INTERVIEW: Katie Gregson-MacLeod talks her debut EP 'songs written for piano': "It's a privilege if anyone's used my songs to process anything emotionally."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Caity Krone

Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod creates music that speaks with an almighty power through being intimately gentle. Released late last year, her stunning second EP songs written for piano is five stripped back tracks of immense, vulnerable beauty that chronologically tell a story of love and heartbreak.

First performing at just eight years old, Gregson-MacLeod began independently releasing music in 2020 while studying history of the University of Edinburgh. She started attracting attention almost immediately, including from the BBC, and In 2021 she released her debut EP Games I Play.

Then in 2022 Gregson-MacLeod’s career went into overdrive. Uploading 45 seconds of a song she had just written, ‘complex’, to TikTok. The following morning it had been shared tens of thousands of times and soon artists such as Camila Cabello, Lennon Stella and Madison Beer posted their own covers of the song to the platform. A rush-released demo version of ‘complex’ racked up over 23 million streams on Spotify alone, and Gregson-MacLeod soon found herself besieged with record labels offering her a deal.

After signing with Columbia Records, highly acclaimed producer Greg Kurstin (Tate McRae, P!nk, Adele) produced a full studio version of ‘complex’. It is a beautifully tender piano ballad of struggling to cope after a relationship ends. The lyrics are incredibly relatable and brilliantly sum up the emotions felt when the one we love leaves - distress, anger, longing and overwhelming sadness. “I'd die for just the promise you'd listen…We won't be together, but maybe the next life,” she sings.

‘complex’, both the original and a new live with strings version, features on Gregson-MacLeod’s second EP, songs written for piano, which was released in December last year. Inspired by heartbreaks she has experienced throughout her life, it was Gregson-MacLeod intention for the EP to be purely stripped back acoustic music.

First track ‘i’m worried it will always be you’ is the oldest song on the EP, written when Gregson-MacLeod was 18. It tells of her very first heartbreak, and is full of both the naivety and pure trauma of the experience which results in a fear you will never be able to love again: “All the while whеn I imagine this life I'm working to / I'm worried it will always be you.”

‘to be eighteen’ is full of nostalgia, with Gregson-MacLeod looking back at her youth and wishing she could look at love and relationship with the same purity and innocence as she could when she was 18. It leads into ‘complex’, which is followed by the latest single ‘white lies’. While it also looks at the end of a relationship, ‘white lies’ is more jaded, less melancholic as Gregson-MacLeod acknowledges she has just drifted away from the person she once loved as opposed to having her heart shattered. ‘I don't know if we don't talk / Because I'm in the city pretending that I'm busy…Sometimes I tell white lies, like I will always want you.”

songs written for the piano is a mesmerising collection of songs, and not just for its beautiful soundscape. Gregson-MacLeod is a brilliant writer who can craft lyrics that are like poetry, intimate and personal as well as tapping into universal feelings of love and heartbreak. An artist that promises incredible things for her future, we recently sat down with her to chat more about her music and career.

Hi Katie! How are things in your ridiculously talented universe?
They're good. They're pretty chaotic, obviously, but I’ve had a nice wee quiet February so far, which has been kind of weird for me. I just moved to London, so just kind of settling in and writing and stuff. But it’s good.

February, particularly in London, is like a Tuesday, like nothing much happens in such a nice way. Everyone's still hung over, so February is a really good time to reset!
Yeah, it feels good. I'm obviously settling in, I've just been going at a slow pace for the first time in like six months. So it's nice!

Gorgeous, and it really fits into the overall emotional hub of your EP. It's just such a quiet, tap dripping purge. It sounds like you've just allowed yourself to languidly experiment with sound.
Thank you so much. With that EP, I wanted to capture the feeling of just sitting down at a piano and playing a song. We didn't go extremely far in any direction it was very mellow, just dipping our toe into different sonics and things. I'm so happy with how it turned out. Those songs, some of them are like three, four years old now, they were from when I was 18. So it's really nice to hear them come to life. It seemed the obvious choice for me in that moment after releasing ‘complex’ in that demo stripped back form. I was like, ‘this world needs to have a wee moment’ and I was so happy with how it turned out. I'm glad you liked it.

