Kate Nash Interview

Summer 2007 and Kate Nash’s hit song Foundations was on constant loop on the radio.

She was one of a few London born singer-songwriters that were experiencing notoriety and she threw herself at every opportunity; she worked so hard in fact that she burnt herself out and had to take a year off.

Before the release of her third album and intimate preview tour, we chat to her about her charity work and breakdown.

Your new album is out soon, is it a departure from your first two?

I would say it’s quite a departure from my old stuff, I think. For me it feels like a pretty natural progression. It’s like when people haven’t seen you for a few years and they see you and say that you’ve changed.

You’ve been seeing yourself every day in the mirror so you don’t really realise it. It’s a bit like that. It’s quite raw and quite strong stuff. I think it’s the best work I have done so far.

You have been running after-school clubs for girls to get them interested in a career in the music industry – how did you first get involved in that?

Basically I did this panel talk for a group that supports female filmmakers. They asked me to talk about the gender gap in the music industry. I was quite passionate about that topic anyway, there were some really quite shocking statistics about the gaps that I learnt about and I wanted to do something about it.

I watched this interview with Kathleen Hanna [of the Riot Grrrl group Bikini Kill] who is one of my heroes and she was talking about these rock and roll camps they have for girls in New York.

I really wanted to bring something like that to the UK but didn’t know how to start a camp.

I thought I could start some after-school clubs and basically picked schools that were in places that I had days off on my tour and literally went to the schools and did them a little presentation and just kept going back.

Did you see any improvements?

I think what it boils down to is confidence.

A lot of girls were suffering with self-esteem issues because of the crazy celebrity culture that seems to be getting more and more explosive in this country.

I’ve got footage of about 100 teenage girls saying they don’t think they are attractive enough to be musicians. I think that’s really sad and I think it’s really quite a serious problem that we all need to take responsibility for.

We need to stop buying into this image of the perfect culture that basically says ‘you’re not as good as these people and here is a product that might make you feel like you are getting there.’ That and constantly slagging women off for being human beings and being normal, having the same sort of things we all have. I think it’s actually really destructive.

Have you felt pressure to change your appearance?

I’ve felt pressure, certainly, but in others ways I’ve felt pretty empowered because I think it’s way more exciting and interesting to be you and not to conform to those pressures.

I do feel a lot of responsibility to teenage girls. There needs to be someone that is breaking those boundaries, doing something different.

You had a breakdown in 2008. Was it harder to deal with in the public eye?

I think that’s where it came from anyway, too much work and too much change and too much of the press and media, too much that I didn’t feel comfortable with. Now I feel a lot more in control of what I’m doing.

I’ve never really played the celebrity game and I don’t really intend to do that. I think it was this explosion at the beginning because I was a new artist and now, because I’m not interested in being a part of that world I don’t have to be, that really helped me.

Is it true you’ve been working with Willow Smith [pop star, actress and daughter of Will Smith]?

I’ve already done something with her and we intend to finish that and possibly work on something else. When I was in LA her management got in touch and we wrote a song together. It was so fun; she is the coolest 11-year-old I have ever met.

You were over in LA recording your album, why that location?

The producer I wanted to work with, Tom Biller, lives out there and I met up with him when I was in LA one time and we got on really well. I wanted to work with him and it was quite exciting to go somewhere new. I’ve made two records in London and I wanted to go to him rather than have him come over to me.

You are very altruistic, have you always been so?

Probably my mum’s influence helped, she brought me up to be open-minded and aware of things.

She is a nurse and very practical. She inspired me and my sisters to always look out for people, look after people and do good for other humans. I just think everyone should be like that.

Published in Metro and Yorkshire Evening Post