English Artist North Runs Down Each Track on Her Debut Self-Titled EP

You’d probably deduce that an artist who calls herself North is not from a warm climate. Well, you’d be absolutely correct. Singer, songwriter North hails from London where one of your biggest enemies day in and day out is often the weather. As she battles the elements, today is an exciting day for the artist with the release of her self-titled debut EP via Dreamscope Records. In writing the EP, North drew from her favourites from the world of rock and blues, blended with her impressive vocals and no-nonsense attitude. All of this creates a work that stretches beyond the expectations of a young artist.

There have been bumps along the road for North, with 2018 being a particularly challenging year when she became a victim of a well-publicized fraud case that involved the music management company Band Management Universal (BMU). Despite the negativity of the whole ordeal, North soldiered on, soon after signing with Dreamscope which provided her direction with which to work in recording her EP.

As a special treat to mark the release of her EP, North has come through with a track-by-track rundown of these five new tracks, describing the background, motivation and intangibles that went into creating this exciting new work.

1. “Breaking Me Down”

“I wrote this song back in 2012, I’d been through a rough few years to say the least. I’d had my heart broken, moved my whole life to London, my dad was almost killed in a horrific bike accident and I was just desperately trying to hold it together. I’d actually started to record this song when I signed with BMU here in London in 2015, until it came to light that their whole operation was a scam. It was pretty soul-destroying. I was already battling my own demons, and ended up losing my job, my home and suffering a breakdown, for a long time I couldn’t look further than the end of each day. I was quite literally broken, mentally anyway.”

2. “Drank My Way To Numb”

“The clue is in the title. When things got really tough, at times I tried to drink my feelings away. I was just trying to cope. It’s not big or clever, trying to deal with stuff and adding a hangover definitely isn’t conducive to success.”

3. “Flatline”

“The turmoil of struggling with mental health can be all-consuming, and the fear of slipping back to the darkness, overwhelming. It’s finding that last bit of fight, tenacity and refusing to give up amid the desperation.”

4. “Storyteller”

“This track is about slowly losing myself to depression and anxiety. I did my best to hide it and hold it together, but people weren’t always kind, and it took its toll. On a daily level, it manifested into panic attacks, on a longer term level it lead to my breakdown.”

5. “Easy Or The Hard Way”

“A slightly predatory song that I wrote while drunk about a guy I liked. I can neither confirm nor deny whether it had the desired effect. But there are plenty of these kinds of songs from a male perspective and not so many from a female.”

Artwork for ‘North’ by North