Q&A: Progressive Soul Singer Madeleine Embraces Self-Love on New EP ‘Sun Daughter’
☆ BY KRISTIAN GONZALES ☆
Photo by Martyna Bannister
TWO YEARS SINCE HER DEBUT EP — Colour Me, alternative soul singer-songwriter Madeleine pulls back the curtains on her emotional state with her second project, Sun Daughter. Following the bittersweet tales of love, loss, and lingering memories from her debut, she reveled in the comfort of nature as therapy, using lyrical imagery of sunlight to embrace self-love and healing on this project.
Coming up in London and initially sparking her artistic flame in The BRIT School and Goldsmiths, University of London, Madeleine made her bones in the city’s R&B scene, learning the craft of pop-friendly songwriting while touring alongside mainstays such as Arlo Parks and Poppy Ajudha. Thereafter, she channeled her affinity for beats-driven jazz and neo-soul influenced poetics of Lianne La Havas and Flying Lotus into an electronic soul sound with Colour Me. Madeleine continues her organic yet modern approach, crafting the sonically warm atmosphere of Sun Daughter through jam sessions alongside Jack Robson and John Jones with a healthy layering of live and electronic drums, bass, rich synths, and raw piano.
Gaining buzz from BBC Introducing, Jazz FM, and The Line of Best Fit with the singles “Hold Her” and “See Me Too,” Madeleine is primed for an even bigger breakthrough as the UK’s next great voice of neo-soul.
Following her performance at London’s 91 Living Room venue on April 20, Luna caught up with Madeleine to get the low down on the creation of Sun Daughter. Read the interview below.
LUNA: Given Sun Daughter’s connection to the Earth in regards to spirituality and mental health, when did you find your comfort in nature as a support for your wellness and as an artistic inspiration?
MADELEINE: Sun Daughter really connects with my love for nature and creating as an artist. There’s something so healing and pure about nature that seems to come out in my writing. Making music has always been a form of therapy for me, so the two worlds seem to entwine and find themselves at the center of my music. I can’t really pinpoint when my comfort in nature first started, but it’s honestly been there for a long time. There was a point when I used to write really abstract naturalistic imagery that didn’t really make any sense, but it was beautiful to me. Maybe it’s the beauty in nature that honestly mirrors the beauty I find in sound, so that could be why they overlap. Sun Daughter is really an ode to the natural world and our connection to the Earth, as children of the sun.
LUNA: Through the sense of your environment and how it influences your work, how does the changing nature of weather and seasons shift the emotional tones and honesty within your music?
MADELEINE: I think as creatives, we’re so susceptible to our environment and what happens around us. We’re constantly absorbing things; music, art, feelings, people, social media, and everything we’re exposed to probably finds its way into the things we say and the music we make.
My environment has been constantly changing over the last couple years, as I’ve done a bunch of touring with Arlo Parks and [have been] really learning to write and hone in on myself on the move has been a crazy journey, and I think it’s found its way into my music. A lot of the artists I listen to are from the US, like DJ Harrison, Flwr Chyld, Makaya McCraven, Salami Rose Joe Louis, and those kinds of influences — [they] are so entwined with my travels over the last couple years.
Anyway, a bit of a tangent, but this really ties in with changing seasons and weather. I’m super influenced by that. “Hold Her” came together really quickly during the summer, in the middle of the festival season, and I think you can hear the drive and warmth of that time in the single. I was feeling super inspired after seeing so many incredible artists perform live after months and it really fed into the feeling of the track.
LUNA: On “Hold Her,” there’s a cautionary message to a lover on full commitment. Does this track represent the early stages of healing and cleansing oneself?
MADELEINE: I think it’s about that feeling when you finally let go and open yourself up to the love that someone’s giving you. The narrative kinda switches a little throughout the track, but it’s as if I was speaking to someone who can’t commit to a relationship. It’s me telling them to “hold her” before it’s too late. “Hold Her” also feels like an ode to femininity and self-love, and I was really speaking about learning to honor the person you love. It’s about finding that respect and trust in each other.
LUNA: There’s a feeling of serenity on the track “See Me Too,” as you share your purest self to your partner. Compared to more intense songs you’ve made, did you subconsciously think about the importance of showing your audience a more tender side of you?
MADELEINE: “See Me Too” was actually the first track I made for Sun Daughter, and I think it was the first moment of peace I’d found [in my writing] for a long time. We recorded this track in the studio, and the lyrics were almost a reaction to the lushness and warmth of the song; it gave me such a strong feeling. I’d been dealing with a really crazy break up when I released my first EP Colour Me, and there were emotions of resentment and anger that had come out during this project, so maybe I’d found that emotional release by the time I wrote this track. I think most of the lyrical choices I make are subconscious. Not to mean that I don’t think them through, because I probably spend the most time on lyrics, but I try to avoid defining the meaning of my music before I’ve made it.
