At this year's Women In Music Awards, we celebrated the achievements of 13 game-changing executives and artists as the industry came together to honour their work. Music Week has spoken to all 13 winners to tell their stories.
Interview: Miranda Bardsley
Flowerovlove, this year’s winner of the New Artist trophy at the Music Week Women In Music Awards, was especially busy on the day of the ceremony.
October 11 was the day the 19-year-old dropped her brand new EP, Ache In My Tooth, a brilliant and candid project that paints Flowerovlove in her truest form.
“It feels very honest to who I am and where I want to go,” the London-based singer-songwriter tells Music Week, excited to share the project with the world. “I just feel like I have an abundance of freedom with what I’m writing at the moment.”
Flowerovlove first broke out in 2020 with her debut EP Think Flower, which caught the attention of tastemakers including BBC Radio 1, who named her Future Artist Of The Month. She went on to make her name in the worlds of both fashion and music, walking in Paris Fashion week as a model and becoming the face of brands like Gucci and Miason Kitsuné.
In 2022, she released her second EP A Mosh Pit In The Clouds, which racked up nearly four million streams on Spotify. She went onto sign with Capitol Records, and her first three singles with the label – Coffee Shop, Next Best Exit and A Girl Like Me – racked up over 20 million combined global streams.
Flowerovlove’s genre-bending pop shows have also received huge praise. She made her Glastonbury debut in June, has a successful run of UK tour dates behind her and will be making her US debut in New York and Los Angeles next month.
As she continues to rise up through the industry, Flowerovlove talks openly about her experiences as a young woman and, inspired by nature in her music, uses the position she’s in to advocate for the environment, as well as to empower the women around her.
“I want to do my bit and spread the word using my platform,” she says. “Because music really can change the world.”
Here, we settle into a chat with our New Artist winner to hear all about her musical beginnings, her thoughts on how the industry can champion diverse voices even more and why, for her, music will always come first…
Firstly, congratulations on winning this year’s New Artist Award! How does it feel to have won?
“I feel so honoured. I feel glad to be seen as a woman, and I’m grateful and so excited. Originally, I wasn’t sure what my speech would be, but my message is always just, 'If I can do something that has influence on people, then so can you'. It doesn’t matter how small you are, what you know or how long you’ve been doing something, it’s always possible to make a change to people’s lives, and the fact that I can do that through music is so powerful to me, because music has changed my life, I would never want to live without it. The fact that I have been recognised for my dream, which is just to influence people with my sound, is sensational.”
Going back to the beginning, how did you start your career in the industry?
“My real love with music started when I was six or seven when I watched Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never documentary and I saw him perform at Madison Square Garden. The influence that documentary had on me was as if there was an earthquake in my heart, that would be the best way to describe it! It’s so funny, because I’ve been a Belieber since day one, but I don’t relate to him at all, I think it might have just been the way it was shot or the feeling he made his fans have, that was a feeling I wanted people to have for me. That was the moment I was like, ‘I want to be a popstar.’ But I was six! So I went to school and got on with my life.
“When I was 13, my brother started learning to produce, and he was like, ‘We should make a song.’ We made one, nothing ever came from it, I didn’t even release it. Then when I was 15, I started modelling, but that wasn’t my true calling. I released two songs during that time on Soundcloud, so then when I was 16 I came back to music properly and made an EP, Think Flower. I think that was the most fun and productive music making has been for me so far, because I learnt so much about it and about where I wanted to go. After that, I got a manager, and he basically told me everything I wanted to hear when I didn’t even know I wanted to hear it, and now it’s been two years we’ve been working together. And last year, I signed to Capitol Records on my birthday!”
If seeing Justin Bieber at Madison Square Garden made me feel like I could be a pop artist, imagine what seeing a Black artist up there would have made me feel
Flowerovlove
Do you think that your work modelling prepared you for the world of music? And how do you compare the two industries?
“Yes! I didn’t actually realise that that’s why I had so much confidence. I used to be super self-conscious, but through modelling I was forced to accept myself and if I hadn’t have done it, I don’t think I’d be like I am now. I am more confident when there’s a camera on me than when there’s not, to be honest. I still love fashion so much though, and I’m obsessed with doing shoots and campaigns, but it wasn't all about me, that was my issue! [Laughs].”
Did you always want to go down the label route with your music?
“For me, the dream was always to sign to a label, and I don’t know if you can become a global popstar without a major record label. I think you can become awfully close, but you do need their resources and their capitol, which is funny as my label is called Capitol! And I think the level that I want to achieve is so high, so I’m really happy with my decisions so far.”
You’ve also previously spoken about how you dropped out of school to focus on your music career, but it was a bittersweet decision as you missed out on things your peers were doing. How do you look back on that now?
“I don’t regret my decision at all. It’s so dramatic, but I think being in school was depressing me! I would just be spending my time doing things I didn’t want to do. With music, people always say, ‘You have so much time,’ but I don’t think you do. The sooner you do stuff the better, because the more you learn, the stronger you grow. I wish I knew the shit I know now when I was 15. But then again, a part of my childhood was taken away by choosing to do this job, and it has forced me to grow up so fast. And people bring stuff into my life now that I might not be ready for, even though I like to believe I am. But sometimes, when stuff happens, I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m actually not ready for this.’”
With that in mind, have you ever struggled to set your boundaries amidst the demands of the music business?
