Birdy is releasing her newest album Portraits on August 18.
Birdy is releasing her newest album Portraits on August 18.
The artist known as Birdy could soon be winging her way back to New Zealand.
The 27-year-old singer and songwriter - full name Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde - is set to release her newest album Portraits on Friday, August 18.
She’s been a household name since she was 14 thanks to her cover of Bon Iver’s Skinny Love, which led to a self-titled cover album, three more studio albums and several award nominations and wins.
But if it seems like that haunting, melancholy voice has gone quiet recently, that’s because, as she admits, she hasn’t toured for several years.
Speaking to the Herald from London, Birdy reveals Portraits is something of a comeback for her.
“This one was much quicker than my previous record [Young Heart] which took like five years,” she reveals.
“This one I did manage to do in a year. And just because the last one was so laborious, I just wanted to have fun with this record and it’d be fast, and to be able to tour this year, which has been so nice, because it’s been six years since I’ve been playing live. So I just wanted to make this record and then go out and tour it.”
Birdy's plans to tour with her new album Portraits could include a stop in New Zealand. Photo / Thibault Theodore
While she’s been playing shows in record shops in the UK, international touring plans aren’t yet set in stone - though a stop in Aotearoa could well be on the cards.
Her last visit to New Zealand was more than 10 years ago and she recalls - “I haven’t been in so long.
“[It was] years ago, kind of around the first record time. So it’s been years. But I loved it, I really loved it.
“I was in Auckland and I don’t really remember much of what we were doing, it was so long ago now, but I just remember it being so beautiful and the trees being so beautiful, huge trees.
“Hopefully on this record, we can come back and do some touring.”
Naturally shy and quiet, she’s the first to admit that touring isn’t her favourite part of making music.
“I guess, just naturally, I keep to myself and I think more about the music, and that’s the bit I enjoy,” she muses.
“I don’t so much enjoy being in the limelight, actually.
“I mean, I love playing live and I love being on stage, but all the other bits I’m not really so interested in. I just want to make something that I love and like to play.”
But the long months of lockdown in the UK and the rest of the world made her realise how much she missed playing live.
“That kind of helped making this record, just not being able to express that part of myself for such a long time, and then wanting to make something that was so big for a stage that people could move to a bit on this album,” she shares.
Portraits is a stark contrast to its predecessor, Young Heart, which was a series of piano ballads detailing a journey through heartbreak.
The new album is bolder, edgier, “more electronic”, she says.
“I played a lot with synths and drum machines ... it’s very 80s-inspired because I listen to a lot of Prince and David Bowie and Madonna and Kate Bush.
Birdy is releasing her newest album Portraits on August 18.
“I was looking at, like, PJ Harvey and Portishead, and I just kind of loved the more Gothic feeling - a bit grungier for this record. And then that kind of fed into the music somehow, it just became a bit darker and more brooding.
“I wanted it to feel very passionate, but kind of disjointed and strange. Not too conversational like the previous record, which is very intimate and personal. I just wanted it to be more about feeling, and a bit more abstract.”
For Birdy, her favourite song on the record is never the single - and that’s partly why she’s excited to see her songs find a new fanbase on TikTok.
Wings, a song from her 2013 album Fire Within, is seeing a resurgence on the social media app.
“I love it because any song can have a chance,” she says. “It’s changed things ... it’s opened that up to just being, it’s whatever people connect to.
“And that’s really nice for me because often my favourite one is not the single on the record. There’s always songs I really love that I kind of feel like never get heard properly.”
That feeling of wanting to be heard is something she explores in the new album - her favourite song on the record, I Wish I Was a Shooting Star.
“It’s about someone who felt invisible, and about them wanting to break through and be heard. And so it just has that feeling of shooting into space ... it was inspired by David Bowie, and I just really love that feeling on the record.”
Another favourite is Ruins, a song that took “maybe seven years” to complete.
“I just hadn’t finished it and then I finally wrote the chorus for this record, and it all kind of fell into place,” she shares.
“It was just really satisfying to remove that thing from my head, finally.”
Portraits by Birdy is out on August 18, 2023
Bethany Reitsma is an Auckland-based journalist covering lifestyle and entertainment stories who joined the Herald in 2019. She specialises in lifestyle human interest stories, money-saving hacks and anything even remotely related to coffee.
