FEATURE:
Spotlight
interesting interviews with the superb and must-hear Nell Mescal from this year. I am not going to mention her acting brother, Paul. That is where you mighty recognise the surname for. Make no mistake: the Irish songwriter should be spotlighted and applauded on her own merit and individuality. When you listen to Mescal’s music, you know this is someone born to play and sing. Born in Kildare, Ireland, I can imagine her household being filled with music and lively conversation. You can feel and hear this natural confidence in her voice! Indeed, Nell Mescal has been singing all of her life. Like so many of the best voices, she performed at school and in choirs. Although she has been writing songs since she was thirteen, it was when the pandemic struck that Mescal decided to pursue music as a career. I first experienced her music through the 2022 single, Graduating. Spurred and inspired by a huge amount of love from fans, this natural curiosity and passion, together with intrigue from the press, means that this year has been the most prolific yet. Singles In My Head and Homesick mark her out as a remarkable talent - and someone to keep your eye on closely. I predict Nell Mescal will headline stages very soon! Her latest single, Teeth, is in my top five singles of the year. She is someone I am very interesting in hearing an album from. That would be a remarkable listen. I want to come to some interviews from this year, so that you can find out about Nell Mescal and discover where she has come from – and where she wants her career to head. Links on how to follow her on social media are at the bottom of this feature. There are a load of tour dates for next month. Go and get a ticket if you can. Also go and listen to as much of her music as possible.
I’m going to drop in some text from five different interviews. First – and to get some background about her earlier years – The Line of Best Fit spoke with Nell Mescal earlier in the year. Proclaiming her an artist on the rise, it is evident that she has caught the eyes and ears of some of music’s most influential and prominent sources early on. Testament to her talent and how her music is impacting people:
“Originally from Maynooth, Ireland, Mescal made the call to quit school and head to London to pursue music full-time at 18. She’d tried the city out for the summer before her final year, and once she started school again in the fall, she knew she needed to leave home for good and get back as soon as possible. It’s been almost two years since then, and though she’s never looked back, it hasn’t always been easy—no big change ever is. As she tells, me it’s only recently that she feels she’s finally hit her stride. This is the journey she reflects on recent single, “Homesick.” Though sonically upbeat, the guitar-driven indie-pop track channels the feelings of discomfort that accompany living on your own for the first time.
“I mean, the song’s about being homesick and not wanting to tell anyone because they’ll just be like, ‘Oh, come on, there’s no shame in coming home,’” Mescal explains. “I think for me, personally, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to be like, ‘No, I can do it.’ And thank God I stuck it out.” In many ways, sticking it out is often the only option. After leaving and living through the kinds of transformational experiences Mescal has, trying to go back can feel futile. This is not necessarily because the place you came from is no longer there, but because you’re different enough that you won’t be able to exist in it quite the same way anymore.
As Mescal tells me, she grew up in a creative household. “My Dad would try and teach me to play the guitar," she tells me. "It didn’t work because we would fight. It was like him trying to teach me maths, like it wasn’t working. But they would always be listening to country music.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Brennan Bucannan
Mescal household names included the likes of Mary Chapin Carpenter, and even if the guitar lessons were at first a dead end, Nell still enrolled herself in other singing and music lessons for most of her young life. The possibility of being an artist in her own right, however, only occurred to her after she discovered British songwriter Birdy. “It really hit me that (music) was something I definitely needed to do when I started listening to Birdy and when I started finding my own music taste away from what my family would listen to in the car” Mescal says. “When I found Birdy, I would just listen to her on repeat. I have all of her albums. And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be her.’”
Much of Mescal’s own musical and writing style she credits to her influences and peers. She cites early favorites as Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana, while more recent obsessions include Alex G and Ethel Cain. When I ask how she would describe her sound to new listeners, she struggles with the question not because of a lack of inspiration, but rather because, as a young musician, she feels open to drawing on and experimenting with as much as she can as quickly as possible. “I feel like I haven’t boxed myself in,” she says. “Every song I write feels like a totally different thing to me.” If she had to pick a genre now, though, she tells me she’d have to settle on indie-pop or alternative as her current label. “But I think it’s ever changing,” she adds.
