Pop singer-songwriter Erin Bloomer – who lives near Rye – is absolutely the modern performer.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00 Yes.
00:01 Good afternoon, my name is Phil here at Group Arts, editor for Sussex Newspapers. Fabulous
00:06 to be speaking to Erin Bloomer, who lives near Rye in East Sussex. And Erin, you poor
00:11 thing, you're suffering a bit of a head cold at the moment.
00:13 Yeah, I do.
00:14 But let's talk about the music. You're having great success, aren't you? But a new single
00:21 just coming out, Wasted It On You. It's such an interesting story. How have you got this?
00:26 The idea for it? You sought ideas from your fans?
00:29 Yes. So normally when I tend to write music, I live a quite a peaceful life. So I don't
00:35 tend to have any interesting stories, really. So normally my friends are my inspiration,
00:41 like the dramas and just kind of things that teenage girls or girls in their early 20s
00:45 have been through, like, you know the drill. So they're normally my muses. But this specific
00:50 day I had a session and I just couldn't think of what to write about. And nothing had been
00:55 going on in my friends' lives at this point. I'd already done all the songs for them about
00:59 that. And so I just put up a little poll on my Instagram story, asked my followers, like,
01:04 what's going on in your life at the moment? I'm on the way to a session. I'm going to
01:07 do a song about it. And this will be my inspo. And yeah, and someone came through and said
01:13 they just felt like they'd wasted all this time and they put all this effort into a relationship
01:17 and thinking, gosh, I wish I hadn't done that. And then I was thinking, OK, wasted, I wasted
01:22 your time, wasted it on you. And that's kind of how the song came about. And we went for
01:28 like a very kind of sassy vibe. I say kind of like Avril Lavigne sound inspired. And
01:36 that was so much fun. And I did that with an amazing production duo called Future Cut,
01:42 who were just great. And another songwriter called Elle Campbell, who's lovely.
01:46 It's slightly worrying that you say that you have a peaceful life. You're a musician. You're
01:51 not supposed to have that.
01:52 I know. I just I've just been a very stable relationship for kind of nearly six years,
01:59 actually six years, end of this month. So I don't have any relationship drama or anything.
02:05 I've like a close circle of friends.
02:07 So you absorb the relationship drama of other people. That's the way to do it.
02:10 Yeah, exactly.
02:11 You do suffer, but you get the songs.
02:13 Yeah, exactly. It's the best way to do it. And I get the interesting stories from them
02:19 without having to go through it myself.
02:22 That sounds the perfect way of doing it. They suffer for you.
02:25 Yeah, God, that sounds awful.
02:28 But we were saying that you are absolutely the epitome of a modern artist, aren't you?
02:33 In two ways that you graduated, you left school in that dreadful pandemic year, didn't get
02:38 the chance to do your A-levels. That makes you terrible. But also, you are very much
02:44 into the social media. And it's that that's made you, isn't it?
02:48 Yeah, completely. That was how I kind of started blowing up and made my way into the music
02:54 scene was because I originally started just posting me singing covers on Instagram. And
03:01 then that kind of gained some traction and people seemed to really like it. And that's
03:05 how I kind of like grew a following. I was getting reposted on these accounts that were
03:10 called kind of like the good voice and things like that, that just posted like people singing
03:14 videos and that managed to get me some traction and some interest. And yeah, it's definitely
03:20 been my gateway into the industry.
03:22 And that must be so empowering because that's you actually doing it, isn't it? You're not
03:27 finding someone to promote you. It's you directly making that contact with the fans. That must
03:32 be so satisfying.
03:33 It is. I think that is the nice thing about social media is like you kind of are, it is
03:39 a lot more direct contact between you and the people who like your music. Like normally,
03:46 I guess the time you'd only really get to see them would be at specific shows, but you
03:49 can reply to comments now, reply to direct messages that people will send you. It feels
03:54 a lot more interactive. And I also how I'm able to write a song inspired by one of my
04:00 followers stories like that would not have happened a few years ago. It's really cool
04:03 to be able to do that.
04:05 And the other thing that you seem to be doing the other way around to the way it was traditionally
04:09 done, you are now starting to develop the live side of your work that you've gained
04:14 this following just online. And now you start doing it live. That's interesting.
04:19 Yeah, it totally kind of is like the back of its way to how it used to be. But I think
04:24 that kind of is just the way that things are going now and progressing over time. It is
04:29 kind of building your audience online. And that's kind of how you get noticed by people
04:33 and the opportunities start to flood in a bit more. And yeah, so this is going to be
04:38 my first like proper live shows end of this month, sporting end ups, which will be really
04:45 cool, but it's also quite scary.
04:46 It must be daunting that you've got this progress so far, but now suddenly you've got the whites
04:53 of their eyes in front of you, haven't you?
04:55 I know, I can't even visualise because it's like a 10,000 people, like number audience.
05:02 I can't even picture.
05:04 Well, you say 10,000 audience and you can't picture that, but you do deal in big numbers.
05:12 You're saying that first single that you had, the first that had 78 million streams?
05:19 Yes, the sad remix I did with Iman Beckham Rasta, I think that was like 78, 79 million
05:25 streams on Spotify, which is crazy.
05:27 Well, you can't get your head around that, can you?
05:30 No, not at all. That blows my mind.
05:34 Brilliant. Well, good luck with everything. I hope you feel much, much better very soon.
05:40 But really, everything goes brilliantly. Thank you.
05:45 Yes, thank you for having me.
05:47 My pleasure. Thank you.