Birdy allows her Young Heart to run free..
Busy singer doing her bit for International Women’s Day with a Deezer ‘Women’s Voices’ Originals Session online and a soul-searching new album at the ready
After being as quiet as a church mouse for a good few years, Birdy is now about to take flight again with a new album in April.
There hadn’t really been a dickie bird out of her since her 2016 album Beautiful Lies went top five in the UK and Ireland – prompting critics to favourably compare her to Lorde, Florence and Lana Del Ray.
It seemed like she had vanished off the face of the earth, but then Birdy – who took wing to work on a new album after signing a major publishing deal with Warners/chappell Music in 2017 – suddenly soared back onto our radars with a new EP in late 2020.
This songbird was never going to need to sing for her supper anytime soon considering she’s got 2.3millionish followers on both Facebook and Youtube, along with 1.1million fans on music streaming giant Deezer.
Her cover version of Bon Ivor’s Skinny Love has clocked up a phenomenal 193.5 million views on Youtube.
But this modest 24-year-old singersongwriter – it’s hard to use “up-andcoming” seeing as she’s an early bird with the release of her first hit single at age 14 – is not one to beat her own drum.
She actually needed a little birdy – feel free to groan – to give her the lowdown on her impressive social media stats.
“Gosh, I don’t even know. I should know that,” she told me during our Zoom chat earlier in the week.
It’s something to make anybody happy as a lark.
But the somewhat shy-ish Birdy is a far cry from your stereotypical proud peacock type. She modestly replied, “I am always amazed by how many.”
I promise, from here on in, to dispense with the constant bird idioms that have been flying around the place. Otherwise you poor readers will end up feeling – again, feel free to groan – sick as a parrot with them!
But there is a lovely story about how Birdy got her nickname.
She recalled, “I’d open my mouth really wide when my parents used to feed me and that’s why they named me Birdy. It just stuck.”
Her full christen name is a bit of mouthful: Jasmine Lucilla Elizabeth Jennifer van den Bogaerde.
“My mom named me Jasmine and she felt it just didn’t suit me. She could never bring herself to call me that,” Birdy explained.
“I’m not really called Jasmine that much anymore. I was called it at school, but, other than that, my family call me Birdy.” Birdy it is, so… Perhaps Birdy has been able to keep her feet firmly on the ground because other members of the family have also tried their hand at this fame game.
She is the grand-niece of the legendary actor Dirk Bogarde, who appeared in Death in Venice, The
Night Porter, and The Servant.
The closet gay actor also bravely starred in the 1961 film Victim which was the first English-language movie to use the word “homosexual”.
Birdy’s mother is a concert pianist – which goes to prove that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree… or rather, bird’s nest in this instance.
And her father is the author Robert Bogaerde, who penned a poignant memoir entitled Daybreak into Darkness.
He wrote in it about how his first wife – who suffered from depression – suddenly disappeared while they were restoring an ancient Romaine Chapel in the southern Pyrenees.
“They did find her body, sadly, but it wasn’t until years later. It was quite a traumatic time in his life,” Birdy explained.
“And then he moved back to England and met my mum.”
Along with three brothers and one sister, Birdy also has two half-brothers from her father’s marriage that ended in such terrible tragedy.
According to her Wikipedia page, Birdy was seven-years-old when she started playing the piano.
“I was probably younger because I was just surrounded by it. My mum would play. My first memory of music is just lying in the cot and hearing classical music,” she said.
“I was always drawn to the piano and then she tried to teach all of us. I think it was quite hard to teach us because when it’s your parent you don’t really want to listen.
“I was probably about five when I started proper reading lessons with her and then she taught me up to about thirteen.
“And then a lot of it, I was learning by ear because I just wanted to play and write music.
“My dad would play the
Beatles, Abba and
George Michael – and my mom always hated most of that music!
“I’ve always loved both, the pop stuff and classical. My music is more pop, but it’s definitely influenced by classical and is quite cinematic.”
Birdy was 12-years-old when she won the UK Open Mic contest and was only 14 when she had her first top 20 hit with a cover of Bon Ivor’s Skinny Love.
Birdy isn’t the only member of the flock planning to spread their wings in the music world.