LUNA: Are there any aspects of creating a song like “In My Garden” that you find difficult in contrast to your usual work, specifically as it emphasizes the importance of self-love? Whether it’s factors like constant changes in your life or the possibility of having self-doubt (as an artist or personally).
MADELEINE: “In My Garden” is really special to me. I was on tour at the time, and we had some time off in the middle of touring the US so I took a solo trip to New York. My friend Jack Robson was spending a couple months out there, and we ended up booking a studio to record some improvisations and have a play together. I remember I’d started writing the chords for this track before I’d left home, but it was only the opening section. We ended up recording one take of the track, which was all improvised, apart from the chorus chords. Everything just kinda happened, and we moved into this really natural-sounding piano and drums jam. There was this beautiful grand piano at the studio which was so lovely to play, and because I hadn’t written the vocals yet, it meant the piano really led the whole thing melodically and harmonically. This natural piano and drums interplay just left such a beautiful sonic space to write the vocals over, and I tried to keep the vocals super instinctive and raw to match the style of the instruments. I didn’t plan anything for the build at the end. I remember when I recorded the vocals I broke down in tears at the end of the take because I felt so emotional. I think it’s definitely the most honest track I’ve ever written, and the natural sonics just created the right space for me to feel comfortable enough to open up like that.
LUNA: In “Love Like You,” there’s a uniqueness about how you sing “your eyes haunt me” that also sounds like “your eyes hold me.” Grasping the idea of the power those words have when relating it to a relationship, could it speak on how it’s important to have someone to support you but to also recognize the possible danger in that dependence as well?
MADELEINE: I really like the idea that people interpret music in different ways, and I wanted to play into the ambiguity with the lyrics in “Love Like You.” I wanted to say “haunt me” and “hold me” so I interchanged between the two, and I feel like as a listener it definitely suggests a kind of underlying risk in dependance. I guess I was speaking about learning to grow into a healthy relationship, even though traits of the past can still haunt you, and finding a way to trust someone even when you’ve been broken so many times before.
LUNA: Feeling a raw and intimate vibe from the live instrumentation throughout this project, similar to that of D’Angelo and Stevie Wonder, how does your additional experimentation with electronic textures help bring out your personal flavor as an artist?
MADELEINE: I’m obsessed with Stevie Wonder and D’Angelo, and I think you can hear their influence on my music, but pushing the boundaries with experimentation with electronics is something that really excites me. I definitely wanna explore this more. I’m really into Brainfeeder artists, like Salami Rose Joe Louis and Flying Lotus — proper left-field production and experimentation, as well as legends Erykah Badu, Sampha, James Blake, Ravyn Lenae. I’m really into layering different synths, which kinda interplay with the vocals, and I’ll just jam out different sounds and play everything in myself. Sometimes it’ll be more textural or I’ll try and make sense of sounds that outline the harmony. I guess my sound choices and electronic textures within a songwriting world lean towards the sound of the EP.
LUNA: Using the organic approach of slowly building up a track with jam session-style improvisation, are there any songs on the EP that took some considerable time to build or assess when you were in the moment of crafting them?
MADELEINE: This is super interesting to think about. In a way, I spent a lot of time finishing “In My Garden.” Even though the piano, drums and vocals came together really naturally, it was crafting the layers around these foundations that really took the most time. Finding the lines and synth sounds to compliment the soundworld, without taking away from the rawness of it all. Especially as I was on tour a lot last year, I really wanted to be delicate with the music and let it build gradually when the time was right. Once the synths were finished I added electric bass performed by my brother John Jones, which we recorded at my home studio. That was the final piece of the puzzle to just pull everything together, and suddenly it all made sense. “In My Garden” really needed that consideration and care, compared to other tracks like “Hold Her,” which came together really quickly in the summer.
LUNA: How do you hope your listeners absorb the EP as an emotional experience?
MADELEINE:Sun Daughter touches on different moments of my life from the last couple years. It explores themes of self-love, femininity, and forgiveness, entwined with themes of trauma and healing through nature. The EP moves from this kind of warm electronic world into a more emotional and honest place for the second half. I really wanted the opening of the project to sound like the sun rising and go to all these different places, and by the end it really just settles, almost like the sunset. It was super fun using synths and textures to try and represent this movement across the project, and I hope people can bop along to the music and find the joy in it. Sun Daughter is a feeling of love, light, power, and openness.
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