TRACK REVIEW: Griff - One Night — Music Musings & Such

TRACK REVIEW:

Griff

PHOTO CREDIT: Cal McIntyre for NOTION

One Night

9.5/10

The track, One Night, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcQjLopjcnM

GENRE:

Pop

ORIGIN:

Hertfordshire, U.K.

LABEL:

Warner

__________

ALTHOUGH her family and friends…

know her as Sarah Griffiths, we refer to her simply as Griff. The twenty-year-old Hertfordshire-born artist is one of the biggest talents we have. With a highly-acclaimed mixtape, One Foot in Front of the Other, released in June, she is on fine form! I am going to look at her latest single, One Night. That mixtape did receive so much praise. A rising star who has been lauded and tipped for greatness, Griff has definitely shown that she is going to be around for many years! A terrific talent who cannot be easily define (though I think of her music as largely being Pop), she sits alongside other superb young artists like Sigrid and beabadoobee - who are producing such brilliant and original music. Although Pop has changed radically through the years, one can still find artists who are making music that is uplifting and effortlessly listenable, yet it is layered and fresh. I am going to cover a few topics before getting down to reviewing the song, One Night. Whilst Griff is not a huge star at the moment, she is definitely a name that many people. It was not too long ago since she was relatively unknown. As we find out in this 2021 interview from The Forty-Five, Griff has thrown herself into her music. She is someone who wants to shape her own sound and direction:

“Hertfordshire-born Griff, is all that and more. In the 19 months since releasing her debut single – ‘Mirror Talk’’s balance of minimal production and pop hooks that get under your skin – she’s carved out her place as one of British pop’s next big things, growing more and more into the role with every track she puts out. It might be a part that’s coming to her naturally but, when she first started making music at the age of 11, becoming a musical icon wasn’t at the forefront of her mind.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Rossi for HUNGER

“It’s weird, I don’t think I ever really desired to be a pop star,” the now-20-year-old tells us. She’s sat in her music room at her parents’ home in the quiet village of Kings Langley, near Watford, guitars hung on the wall beside her and a piano behind her. “I just loved writing songs and I was really excited by the idea of being a songwriter – for other people.” As she got a little older and more experienced in her craft, what she was writing became so uniquely her that it felt like no one else could sing them.

Nevertheless, she’s now fully throwing herself into things, be that producing her own tunes, creating the set design for her shows, or making her own clothes for photoshoots, videos and anything else that requires her to look like a pop queen. For Griff, each of these creative strands feeds into building her own world – one that she hopes will always set her apart from the crowd.

“There’s so much of the same conveyor belt pop at the moment and it’s really overwhelming,” she explains. “If you go on [Spotify’s weekly new music playlist] New Music Friday every week, everything’s good but it’s the same. It’s another girl writing about heartbreak and looking the same.” Instead, she wants to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Lorde, Haim and Banks, and become an artist with her own distinctive sound. “Sonically, I think I’ll always write big pop melodies, but I always want to try and create something a bit more interesting in the production that throws it off a little bit”.

I wonder whether Griff has always wanted to be a musician. Most of us change our minds regarding our desired career. Raised in a Hertfordshire village, it must have seemed quite far-fetched being an acclaimed artist. The Guardian interviewed Griff back in January. She talked about how her parents (unconsciously) directed her towards music, and how she prefers to go down the D.I.Y. route:

“Superstardom seemed a long way off growing up in the sleepy village of Kings Langley in Hertfordshire. “Being half-Jamaican and half-Chinese, as a family we stood out like a sore thumb,” she says. “I’ve always felt a little bit different. But music has helped me embrace that. Now I can’t think of anything worse than being like everyone else.” That musical journey was aided by a mix of Taylor Swift (Griffiths learned to play Swift’s 2008 album Fearless when she was nine), Sundays spent at church, and her parents’ thoughts regarding timewasting. “They were like: ‘No TV in the week, do something practical, learn something,’ so I gravitated towards music.”

