Singer Aimée’s in it for the long haul...
The down-to-earth Dubliner who is determined to fulfill her musical ambition
Everybody’s plans are currently on hold for the foreseeable future and artists of all stripes are no different. Dublin singer Aimée Fitzpatrick, who achieved over a million streams with her first two singles Don’t Bother and Break Me, should have been celebrating the launch of her first EP Confession on Friday with a sold-out headline show in Whelan’s in Dublin. Instead, the Swords woman says, ‘I’m just like everyone else. I’ve been forced to stay home. I should have been doing all the promo for the EP right now, but the last week and a half for me has been about coming up with plan B for everything.’
Aimée never considered a ‘plan B’ or some fallback career option
‘I don’t want to write songs about boys and asses. I want to make people feel something’
had her musical ambitions been thwarted. Although she worked with her sister Niamh and her late mum Tina at the Back Street Dance studio in Swords, music has been Aimée’s lifelong passion.
‘My mam said that I came out singing,’ the 24 year old laughs.
‘Apparently, from the age of two, I could sing Celine Dion songs from beginning to end. People were like, “How does a child that age remember all those words?” From as young as I can remember, if anybody asked, I just told them, “I’m going to be a singer when I grow up” and it has never ever changed.
‘There have been a lot of knockbacks. My mam and dad used to worry a bit about how I was going to keep doing this because they knew I was going to hear the word “no” so many times. I’ve always had this thing in my mind, “Don’t have a plan B”. If you have a plan B, you are already doubting your plan A. It also helps, of course, that I’m no good at anything else!’
She’s being modest there. She was an All-Ireland hip hop dance champion three years running. She had been modelling since she was a child and Back Street Dance, or BSD for short, won Ireland’s Got Talent last year. Aimée, in her own words, has been ‘knocked back’ by The Voice UK and several other TV talent competitions – she lost out to Ryan Dolan in Eurosong ’13 when she was just 17.
The music she is making right now has drawn favourable comparisons with Demi Lovato and Zara Larsson and behind the classy productions and danceable grooves, her songs promote an affirmative, empowering message.
‘I always had it in my mind that I don’t want to write songs about boys and asses. I want to make people feel something,’ she says.
‘I’m like that in everyday life. I’m very open about going through anxiety and so it makes total sense to do that in my music. I struggled with anxiety and panic attacks throughout secondary school; they thought I had asthma. I started to write songs and talk about my anxiety online but the only people I ever showed my music to was my mam or my family.
‘Then, I started to put it up online and I got people saying, “Yeah, I feel like that”. It has made me a more open person now than when I was a teenager. Mam was the inspiration for me doing that. She passed away two years ago. Two of the songs on the EP are inspired by her, I’m OK and What My Mama Gave Me.’
Although everyone from Bressie to Billie Eilish has been promoting a similar message to Aimée in their music and on the platforms afforded them, we can
never have enough, particularly in the current climate.
‘I think the reason why a lot of people gravitate towards me on social media is because I am just very normal and honest online,’ she says. ‘I remember my little sister saying, “Do you wish The Voice wouldn’t show your audition clip?” ‘I told her, no – I want little girls to see, “oh Aimée didn’t get that and Aimée didn’t get that, but she got there in the end because she kept going”.
‘I don’t believe shortcuts in anything work. I think the quicker you get there, the quicker you fall off it as well.
‘I’ve no problem in saying The X Factor didn’t want me, Britain’s Got Talent didn’t want me and The Voice didn’t want me but I know that there is some day they are going to regret it.
‘It’s the same with negative comments I get on my YouTube channel, I never delete them. I want young girls to say, “She is getting slagged off but she is still carrying on”.’ Confession is out now
‘I don’t believe shortcuts in anything work. The quicker you get there, the quicker you fall’