Paloma Faith interview

Paloma Faith is an award-winning singer-songwriter and actor who has released five critically acclaimed platinum-selling albums since 2009, beginning with her debut, Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful?

Her sixth release, The Glorification of Sadness, is an expansive, deeply personal piece that the London-born star describes as a “divorce record without the divorce”. We caught up with Paloma as she prepares to embark on a UK tour which arrives at the Liverpool Empire on 8 April

Words | Lawrence Saunders

You’re playing the Liverpool Empire next month as part of a UK-wide tour. Do you enjoy performing here in Liverpool?

I love coming [to Liverpool] because my best friend is from the Wirral. I’ve got really fond feelings about that part of the country. I also really love Liverpool as a cultural hub and for all the history it’s got. The music is amazing as well. I feel like an honorary northerner. I always have a good time when I’m in this part of England because personalitywise, it suits me. Nobody’s up themselves!

Whilst The Glorification of Sadness was inspired in part by the end of your long-term relationship, this is by no means a sad album, is it?

It is sad [what happened] but it’s sort of indicative of who I am as a person. I tend to laugh in the face of adversity, just by nature. I’m also old enough, and wise enough, to know that every feeling is temporary – the bad ones and the good ones. You’ve just got to move on, you’ve got no choice. A lot of people struggle in life with not letting go. I think that’s a dangerous thing not to sort of teach yourself or your kids to do – sometimes you’ve just got to let things go.

I remember my mum saying it to me all the time when I was a kid, she’d be like ‘Sometimes Paloma, you’ve just got to let things go!’. It was like a sort of thing she’d say, and I feel really grateful that she did. Quite often people make breakups about two individuals: what was his side? But in a psychological sense, it’s not really ever about who did and said what because you can survive anything if you choose to, maybe you just choose not to.

The album deals with a particularly traumatic period in your life. Was it difficult to write songs about what had happened or did it come naturally?

I think I had a nervous breakdown, I wasn’t diagnosed but I had some sort of breakdown and I felt so out of sorts. I wasn’t myself and nothing felt right, nothing was comfortable. Writing felt like my only option because sometimes just doing something makes you feel better, rather than just sitting with it.

So I started to make this music but when I did, I genuinely believed that it would be the worst music I’d ever written because in the past I’ve written about stuff in the moment and it’s been really s**t. But for some reason, I don’t know why, people were like ‘Keep going! It’s really good!’. Early days, I remember being really shy and playing some of what I’d written for one of the heads of my record label. She came round to my house and was in my kitchen crying listening to it.

The first single from the new album, ‘How You Leave a Man’, is a remarkably candid track about your breakup. Was it a cathartic feeling releasing a song like that out into the world?

‘How You Leave a Man’, is meant to be empowering. It’s about taking control and responsibility for your own happiness as a woman. And not listening to the din of social pressures saying ‘You’re only accepted as a woman if you’re a victim’. There’s no room for a woman to say ‘Actually, I just wasn’t really happy’. It’s not really seen as acceptable, especially when there are kids involved. You’re just a bad mother, selfish or whatever. So with this album, I’m trying to pull it in the direction of it being okay to take ownership of your own happiness and not be a victim, re-establishing ideas of how we demonise women.

This is the first album that you’ve executively produced. Did you enjoy having more control over the finished product this time?

It’s the first album I’ve been given a production credit on but I’ve done it all before. I dug my heels in this time and pushed to actually get acknowledgement for what I do on these records. As a female artist you often don’t [get a production credit], but I was like ‘No, I’m not doing that this time’. [The album] sounds how I wanted it to sound. My note, most of the time, was either ‘angrier’ or ‘darker’.

Aside from the new album and the tour, you’ve also got a book coming out in June about your experiences as well as your aims for the feminist movement. What inspired you to sit down and write it?

I started to notice that when I was being very frank on social media about my experiences as a woman, and as a mother, the response was really positive. I had a lot of engagement on those sorts of posts so I just felt like there might be an audience for a book expressing an alternate view of female identity struggles. [Writing] makes me feel less alone as well. We live in this very separate society now because of the internet, dating apps, Chat GPT, and the illusion of community online. How many times do we actually truly engage with each other? It adds another wall between us. Friends I’ve had for 20 years have said to me recently ‘Why don’t you just call us when you’re not feeling good?’. And I don’t know how to. I’ve forgotten how to.

Your children are obviously a huge part of your life. How do you cope with being away from them when you’re on tour?

Usually, the little one comes on the whole tour because she doesn’t have school. My eldest used to do the same but now she has school she gets so much FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve scheduled this tour so that two weeks of it runs during the Easter holidays though, so she’ll get to come!

The Glorification of Sadness is out now. Paloma plays the Liverpool Empire on Monday 8 April as part of her UK tour

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