INTERVIEW: Sophie May on debut EP 'You Do Not Have To Be Good': "This EP is looking at my younger self and feeling a lot of empathy and love for her."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Dani KM

Australian-UK singer Sophie May creates music with a depth, quality and maturity that belies the fact she only released her first single in April this year.

First teasing music on TikTok to her 200k followers, she soon attracted attention from not only her now managers but also superstars Billie Eilish and Celeste, leading to a yet to be released collaboration with the latter. Her first double single ‘With The Band’/’Bruises & Scratches’ brought her immediate attention, as well as over 1 million streams, and at the beginning of August she released her debut EP You Do Not Have To Be Good.

May’s music is a beautiful blend of folk, pop and rock with lyrics that are cutting, raw and real and accurately reflect the awkward, wonderful, painful experience of growing from a teenager into an adult. There is a honesty in the lyrics that is at times breathtaking, such as in ‘With The Band’ which uses the analogy of dating a rock star to brutally tell a story of an abusive relationship: “Got his hands 'round your neck / You'll still romanticise all the things that he did to you”. Backed by just a guitar and multi-layered vocals, it is a track that is heartbreakingly beautiful.

‘High Life’ is another stripped back guitar ballad that examines the heartache and realisation the object of your love does not return what you are putting out. “He knows I'm always an option / So I know I'll always come last.”

‘Cadillac’ is a full blooded, driving track with a thumping beat and fuzzy guitars with May’s vocals taking on a more disenchanted, punkier cadence, which contrasts beautifully with the next track ‘Lover Boy’, a floaty ethereal two minute track that also looks at a failing relationship, although this time there is a sense the power is all with May: “My lover boy you know my lovings almost done…Don't look at me so sadly / You know I love you too / But I don't think we want each other the way we want us to”.

The EP closes with ‘Some Italian Mountain’, a gorgeously mellow track that is almost the recovery phase of the EP. After the trauma of a relationship, May uses the Italian countryside as a reset and to find peace again. “I hate to admit it / But I can't wait till October / When I'm allowed to escape him/ And movе my life to some Italian mountain.”

May has created a truly beautiful EP with You Do Not Have To Be Good. Her songs are intensely personal, but are done in a way that can you project your own stories and feelings into them. They flow effortlessly into each other to form a cohesive whole but retain their own unique feel and beauty. An incredibly impressive debut, the mind boggles as to what May will be capable of with more years of experience under her belt. A mainstream star of the future, we recently caught up with her to find out more about her career and the creation of the EP.

Hi Sophie, you have collated a very beautiful collection of songs on your debut EP You Do Not Need To Be Good. How are things with you?
They’re good right now. It's been a bit of a build up to releasing the EP and so that being out feels like a big literal release. It feels really good to have that body of work out now.

It's quite a creature in itself. Can you talk to me a little bit about the origins of the collation, thematically as an EP as a whole?
A lot of the EP is centred around my experiences when I was 18, 19, bleeding into my early 20s, I'm 23 now. It feels like a big learning curve, actually, and a bit of a love letter to my younger self when I was that age. A lot of the time at that age was spent questioning if I was a good person or not, and into adulthood and everything feeling quite confusing, and learning about the world and relationships especially, because the first relationships feels so intense. I look at this EP as looking at my younger self and feeling a lot of empathy and love for her. That's why I called it You Do Not Have To Be Good, I quoted a Mary Oliver poem that is all about that, you don't always have to be good. As a young woman, you can be really hard on yourself.

That's so beautiful, a love letter to your former self, because we do give ourselves such a hard time. And the notion of what it means to be a ‘good girl’, it gets weaponised at young women because it gets embedded into our brains. The EP opens with the beautiful and brutally poetic ‘With The Band’, but ends with this absolutely gorgeous ‘Some Italian Mountain’. Can you talk me through this bookend?
It kind of felt like the right song to end with, because it felt a more like saying goodbye to a long term relationship. And also to that younger self a bit more, or at least my approaches to relationships. I spent a month in Italy in October last year, around the time of a breakup as well. I wrote it with Matt Maltese and we spoke about Italy. I was in Tuscany and I remember looking at the mountains and I just felt like I was running away from a relationship. Sometimes that's all you feel like doing when something's ended and you feel a bit trapped by someone. I thought it was quite a pretty sentiment to run and build a whole new life on a mountain, because that's how bad you want to escape. It definitely comes from my romantic view of running away from someone.

