INTERVIEW: Emily Barker on latest single 'Wild to be Sharing This Moment' and the power of humanity: "I feel in the world we're lacking in compassion, and it's one of the ways that we can heal."
Emily Barker was born in Western Australia but for the last two decades has lived and worked in the UK. A formidable musical talent, her music has crossed into folk, indiepop, and country amongst many other soundscapes. She has also won acclaim and fame as the composer for major BBC television dramas, including Wallander, for which she composed the theme song, and The Shadow Line.
She has recently released the new single ‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’. Written by Barker and produced by Luke Potashnick, the song is a beautifully poignant pop ballad with drums, synths, guitar and evocative vocals from Barker that perfectly project both the love, melancholy and hope present in the lyrics.
The song was inspired when Barker was waiting for a train at London’s Kings Cross station. “I was people-watching and thinking of how vulnerable we all are, with our own stories and secrets, all sharing this same moment in time and space,” she says. “There were passengers sleeping at awkward angles, some reading, some playing games on their phones, some with masks, most without, some listening to music and tapping a foot, children clinging to parents. I found myself questioning where empathy has gone. The song is about compassion. The war in Ukraine had just started and it was all feeling very intense, much like it is right now.”
The accompanying music video was created by Headjam and focuses on a universal shared moment of school photo day, with Barker playing the part of the photographer. “We don't know anything about them, but we have this snapshot of a key moment in their lives and are left to wonder about their hopes and fears and who they might go on to be,” she says of the video.
Barker is an artist that draws you magnetically into a whole new world with her music. It is unique, touching, incredibly warm yet challenging, genreless yet universal and is always absolutely mesmerising. On her recent tour of Australia with Frank Turner we caught up with Barker to chat all about her career and the creation of ‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’.
Hi Emily, so lovely to have some time with this morning. Welcome back to the motherland! How are things?
Thank you very much. Things are good. Frank Turner is a really good friend of mine from the UK and we've been touring together since about 2006. We've done all sorts together, including I sang backing vocals for him when he opened the London Olympics opening ceremony in 2012. So that is probably the biggest one. He's a really good mate.
That's fabulous, and what a great tour to be to be home on. I really want to talk to you about ‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’, your latest single. Tell me all about this beautiful track.
I wrote this song about a year and a half ago and I had been at a friend's son's first birthday in London. I was getting a train back to Stroud in Gloucestershire, where I lived for 13 years. I was at Kings Cross Station and, and doing that people watching thing, listening to some amazing music, and I just suddenly was sort of overwhelmed, as I was looking around thinking how everyone has just got so much in terms of their story, and we don't know what that is. What they've inherited from their parents, their grandparents, where they were, born, their race, religion, all these things that make up a person. The war in Ukraine had just started, so I was focusing on people and then zoomed out to this wider view. It was a pretty intense time, as it is now with war in Gaza, and just recognising the vulnerability of all of us as human beings. The song talks about compassion, and trying to remember the complexity of individuals and to really embrace speaking across all the ways that we can be divided. Because there are so many ways now and we're so quick to shut each other down. So it is encouraging listening, and compassion because I feel that sometimes in the world we're lacking in compassion, and it's one of the ways that we can heal
Absolutely, and you hit the nail on the head with this track in that sense, that it all just feels so big, and I get a feeling from you as an artist, even with previous releases, that it's something that you struggle with a lot as well, this notion like, ‘Oh, I better stop the war.’
Oh, I know! Yes, it’s like what else can I do? What can I do? So a lot of that goes into my songwriting and just sharing those messages in songwriting.
But you've also got this great reminder, which I think is really important, that you can't physically, single handedly stop the war, but it's about finding the individual within the chaos and remembering the humanity. There's an overwhelmingly beautiful sense of exhale with your music and very much so with this song, which I think is always needed, whatever time we're living in, it's always needed. I think you've applied it so beautifully.
Thank you so much. It's been quite moving to read and hear people's responses to the song actually. It wasn't intended that it was released, necessarily, these things are in planning for a long time, but it feels like in some ways a message that is landing with people well at this very moment in time.
And the music video again, it's so incredibly beautiful. You're a photographer to a group of school girls, which I think because in popular culture and media, we actually never see teenagers, we see 30 year olds being teenagers. And so to actually see these young girls in your video, in these very intimate cusp of life moments, it's confronting in itself. Talk me through it, I think it's beautiful.
