Artist Of The Week #208 - Phoebe Green
This weeks Artist of the Week is 24 year-old Manchester artist Phoebe Green - who has just released her long-awaited debut album ‘Lucky Me’ via Chess Club Records.
Phoebe Green dares to confront her reflection, holding the mirror up to her face so closely she can see her breath on it. Who’s there? A shock of tangerine curls which earned her the childhood moniker of ‘Shirley Temple of the north’; eyes painted with strokes of lime green; right hand inked with the constant reminder: Lucky Me.
With the release of her debut record Lucky Me, at last, we find Phoebe. Across 13 acts, it’s a frustrated self-interrogation, blinding herself with torchlight to extract explanations for her own behaviours, contradictions and complexities – but through this process of knowing herself, she arrives at a place of peace and self-forgiveness.
This duality is the spinal cord of Lucky Me, down to the title itself: “It’s about feeling guilty for being so mentally unstable when you’re extremely privileged in so many ways. I’ve been so lucky in terms of my upbringing and early life that I’ve felt almost uneasy and guilty about it, because from a young age I believed that success was only earned through suffering. It’s frustrating because despite circumstantial privilege, I’m still fucking traumatised and I find it sort of humiliating.”
She took a moment to talk to us about how the album came together.
Hey there Phoebe - how are you? So your album is out now - how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
Equal parts terrifying and exciting … I feel very vulnerable but also empowered … a lot going on!
It is called ‘Lucky Me’ - what is the meaning behind that?
It definitely has a dual meaning for me, I’ve been through a lot to get to where I am now and I genuinely am lucky to still be here, but also there is a kind of irony to it as there is a big part of me resenting what I had to endure to be able to write such emotionally heavy songs.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories from the creative process you are happy to share with us?
It was mostly recorded in a studio Tom Fuller (one of my producers) uses, we smashed out the vocals over a week or so which was proper intense but made the album feel really cohesive. There were a couple of songs I recorded remotely in my flat in lockdown, ‘Won’t Sit Still’ and ‘Clean’, but the others were done all together, which I thought would feel like they’re in a little world of there own, but they slotted into the tracklist perfectly.
What are the key themes and influences on the album?
Self sabotage is a big one, not letting myself be open for fear of getting hurt but only ever really getting in the way of myself, the physicality of trauma in the body and how it manifests, and not being able to commit to anything because I can’t even commit to looking after myself. It’s definitely about facing the flaws in my behaviour and analysing them, but also accepting them and trying to heal.
If the album could be the soundtrack to any film - which one would it be and why?
Shrek 2, because I fucking love Shrek 2 and would love the hear the Fairy Godmother’s take on DieDieDie.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the album - if so, which one and why?
God, that’s so hard. It changes every day … but right now I’d say “No one’s getting this fucked up for fun, they’re not fooling me and I’m not fooling anyone” from ‘Break My Heart’, because I think it’s such a fine line between getting fucked for fun and getting fucked up to forget, it’s different for everyone but it’s so easy to cross that line.
Now the album is out there - what next?
Ask my therapist!