This fluidity and openness sits in line with Mescal’s writing process as well. She usually has multiple songs on the go, taking any random moment that comes along to sit alone at her piano to try and get out certain verses or bridges to send to her manager. “I would say I’m a very impatient writer,” she notes. “I want to feel like I’ve tied up the loose ends as quickly as possible. It doesn’t need to be done, but I just need to know that it’s got its path and we can put it away and start again on a new one.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Brennan Bucannan
As of right now, much of her lyrical repertoire focuses on the hardships that come with friendships that have gone wrong. Another key area for her is writing about home and family. “I think,” she says, interrupting her own train of thought, “maybe I would like to start writing about things that are a bit nicer. Maybe the friendships that I really cherish. But at the moment, it’s been kind of that whole moving away thing.”
Between the ages of 13 and 15 was when Mescal got her proper start in songwriting. Using a voucher that her mom had given her as a Christmas present, she got some of her tracks recorded. From that early batch of work, she published “Crash” and “Déjà Vu” on streaming platforms, though she later took them down when she decided she wanted a fresh artistic start prior to releasing her song “Graduating” last July.
Still, it was through these songs that she made her first imprint on the music world and got connected with her now manager, Tara, and some of the other individuals with whom she maintains working relationships. “At the time when I was releasing those songs and not really understanding what the craft was, what my craft was,” Mescal says. “After meeting (Tara) I decided to come to London, so it was such a wild experience … Then I went in (to sessions) with people and learned about what it all meant. Then I decided I wanted to take those songs down and start fresh with ‘Graduating,’ which was, for me, the best choice”.
Before moving on – and apologies: I am sourcing interviews from different months and mixing them up, so the narrative and chronology might be out of sync -, i-D chatted with Nell Mescal in March, ahead of the release of the video for her massive and standout single, In My Head. It is another prime cut from an artist who keeps putting out musical gold:
“When she told her parents she wanted to pursue music full-time, she expected some pushback. Instead, they rallied behind her. “They’ve always been ridiculously supportive. I was the only sibling who was into the arts from a really young age. That came for Paul a bit later,” she says. “They were like, okay, let’s draft an email to the principal. I was like ‘Oh okay, I didn’t mean to do that!’”
If it happened quicker than Nell expected, the three years since, has been more of the same. She’s skyrocketed in social media popularity, and now has over 45k TikTok followers, and 60k on Instagram. The success of debut single “Graduating”, followed by indie thriller “Homesick”, had a hand in this. Since then, she’s performed her first live gig on Ireland’s The Late Late Show, performed with Phoebe Bridgers in Brixton (“one of the craziest moments of my life”) and is about to embark on a festival circuit tour. She’s also releasing her anticipated third single, “In My Head”, a moody, nostalgic track co-written with friend Kai Bosch, that ruminates on a universal experience: being drawn back to someone we know is bad for us, or the one person we can’t seem to shake out of our head or heart. It comes with a nostalgic, Cranberries-style video directed by Dora Paphides, which also drops today. “We always try and reach for nostalgia,” Nell says.
PHOTO CREDIT: Lewis Vorn
“It’s a step away from what I tend to write. I write about friendships a lot. And this is the first song about relationships. We all have that one person that we’ll go back to and continually fall into the loop of like, this is bad for us. But is it our fault? I definitely talk a lot about trying to criticise myself and trying to figure out and pinpoint all the bad stuff that I might be doing. I feel like the song is quite sad. The bridge feels like this revenge point, or the point where it's like, okay, it's not our fault. We're in this loop because of this person. And we need to break away from it. And so we kind of end the song on this high. It's all a lesson too. But it's nice when there's a bit of hope thrown in there, I think. And it's not just miserable for three minutes and 30 seconds of life.”
“In My Head” is very much sad girl music, there’s no escaping that, but with a hopeful surge in the bridge, Nell’s telling us we can break the pattern today so we won’t repeat it tomorrow. The sad girl influence comes from her own musical faves: Lucy Dacus, Gracie Abrams, Birdie, SZA and patron saint of the sad girls, Taylor Swift. Luckily, she’s also a huge musical theatre fan, which alleviates some of the ennui. It’s hard to be online without being exposed to sad-girl-jams though, especially on TikTok. “I don't feel well-known on those apps,” says Nell of her online and offline following. “It's very weird. I feel like the only time you kind of feel the effect of their eyes on you, or when you see them in the flesh, is in a show. When you go and see those people in person, it's like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. Looking at numbers on a phone is just draining. You can't be doing that all the time.”
“I definitely don't deal with burnout very well,” she adds. “I do need to get better at it. And I need to go away and figure that out. Because the song’s out on Friday, I've been on my phone all week, just making sure everything's right and perfect. Right now I can afford to do that. But like, I'll definitely need to stop and figure myself out soon.”
