Today's guest is a songwriter four albums deep, with a song that's been picking up new listeners for nine years and Mick Fleetwood playing on her latest record. But her real story isn't any of that.
From weekend stage camps in West London to opening Wembley for Taylor Swift five months after giving birth, she spent a decade releasing roughly one song a year into near silence. What kept her going wasn't a plan — it was a pair of collaborators who got nothing back for years and got up and made something every day anyway.
This is an honest conversation about what a long stretch of nobody listening actually feels like, and what happens when the proof finally shows up on a timeline you didn't choose.
And The Writer Is... Suki Waterhouse!
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:46 How's being a parent and doing music?
1:18 \"Being a parent is only hard for good parents\"
2:49 \"The girl with the guitar\" — how her daughter describes her job
4:30 Test-driving album demos on a toddler in her \"no\" phase
12:44 Somewhere Over the Rainbow — and losing to the girl who sang All Saints
14:38 The voice teacher who told her she was too skinny to sing
15:58 \"I was angry. I had this huge fire in me.\"
16:42 The friend group that turned on her: \"fuck this school, fuck these people\"
26:45 \"You walk through open doors\" — model, actor, musician
28:56 \"Brutally,\" 2016, and ten years of making things nobody heard
31:01 Advice to a young female artist: learn to produce, even basically
32:56 \"I went hunting for my fucking tribe. And I found them.\"
35:54 Amy Winehouse at the pub, The Libertines, and a London scene that's gone
38:12 Backstage at a Jake Bugg show — meeting Natalie and Jules at eighteen
39:23 \"They got zero back for years and years and years\"
42:45 Extreme ADHD, a giant sitar, and a fight over a song
46:26 December 7th: flying to London for a song that didn't exist yet
47:16 The pact: \"if we're not writing something brilliant, we're not carrying it on\"
47:28 The worst audition of her life, in the dark
48:09 A Wurlitzer, a Mellotron, and the song that opens the album
1:01:39 \"Good Looking\" — top ten on TikTok, written nine years ago
1:05:53 Covid, Daisy Jones, and deciding to just make the record
1:06:32 Every label said no except Sub Pop
1:08:40 \"It's nothing about what happens in the first week\"
1:10:16 \"Dangerous Woman\" and a song that gains meaning over time
1:11:38 Daisy Jones: \"my name wasn't on the list and I was fucking pissed\"
1:16:24 \"You're more envious of the check than the song\"
1:26:14 What makes a good song — Beck, Elliott Smith, and roughness
1:29:26 Red Rocks with no ear monitors: \"I was in insane debt\"
1:32:04 Opening for Taylor Swift at Wembley
1:34:17 Hayley Williams: \"this one's for Mr. Waterhouse\"
1:37:02 A baby in March, a record in September
1:39:44 \"When everyone goes a bit red — that's when you keep it in the song\"
1:40:35 What to play driving at night, heartbroken, walking through London
Credits:
Hosted by Ross Golan
Produced by Joe London & Jad Saad