It's really beautiful. And not to sound condescending, but it's a collection of songs that usually take artists, quite a few albums behind them to have the confidence to release. You are so in your place, it's really quite incredible. You said some of the songs have been there for a while, and it feels like this stream of consciousness that came from a while ago that you're still processing. Is that what these songs are, still reflecting and processing certain feelings and emotion?
It’s in chronological order which I don't know if it matters to everyone else, but for me, it was just nice to feel that ageing process, even just going from 18 to 21 which is still just going from very young and naive to very young and naive. It opens with ‘i'm worried it will always be you’ which is the most earnest and the most 18 year old song that I've got because it's this feeling of the first time and that feeling that you'll never feel any different in your life. And I don't think I’ve felt that again. Once you've been through that once, you feel more wise, but there’s something nice about that song, it's like happily sitting in this naivety and ignorance, it's very childish in a way. But then the second song, ‘to be eighteen’ is probably the rawest one in terms of it was the first song I'd written after this very tumultuous breakup, it is just literally all the thoughts. It’s the most tender song to its subject, it’s really trying to understand both how I was feeling and how they were feeling, and trying to really contextualise. Trying to feel like I had more of an understanding of it than I did when the first song was written. But in reality, there's more questions because the older you get, I feel like the less sure of your own thoughts you are. Singing ‘to be eighteen’ live is definitely the one that's stops me in my tracks, because it's just so candid. They're all candid, but that one is just very much in that place of these are genuine questions that were being asked.

I'm very happy to have those songs out, because at the time, even when I was releasing it, I was like these songs don't really feel like my writing now, maybe a wee bit too earnest, maybe a wee bit too immature. But actually, I'm very glad to have those moments out there. It's nice, it’s been a privilege.

That's such a great way to look at it, because I imagine as you advance in your career, particularly after ‘complex’ blew up, apart from the joy, there's also quite a lot of pressure there, to go ‘okay, whatever that was, I guess I need to do that again in order to stay relevant and to keep this going’. But you decided you really needed to release these songs, exactly as they were in your heart when you wrote them. There is a power in stepping back to go forward, and it's almost like you're further making your mark of who you are as an artist by releasing the songs that you'd written before you blew up.
Thank you. Yeah, it is that weird thing of that moment where it felt like the world was watching in a weird way that that never happened to me, obviously, before. I'm very sure in my own writing, I write so much, and I know that I'm constantly improving and stuff, but it's funny, the more people telling you that you're an amazing writer than ever in your life, you never feel more unsure of that. It’s like you do need to kind of prove that you can do it again. For me, it felt really calming and really obvious to take that step back and show that journey of songwriting literally in order and being these are some songs in a similar vein that I wrote since I was 18. There will be thousands more in the future, but for now it's kind of a nice moment to capture and also putting that to bed a wee bit and allowing the piano sonically to have its moment. I knew that whatever I'd be making next wouldn't sound like ‘complex’, so it was really an obvious choice to me. It felt like a nice way of letting that have its time.

Going into making music now, there is always that thing of whatever I do next has to prove that I'm more than just ‘complex’. My team are the best for fucking stopping me and being like ‘Katie, you don't have to have every song that you put out trump the last one and it can just be you growing up in public and making the music you want to make in that moment and that's okay’. It's very nice to hear that because just subconsciously there is that concern that will ‘complex’ fans be disappointed by anything that I make now or will it really live up to that, but giving that its moment I don't really need to ever trump it I can just do whatever fulfils my current creative motivations. Definitely with that EP, it was a wee bit scary, but mainly very fulfilling. I felt very satisfied

It's beautiful. You just mentioned giving the piano space, the way you play it sounds like an extension of your voice, it sounds like a very personal instrument to you, it's just another way of speaking. Has that always been the case?
Yeah, I was actually my first instrument because my mum's a pianist. We grew up with an acoustic piano in the house, which is one of my favourite parts of my childhood and I feel very lucky. I refused to have lessons because I was stubborn, and my mum was the teacher, and I was like I can't get taught by my mum, mum, leave me alone, I'll do my own thing. Now I’m like ‘I wish I'd taken one or two lessons…!’