“My sister is a really good singer. She’s now writing and doing her own thing, which is very good,” she said.
“I was a bit scared to put all of it out there. But I’ve never felt as close to the songs before. I feel very protective of them.
“My eldest brother just got into production and actually, over the lockdown we’ve been doing a lot of work together. He’s been helping me record a lot of stuff.”
Birdy first flew the coop at age 17, but she’s very much a home bird these days since returning, as a result of the lockdown, to the family nest on England’s south coast in New Forest. “It’s been quite strange but also quite nice. We’re lucky because we’ve got like a lot of space outside, and in the summer there’s big lakes and we’ve been swimming,” she said.
“I think – probably like with most artists – this time is quite inspiring. I feel like in a few months I’ll probably write all about this time.”
Birdy wears her heart on her sleeve on her upcoming album – appropriately enough entitled Young Heart.
“At the beginning of writing it I went through a break up and so it’s about that and the healing of that,” she said, adding it was her first big break up.
“But it’s also about being on my own really and struggling with that. Because I always had this person to make these decisions with.”
She mused: “I think for anyone, first love is always going to be quite heartbreaking and quite hard to get over.
“And that’s really when I fell in love with Joni Mitchell, because that Blue album is so much about that. I really related to a lot of the songs.
“It (the new album) has been so much inspired by her. But also, just her as an artist: I fell in love with the way she writes and how conversational it is.
“I’d never written in that way before: it had been quite dramatic and loads of metaphors.
“I like the way hers was very conversational and almost like she’s talking to a friend.
“And also, she’s just very powerful as a person. You know, her music isn’t big and loud or aggressive, but what she’s saying is very powerful.
“And, actually, after a while it really sinks in – it doesn’t hit you instantly, but it’s very powerful at the same time. Which I really love.”
She added about the new album: “It is very personal and the songs are very real. I’ve not really shown that much of myself before on other albums.
“I was a bit scared to put all of it out there. But I’ve never felt as close to the songs before. I feel very protective of them.”
Birdy’s newfound appreciation of Joni Mitchell made it a no-brainer for her to pick one of the icon’s songs to cover for Deezer’s Women’s Voices’ Session.
Coincidentally, Deezer’s streaming data for the UK and Ireland from the last 12 months shows that Dublin is where fans stream Birdy the most.
Birdy herself told me she is a massive fan of Villagers, Kodaline, Van Morrison and – last but not least – our Guinness.
“I remember going out there and just having loads of fun in the bars and drinking lots of Guinness,” she said.
Birdy’s Deezer session includes a cover version of A Case of You and her own track Loneliness, which is taken for her new album Young Heart that’s out on April 30.
Deezer has just launched a new “Women’s Voices” collection with originals sessions and curated playlists to help support female artists for the upcoming International Women’s Day on March 8.
Deezer’s new “Women behind the music’” playlist series will also promote the songwriters, producers and musicians who wrote, produced or performed on international hits.
Apart from Birdy, the “Originals Sessions” line-up includes The Staves performing Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting, LP performs Adele’s Hello, while Fousheé gives us Drew Barrymore by SZA.
Later in the month, Dodie will also release a special cover of Kacey Musgraves’ tune Oh, What A World.
Birdy said: “It’s an important day to celebrate for women and for young female artists. It’s nice to show that I really respect someone like Joni Mitchell, one of my favourite artists, and talk a bit about that.”
Birdy said she has “definitely” like “any woman” experienced some sexism in the music industry.
But she added: “I think because I was so young when I started I was very well protected by my manager.
“I have a female manager, so she was already pre-empting a lot of the things that might have happened.”
Does Birdy feel like she missed out on being a normal teenager?
“There’s definitely things that I’ve missed out on. When I was making the first and second album I was still at school and I would be travelling – so I wouldn’t be there for a friend’s birthday,” she recalled.
“Or going to festivals every summer, I wasn’t there. And so some of that was hard at the time.
“But I’m also very grateful for having this much experience at my age, because it’s really nice to be able to now make an album and feel like I know what I’m doing.”
Birdy’s going to come through this with flying colours…
■■Birdy’s ‘Women’s Voices’ Originals Session is available exclusively on Deezer at www.deezer.com. Join now for three months free.