It’s possible though, that you might know Nell Mescal without knowing her music. Nell’s brother, after all, is Paul Mescal. It’s impossible to escape mentioning this, not least because she recently went viral for a video reacting to his Oscar nomination, and she’s just returned from LA — an experience she can only describe as “bizarre” — where she celebrated that nomination with the rest of the Mescal family. Her feelings on the presence of Paul in coverage of her own music career are clearly conflicted. “I mean, I can't be too mad at it, because it's been my fault,” she says. “Like, I can't hide how happy I was for my brother. I guess I didn't think [the video] was ever going to be as big as it was, and that very quickly changed. And I was like, oh, shit, I don't know what to do here. But I think that, when it comes to stuff like that, you kind of just have to grit your teeth a bit and just say, okay, it's fine. And hope that one day, people don’t use my brother's name as a headline. But people just don't really know what to do. They’ll be like, just pair them together. It's fine”.
There are a few more interviews that I want to pop in. In March, NYLON shot the breeze with an artist who was gaining serious momentum. Six months later, and Nell Mescal is at the stage where she is getting so much buzz. Many predicting she will headline stages and be in the mainstream before too long. I think that, as she is still so young (twenty), this is an artist who is happy putting out singles. Pleased to have this dedicated fanbase. That said, I can well see major artists like Taylor Swift heading her way for possible collaboration:
“Were there any artists at the time inspiring you to take that leap?
Birdy was that one, so getting to open for Birdy is incredible because all my early songs are very much Birdy, 1000 percent. She was a huge draw to the writing side of things. She was just so honest and was very much saying sentences that really made me feel something, but were also really beautiful. I feel like I hadn't really had an artist that did that for me up till that point. I didn't understand music enough to be like, “Oh, songs can actually mean something other than just you like listening to the song.” It's nice to have the escape of “I'm just listening to the song and I'm not going to really care too much about the meaning.” But I think Birdy was one of the first people that I was like, “Oh my God, this is actual poetry.”
When you decided to start in the industry, what were those steps for you?
It was weird, because I started in COVID and had my first song out literally February of 2020, and I did it myself through CD Baby, which I did for the next three songs. I just released the songs and was expecting it to just be my friends and family [listening]. And then that circle opened up a little bit, and I met the right people through it. I was very lucky that it happened quick enough, but not too quick… I was sweating for sure. I was absolutely like, “I need someone to email me,” or “I need to send more things out.” But I was very lucky that I also was kind of protected in the space of having that time to really just be putting stuff out by myself and trying to figure it out that way, and not having too much pressure. I was very glad when I got an email from Tara, my manager.
Do you have a process for writing?
When I'm writing with other people, it feels like there's a pressure that's kind of welcome to be like, “Okay, imposter syndrome has to stay away.” So you have to just hit them with something and keep going. I've been quite lucky. I haven't really been experiencing too much writer's book at the moment. I've been maybe too impatient where I'm just any lyric, just put on paper. When I'm writing by myself, it will be a much longer process, which is also very welcome because there are just certain songs need more time.
Have you gotten to the stage where you are starting to write specifically with the end goal of an album?
I think I'm always kind of writing for a bigger project. I don't know what project it is, but I think that there's certain songs that I'm like, “okay, this is going there, and I'm okay if this doesn't see daylight for two more years.” Other songs, I need to have its moment [immediately], mostly because I'm impatient. It's an exciting time right now, and I think that I'm writing songs that I'm really proud of, especially this one. “In My Head” is my favorite song I've ever released, so I'm really excited for it”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Lee Malone
A couple more interviews to go. In July, WhyNow spoke with Nell Mescal. In addition to comparing her sound to the likes of Margaret Glaspby and Maggie Rogers, they also asked about the darker side of the industry. Mescal has faced discrimination, misogyny, and sexism. It is something (sadly) most women in the industry have to deal with – and, in 2023, why should we still be having this discussion?! In any regard, the strong and massively accomplished Nell Mescal is ploughing forward and showing why she is going to be a massive name soon:
“As a young woman in music, Mescal says she’s seen the darker side of the industry, too, especially with the misogyny aimed at up-and-coming female artists. She says she’s not had much of it herself – on account of people being “too busy” accusing her of “being a nepo-baby” – but says she and other female artists are trying to support one another when that misogyny does arise.
