INTERVIEW: KYE releases new EP 'Ribena': "It's been really fun combining that feeling of making fresh pop, but also making something that feels old and timeless."
Since emerging with her debut single ‘Good Company’ in 2019, Kye has become one of Australia’s brightest new talents. Her music mixes pop, UK garage and R&B in a way that is both new and nostalgic, with throwbacks to the music she grew up with in the early 2000s.
Born in Zimbabwe, Kye moved with her family to London when she was three, before they relocated to Melbourne eight years later. Initially starting out as a backing singer for major artists including Sampa The Great, Meg Mac, Jessica Mauboy and Ruel, the intervention of COVID made her realise it was time to focus on her solo career, and since she has stepped out onto centre stage she has never looked back - a starring role in the Olivia Newton-John tribute at the ARIA Music Awards brought her national attention at the end of 2022. The swinging, sparkling beats of debut single ‘Good Company’ have racked up close to a million streams to date on Spotify, as have the early-2000s UK garage sonics of ‘Bossin’’, released last year.
Today she releases her second EP Ribena. It is a glorious, joyful collection of music that celebrates the sounds of UK garage from the early 2000s, while still remaining very much of the now. Third single ‘Ribena’ is a hypnotic pop jam, with Kye’s amazing vocals effortlessly switching registers throughout the song. An ode to both Kye’s favourite drink and the emotions that swirl through you when you first enter a relationship, Kye said on the song’s release “This song is about that gooey feeling in the pit of your stomach when you first fall for someone. That sweet, scintillating, sugar high.”
Standout track ‘180’ is a dance-club-pop delight, and the latest single from the EP. It takes heartbreak and turns it into “something fun and danceable”. Fourth single ‘Heavy Love’ features Budjerah and is a funky, R&B tinged pop gem with incredible melodies throughout.
The 2022 single ‘Clique’ is as addictive and sassy as ever. A celebration of female friendships and the bond that comes with it, its shuddering electro beat and the repeated vocals almost compel you to move.
Ribena is an EP that is pure pop bliss with a splash of retro to bring in the nostalgia. It is a collection of music that has the power to just transport you to a place of joy, and Kye’s voice is a thing of immense beauty - rich and warm, never overpowering, it just flies straight into your heart. Kye’s star is fully in the ascendant with Ribena, and we recently sat down with her to chat more about its creation and her music career to date.
Hello Kye, thank you for taking the time to chat to me today, and also thank you for creating some incredibly fun, fun, fun dance music.
Oh, thank you so much!
I want to go straight into my favourite, the new single. Let's talk about ‘180’. I love this track: 'catching my breath / It tastes like candy in your last cigarette'. I love that it's like an amalgamation of dance pop, club pop and R&B, but it's like the 2023 and beyond version of it. Talk to me about this track because it's phenomenal.
Oh, thank you so so much. It is actually one of my favourite tracks I think I've written. I wrote this one with Maxwell and Ivy Adara. It was at a Songhubs session [songwriting camp run by APRA]. They just throw us into a room together and see what we make and the song was written with that kind of nature, I guess, of just throwing yourself into a feeling and just creating something fun and spontaneous. It's probably one of the quickest songs I've ever written. It definitely captures the feeling that I was experiencing at the time with a certain person, but I'm glad that I could take that feeling, that almost heartbroken feeling, and turn it into something fun and danceable.
When I first heard 'Ribena', I was like, ‘this song needs to go back in time, and be presented to the people that made the film Clueless and this needs to be in a montage’!
Oh my gosh, I would love that! That's kind of my nostalgic era of music, I guess, and movies. I do sort of write aimed towards that time because that’s when I fell in love with pop culture, and that's the pop culture that influenced me as a kid. So I'm hoping it has a renaissance, I'm hoping that people love that time too.
I'm also loving 'Bossin', your vocals are just beautiful, with this UK garage beat, which I love. You grew up in London, so I'm assuming that's a little nod to your past?
Yeah, I grew up in London, spent like a large portion of my childhood there from ages three to twelve, so a lot of my primary schooling was done there. UK garage would have been one of the first influential sounds that I would have heard. Craig David and Daniel Bedingfield were just being absolutely slammed on the radio, so it's one of the first sounds that I would have heard. It’s something that sort of stuck with me, and when it came to writing the song, and hearing this UK garage beat, it felt really at home for me. It didn't feel like it was outside of my comfort zone, or outside of what I usually would make. It felt like this really nostalgic nod to things that I loved as a kid. It's been really fun combining that feeling of making fresh pop, but also making something that feels old and timeless.
I think that's such a beautiful way of creating music. With any artists, they're processing their own story in writing a new one, and I love that yours goes as deep as a bassline or a genre that you feel at home in. You didn't go ‘oh, I want to make a UK garage track’. It was ‘this is what suits it’. And it then becomes even more your song because it comes from a place before you even making songs.
Yeah, exactly. It didn't feel contrived. It was just sort of there, it just made sense in the moment and we just seized that. There's not really a lot of other artists in Australia that are making UK garage, so it felt like a bit of a risk to do something like that. But at the same time, it was like this is a sound that people have known and loved, and let's just put it out there. Let's just see what happens.
