The Liverpool music scene often brings to mind guys with guitars, albeit very very good guys with guitars. It is always nice to find that the city is also a breeding ground for artists away from indie vibes. Coming out with great pop / R&B tunes is Daisy Gill with a sound reminiscent of so many great female artists of the late 90s early 00s (more on that later). Daisy is the music industry back to front. Singing, writing and producing all in between studying sound engineering and vocals at BIMM in Manchester and hopefully passing her driving test. I caught up with her after she’d been working backstage at West Holts stage at Glastonbury – see, music back to front.

TLC – No Scrubs

“I love ‘No Scrubs’, I just love TLC, I think they’re fabulous. I was a bit young for them in they heyday but my mum loved them. They were always on MTV and my mum had like a mixtape in the car that had a couple of TLC songs on and I went to watch them in Glastonbury. When I was a kid in choir we did a cover of ‘Unpretty’. We did it with a proper arrangement and got to do it in a recording studio as a school project which was really fun. But I just love TLC, they’re so cool.”

“As a kid this track is just a bop, it’s so catchy, but now I’m older I just love the attitude, the sass – everything they’re saying in the songs. In Liverpool TLC are such a big band oddly. When they performed at Glastonbury I think half the crowd were scousers. Everyone here just loves ‘Waterfalls’ and ‘No Scrubs’ is such a banger, such a classic. But also lyrically it’s on point, it’s something every woman has dealt with – dealing with crappy boys.”

“I definitely channel the sass and attitude, with ‘Telephone’ off the EP I was definitely going for TLC vibes. I was really going for early 2000’s pop, late 90s pop. Bands like TLC, Alicia Keys, artists like that. They really inspired me, this track in particular though. I loved that early girl power sass that came from those artists at that time. It’s just so inspiring, sometimes I think in modern music now, in songwriting, sometimes it can lack a bit of that aggression. I love that that aggression that comes through out of those sort of artists. It’s was just amazing, there’s nothing better, nothing I love more, than an angry woman when we write songs. Not too angry, but it’s always a good source of emotion to write with.”

Aloe BlacC – I need a dollar

“I love this song, it was kind of an inspiration for the EP. This one was a track that inspired my track ‘New York State of Mind’ in it’s production elements. I loved this song growing up. I think he’s a fantastic artist, the soulfulness out of this track, how he was telling the story. Going through this really bad time financially and trying to just get by and I felt like that’s what ‘New York State of Mind’ was a bit about – hustle culture, struggling, trying to find your feet again. I just really loved this song – I didn’t even realise when I wrote it [New York state of mind] they’ve got the same chords and they’re in the same key. It was only after the fact, when I’d recorded it and was producing it and looking at inspiration for what ways I want to produce this track.”

“As much as I was inspired by early 90s stuff and well, late 90s / early 2000s I didn’t want the EP to be really samey throughout the whole project. I didn’t want it to feel just boring, I wanted it to have those other elements. I love different styles of music and I’ve got quite an eclectic taste and I’ve always grown up with soul music and Mowton. Honestly so many different influences.”

“And I loved this tune growing up, I’d hear it on the radio, it was such A tune. It came up recently, I think on a video, on TikTok “this song turns x years old” – 15 years or whatever and it reminded me of the whole vibe of the track. It is such a vibe, and I took inspiration in the chorus with the keyboards, the higher frequency chords and soulful organs incorporated with lots of harmonies. All inspired by that track.
Honestly I need to listen to more of his music – it’s really bad – I only know this song because it was so big in the UK. I need to listen to his music. I’m sure he was on our stage at Glastonbury a few years ago and I wasn’t there – he was fantastic live. But this just came up and I took so much inspiration from it.”

Taylor Swift – DOn’t Blame Me

“As an independent artist you can over analyze and try to do everything in the same month, but it’s hard doing everything – the whole EP was self produced. I’ve spread myself thin this year but now I feel I have a proper body of work out that says something about me as an artist. So the plan is to hit the festival scene next year. I love singles and stuff but there’s nothing better than an EP or album to express stuff. To not just be one thing. I wrote my EP and worked on it for two years, but I wrote so much since then and I don’t want to box myself in to sticking with hip hop and R&B. I still love to experiment with other things. It would be really boring to make another EP exactly the same as this one, although that stuff is a sound I can always come back to.”