I made it with Headjam this amazing creative agency based in Newcastle. And one of their people is Tom Hudson and he came up with the concept for the film. I loved it straightaway, just this idea of holding on a face and reading into all the potential of someone and all these things that we talked about, fragility, you don't know what's going on in that person's life at this point in time, but you can imagine and think back to where you were as a teenager as well.
Headjam did this call out on social media so they’re not actually a group of girls who know each other, most of them were strangers. 25 of them showed up and volunteered their Saturday to be a part of it and I felt like that was such a brave thing to do. They were all so excited about it, and just brought such good energy, and willingness and openness. It's been really sweet seeing them respond to the video and themselves as well, and proudly sharing it and telling their friends about it. I'm still in touch with them, and they send me things and it's just really lovely. The filmmaker partly came up with that idea as a response to me talking about my love of mentoring people in music and in songwriting, young women in particular. It's something in the last few years I've been doing much more of, songwriting mentorship, and just trying to help others navigate what it is being a musician.
With regards to that, it's pretty much across the board but it applies quite particularly to the term singer-songwriter. There's a lot of amazing female singer songwriters, but unfortunately, when you say singer-songwriter, everyone's voice drops an octave and they just seem to say ‘Bob Dylan’. With you really wanting to mentor young women, where did that come from? Did that come from you yourself pushing through the dudes to get heard?
Yes, and it's still ongoing. It really strikes me sometimes how overwhelmingly male the venues are in terms of lighting, sound, everyone backstage, mostly the bands. It's something that you do have to steal yourself for some days. I'm sure we can all identify these situations in our workplaces. I'm really encouraged though how much that has changed over the years. There are now more women In all aspects of music, which is great, but some days, you're like, ‘wow, I haven't seen a woman in this venue all day so what's going on?’
So it's partly that, and it's partly also just being a bit older now and recognising that I would like to give back as well. I think things shift when you're in your 20s, 30s, where you're very focused on your own career, and I'm still very focused on my own career, but I also feel like I've acquired quite a lot of knowledge and the best thing that I could do with that would be to share that and pass it on. And for me, at this point in my life, that's really fulfilling.
I love that. I feel like with the themes that come through your work, you had A Dark Murmuration of Words was the emotional response to the environmental collapse. I also loved Room 822, because you had this collection of covers, but they seem to come from a place of holding that adolescence, going back to the ‘inner’ and what you can do to protect that. As an artist, has that always been what music does for you, it gives you a place to further voice your concerns, frustrations and cares?
Absolutely. I think for a lot of songwriters, it starts out more inward, you're exploring your own emotional landscape, relationships, things like that. And then, after you've written a couple of albums of heartbreak you’re like, ‘there's a lot more that I want to say’. I've always been very interested in other people's stories, and one thing that has always cropped up in my songwriting is indigenous Australian relationships and that remains very important to me now. Because when I was a kid, I had no exposure whatsoever to indigenous culture, there was one Aboriginal family in my country town and like so many Australians, we just didn't learn anything about the true history of this place. It took me doing a brief stint at university for six months doing an Indigenous Studies course which was all led by indigenous academics and it was maybe the best thing I've ever learnt, but I also felt really ripped off that I didn't learn this as an Australian and growing up on stolen land, all these facts. That sort of injustice is something that I can't really stop exploring, and it's partly because if I hear about some sort of injustice, I want to know about it. It's my way of doing a lot of research and then disseminating that into a song somehow, which allows an emotional letting go for me and also enables me to then be able to talk about these issues that really concern me and a lot of other people. Onstage as well, I really try to have a story be open in some way. There's a lot of brilliant protest songwriters, and everyone's got their own brilliant style, but for me, I like to have the listener come to the song and ask questions so that they're left with a question rather than feeling like I've just been lecturing them. That's quite an important approach that I take with songwriting.
Absolutely, as we've learned from street preachers, no one listens when they're being shouted at.
Absolutely, yeah. Like I said we've all got so many stories and histories and ways that we've been raised and things, and it's so easy to shut a conversation down but I think by asking questions it can keep that conversation going.
Beautiful. Obviously we have ‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’ out now, which everyone is sharing because it's very beautiful. What else is coming up for you?
New music, more new music on its way. Apart from that, I’m looking to do a bit more work writing film and television music. There's a couple of things in the wings that may or may not happen, but hopefully will. And other than that, I'll be at the beach, C.Y. O’Connor beach in Fremantle, Western Australia walking my golden retriever and looking after my my nephew and niece. Because it's good to be home again after such a long time.
‘Wild to be Sharing This Moment’ is out now via Everyone Sang/Kartel Music Group. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Emily Barker you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