“We’re all quite young and a lot of us are female, non-binary people that are just kind of coming up together. I think we’re all a shoulder to lean on,” Mescal explains. “It’s such an easy thing to do, to shit on women that are good. People love to fucking tear women down when we’re just trying to get a foot in the door.” Mescal says she’s determined not to be put off by any of it. “We’re women and we’re strong. We’ll just keep going… but people need to stop shitting on women that are really talented and work really hard for a living.”
One person who offered Mescal some early support was musician Phoebe Bridgers, who dated Mescal’s brother Paul (they’ve rumoured to have since split but have not commented on this publicly). It culminated in Bridgers asking Mescal to perform with her during a sold-out show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. Mescal took to the stage to perform ‘Georgia’ from Bridgers’ 2017 album, Stranger in the Alps.
PHOTO CREDIT: David Reiss
“It was an incredible experience,” Mescal says, recalling the moment she nervously stepped out on stage with Bridgers. “I don’t think I was expecting the audience to be as receptive as they were. It’s always been one of my favourite songs since I first heard it. Getting to do that with that crowd… well, I think I started crying immediately, as soon as everyone cheered when I walked out,” she laughs at the memory. “It was probably one of the coolest moments of my life so far. It was just really fun,” she says of the “pinch yourself” moment.
On the flip side of moments like this, Mescal says she’s under no illusion about how hard it is for young artists to break through in the industry right now as they face more and more barriers to making music than ever before. It’s a difficult financial climate for new artists to make ends meet, she says, from the “merch cuts” – referring to venues taking a portion of artist’s merchandise sales – to “Spotify not really paying their artists.”
“Everything is so expensive too,” she says, talking about the increased cost of touring. “I just hope that I’m still doing it in the next 50 years and that I can still afford to do it. I hope I earn some money and that people still want to hear the songs that I’m singing. I think longevity is the key and [I want] to keep doing it for as long as I can”.
I am going to wrap up with one of the biggest and most prestigious interviews Nell Mescal has been involved with. I am going to go back to the February/March 2023 edition of Rolling Stone UK. I wanted to end with an older interview, as we can see how far Nell Mescal has come since then. She achieved all she set out to do, though she has exceeded all of that. She is now an artist who is primed for superstardom:
“In what Mescal admits to being her biggest pinch-me moment of the past 12 months, she joined Bridgers on stage at Brixton Academy last summer to perform her 2017 track ‘Georgia’. “I just got a text from Phoebe and immediately thought it was a joke. I called my mum and she started screaming,” she recalls. “I said yes immediately and then was frantically trying to convince myself I knew all the words and getting ready. It was a quick thing, but the best experience.”
Although that brief cameo with Bridgers marked one of Mescal’s biggest live experiences to date, she says that hitting the road with Phoebe Green has allowed her to work on the performance side of her craft while also changing the relationship she has with some of her more emotional songs.
“My drummer Meg was recently saying the difference between me on the first day of tour and [the] last day was just incredible. It’s been such a catalyst for me to just be like, ‘I wrote these for a reason and I’m singing them for a reason.’”In turn, it has also helped liberate her from the personal pain that inspired tracks like ‘Graduating’.“It does take a while but you feel that click eventually happen. It happened during this live tour, it stopped feeling like a chore and I could have more fun with it.”
She is also under no illusion that some fans will attend her shows purely because of the Mescal name, but she is entirely confident that she’ll win them round as new members of her fanbase.
“I’ve been singing my whole life. Paul is incredible and it’s been amazing to see what’s happened for him in the past few years. People might come because of his name, but if they stay then it’s because they like the music.”
And although her brother might be carving out a career as a Hollywood regular, Mescal has conclusive proof that she —as the youngest of three talented siblings —is in fact their parents’ favourite.
“I’m on both my parents’ lock screen,” she jokingly admits. “I’m the baby girl.”
For 2023, Mescal promises more music and a string of buzzy performances —including slots at the industry-heavy Great Escape.“I’ve been listening to a lot of music that has been all over the place and I don’t want to be tied down,” she says.
“I just can’t wait to release ‘Homesick’ straight after ‘Graduating’, because it shows an entirely new spectrum to my sound. That’s what I’m aiming for”.
I really love – if it wasn’t clear! – Nell Mescal’s music. I have seen interviews she has given and she is so accessible and charming. A real professional, her music is unique but relatable. I think all of this means that she will be releasing superb music for many more years to come. I was intending to publish this feature next week. I couldn’t really wait to praise and spotlight the stunning Nell Mescal! If she is new to your ears, then do make sure you spend some time immersed…
IN her wonderful music.
___________
Follow Nell Mescal
