Fia Moon’s brand of pop is a beautiful blend: deeply personal and emotional in nature, her songwriting grabs elements of the pop of the 60s, focusing heavily on distinctive and breathtaking vocals, but not afraid to tell sometimes heartbreaking stories.
As an Irish artist based in London, Moon’s slow-rolling her early work, releasing singles infrequently and away from the hubbub that the music industry often demands. She’s made a conscious choice not to chase the “right now” that the scene can evoke, and instead to build a catalogue as she works towards an album when the time is right. It’s worked: just a few songs in, spread over years, Moon has a reputation for meticulous and beautiful quality.
“Like all my music, the single is quite personal,” Moon says of latest release ‘By Now’. “I wrote it with DAY_S the very first time we recorded a session, which I thought was unusual, we’d never met before, and we came out with this really personal song. We have a close friendship now from that day, and it means a lot.”
“It’s my first ‘all Irish’ collaboration, including the production, photos and video, so that’s been really nice,” she says. “I try not to think too much about the personal stuff. I think if I did I’d probably be terrified. It’s baring your soul completely, and the nature of my music means that I find it difficult to write in any other way. It doesn’t feel real, or natural. I try to take myself out of the equation once it’s written, and detach from it in order to release it. That doesn’t take away from the emotion. I couldn’t listen to one song, called ‘Falling For You’, without crying.”
Of course, loading that much personal emotion into music can be a huge positive, too. “I hope I can connect with people who’ve gone through the same thing through the music,” Moon says. “I’d like to build that, I hope people can find joy, solace and meaning in it all. Most of ‘By Now’ is one take, from a demo I’d recorded on my phone, except for a couple of lines in the chorus that I changed in the final production. Everything else is the first take, and that was an important part of maintaining the rawness and emotion of the song, which is about finding out my ex had a new girlfriend. I was surprised to find that it stung the way it did.”
“I can’t overthink these things,” she continues. “The more I overthink the music, the less the emotion works. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s best to let it be, to go with your first shot.”
Moon goes on to talk about the dichotomy of music and attempts to succeed in it. “There’s that strange balance of trying to get discovered on social media, but also remembering that the heart of it all is art,” she says. “Most of my songs have come out during the pandemic, and that’s been a bizarre time. It’s been challenging but it’s kept me motivated and given me something to look forward to during these times. There are certain limits, of course, but you can make connections, and when things do come back around, it’ll be that much more sweet.”
As for the future? “I don’t think there’s ever going to be a perfect album, but I want to put something out that communicates what I feel like at that time. I’m writing all the time, working with different people and figuring out who I want to do a record with. I want to have some level of consistency across it, especially with production and mixing and so on. The songs I’ve released are relatively different, so I’m just gathering and assessing as I go, until I feel like it’s time.”
