New voice for LDN: Sinead Harnett interview

‘Thai-rish’ singer-songwriter Sinead Harnett talks to David Smyth about working with Wiley, raving with Rudimental and being at home in Barnet
Sinead Hartnett: ‘There used to be less knowledge about mixed-race people. I got racist comments in the street’
David Smyth23 January 2015

Sinead Harnett is in two worlds at once at the moment. She has toured the globe singing with Rudimental but is surprised when I mention her Wikipedia page, as she didn’t know she was worthy of having one. She has been making her forthcoming debut solo album in Westlake Studios in LA, where Michael Jackson recorded Thriller, and also in the bedrooms of various friends. It’s a funny status level — the 25-year-old north Londoner is known and successful, but not to the extent that she actually seems to believe it.

“I just didn’t believe that working in music was a possibility,” she tells me over a flu-beating orange-and-ginger juice in a Crouch End café. She has to now, though. She’s just been prominently placed on MTV’s Brand New for 2015 tips list, for which she’s playing an Islington concert next week alongside fellow next big things James Bay and Years & Years. Slinky, soulful appearances on two of the most successful home-grown dance albums of recent years — the debuts by Rudimental and Disclosure — have placed her alongside her fellow guest vocalists Sam Smith, John Newman and Ella Eyre as next in line for breakout solo stardom.

She’ll need to acquire a bit more cockiness from somewhere first, though. Having sung for fun from the age of eight, including a university stint as a singing waitress in Bournemouth’s top American diner Starz, she admits that she thought she was good but not actually worthy of a career. “I always felt quite shy about singing,” she says. “It wasn’t encouraged. My mum wanted me to do something academic.” She compromised by studying for an acting degree instead. Then Wiley came calling.

Actually, the godfather of grime came tweeting, in the spring of 2011. “Apparently he had tweeted something like, ‘I need a singer. Let me know who’s good.’ My friend sent him a YouTube video of me singing a song of mine called Lights Off. He emailed his song to me, I wrote the chorus, recorded it at my friend’s house, sent it back. He did his rap, gave it to 1Xtra and it was on the radio before we’d even met.”

Slinky and soulful: Sinead Hartnett has appeared on two of the most successful home-grown dance albums of recent years — the debuts by Rudimental and Disclosure

The track was Walk Away, a mellow take from Wiley’s 2011 album Chill Out Zone. Harnett brings sophistication and a sense of restrained power to the song, as she does to the better known ones she has sung and co-written with Disclosure and Rudimental. Having toured with the latter, she remains especially fond of the lively Hackney collective.

“It was only fun and only good vibes, really great energy,” she says of their travels. “They know how to party as well. I remember a 24-hour rave in Melbourne…”

Don’t pigeonhole her as a party-starting queen of the dancefloor, though. She admits that she’s not the world’s biggest clubber. “I am such a hermit at the moment,” she says, citing a hectic recording schedule as the reason for a lack of social life. She’s single too, living with friends in Friern Barnet, near where she grew up. “I don’t want to be the girl at all the parties without earning my stripes. First I want to work hard so I feel like I have a reason to be there.”

Nevertheless, she’s more than capable of giving the stage some sparkle. Even when visibly under the weather, with her tiny nose stud, leather trousers and cat’s eyes, she brings a hefty zap of glamour to the coffee shop.

She credits her exotic looks to being “Thai-rish” — mum is from Thailand, dad’s from Ireland. They split when she was a toddler and he lived in Australia for most of her childhood. Such impressive genetics haven’t always been a good thing, however. “In my school days, either I looked more Oriental or there was less knowledge then about mixed-race people but I remember people used to shout racist comments in the street.”

It sounds like it was a lonely childhood, with her mum working and her half-sister, five years older, away at university. “Singing was something that made me feel like I was doing something productive, not just sitting there. I started writing songs from an early age. They were probably awful but it was therapeutic.”

Her solo material so far has slowed things down in contrast to her livelier guest spots. Last summer’s single, No Other Way, is smooth, head-nodding R&B but she claims it’s “just the surface” next to what she has in store for an album. Another solo single is promised soon, with the album coming later this year.

“It’s personal. Things have been a bit complicated for me and I’ve got things to share.” Listen out for the latest singer to prove that she’s more than just a special guest — Sinead Harnett is talented enough to be the main event.

Sinead Harnett performs as part of MTV Brand New for 2015 on January 28 at Islington Assembly Hall, N1 (to win tickets go to: mtv.co.uk/brand-new-for-2015)

More new women on the dance scene

Emilie Nicolas

This Oslo singer’s debut album was a number one in Norway last year and will be out over here soon. She veers between grandiose electropop on Pstereo and sparse introspection on the stunning Grown Up.

Jan 28, St Pancras Old Church, NW1 (0871 220 0260, seetickets.com)

Becky Hill

Hill has managed to stay credible despite being mentored by Jessie J while reaching the semi-final of The Voice in 2012. Now she’s in the thick of the UK house boom, touring with Katy B and singing with Rudimental, Wilkinson and Oliver Heldens.

Laura Welsh

Staffordshire’s Laura Welsh can do the melodic house thing no problem, as demonstrated by her vocal turn on dance duo Gorgon City’s track Here For You. Her solo material is largely slower and sexier, hence her appearance on the forthcoming Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack.

Mar 12, Electrowerkz, EC1 (0871 220 0260, seetickets.com)

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