After teaching herself production using her brother’s copy of the music software Logic, a handful of early homemade demos caught the attention of a manager before she landed a record deal with Warners three years ago. “I didn’t know what a record deal was so I kept them waiting for a year – I wanted to finish school.” In fact, she started using her textiles A-level immediately, eschewing designer labels in favour of her own self-made outfits in early photoshoots. “I just love creating things,” she says of her DIY ethos. “I enjoy the challenge of envisioning something in your head and then making it come to life”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Adegboye for CLASH

I didn’t know this before I started researching for this review. The church plays a very big and personal role in Griff’s life. If it does not feed heavily into her sound and lyrics, faith is very important to Griff. I do not know of many young artists in this country who have mentioned religion and its role. In an interview with The Line of Best Fit, Griff discussed the role of the church in her music:

“A dumbfounding moment like that, would for many feel like a gift from God, and Griff especially uses her faith to navigate the surreal situations she’s finding herself in: “Growing up in church and putting my faith first has been a huge thing,” she tells me. “And really believing that whatever I’m pursuing in music is not just about me, but about putting my trust in who God is, and his plan for my future.” Music was heavily integrated into services at Hillsong – the church Griff attended – and it was here she received her first taste of performing live.

After refining her songwriting independently at home, Griff played her work to fellow musicians in the congregation, who subsequently introduced her to industry contacts. From there, aged just 13, she scored a management deal but held off releasing her debut single “Mirror Talk”, until she left school five years later.

Playing it characteristically cool, she refrained from telling her teachers or classmates when she later signed a record deal. “I think it’s the competitiveness in me”, she says. “I think I always thought it was cooler if people found out, not because I told them, but because they heard it on the radio or saw it on the TV, or something.” In the years prior, she did branch outside her music room into studio sessions, whilst doing her A Levels. In this induction into the industry, she discovered a distinguishing mark that she hadn’t even noticed she had”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jenny Brough for FLAUNT

There is another interview that I want to drop in where the church/its importance was mentioned. As Griff states in an interview with Women in Pop, the fact that attending church meant that she was always surrounded by music and song guided and inspired her:

“That's so uplifting. Obviously you're an incredible song writer and producer with one hell of an origin story. Can you just give us a little back story about how the music got from your bedroom to the worldwide stage and platform of our ears?

Totally. I was born and raised in church, so I think in that sense I was constantly surrounded by music every Sunday. I started learning piano from a very young age. Then my dad bought my brother [music software] Logic and I realised I could jump on there and write my own songs and record them. I started off when I was maybe 12 and wasn't any good, but I was just exploring the software and figuring out how I can write songs. I was doing that a lot when I was in school and was probably supposed to be doing my homework. Then I just started working with any producer that would work with me really. I was going into London meeting a new producer, doing sessions all the time just to try to figure out what this songwriting thing is. I think when you start to work with people that's how your name goes about a little bit more and hat's how I started getting a bit of interest. I was like ‘what the hell is a record label, what's a publishing deal?’ But these adults seem to be very interested in my music so I ended up signing my life away when I was like 17. I finished my A-levels and then last year I put out my first song ‘Mirror Talk’”.

There is no doubt that Griff is a role model. Even though she is very young and her best work is ahead of her, Griff is influencing others. Going back to that Women in Pop interview, maybe Griff did not have the sort of role models in her musical youth. She has sort of become who she needed from her musical influences:

“We're more than just a broken heart. That’s so true. Now we often hear from artists talking about the unattainability of pop stars growing up. They didn't see anyone that looked like them or they were singing about things they couldn't relate to. But again, you champion the loner, the outcast, the secret in all of us. In doing so, do you yet feel like you’re becoming the musical role model that may have been missing in your youth?

Oh woah. No. Absolutely not. I think I'm just doing what feels right and what I really enjoy doing. Do I feel like a role model? No. Not at all. But maybe I am, I don't know. Hopefully young girls are listening to my music and really connecting. I hope in a way that I'm a role model, but I don't feel that kind of weight or that privilege.

I think that makes you a role model because if you set out to do it it comes out contrived. You just mentioned the girls, how important is it within your own career trajectory to support young women and women in general in the industry?

