different thing to most people my age, I miss out on like classic Friday and Saturday night parties.”
Honestly, it doesn’t seem like things are going to get less busy for Monds-Watson any time soon. “Half the time I don’t really know what I’m doing the next week,” she says. “I’m definitely doing one day at a time at the moment … I don’t really have like a specific month off or anything. Not for quite a while, especially in the lead up to my first ever record. There’s going to be a lot of touring.”
Still, it seems like the trade-off is well worth it. “I’m having a really good time,” she assures us. “Like obviously you start doing it for the love of it, and then you fall into this system where you’re doing it for your income and as a career. But I don’t think there’s a career I could do if I didn’t love it because my songs are all about honesty and real life. If I couldn’t convey any emotion then there’d be no point in what I’m doing at all.”
Before We Forgot How To Dream out May 29 through Rough Trade Records.See SOAK at Paddington Uniting Church onThursday April 16 withJesse Davidson.
