Griff: “I Feel Like There’s A Lot Less Pressure To Be The Perfect Woman”
If you go to Mary’s in Newtown over the summer holidays, there’s a chance you might just spot British pop star Griff demolishing a burger.
When we spoke recently, she was keen to hear about all the places she should visit in Sydney, and humoured me as I tried my best to oblige. Besides good food and sunshine, she doesn’t know what to expect, really, from her first visit down under, though she is “intrigued” by kangaroos. She also makes passing mention of Ja’mie: Private School Girl.
Griff’s here to perform at Heaps Good Festival, the one-day music festival taking place around the country in late December and early January, and she’s tacking on her a solo gig in Sydney, too.
Local fans have reason to be doubly pleased with Griff (full name: Sarah Faith Griffiths): not only is she coming to Australia, but her recent single, ‘Astronaut’ — released as part of vert1go vol.1 — is one of many new tracks slated for release in the next while. This’ll be the most comprehensive drop since her breakout mixtape, One Foot In Front Of The Other, which she wrote from her bedroom in lockdown and released in 2021. She subsequently became very popular and even more busy.
Griff was awarded accolades like the BRITs Rising Star title, broke chart records and toured with some of the world’s biggest artists including Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Florence + The Machine and Dua Lipa. Along the way, Griff also enjoyed endorsements from the queen of pop herself. “damn griff i love this one,” Taylor Swift most recently wrote of ‘Vertigo’, the first track from 2023’s vert1go vol.1.
Despite Griff’s success (she’s got more than 660M streams under her belt, and counting), releasing new music in an age dominated by algorithms (TikTok’s especially), live streaming numbers, likes and comments and reviews is, naturally, incredibly anxiety-inducing. “It’s terrifying — it’s been a while since I’ve released music, actually. It’s been a funny journey, because I essentially really started in the pandemic, and then the last year or two I’ve been on a lot of amazing tours. So, it’s been a bit disjointed … This is the first time I’ve had to release music in the world of shortform content [being so prominent].”
“And in some ways, it’s amazing because it’s super democratic now and any song can pop off, on the other hand, is completely crippling, because like, all of those numbers are out there and like you can’t— there’s no smoke and mirrors anymore. It just is what it is.
“So, yeah, I don’t know, I feel like each time [period] has its challenges [for artists releasing music]. Right now it’s just like, I don’t know… content in shortform, which I think is killing the art of songwriting and music a little bit at the moment. So yeah, it’s just like trying to find that balance.”
As in 2021, remedying old wounds remains a struggle for Griff; at least, that’s what her work implies. Griff lists two of her all-time favourite lyrics during our chat — one from her 2021 hit, ‘One Foot In Front Of The Other’ “Things just take longer to heal these days” and a line from a soon-to-be-released track, “If time was a healer, is there a waiting list I can find?”.
Like ‘Vertigo’, ‘Astronaut’, marinates on wading through life’s turbulence for the first time as an early twenty-something just trying to figure it all out; especially when it comes to love. “I wrote ‘Astronaut’ about the idea of being left behind,” she said in a statement. “In young relationships, when someone needs time to figure out and find themselves without you, it hurts because you’re left wondering what about yourself wasn’t enough for them.”
At Heaps Good, Griff will be joined by fellow lockdown bedroom act, 24-year-old Holly Humberstone. Griff champions Holly, along with Maisie Peters and Sigrid, as part of the next generation of incredible female artists born and grown, in part, by Taylor Swift and her songwriting. When I share how nice it is to be in this time now, a time when female artists are refusing to be pitted against one another, and champion each other instead, Griff nods.
“I feel like there’s a lot less pressure to be the perfect woman [or female artist now]. We’re all just kind of on our journeys and doing our own thing. So it’s nice. It was amazing [collaborating] with Sigrid and coming together. And it was nice actually just being friends. I feel like the best collaborations happen when you’re friends first.”
“Taylor’s raised a new generation of songwriters and you can really feel that. The talent [of] young [female artists] at the moment is really inspiring.”
Amid a busy touring schedule, the constant distraction and pressures of social media, and navigating life in her early twenties — Griff tries to stay focused on the big picture.
“I think you just have to take it [all] within your stride and like, do whatever feels like you can to survive and stay creative. I feel like that’s often easy to forget: I actually just need to prioritise keeping my brain creative. That’s where I’m gonna write the best songs.”
Griff’s performing at Heaps Good on Sunday 31 December at Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne; Tuesday 2 January at Sandstone Point Hotel, Brisbane; and Saturday 6 January, Adelaide Showground, Adelaide. Her solo show is on January 3 at the Metro Theatre, Sydney.
Image credit: Warner Music