It’s interesting, because in Australia, for any female artist that's doing any kind of pop that isn't mainstream pop, they're pushed abroad because there's no place to go. We have these amazing pop makers in Australia, that do end up moving to the States or the UK, just for the fact that they may have some ears to fall on there.
Absolutely. A big part of that is with experimental music and experimental pop, I feel like it's constantly introduced to us by male artists, and people tend to get around it a lot more. With women, we have that extra extra barrier to push through in terms of getting people excited about the new thing that we're making. It's an interesting trend.
Have you found on that note, that when you do release a new track, people are always interested to know which man worked on it for you?
Yes! It's like, ‘this is so cool, whose idea was this, did the producer come up with this idea?’ It’s really, really interesting that people wouldn't think that I would have ownership over a lot of those ideas. But production is so male heavy that people don't usually expect that if they hear something really cool that it could be produced by a female or that there'd be so much input from the artist. There's this weird line between wanting to present yourself as a pop star, but also wanting to command that respect or at least have people acknowledge that you are the biggest part of your creative process and you don't just have people pressing buttons for you all the time.
That's so interesting. And doesn't that also just go back to our perception? Even that word was so bad for a long time in Australia, ‘popstar’.
Oh, absolutely. When I first started calling myself a pop star, it almost felt taboo, like I was calling myself a pop star maybe a little ironically. It wasn't cool to call yourself a pop star. Then I just thought, ‘why not?’ All the music that I love is made by pop stars, the music icons and legends are pop stars, and that shouldn't have to be a bad thing. It doesn't make you any less cool.
That's such a good way to look at it as well. The music I love is made by pop stars, so why can't I be a pop star? Why is it suddenly uncool? Speaking of amazing pop stars. I'm just gonna throw three letters at you: TLC. You supported them on their Australian tour last year, how was that?
Oh like such a moment! It's really, really amazing to have an opportunity like that so early in my career. To essentially meet and open for musicians that have shaped my music and have shaped my life, TLC was the soundtrack for my early life. It was just this surreal moment. I didn't really believe it was happening until after, so I felt like I was walking in a dream. The next morning when I woke up, I was like, ‘Oh my God, that just happened. I was just spending time and hanging out with TLC last night!’ It's insane to get a compliment from artists that you have watched on your screen for your whole life. It's an insane feeling for them to go, ‘oh my god, you're amazing, and I can't wait to see what you do with your music.’ I was like, ‘my music?!’ Like this is so crazy. I make music because you make music. It's one of those things I think will stick with me for a really long time.
You've been working with some incredible people, such as Sampa the Great. You've been singing and backing for some incredible artists. How has that experience assisted the road you are on now as prime popstar?
I probably wouldn't be the kind of popstar I am now if it wasn't for those opportunities. I never set out to be a backing vocalist, it wasn't something that I'd ever planned or thought that I would do. It just didn't seem like a good way to go if I wanted to do my own thing. But it just sort of happened, I fell into it. It showed me so much more than I think I could have learned on my own, especially touring the world with Sampa, we went to so many different places. We played so many shows, and we did these crazy, crazy nonstop tours, and being able to watch that from ten steps back and be as much a part of the experience as her but being able to stand back and have it not be my show, it takes all the pressure off, with all the benefits of having the experience. By the time I started making my own music and playing my own shows, I had already done that before, so it wasn't completely new and foreign to me. I'd seen the logistics of what it takes to be in that position. It really equipped me for this world and really equipped me to be my own act. Because yeah, I mean, yeah, like I said, you get to see it all in front of you happening. I don't think a lot of people get to see, the ten steps, to see everything that happens before it happens. Watching a good artist do their thing a taking notes mentally and going ‘yeah, okay, when I'm in that position, that's what it'll look like.’ it changes your perspective entirely. There is such a huge difference between going to a show and watching the show and being in the show. So it's been really cool to get to experience it on both sides.
Before we wrap up, I want to talk about the incredible single you recently released with Budjerah, 'Heavy Love'. Tell me all about it.
It just came about so randomly and amazingly. Marietta, my A&R from Sony sent Budjerah's team a few of my songs, and it was not the song we were expecting him to pick but he just instantly connected with it and was like 'this is the song I want to do'. We really didn't know how it was going to go, but I flew to Byron in February, and we did the studio session and it was just magic. I mean how could it not be when Budj sounds the way that he does? It was just magical to have that moment. As two people who are such singers and have grown up singing and just love the art of singing, it was this beautiful moment where we were both just beaming and coming up with new ideas and harmonising with each other and doing these crazy acrobatics and harmonising them to each other. That's just the most fun thing in the world for me, vocal arrangements and vocal flexing is just one of my favourite things so to get to do that with someone who is such a superstar and to just have fun with it, it's just created a magical track and I'm really really excited about it. It just feels like a dream, it just doesn't feel real ever. We joked that it was our version of Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown's 'Nowhere'! I think both of us felt like kids in a candy store.
Ribena is out now via Sony Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things KYE you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Kye is touring Australia in June. Tickets on sale now.
June 3 - Corner Hotel, Melbourne.
June 16 - Volta, Ballarat
June 17 - Torquay Hotel, Torquay.
June 23 - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney.
June 24 - Felons Barrel Hall, Brisbane. Free event