It's so important. Especially as the thing everyone says to me is ‘you're a girl and you produce’. I'm always like is that even a big deal? But I think it is a big deal because you don't see that. I want to find more ways to just encourage girls to do it all. I want every girl to have the attitude that you can do it. No one really knows what they're doing, so you just got to go for it and be good at it. When you realise that no one knows what you're doing, suddenly you are qualified to do everything and it's great”.

PHOTO CREDIT: The Ivors Academy with Apple Music/PA

I am also want to come back to the interview from The Forty-Five. Quite a few people who have interviewed her have raised this subject of (Griff being) a role model. The fact that she produces her own tracks is something that will inspire many other artists:

“Although Griff says she doesn’t have any desire to be a role model, some of the Griffiths family’s young charges did try and copy what she was doing while they were living with her. “They always used to just burst in and start playing,” she laughs. “Or they’ll pick up something and pretend it’s a microphone because they’ve seen me singing.”

The 20-year-old’s family environment has generally always been supportive of her and her brothers pursuing creative endeavours. Their dad used to be a gospel singer who would “always sing in church back in his heyday” and pushed them in the direction of music. Griff started playing piano aged six, determined not to be left out of the lessons her elder siblings were getting. It was because of them she took her first steps into producing too, hijacking the copy of Logic her dad had bought for them so she could record the piano covers she learnt to kill time.

The fact that the rising musician has the ability to produce her own tracks is something that’s often celebrated about her – a far too rare instance of a woman in pop music possessing that know-how. She says she was blissfully unaware of the gender divide in that area until she started going to studio sessions, noting sadly that the assumption now is “when you go to the studio, the producer is a guy”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ulrike Rindermann for TANK Magazine

Before coming onto her 2019 E.P., Mirror Talk, I will round off this role model section by going back to the interview from The Line of Best Fit. Griff is not consciously setting out to be a role model. She hopes that girls and women from all backgrounds feel motivated and encouraged to do their own thing and pursue their dreams:

“The prospect of inspiring younger artists from under-represented backgrounds also excites Griff. But, at the same time, she hopes she won’t need to be that role model. “I don’t want to be the reason that suddenly young girls, young producers, or young Black girls, Chinese girls, wanna pursue what they wanna pursue,” she says. “I just want young girls to feel inspired and know that they can do it, just because they can by themselves, without having to know there is a whole generation before them who have.”

Professionally, however, it is 2021 that looks set to be Griff’s moment. Commencing with the announcement that she bagged 5th place on the BBC Sound of 2021: “It’s absolute madness,” she says. “It’s probably one of the most surreal things that has happened in my journey in music so far.”

The honour notoriously comes with a weight of pressure, and so too does the unmapped path a new artist like Griff finds laid ahead of her. “I think I have like a quiet fear that it could all just erupt tomorrow; like tomorrow I could get dropped,” she says. “I think there’s just that constant looming of unknown whenever you’re an artist and pursuing something creative like this.” But, with her classic composure, she adds: “But, I think that’s the fun of it. So, I’m not scared of the unknown”.

Before coming up-to-date regarding Griff’s work, I will go back to her excellent 2019 debut E.P., Mirror Talk. Specifically, the sense of autonomy on it. Rather than have hordes of people putting it together, Griff was the driving force. In this ELLE interview, Griff talked about how people perceive women as producers/men selling female Pop:

“She plays the guitar and piano, writes all her own songs, sews her own clothes (including her Brits dress), oh and she’s a self-taught producer. On the new EP, the only song she didn’t produce is ‘Black Hole’. For Griff, it’s very important that everyone knows this. She wants to give other women the confidence to explore producing given the staggering male dominance in the industry.

According to studies, only 12.5% of songwriters are women and of only 3% of music producers were women in the top UK 100 charts by British artists. Griff believes that if it had not been for her own music, she wouldn’t have had the confidence to step into production as a sole producer.

‘If you're a girl and you can sing or you’re musical, you are automatically the product, because the industry is built off of men selling female pop artists,’ says Griff. ‘No one ever looks at a woman and thinks, ‘Oh, maybe you're just the producer’, and that’s what pushes girls away from exploring it”.

