INTERVIEW: Freya Ridings on her stunning second album 'Blood Orange': "It's a privilege to do this job, it's not a given, so I'm just going to give my all to every opportunity that I get."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Josh Shiner
The UK’s Freya Ridings made her name with big, beautiful and often heartbreaking ballads, first coming to global attention with the hit single ‘Lost Without You’ in 2018. The following year she had another hit with ‘Castles’, and her debut self titled album hit number 3 in the UK charts.
With her reputation for the type of ballads you can cry your eyes out to, when it came to making her second album Blood Orange, Ridings had plenty of personal pain to draw upon, but also a whole lot of joy, which she says put her in a quandary. “I’m really sensitive to pressure, and I was like, ‘What if being happy cancels me?’,” she laughs. “But at the end of the day, I’m really, really excited because the biggest privilege and honour I can imagine is getting to make an album that I really, really love. Whatever happens after that, that’s up to the universe – that’s not up to me anymore. I got to make the album of my dreams.”
There is little chance anyone will be wanting to cancel Ridings on the basis of Blood Orange, as it is simply a stunning album. Mixing 1970s disco, pop and rock alongside her strong piano-driven ballads, it was created over three years and chronicles Ridings’ life and emotions of that period, including the collapse of a relationship and finding happiness again in a new one.
While the theme of the album is very much the trauma of a relationship ending, and there is no denying the moments of darkness and melancholy, the feeling the album leaves you with is an undeniable sense of happiness and hope. There is a more diverse soundscape than in Ridings’ earlier releases, and while she says she was heavily influenced by music from the 1970s, this inspiration is wrapped in a thoroughly modern delivery. A thumping electronic beat transforms the guitar-rock foundation of ‘Bite Me’, while ‘Dancing in a Hurricane’ is an eclectic pop song that hurtles along and sweeps you up like its titular windstorm. ‘Wither on the Vine’ is a brooding soul track but with its heavy beat and multi-tracked, chant like backing vocals also takes on elements of dance music.
First single ‘Weekends’ was one of the first songs she wrote for the album and is a glorious disco-infused track, while the album opener and title track ‘Blood Orange’ is a rock song tinged with soul with a stirring chorus. Elsewhere second single ‘Face in the Crowd’ is the kind of classic piano ballad Ridings has become famous for, and penultimate track ‘Can I Jump?’ is a piano-driven pop song that explores the nervousness of a new relationship and the fear of committing in case it is all taken away.
The album ends with the latest single, ‘I Feel Love’, a sonic outlier but an absolute highlight, which celebrates Ridings’ current relationship via a trance-funk-dance vibe.
Blood Orange is an album that takes you on a complete journey and is a remarkable, immersive listen. Ridings is at the absolute top of her game and this is a collection of music to treasure. We recently caught up with her to chat all about the creation of the album.
Hi Freya, congratulations on Blood Orange what an absolute delight of an album. Tell me all about it.
I've worked so hard on it! Blood, sweat and tears, man. The thing that I'm most proud of about this album is I had a bit of a writer's block at the beginning, because I was like, ‘what could live up to first one?’ And there was just a day where I let go of that, I just want to make an album that I love. At the end of the day that is literally the only thing I want. I want to say things that scare me to say, I want to get braver by doing it. A lot of therapy was done with this album, a lot of internal growth, and I just wanted to have more of a voice in terms of how the production sounded. Half of this album was made in a shed in North London, and then the other half was made in some of the best studios in the world in LA last year. So got a mix of the organic and the raw. The thread through all of it ‘this is a diary of the last three years of my life’ without a shadow of a doubt.
‘Blood Orange’, the title track, opens the album with such a 70s vibe. I'm getting whiffs of Janis Joplin in there it's rock, a love song, fire. It's such a great opener
That means so much to me. I wrote it with an incredible writer Camille, who I think is the best female top liner in the UK, and her producer Will Bloomfield. Together they just they empowered the hell out of me. I really wanted this album to be called Blood Orange, I had this idea about the bitter and the sweet. I've gone from this very heartbroken place in my life to actually trying to allow myself to be happy and enjoy the fruit of the dark years. You work hard for this, you might as well enjoy it. And they were like, 'Let's do it', they were up on the sofas clapping and singing, it was just euphoric to make it. And I love them for that. We did two songs on the album, 'Blood Orange' and 'Bite Me' and I see them as sister songs, because they were written in almost the same session, which might be the most productive day I've ever had! For me, starting the album with 'Blood Orange', it's almost like the end of the story. Someone’s sat in an armchair being like, ‘this is where we're at now’….but and then you flip over to the first page ‘but let me take you back to the beginning’. And 'Bite Me' is then where you begin. It’s kind of like a full circle moment.
What I love as well, is you book ended it with 'I Feel The Love', oh my goodness. 'I woke up with a smile on my face knowing that I'd see you at our place'. It's a great song, so beautiful.