“This isn’t R&B or hip hop, maybe a little bit of hip hop influence but it’s really ballad-y, it has soulful gospel-y moments in it. I really love this track and used this as a reference point for ‘Remedy’, the last track on the EP. I wanted ‘Remedy’ to have a really dark moody feel and I’ve always loved this, it’s one of my favourite songs off Taylor Swift’s Reputation album, it’s such a great song. The whole vibe of it. As well, I was influenced by ‘I Did Something Bad’ from Reputation but more so ‘Don’t Blame Me’ because ‘Remedy’ kind of tells the story of witchcraft and things like that.’

‘I was really inspired by the story of the Pendle witches, the story of how these women were treated in the 1800s. I was doing some gigs in Clitheroe and heard about the Pendle witch trials. Oh that’s super interesting. It kind of inspired the story in ‘Remedy’. That second verse “Don’t reprimand, I’ve got the power you don’t understand” Drawing upon that. That’s why I really love those two tracks from Taylor Swift. In ‘Something Bad’ she talks about ‘we’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one’ but then it transcends into a similar vibe with ‘Don’t Blame Me’. It was heavy, it had especially good mixing points for when my boyfriend was mixing the tracks – “mix it like this” were the instructions.’

‘I just love it, it’s such a good solid piece of songwriting as well. I’ve grown up listening to her music, right from Hannah Montana because she was on the Hannah Montana movie. I think she’s like maybe the Madonna of my age, maybe not madonna – I can’t think of someone who like my mum would have grown up watching from a young age. She’s like that for me, and probably Miley Cyrus. Taylor swift more so and I probably sound like every other singer songwriter who’s female, everybody uses Taylor Swift as a reference point. Taylor Swift inspired me to play guitar when I was 13 and a lot of girls, female songwriters would probably say that as well because she had that influence. The way she played guitar and stuff, she made so many teenage girls want to play guitar. i wouldn’t play the guitar if it wasn’t for taylor swift. The hold she has on so many young girls is crazy, it’s really mad. She’s popular for a reason and she is amazing. That said I was never stan. I see some people on twitter and it’s crazy, they’re mad. They get so upset and you’re like ‘you don’t know her, you don’t know this person at all’.”

“When recently she was going out with Matt Healy and it was all over the news I was like ‘why are people so interested in this ladies love life?’ It’s so mad to me. I don’t really pay attention to celebrities. I love the artists I like, I don’t look into who they’re going out with. We went to see Lana Del Rey and people were telling me she’s engaged to such and such. I didn’t know who it was, I’m not there for that stuff it’s boring. I just want to see what they do with the music. I was surprised with her lateness at Glastonbury, because I work backstage I know what a tight ship it is. It’s rude to the staff, working a small stage, working the pyramid, we all have a role to play at the festival. I was like ‘oh my god, she’s half an hour late’. It’s a shame, that she might not get asked back now and she’s such a great artist. But she’s late to everything and I was rooting for her to not be. It kind of upset me.”

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For those who enjoyed Telephone, Daisy promises some new music coming later in the year – “I’ve not really recovered from Glastonbury, it’s a lot of walking. I’ve done so much this year, I’m totally burnt out. I feel like I’ve not had chance to push the EP as much as I’d have liked. Most of the singles had already been out so the EP was a little final push for those track. I know now what not to do, bring an EP out when I’ve got uni deadlines and I’ve got to be away working at Glastonbury (all that walking!) A lot of the songs I do myself, my boyfriend is a mixing engineer so he does that bit, I’m learning it though. I don’t think I’ll ever be a great mixing engineer but just get to the point that I can send them off and know where I want them to go. I’m better a producer though, putting the musical elements in, getting the direction for tracks. I learnt so much with this EP production wise as well though, my skills got so much better with each track, some of the tracks here are two years old. I’m excited about releasing new stuff.”