use or spelling of the word and it’s all
very exciting. Woman is me marking
2019 and saying, “This is where we are
from the point of view of a woman”.
Your 2016 album, Home, felt like
you’d found your base, your platform.
Was it from there that you were able
to springboard into Woman?
There’s definitely safety in having per-
sonal space and being really lucky to
have it, but I didn’t know what I was
going to write for this record because,
for me, my whole shtick was search-
ing for “big love” and that final happy
ending. Then I wrote Home and I was
like, “Right, well... I’m done now”.
[Laughs] That’s what it felt like... “The
well is empty”. Then my management
saw I had zero interest in writing and
were very clever and said, “Well, what
about writing a song about this? Just
to have it, you know?” So, then I’d be
working constantly and they’d be like,
“Oh, look! You’ve got four songs al-
ready! That’s really interesting...” And
I’d be like, “Motherfuckers!” [Laughs]
Woman spiralled from there.
You recently said, at 36, you feel
you’re “officially a woman”. Why?
It’s two things. One, I always wanted
to be 36. Always. I don’t know why
that number. It’s a nice age of youth
and experience or something. Any-
body who I ever met who was 36, I
knew it, there was always something
about them. What I recognised in
it is that, if someone asks me what
age I am and I say 36, they’ll always
say, “Oh, I thought you were much
younger, but you’re actually a fully
sized adult.” So, that made me think,
well, yes, I am supposed to be a
fully contributing adult now, to know
where I’m at and what I’m doing. It’s
[also] about living life. I love getting
older, I love older people and so, again,
I’m celebrating my age and going,
“Yes! I’m the age I always wanted to
be and I’ve got a story to tell”.
How does it compare to your 20s?
You spend an awful lot of time there
worrying about what other people
think and having body issues, where
nowadays, if somebody has a problem,
that’s their issue. It’s very liberating.
It’s all uphill for me from here.
Another theme running alongside
womanhood is that of apathy – in
particular, getting off social media. Is
this something you’re practising?
Yes, definitely. I spend a lot less time
scrolling. Before, I was forgetting what
I was into, forgetting to go outside... I
was also [having] pains in my hands
from holding a phone and I was not
into that. So now, turning the wifi off
at night is a thing. Getting out into
nature as much as possible, not tak-
ing as many photographs and using
social media more mindfully. I have
to use it, as most artists do, but now I
approach it differently. I have to find
a meaningfulness in what I’m doing
and find the right time to do it. That,
and when I’m about to pick up the
phone to Google something, I prefer
to look it up in books. It’s by doing tiny
little things like that, that my mind’s
coming back to where it used to be
before I had a phone. It’s made a big
difference to my life.You’ve noticed real benefits, then?
Yes, I use my mind, I daydream.
You know when you want to come
down and relax, you might watch
something on Netflix? Or scroll for a
while? Well, that’s what I was doing,
that was my way of relaxing. I had
so much to think about that the last
thing I wanted to do was think. So I’d
just go mindlessly scrolling, but that
was really harmful because I forgot to
daydream and, for me – as an artist –
daydreaming is absolutely essential. If
I don’t daydream, then the ideas don’t
have a space to come out.Wisdom noted. Your single, As The
River Flows, explores immigration
and injustice. Why those stories?
I’ve been very lucky with my passport
and where I was born. I’ve lived in
four different countries now and I’ve
never had a problem with movement- purely because of the luck of the
passport I was given and the fucking
colour of my skin – and I really don’t
think that that’s a fair reason to stop
anybody moving around in this world.
Racism stems from a lack of exposure
and lack of empathy or sympathy
towards a person that doesn’t have
the same passport or look the same.
In the same way exposure helps LG-
BTQI people be normalised in society,
we need to normalise that stopping
people moving countries based on
how they look is abject racism, and
we need to call that out, like. The
movement of refugees is a really easy
reason for people to be racist and I
think it’s very lazy and very damag-
ing. In 2015, when there was the refu-
gee crisis and Europe was faced with
millions of refugees fleeing war, some
of them had their boats actively sunk,
with hundreds of people on them,
because of racism. When I saw the
picture of that little boy, Alan Kurdi,
on the beach, I just thought, “How can
you deny a child the right to live?”
We’re talking about humanity here.Linking that back to apathy, when
was that point where you thought,
“That’s it, I need to do something”?
I’ve done a lot of gigs to raise money
for charity and I work, through music,
with refugees here in Berlin. I just do
little things to fucking help out... Now,
I’m very much celebrating migration,
because everybody should have the
same chances that I do. Not just the
“right kind of immigrant”.Living in Germany during the crisis,
how have you experienced it?
Angela Merkel welcomed over one
million refugees into the country,
without question. She was just like,
“We’re a rich country, come in and
settle”. It’s been nearly four years
since that happened and the econ-
omy has flourished because, when
somebody welcomes you, all you
want to do is show thanks. Variety is
the spice of life and everybody should
have the right to be able to move,
whether it’s for a holiday or forever,
whatever. Let us move. We always
have and we always will move.Absolutely. Finally, what does Woman
mean to you?
Woman is... the zeitgeist, a personal
retrospective and... [pauses] A hopeful
celebration of the darkness.Woman is out 27 September 2019.
Follow @wallisbird (where she’s only
posting mindfully these days...)It’s time to speak openly
about what’s important
for equality”
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