A little random section I want to bring in is Griff’s musical loves. Sticking with that ELLE interview, she talked about (in June) what she has been listening to and who she really wants to collaborate with:

“What I’ve been listening to recently…

At the moment, it’s been Whitney [Houston] on repeat, mostly ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’. When I found out I won the Brit award, I took myself the cornfield behind my house, put on some Whitney and popped Prosecco. I usually only listen to music when I’m travelling so in the car it’s been ABBA and Haim. Their song ‘Now I’m In It’ came out when I was in LA so it helps me imagine sunnier times.

Lorde’s return has also made me revisit ‘Royals’. I remember hearing that and just thinking wow, she is so unbelievably talented to have made such minimal production so impactful, she just uses drums and vocals.

The first album I owned was…

Fearless by Taylor Swift. When you’re young and haven't experienced love yet, Taylor’s lyrics are so wonderfully heart-breaking and dramatic, so much fun. My parents gave me guitar lessons aged five in the hopes I’d go into classical music and do grades, but as soon as I learned chords it was a lost cause because I spent all my time learning Taylor Swift songs. Around the house my parents played a lot of R&B and soul; Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige and Kirk Franklin.

The first gig I went to was…

Melanie Martinez at the London club Heaven when I was 13 at Heaven. It’s mad because that’s where my London show is in December so I’ve really come full circle. I’ve put out so much music this year, so it's going to be so great to make them come to life finally, in a room with people.

I would absolutely love to work with...

Dave. I don't know how that would sound and it could be an awful idea, but I just think he's one of the best acts in the UK at the moment. His album Psychodrama is so beautifully structured and every single song is powerful”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Chick for Wonderland.

Griff is an award-winning artist who is being heralded as a phenomenal artist. Quite right. Even though she has won a BRIT award (as their Rising Star for this year), there is controversy and debate regarding the validity of awards. Whether there is tokenism involved. It is an interesting debate that takes nothing away from the much-deserved recognition that Griff received. When speaking with CLASH in May, the subject was raised:

“Wading through her most formative years as an artist – signing to music behemoths Warner Brothers aged 19 to securing a breakthrough BRIT Award a year later – Griff is self-aware of her situation. So, when our conversation naturally turns to the controversy of award shows, the singer all too knowingly nods, smiling. “I think everyone knows these things are political but for some reason, we're still addicted to engaging in it. Even though we all know it's bullshit, I’m still over the moon that I won a BRIT Award,” she tells me.

Pausing to think, the singer picks on the much-debated criticism of award industry tokenism. “It's a weird double-sided coin and with tokenism. I get that these institutions have been run for years and are now experiencing this rapid increase in progressive thought of this new generation and are trying to catch up, so when they try and catch up it feels like tokenism and I have grace for that,” she adds.

But, for the 20-year-old creative, award shows aren’t her defining line. If anything, they’re quite the opposite. “As an artist, I never got into it to win a Grammy or win a BRIT, so I don't hold any of it that close. If you are part of it it's fucking incredible but if you're not, it doesn't change the fact that I’m still trying to do what I do regardless of it.” She adds: “There's still a long way to go, but I'm encouraged by how much change I’ve experienced. The fact that with my nominations for the BRITS included Pa Salieu, Rina Sawayama, and me who's half Jamaican and half Chinese. We get frustrated. It's slow but it is changing”

As our coveted award ceremonies become increasingly contested by onlookers and dejected artists, many turn to the question of personal privilege to redress equality in the artistic playing field. “When you're a person of colour who has grown up around middle-class white people your whole life, I’m conscious of it. I know that I’ve grown up within a certain level of privilege. But also, I don't have the privilege because I’m half Jamaican and half Chinese, especially given the Black Lives Matter movement and Asian hate recently,” Griff reflects. “It's shocking how many people would look at my heritage now and still not be okay with it, but, at the same time, I've grown up in a middle-class area. I'm standing on the shoulders of a lot of sacrifices that my mum, as a refugee, has given”.