“I actually think that’s the hardest thing – people understanding your boundaries. This is a job, and I love to shop for myself so I need to do it, but there are also expectations I have for myself which make it harder. Something I’ve realised is that I live and breathe music and I’m not saying that to be hyperbolic, it’s the only thing I think about, and I really don’t care about anything else. So it’s hard to set boundaries for myself, but I’m also extremely certain of what I want, and everyone on my team knows that. Sometimes I think it’s difficult to be too friendly with people, I do have moments with people in my team where I’m just like, ‘You’re my best friend,’ but then it’s like, we work together, this is a job, and we have something to do so let’s do it.”
When you spoke to Music Week last year, you said that being a musician is a lot more work than it seems. In your opinion, what are some of the misconceptions about what it's like to be an artist?
“I think people think it’s just about making and performing music, but there’s so much work that goes into everything. This is just as hard as any job, there’s so much studying you have to do – every day as a musician is school, you’re learning about how you write, how you grow, how to create sounds that make people feel things. It becomes a world where it’s your personal life and your work life, which is really difficult to navigate, and when you get to a point where your schedule is so full, it’s so hard to make time for yourself. It’s so interesting, because Chappell Roan recently was saying that people who succeed don’t take care of their mental health, and I think that's very true. I’m always doing the best in my career when I don’t take care of myself, but then when I am, I feel guilty for it. Two years ago, I used to be like, ‘Guys, take care of yourself, you can be happy, you can have everything…’ I definitely still think you can be happy, but showing up for yourself in this job is hard. However, I will never regret putting music on top of everything, so in a way that is me showing up for myself, because I want to spend my time doing it.”
Flowerovlove with FAE Group vice president Jesse Dickson
The Women In Music Awards aims to highlight issues of inequality in the industry and celebrates the voices who aren’t always heard. How have you found your journey so far? Have you ever felt unheard?
“Before I signed, I was meeting a bunch of labels and a lot of the time, people wouldn’t really address me in the room and they’d just talk to my brother. It’s been a lot of stuff like that, when people assume that I’m not in charge of everything and nothing is my idea, because I’m a woman and I’m young. Also with my age, a lot of people don’t take some stuff seriously. In terms of not being seen, I also feel like sometimes it just happens on the low. What I will say, though, is that I feel most seen by women, any women in music, I feel heard and understood by them, it’s like, ‘You just get me'.”
Do you think the music business is doing enough to support and champion diverse and marginalised voices?
“I think the industry is trying, it’s not falling behind, but it's not trying hard enough. This stuff is so fucking important – we, as women, go through so much on a daily basis! Especially Black women, I want to see more support. I never realised how important things like these award shows are or music is until I became somewhat in the public eye and people would come up to me or DM me and say things like, ‘This thing that you did was so important to me,’ or ‘This changed my life.’ It’s so important for Black people to be given a lane, to be able to do our thing, and to be put upfront and in public. Especially with alternative music, there have been so many Black alternative artists who were never given a platform, and their music was somewhat taken by other people who don’t look like us and who were given a platform. I feel like now we’re seeing the pop girls, but where are the Black pop girls and POC pop girls? If seeing Justin Bieber at Madison Square Garden made me feel like I could be a pop artist, imagine what seeing a Black artist up there would have made me feel.”
Nature has always been a huge influence in your music, and you’ve spoken about the importance of looking after the climate. In the future, do you see yourself going down the activist route more?
“I don’t know if I see myself going down a full-on activist route, but I do see myself trying to help the world get better, be cleaner and healthier and more sustainable for people to live in. My biggest dream now is to help people who aren’t homed because of climate change. Also, as an artist, I think when you’re big enough, and when you have so many people watching you and you have such a big platform, you really can change the world, and so can music.”
Throughout your career so far, you've garnered attention from multiple publications, you’ve racked up millions of streams and you’ve received shoutouts from artists like SZA. What do you think it is about your music that really cuts through?
“I think I just bring such a relatable – and delusional [laughs] – vibe to the table. I realised recently that I really do have the freedom to write about whatever I want to write about, I think the stuff happening in my life is so relatable to other people my age, and people who are older than me because they’ve lived through it, to an extent. I also think how I look is really important too, because people don’t have someone who looks like me, dresses like me and sings about the stuff I do. I just know, if I was someone else, and I had the same feelings I do about music but I stepped out of my body, I would be obsessed with Flowerovlove too, she’s really cool!”
You also just released your new EP on the same day as the Women In Music Awards. What does this project say about where you’re at as an artist right now?
“With this project, I’ve collaborated with my dream people and every song on it is my favourite, which is so great. I’m so obsessed with this music, and if I heard it from an outside perspective I’d think, ‘Fuck, this is good.’ I hope other people feel that too. It just feels so me, it feels like my friends and I having a yap session. I used to overthink lyrics so much, but now I just feel like I have to be true to myself, and I love how writing songs like that makes me feel. It feels like the direction I’ve wanted to go in for a long time, and it feels like I’m so close to everything I’ve ever dreamed of with this music.”
And finally, what would be your message to other young artists starting out?
“It’s so crazy to me that I’m even asked that because it just feels like I’m still starting out. I know so much but I also know nothing. When I have chats with people who are so experienced and are superstars, they know so much and I know nothing in comparison! But my advice or my message is just do it, do everything you want to do, try dumb shit, and also care about it. Care so much that it hurts because caring is really cool, and when you care, it means that you love what you do.”
