In Conversation With Abbie Ozard
Manchester’s Abbie Ozard catapults us into the opening scene of a 70s coming of age flick, through her self-proclaimed collection of ‘sad bangers.’ Developing an interest in music from a young age, she has since been thrown into the public consciousness after being signed to Modern Sky Entertainment UK and recently releasing the lo-fi pop track ‘TV Kween.’
The song puts a spin on the classic feel-good after school special vibe, and Ozard pulls no punches when commenting on 2020’s influencer culture. There’s a real honesty in her songwriting, offering an unapologetic, shoulders-back attitude to femininity. “When you’re laying on your bed and you’re scrolling through your phone, you see all of these sick people on Instagram,” Ozard begins, “you think to yourself ‘fuck sake, I’m still at home,’ or you look at yourself in the mirror of a bar thinking ‘who the fuck even am I?’ It’s inspired by that, the pressures of influencer culture now.”
Commenting on the lyric: ‘everybody wants to be famous, I play it cool, but I’ve not got the patience,’ she says: “I don’t really want to be famous, it just sounded like a cool little line, but I think everyone is fighting for attention all the time. It’s all very fake and boring.”
The zeitgeist of our times isn’t the only inspiration Ozard draws on. She winds back the clock looking to 20th-Century music and cinema, which has almost certainly rubbed off from her parents’ admiration for them. “My Mum loves The Breakfast Club and my Dad is a big Blondie fan,” she explains. “I think it all got in my head a bit. I love films like Juno and all those coming of age type films, so I guess that’s my favourite kind of style.”
Cutting her teeth on a songwriting course at Manchester’s BIMM, Ozard found inspiration more outside of the classroom than in. “I don’t think you can really teach songwriting, it’s more of a subjective thing,” she begins. “I was going out and getting pissed, and wasn’t writing as much as I would have liked to, but the personal experiences I had at university influenced my writing a lot more than the course.” Not alone in a sea of discontent towards higher studies, she was still able to express her creativity elsewhere, “all the people in my band are from BIMM, and my housemates studied music, so we’d all just chill downstairs and jam. So it was better for the people you met, you know?”
After a spur of confidence from her Bowie-loving Father persuading her to take the songs out of the bedroom, Ozard decided to take the leap of faith with her music and accept an offer to be signed with Modern Sky Entertainment UK. “I released the single and from that Dave [Pichilingi] approached me and was like ‘I wanna fuckin’ sign you!’ [heavy Scouse accent impersonation],” she begins. “I thought I could stay independent and do it all myself, but I’m a dosy bitch, I’ve got no idea about money or anything. I’d rather just concentrate on writing my songs.”
Image: Tom Preece
Forced apart by lockdown restrictions, the usual songwriting process had to take a new turn, as Ozard and co-producer Rich Turvey [Blossoms, Vistas] took to facetime to squeeze in those crucial creative hours. “We wrote the song over Facetime during lockdown,” she says, “it was our first facetime writing sesh, it was so weird. We both have our guitars, he can hear me and I can hear him, so we just crack on.”
Despite the struggles of the pandemic, the creative process is not halted and ‘sad bangers’ continue to be written: “they eventually develop and you then realise that you’ve actually written a song that’s very personal, without specifically saying how you feel. ‘On A Low’ was on my own, so it’s a bit more sad and slow. It’s always good to mix it up though.”
Ozard has rightfully garnered interest from tastemakers at BBC Introducing and Radio 6Music, playing a number of festivals before lockdown hit and is certain to appear on more line-ups when (if) the time comes again. The growing pains are surely over for Ozard now with an impressive collection of tracks under her belt. Watch this space.