One Foot in Front of the Other is a wonderful mixtape that hints at what a debut album might sound like. I love the songwriting through the mixtape, though it is the range of production sounds and styles that interests me most. In this Billboard interview, Griff revealed some of her influences for various songs (in her role as producer):

“I still think songwriting is the thing that I love most,” says Griff, who wrote or co-wrote all seven songs on One Foot in Front of the Other and has a production credit on six of the tracks. Originally conceiving of herself as a songwriter for other artists when she was a teen, Griff says that she quickly changed course while meeting with record labels anxious to bring her on board. “I was being offered publishing deals, but also record deals,” she explains. “They're telling me that they want to put down money and sign me as a developing artist, and that's a huge thing to say no to.”

After signing to Warner Records two years ago, Griff began releasing a series of singles, including the spacious stomp-along “Mirror Talk” and the contemplative piano ballad “Good Stuff”; she reached an artistic and commercial peak last January with “Black Hole,” a pristine breakup single that became Griff’s first top 20 hit in the U.K. As she worked on the songs for her debut mixtape in lockdown, Griff also polished her approach to production for the project, which began with looking up YouTube tutorials as a teenager.

Production influences for the mixtape were wide-ranging: “A song like ‘Shade of Yellow,’ it was like, me turning on my Imogen Heap brain,” she explains. “I was listening to a lot of Imogen Heap, and getting the vocoder out. Lorde was a big [influence] — ‘Heart of Gold,’ for me it wasn't a version of ‘Royals,’ but I've always loved ‘Royals’ because it was just drums and vocals, basically. And so ‘Heart of Gold’ is basically just drums and vocals. Haim was a big inspiration, too. But I just try and use odd sounds, percussive elements and orchestral sounds”.

I am going to come to the review soon enough. It is worth providing this build and backstory, so that one gets a bigger and clearer picture of Griff as an artist and person. Sticking with her mixtape, Griff was asked about its themes and creation by Harper’s Bazaar:

“It seems like Griff is already doing things her own way. Her new seven-track mixtape One Foot in Front of the Other, which she dropped in June, features songs about healing after heartbreak that range from unique, sticky indie-pop melodies to melancholy ballads. Her style looks like a visual artist’s dream: voluminous dresses in bold hues, structural headpieces, a thick bubble ponytail that falls past her waist. She even made her own outfit for her BRIT performance. (“I used to do it all the time,” the former fashion and textiles student says of making her own clothes.)

Your mixtape is titled One Foot in Front of the Other, and you use a metaphor of walking a tightrope in the titular song. It's also what you're doing in your cover art. What drew you to this imagery, and what does it mean to you?

It kind of just happened. The song is just about, when you get older, your body heals a little less and things start going wrong with your body physically, and I think it's the same emotionally. When you do fall over emotionally and you have a setback, getting back up feels like you're walking a tightrope, and it feels like real vulnerability, but all you can do is put one foot in front of the other. It felt like the right sentiment for the whole mixtape.

I was like, "I kind of really want it for the artwork." And so I learned how to walk a tightrope for the photo shoot, which was quite amazing. With everything I do, there's a slight level of drama. But I think it was fun to do it that way. It felt like the right emotion of what my whole mixtape is; whether it's me writing songs about my love life, my relationship with my family, my future, whatever, it's that same kind of tightrope-walking feeling where you're a bit uncertain and you're a bit cautious, but the only thing you can do is [keep going].

PHOTO CREDIT: Zachary Chick for Wonderland.

I feel like there were a lot of themes of healing and recovery throughout this mixtape. Was it a collection of songs that you had worked on over the years, or was there an event that spurred this writing process?

They were all kind of written over lockdown. It's not like I went through this major heartbreak, even though it kind of sounds like I did. But they were all written in that place of solitude from my front room while I was trying to get in touch with my feelings. So there wasn't any triggering event, but somehow, all of the songs are still really written from the heart, and that's that, like, tone of fragility and recovery. It somehow felt like what I was feeling at the time.

With the last song, "Walk," the mixtape does end on an encouraging, hopeful note. Was that intentional?