I didn't know it was gonna be on the album until literally about two months ago. It’s really interesting to me, because I, as a listener, as an artist, in my head, I will not lie to you, I went into that session thinking ‘I'm gonna write a song for someone else’. But sometimes you come out of a session, and you're like, ‘I really had a fun time’. And I let go, and I stopped overthinking it. And for me, every time I listened to it, it might be slightly different sonically to what the rest of the album is, but it's almost like an ode to the future direction that I want to move in and just accept that. You're accepting yourself in all forms. It is slightly more pop, but I feel euphoric and joyful every time I listen to it. And I wanted to end the album on a feeling of joy instead of a feeling of pain for once.
And isn't that interesting as well? I'm really not trying to be your therapist, but the way even just then you said, ‘Oh, I know it's a bit pop’, and automatically it sounds like you're even putting yourself into the pigeonhole that people have put you in. Is that me? Is that do I? Is my piano there? Am I sad? But you have gone ‘yeah, I can do a pop song at the end, that's what I want to sing.’
Exactly. Basically, it's whatever's taboo. I made my living from writing really sad songs, and to say you're happy in a relationship is fricking terrifying. I was like, 'This feels like the scariest thing I've ever said'. Genuinely. It was really weird because the album was full of things that I thought was scary to say, from'Perfect' to 'Can I Jump?' But there's something about 'I Feel Love' that was I like this one is I want, I'm putting it in there, and I'm making it the last song on the album because I love it. I don't care if it doesn't sound like my first album, it's still me. And I really love it.
I also want to talk to you about 'Happier Alone' because this track is like contemporary pop-folk slash musical theatre mid solo breakout where you sing to the audience like it's a soliloquy. It's a beautiful song and what I love about this track is you have such ferocity in your vocals, however, on this song you pull it back, and it makes the song.
Thank you. I'm very excited to play 'Happier Alone' live, that was one of the ones from LA that just jumped out on a day where I had kind of given up trying. I was like, ‘I'm just gonna say what's true’. There was someone in my life at that time that I'd given so much energy to and I was so enamoured with, and I was like, ‘why do I always feel so awful after I've spent time with them?’ It was so weird to me, because they were such a cool person, but I was like, ‘am I allowed to even admit that I literally am happier walking in the park on my own then I would be like spending time with them?’ Mother of God, I think I would, actually! Wow, I really want to write a song about this. That bassline, there's just something about it, where I almost kind of whisper sang it really low, I think you can tell I'm not trying in that song.
The 'all you seem to know is the worst case scenario', we're talking about those people who are emotional vampires out of nowhere. You're giving so much to them but, why do I feel weirdly drained afterwards? You're allowed to fight for your joy and your mental headspace and you're allowed to admit that being lonely and being on your own isn't worse than spending time with people who drain you. It's not.
You performed 'Weekends' on The Graham Norton Show back in February for the season finale, how mad is that? That performance was incredible, tell me all about it.
Growing up, Graham Norton has always been my favourite TV show, even from when I was like, seven or eight. I used to watch it with my family religiously. He's just so funny and charismatic and the way he gets guests to interact. For me, that was on my 2023 vision board, I visualised it, I prayed for it. And there was no chance of that happening, because the show was booked up with people. But I went on his radio show a few weeks before, and I vocally trained so hard, I got up really, really early I basically was like, ‘I'm gonna give this everything I've got’. We really got on, we had a great chat. He was just so so lovely, and kind, even very early in the morning, which is not always easy to be. They said, ‘maybe you'll get on the [TV show] next year’. And I was like, ‘that would even be incredible, but no pressure’. I think he personally championed me to get this slot in the final, which I can't get over. There were like 15 other people who should have gotten on ahead of me, so he really championed me and I'm so grateful to him for that. I am an independent artist, I am on an indie label, and I wrote and produced this album basically on my own - with a lot of help from my indie label and people that I knew - but I'm not a major artist in that sense. So we don't get things that people think we get. So the fact he gave me this opportunity, I was like, ‘I'm gonna give this everything’. We did a completely live band, which no one ever does on Graham Norton anymore. We had like live brass, live strings, I organised how it was gonna sound. We wrote the brass parts, we wrote the string parts. I stood up for the first time, I've got my extensions in, I had a dress made, I did movement coaching. I was like, ‘Graham has given us this opportunity, I am going to give this version of 'Weekends' everything I humanly have’. I was in my latex boots on my treadmill, at like two in the morning practising how to walk and sing in them because I have no idea how to walk and sing in high heels! I have no idea, I'm literally not a dancer, I've never danced in my life. Afterwards I was just euphoric that it happened at all. It feels like a dream.
That’s one of the loveliest stories and I'm so glad that you've perpetually chosen not to be publicly cool because I really think you should tell your heroes who they are and tell people how hard you work. It's really important!
Growing up for me, watching like Taylor Swift tour diaries, or Beyoncé documentaries, where you see her like sweat and train and work, I'm like, ‘oh god, I wanna be like that’. Or the Kardashians, who get up at like four in the morning every morning doing Pilates and weight training. These women are titans, I'm just in awe of them, I want to be like that. But because they showed they're vulnerable, and they showed the hard work that goes into it you're like, this isn't just a given, you can affect your own life. So I'm gonna give this everything. It's a privilege to do this job, it's not a given, so I'm just going to give my all to every opportunity that I get.
Blood Orange is out now via Good Solider. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Freya Ridings you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.