It's really beautiful and when you listen to the EP as a whole it is this moment of growth. Coming over the mountain on the other side. It's absolutely beautiful. Have you always been a writer?
Yes, definitely, that's my main love to be honest. I felt more of a writer than a singer or anything else. I found my love of writing through slam poetry when I was 13 and just got absolutely obsessed with it. Which makes sense now, because of the rhythm element, it's almost like singing, the closest thing you can get to singing without singing. I kind of look a little bit embarrassed at my younger self, but I see it as growth! I used to go to slam poetry nights and go into competitions and stuff like that. I found my romanticised self through writing poetry, and then I kind of fell into songwriting.

There are a lot more embarrassing things you could have been doing than slam poetry! You write in the moment, and with this EP you're reflecting on times your writing the words exactly how you felt them. For years, our musical goddesses have been coerced and constricted to sing words of, most of the time, middle aged white men - apparently, they know what it's like to be a young woman! But now artists such as yourself are releasing this music that truly represents your experiences. Do you feel that was something that was missing with the music you were listening to growing up?
Yes. Also, women have such interesting lives and experiences that no other person could translate. The media are so obsessed with women, and how they exist, but usually it felt so 2D almost, it never felt quite right. Some of my favourite films, like Almost Famous and you would see Penny Lane, that kind of a groupie character that everybody loves to watch, I thought she was the most interesting person, but [the film] never really dived into her story. I ended up writing ‘With The Band’ and I feel like I was giving a voice to these characters that you never hear anything about. You just like to look at them, because they're pretty. I definitely felt there was a story that was missing, and if anything I kind of wrote accidentally, just because I ended up, living it.

You've had such an amazing start to your career, I know you've been writing and performing for years, but what has been the most pivotal moment in your career thus far?
A big feeling for me was releasing my first song, once it was actually out in the world. It felt like a real shift because a lot of this past year and a half has all been condensed online. I could also say the first video that did well, I gained like 10,000 followers overnight and I was so taken aback by that but the online world doesn't feel so real. Numbers can feel really super cool, but it doesn't feed your soul like singing live or meeting real people. So when I released my first song and started playing it live, that's when something within me felt really accomplished. It felt rewarding, you make something out of nothing, especially when it's a song that means a lot to you. It felt really gratifying to then feel I've done something at least.

It also probably quite surreal considering the way your music got to everyone's ears - these are actual people, not just numbers on a screen! And how did you find the whole experience? This is like slam poetry but with melody, were you nervous about turning the poetry into a song in front of a live audience?
I wasn't necessarily nervous to go from the poetry into song, they kind of just ended up meshing together. That almost felt like a natural step because I wasn't quite writing poetry the same and I found lyrics a lot more interesting to write. But definitely when singing them for the first time live it felt really surreal and kind of hard to get over the fact that people were paying attention to me. Definitely a bit of impostor syndrome there! The fact that people were looking and watching and listening, even now I'm still kind of learning to get used to that. It's such it's a great feeling afterwards, when people say that they enjoyed the song or it meant something to them, that that will always feel good.

This EP is such a beautiful collection of songs and you should be super proud because we're all enjoying the pants off of it. Tell me, if you can, what else is coming up for you?
I've got a few headline shows, which will be really fun, coming up in September. I’m opening for a band called Inhaler in October and doing a few festivals. So I'm really honing in on the live performances now because I feel like I have tackled releasing music and now I've just got to make a really good show. That's my big goal for the next few months, creating a really good live performance. But also I'm always writing new music, so definitely looking towards the next the next project now.

You Do Not Have To Be Good is out now. You can download and stream here.

To keep up with all things Sophie May you can follow her on Instagram, TikTok and Discord.

Sophie May live dates:
September 7 - Servants Jazz Quarters, London (SOLD OUT)
September 8 - Folklore, London (SOLD OUT)
October 1 - Neighbourhood Festival
October 15 - Live At Leeds Festival
October 19 - Roundhouse, London*
*supporting Inhaler