Definitely. I think it's funny, "One Foot in Front of the Other" is like the recovery song after "Black Hole." It's part two. I guess the mixtape goes on this journey where you're finding comfort in something else and figuring out other relationships, and then you kind of end on "Walk," where it's this optimistic thing. I was listening to it all again, and it's almost as if "Walk" is someone else telling the voice of who was singing "One Foot in Front of the Other," like, … "You've got it." So I think that's the subconscious narrative throughout the whole thing.

You wrote and produced the mixtape mostly in your room over the last year. Did you feel like you were distraction free, or was it harder to get in the zone?

Both. It was definitely hard. I was excited at first because it's how I started writing music and I [thought], It's gonna be nice because literally no one can bother me and I'm just gonna write songs. And then, I came [home] and I didn't feel inspired at all, because I guess you're just looking at the same four walls. I didn't feel inspired, so it took a second to get there. You write many bad songs for one good song. Then at the same time, it's kind of my safest place to write, and it's where I feel like I write the most unique stuff. "Earl Grey Tea," for example, I don't think I would ever have written that with other writers, because it's so personal. I think eventually I found my rhythm.

What do you hope people take away from One Foot in Front of the Other?

I hope people feel whatever kind of sadness or heartbreak or emptiness that they feel I've expressed and have almost put into words. And I hope they feel like that's been related to in the lyrics. But then, I also hope that they feel some sense of hope and that when they listen to it, there's just a warmth. … I just want people to feel emotion when they listen to it, whether it's happy or sad or warm or nostalgic. I want people to feel and relate to my songs in their own ways”.

I think having control of her music is important to Griff. By writing and producing, there is something more real and authentic about her music. So many artists have others creating songs that are meant to be personal. That is not the case with Griff. She prides herself on being true to her own voice. Going back to that CLASH interview, we get a sense of what Griff is trying to achieve with her music:

“Keeping intuitively engaged in the arts is a constant when it comes to Griff. A conqueror of music production, writing, and fashion, the rising star’s journey captures the image of a young woman coming into her own under the gaze of effortful, melodramatic pop. No matter what eclectic, heartfelt swelling spectacle the singer convincing pulls off next — she confesses to “actually never having my heart broken — the likes of ‘Black Hole’ stands as a shimmering, playful example of open-ended penmanship that ushers in layered meanings to the mundane; “It's up to interpretation as to how much you want to look into it or if you just want to dance to it.”

Emotional accessibility is something that permeates Griff’s work. A quick listen to her previous hits ‘Good Stuff’ and ‘Love Is A Compass’ showcases the singer’s knack for creating her self-described “emotional, uplifting pop”. If anything, the trailblazing musician embodies the mature, moody melodies and confident style found in her female favourites. “When I look at Taylor Swift, I don't know if anyone was speaking to being a young girl in such an honest, profound way which was inspiring for me,” she explains. “I think it’s a similar thing with Lorde. I love how she has managed to do pop, but keep it left. It's the same with HAIM as well; it's got that really strong girl power feel as they’re in complete control of all their music — it's really authentic.”

Inspired by the intimate sounds of styles of her most appreciated pop acts, the Taylor Swift-approved artist has established her songwriting ethos. “I think the best songs come from when you bare your soul a little bit. I don't think I can put anything out that doesn't feel like it's authentic to me”.

So far, there is a lyric video for One Night. I guess an alternative video will follow soon. The tone and sound of the song switches. At the start, we a scratchy riff and a booming percussive beat that has definitely weight and emotional heft. Griff’s voice is smoky and quite heavy with emotion: “How long can I leave the lights in the ceiling on?/And the static from the TV keeps me company till I'm gone/'Cause I rock back and forth/Reciting words that I've said wrong/I swear I've been doing fine/When I'm busy and got things going on/Oh, so girl, what you running from?”. Even though it is a lyric video, Griff appears and is singing. We get to see the emotions on her face and feel a sense of what the song is about. Those lyrics make me think about what has influenced Griff. There has been an event or something that has hit the heroine quite hard. She is going through something at the moment and doubting herself. A lost love or strained relationship seems to be on her mind. The chorus changes to this energised and huge sound. There is this rush of positivity and light that takes the song up to a new gear. The vibrancy and rush of the composition backs words of doubt and regret: “Oh, maybe there's something in the midnight hours/The midnight hours, you know/And maybe there's something in the dead of night/When I'm sleeping alone/Where I always see your face/God, I wish I didn't though/Can I have one night, one night, one night/Where it's just me alone?”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cal McIntyre for NOTION

