Molly Burman is a 22-year-old songstress from north London, Hornsey specifically “I Love it, I’m such a North London Girl”. Over Zoom I spoke to a fresh-faced Molly a week before her 22nd birthday, about who she is, why she does what she does and what the world can expect from the talented young singer-songwriter in the coming years.
We started with Molly explaining the genre and style of music she makes, with the internet labelling her an indie dream pop artist I always find it best to get the answer from the horse’s mouth, ”I would say, I feel like I have quite dark/heavy lyrics but I always use kind of cheery upbeat melodies to get the point across which is very much how I am as a person”. Molly uses her music to tell the world how she feels and that is why her music is so relatable and has the ability to create an instant connection with the listeners, “I like to write basically just my experiences as being myself, being a human more specifically a women, a young person, heartbreak, rejection, sexism, just everything the everyday person experiences basically I vent all of it”.
Molly’s love for music and creation wasn’t something she discovered as a teen or young adult, it was something she was raised with as a key part of her upbringing with both of her parents having been musicians, her father still teaching guitar to this day, “It had always been a part of my life, all my family friends, my parents met them all when they did music, every family party would be everyone around the piano or with their guitars out. I would go camping with all my family and everyone would bring their guitars literally around the campfire … I never thought of it as a question. Oh, I’m choosing to do music, I just always loved it, I love performing, I love all of that”. While her main influences in getting into music were the people around her she did have some exterior influences that she admired for different aspects of their art “When I was younger, I was very much influenced by the Beatles, their harmonies and all the guitars that the Beatles used, all the layered guitars”, as well as artist such as Adele who Molly admired for her pen.
The Hornsey native is only 22 and is still in the early stages of her career, her debut track was uploaded on streaming sites in 2018 but it wasn’t joined by a succeeding track for another 3 years. “I was literally in college, one of my friends was paying for a distributor and was like I can put it on Spotify”. Molly is a self-proclaimed worrier so music definitely wasn’t at the forefront of her brain while trying to finish college. After uploading the track ‘Happy Things’ Molly just got back on with her studies and never really paid any attention to the track until a few years later when she looked back at it and discovered it was doing fairly well, the song currently has over 1.5 million streams and is Mollys most popular track to date. The talented songstress knew that her music had fans but didn’t want to rush her output “ I wanted to wait till I had the best songs ready, I wanted to do music videos, the full thing. I didn’t want to do anything half-assessed”. Even now the tracks Molly are putting out “Some of them I’m releasing now, I wrote 3 years ago, 4 years ago so it’s hard to pick out from such a big bunch of them”.
Molly’s newest track is her first of 2023 and is a beautifully created song with lyrics full of positivity and joy, the track titled ‘Beautiful People’ was massive for Molly as it was a track where she was able to speak on her queerness for the first time in her music “It was really nice, firstly to write a song like that, which was the first song I wrote about being queer, usually all my songs are about ‘I hate men’ and stuff and this one is kinda like the new era of me discovering more stuff about myself”, the video featured Molly alongside a number of her ‘Beautiful’ friends as her melodic voice let out lyrics such as “What about all the other beautiful people, that I’ll never get to kiss, I will never get to reminisce”. The track explores Molly’s sexuality with lyrics that explore her newfound queerness as well as acting as an anthem with the message that all are beautiful not only her friends in the video but all those listening.
Molly is a young female in the creative industry, there are a plethora of struggles that one may face in the industry she finds herself in with a load of closed doors and somewhat a lack of help. The 22-year-old is part of the fast-growing collective, Loud LDN, a group created to offer support to women and non-binary musicians, the group works as a sort of ecosystem with several members with different skill sets and talents all open to helping one another. Molly joined the group a month after its creation and was speaking to me on the day that they were celebrating the group’s 1st anniversary,” It’s such a good support network, we’ve got an event tonight, it’s amazing how far it’s come”.
Molly and I ended our conversation by talking about the future and what we can expect from the gifted singer, a topic she seemed happy to speak on and shared with me the plans of her upcoming project, “The second EP, it’s called ‘Worlds Within Worlds’, my whole universe, what I’ve been up to since I disappeared from releasing music for a little while”, the project is long-awaited with Molly’s debut EP having been released in 2021, Molly knows there has been a wait and is ready to return with “Bangers, I’m kind of experimenting with some different, not different genres just pushing myself” as well as new music the singer is more than ready to get back on stage “Im gonna start gigging again, soon”.
Molly told me earlier in our conversation “I guess it’s the only real thing I’ve been exceptional at, I’m incredibly average at everything else”, and I don’t know Molly personally to confirm that but the music she creates is exceptional from Track titles and cover art to Music video and finished project what she creates is special. The 22-year-old has had a somewhat stop-start career so far but her last words when talking to me were “[Imma] just be going at it and having a good time”.
