STRIKING A CHORD
Singer’s love of guitars is...
The lockdown longueurs will give you ample opportunity to listen to stacks of music; the bad and good; old and new; A to… well… Zuzu. She’s a 25-year-old Liverpool singer, whose six-track EP, How It Feels is making me, for one, dance as if no one is looking… and nobody is.
I think she sounds like a collision of Chvrches, Kooks and Vampire Weekend. She contends that her influences are
The Beatles, Lizzo, Taylor Swift and Diana Ross. You might not immediately leap to the latter conclusion, but believe it, the evidence is right before your eyes.
‘I’ve got an image of Diana Ross tattooed on my arm. I adore the 1960s and The Beatles,’ she says.
‘My parents are big Beatles fans. I feel connected to that world being from Liverpool. At the same time, I hear music on the radio that excites me. I think what’s great about music these days is that you can say what you want,’ she says.
‘Every time I get in a taxi, the driver will have a story of how he was in a band, or his uncle was a barman who served a drink to The Beatles. In my family, there is nobody that is musical, or connected in any way.’
High-profile support slots to the likes of Australian singer Courtney Barnett raised Zuzu’s profile. Her self-produced songs and videos got her a deal with Virgin/EMI in 2018 and Zuzu is her real name.
‘My mum gave me the name Zuzu after the little girl in
(the Frank Capra movie) It’s A Wonderful Life,’ she says.
She sings proudly in her cherished accent. A decision she says that has met some resistance.
‘I thought about that quite a lot. I can hear their scouse accent in there but I think the scouse accent in the 1960s was quite different,’ she says.
‘I like to put in a lot of scouse expressions in my music, the things my mum and aunties say and teach you. I want that to be a part of what I do.’
She is now pursuing her career in London and isn’t afraid to be out of step, as she sings on Cool With Me: ‘I wanna hit and I want it now. Drums are in and guitars are out. I guess I’ll just have to stick it out and see if the trend comes back around.’
She explains: ‘I’m trying to say that I make guitar music and whether that’s on-trend right now or not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s basically about me wanting to make pop music with guitars. It sums up what I want to do.’
n Zuzu – How It Feels is out now