One Night is fresh and has a sound that reminds me of Pop and Dance from the 1990s and early-2000s. I am not sure who has got inside of Griff’s head and what is causing this stress. That message of wanting to have one night without recurring visions and questions is very powerful. Griff asks herself some very searching questions: “Is it 'cause I've been feeling guilty all along?/Or is it the gods just tryna tell me to move on?’/'Cause while you're haunting me, that's what you've done/Oh, so girl, what you running from? (Oh)”. With a euphoric vocal and a heavy beat/bass, One Night seems designed to make one dance; to bring people together and create celebration. A lot of great Pop songs have lyrics that are pretty heavy or have anxiety at the heart that is balanced against a vocal and composition that is much more giddy and sunny. It is an interesting emotional and sonic blend. Griff definitely needs a release and sense of freedom: “So I, I know what it feels like/So I can wake up in the daylight/And my chest ain't heavy/'Cause you're not there with me/Tell me when that I will be”. It is clear that there has been this breakdown and things that Griff and her estranged lover have said. Maybe some bad decisions. There does seem to be lingering feelings of affection among the pain and doubt. Whilst one can dig into the lyrics and ask whether Griff has found resolution and peace, you also get carried away on the tide of the sound. Such is its energy and positive spirit, one is helpless but to move along and surrender. A song that you can tell Griff has put a lot of effort and herself. One Night is another fantastic and accomplished song from a young woman who is among the best Pop artists of today.

Prior to wrapping up, there are a few other things that I need to cross off of the list. There is going to be talk about a debut album. Having released a mixtape a couple of months ago, Griff will want time to write an album at her own pace. I will come back to the interview from The Forty-Five that I referenced at the start. They asked Griff about a debut album:

“And has she thought ahead to what a debut album might look like? “It’s just so much music, isn’t it?” she grins. “I want to release an album when everyone’s ready to digest that – especially now we don’t have attention spans for that much music, unless you’re obsessed with an artist.” Though she admits, despite being a child of the streaming generation, full-length records are still important to her and she wants her debut to be “one of the most thought-through pieces of music that I ever put out”.

It’s an ambition that taps into what Griff calls her “overall goal” – to put out the best music possible. “I want to write songs that feel timeless and like they’ve impacted lots of people,” she says. In both her tunes and her visuals, she has big aspirations. She wants to become known as someone who is always “a little bit ahead or a little bit more interesting” than the trends of the day. “It’s such an impossible task,” she laughs. Based on the evidence so far, though, she’s very much on the right track”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Riccardo Castano for GLAMOUR

I will end by mentioning an artist that Griff is pretty keen to collaborate with: Taylor Swift. Perhaps it is not a surprise that Swift is a fan of Griff’s music. Going back to that Billboard interview, the subject of Swift arose. Griff met her at the BRITs:

“I’m so in awe of Griff- you GOTTA go listen to the EXCELLENT Shade of Yellow solo written and produced by Griff,” Taylor Swift posted on her Instagram story on June 18, the day One Foot in Front of the Other was released. One month after meeting Swift at the Brit Awards, the pop superstar’s co-sign of her debut project gave Griff a much-needed shot of confidence.

“I was so down that morning, just really anxious,” she explains. “Like, ’S--t, it's out. I can't tell if it's good or bad anymore, because I've heard it so many times.’” Reading Swift’s message about “Shade of Yellow” allowed the singer-songwriter to exhale. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. Taylor likes it’”.

I shall leave it there. Griff is surely one of our most promising and prolific talents. She is someone who throws herself into the songwriting and production. With many years in front of her, I feel that she can take time regarding a debut album. There is this thing of people wanting material all of the time! If rushed, she might not produce an album that is meaningful and as good as she wants. One Night is a typically excellent song that highlights her limitless talent! I shall leave it there. Go and follow Griff and listen to as much of her music as possible. A sensational artist who is here for the long stay, it has been great reviewing…