Local emerging artist She’s Mine best described as a sonic mix of Billie Eilish, FKA Twigs and Lorde and explores themes that touch on her experiences feeling outcast as someone trying to navigate life as pansexual and suspected AuDHD.
Her latest single Freak has placed her as the Mayor of Manchester’s Artist of the month last December and was named in the top 30 songs of the Young Songwriters Competition 2024.
What an achievement and inspirational for representation for women in the Manchester music industry.
We got the chance to talk about her journey and self expression through music.
Have you come across any times in your musical journey where you’ve not felt heard or felt people were obstructive towards you?
Absolutely, and often. I’ve had music teachers in High School and Uni secretly give out huge opportunities that should have been public knowledge to people that were on the right side of their personal biases with no regard for how good the music actually is. Usually, these are the well-off students who can afford to be paying for music videos or renting out venues for their own gigs.
The people actually making the interesting music are the people who are having to work or are too depressed to leave their room and I think it’s a travesty that musical directors fail to understand that.
A few years ago, I was struggling to get gigs and I remember talking to a friend who has upwards of 30k instagram followers, I asked them how they get gigs and they said “I just get offered them. Either I get DMs or emails offering me gigs” and I was just absolutely dumbfounded.
So now I have to be a Social Media star on top of a Singer, Composer and Producer just to even get a song heard?
I swear it’s always the people who are making bland music that get championed because if someone is making some form of music that crosses genre, no playlists on Spotify and no algorithm really knows where to put you, so you just don’t get heard.
Before you have money or the right team or a gazillion followers or streams, you always have to be on your best behaviour and ready to blow someone away with your talent because impressing the right people at the right time is the only way you’ll get given a shot.
The anxiety of always having to be at the top of your game just in case you stumble upon a big break is crippling sometimes and there’s no guarantee it’ll ever actually come along.
There was also this time where I had a bunch of promises made to me that if I worked for free recording demo vocals for a big industry songwriter, I might get picked up. They asked me to come in to the Studio to write some music and “see what happens” but then at the end of our two hour session they told me that because I hadn’t single-handedly written their idea of a hit song in that time (with no idea what was expected of me) I wouldn’t be getting a call back. Ugh it’s so frustrating but you just have to take it on the chin and keep going.
Do you feel it’s harder for your message to be heard as a woman in the music industry?
Without a doubt. People who present as the same gender tend to flock together in social situations (I suppose it’s human nature to some degree), but because the majority of instrumentalists or sound engineers are male, all the sudden I’ll find myself in a band room or in a sound check, trying really hard to include myself in this sort of “male culture” or “male humour”.
It’s completely unintentional on their part, but I don’t find it very professional, emotionally intelligent or socially aware. It makes me feel very “other”, it makes me scared to say the wrong thing for fear of being laughed at or ostracised whether it be to my face or done behind my back (which I’ve literally watched happen).
I’m hyper-sensitive to this too because I’m neurodiverse so even just the tiniest bit of perceived rejection in facial expression or in tone opens up a tab in my brain that’s trying to now engineer the social situation to compensate for a missed social queue or a mistake.
Of course there’s blatant sexism too, like when sound engineers ask the men around me about the music I wrote when I’m standing right there. Most people who are in a position to hand out career changing opportunities are male too and in my experience they lean more towards giving those opportunities to rich kids with guitars rather than someone who’s actually pushing creative boundaries.
And the women around me who are badass at being both open about their mental-health and assertive are labelled “b*tches”, “unstable” or “crazy”. So anyways, yes, I see women stomped on all the time in the industry and it breaks my heart.
I’m learning how to be more assertive so that I can have more autonomy over the way my music sounds and presents, like not letting an instrumentalist or a producer just completely change my music, I’ve just accepted that I might be labelled “cringe” or a “b*tch” and I just don’t give a f*ck anymore. The people who get it, will get it. But unfortunately sometimes I still need those people who don’t.
Put simply, as a woman trying to build a career in music, at the very ground level I already feel like I have to prove myself and it’s that added level of subliminal anxiety just makes my life a whole lot harder than it needs to be and makes me a lot more likely than my male peers to want to quit altogether.
What words of advice would you like to say to a young woman wanting to be truly expressive through music and make it in the industry?
You have a right to be able to express yourself however you want to and you have a right to take up space. Get angry that you were ever made to feel like you couldn’t.
Channel it into making really good art. Keep being resilient, keep being persistent, keep being tenacious and keep being a good person and I promise once you wade through the bullsh*t you’ll find your tribe.
People will tell you to be smaller because of the exact thing that makes you stand out and it’s the thing that makes you stand out that’s what will help you to succeed.
Get better at the things you need to, educate yourself on the industry as much as possible and allow yourself to get creative without picking it apart too soon.
Just please keep telling yourself that you can make it because we already have enough people telling us that we can’t.
How did you find the confidence to express your Pansexual identity through music?
I think that I’m extraordinarily lucky to have people around me that don’t even blink twice at queerness so I haven’t had to really have any extensive conversations with loved ones about being pan.
That being said, I do have some family members that I rarely see who harbour some very homophobic views, but I have no reason to hide. It took me a while to realise I wasn’t straight so experiences of feeling different are embedded in the music I’ve written since I was sixteen even though I didn’t know exactly why back then.
So yeah, it was never a conscious effort to write about my pansexuality, but it is fun to go back to some of my lyrics and see little glimpses of my closeted perspective on certain relationships.
We are currently celebrating Pride month and understand the importance of being able to be true to yourself, what would you say to others who are struggling with self identity?
First of all, having the awareness that you are struggling with something is the first step in feeling better, so if this resonates with you, you should already be very proud of yourself.
There’s no rush. Start as small as you want or in any way that feels right. I started by learning to say “no”. Please don’t put pressure on yourself to turn into your “best, most authentic self” right away.
You could start by identifying your core values and work outwards from there. If you can, surround yourself with people you look up to, I bet they’d be up for a conversation about how they overcame their own struggles and I think you might find that they still feel the same way from time to time.
Another good place to start could be trying to figure out what you’re jealous of, I remember looking at queer couples and thinking to myself “I want what they have” and as soon as I realised that that was what was going on in my head I was like “Ohhh, straight people don’t do that. I think I could be gay”.
Even though I’ve been calling myself pan for quite a while now, I still sometimes feel like an imposter and think to myself, “am I pan enough to be able to call myself pan?
I’m in a heterosexual relationship right now, like surely if I say I’m gay to someone they’re going to look at me with raised eyebrows”. But in those moments, I’m like – this is such silly example – “just because a shoe isn’t on a foot doesn’t mean it’s not still a shoe”.
Anyway, you’re allowed to explore and you’re allowed to change your mind.
You can check out She’s Mine below!