It was always my natural instinct just to go and potter about on there. It was always something I did, but when I went to uni, I connected more with a guitar because I was in a wee uni room trying to make folk tunes and stuff. But the piano was always gonna have that special place in my heart, and there is something just undeniable and so cathartic when you just strike the right chord on the piano with what you're feeling. And that's what happened with every one of those songs. It just was a moment that just happened to work. I don't write on the piano very often, but I'm playing it more than ever now. It’s nice to have that, it does feel full circle because it was my first instrument and it was where I wrote throughout my childhood. So I love it and I feel like it's the one of the most emotional and cathartic instruments for sure.

At the same time, it's also such a beast. You can't sit quietly in the background with a piano, you got to be impressive.
I grew up obsessed with Tim Minchin and Billy Joel, so that made me want to do it and then I never got to that level of playing. But maybe one day, maybe I'll figure it out!

I think so! I read a beautiful quote about you and it said that your songwriting continues to help your fans emotionally purge. Who were those artists for you?
When I was growing up, we had literally a lot of everything in the house. I was very lucky to have a family that just loved music, there were just like thousands of CDs and it was just everything. Amy Winehouse was big in our house. My mum and dad love Motown, they actually just gave me a ton of records that they found in the loft, and it's all Motown and soul. When I was in my older teenage years, I was starting to really branch out musically and extend what I was listening to. It was a lot of Phoebe Bridgers, Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith. But when I was younger, it was a lot of piano pop. Tom Odell, Adele, Emeli Sandé. It was really a bit of everything I'd say those artists for me now would be the likes of Cohen, Smith, Joni Mitchell. Carole King always has a big part in our house. There are so many now because I just love music that makes me feel. I find something very comforting in sad music, there's something very comforting about it.

Oh it’s very comforting. This EP is very much sprawled out on a bedroom floor soaking into your own feelings and wallowing. Wallowing in all your emotions, so congratulations for joining that realm.
You have to have a moment like that! The music that I'm making now, I'm making a lot more tempo stuff. I think they're not sad songs because they're upbeat, but my friends are like ‘no mate, the lyrics are heartbreaking’. I want to capture that moment again, because I love those songs where you're just floored by them from the first chord. There's so many songs like that to me that I would love to have someone feel the way that I feel listening to them. It's a privilege if anyone's used my songs to process anything emotionally. I get messages like that and that's insane to me but very much an honour.

Of course, you're going to be on a lot of people's breakup mixtapes! On that, I don’t know if it’s intentional, but you've got this wonderful contrast, you’ve got an incredibly confident and mature and even baritone delivery of someone that has seen a lot, but not only are you young yourself, but you're also writing about youth. is that something that you're aware that you play on, or is that just an old soul that's also an amazing songwriter and pianist?
Oh, stop! Thank you. It definitely wasn't intentional. It's funny, I think the one that I sound the oldest in is the one that I wrote when I was 18 because I guess it's more a soulful song. I’m very flattered. The songs really are about youth. I’ve never been told that before, but it definitely is the case. I think a piano brings it out of you, it’s just the way that the piano connects, it just brings that out. It’s not intentional, but I'm very, very glad that that's how it comes out

Well, it's absolutely beautiful. Tell me, what else coming up for you this year Katie?
Well, right now a lot of it is still just insane and I can't believe much of it. But my main goal is just to be writing and making music. That's my favourite thing ever. I'm in the studio for the next four weeks straight. I've been writing on my own a lot the last two months, I’ve been very much up in here trying to work things out. I'm just really excited to be making music. I've got some gigs going on, but most I can't talk about. Then in summer a few festivals, but we really kept things light with the live side this year, trying to focus on getting some more music and figuring out the new sonic landscape and I'm just so excited. The new songs I've been making I'm really buzzing about. For everyone, they can expect a lot more music this year, which I'm very excited about and some live stuff. The last like six months has shown me that I really can't predict anything. I go into every new month like ‘fuck knows what's gonna happen, I’m just gonna go along with the ride'. But for now, my main goal is just to be making music that I'm proud of. And it's working so far. I'm just writing all day every day and I’m excited.

songs written for piano is out now via Sony Music. You can buy and stream here.

To keep up with all things Katie Gregson-MacLeod you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.