I want to tell people that regardless of what happens to you, you can be all right
FORMER X FACTOR CONTESTANT LUCY SPRAGGAN HAS BEEN BUSY. SHE TELLS ALEX GREEN ABOUT THERAPY, WORKING WITH SIMON COWELL AND WRITING A SONG FOR CAROLINE FLACK
IT’S not often an artist sends music to their therapist asking for notes. But that is exactly what Lucy Spraggan did with Balance, her recent single.
This makes sense when you realise the piano-led ballad – about learning from past traumas and growing into the future – emerged from their sessions together.
“I’ve been doing therapy for a long time,” says the 31-year-old from her apartment in Manchester. “I speak to my therapist about how I’ve always wanted to do everything on my own, like ‘I don’t need anybody and I’ll do this myself ’.
“And she had me query it and be like, ‘You can actually rely on people when you find the right people, so why don’t you?’
“I left the session and I wrote Balance and I sent it to her. Literally, I left the studio and sent her the song and just said, ‘I wrote this about what you’re teaching me.’” Her therapist’s response?
Lucy says she thanked her for her openness and praised the track, but added jokingly: “And remember to breathe!”
“She’s just really humble,” the singer says. “She’s great.”
Lucy appeared on The X Factor a decade ago in 2012 but had her highest charting album yet, Choices, last year.
That record, which followed a divorce from Georgina Gordon, her wife of three years, and the decision to go sober, reached number five in the charts.
“It was like mind blown,” she says with a warm laugh.
Yet the singer has remained busy since then, completing another album, also titled Balance, and writing a memoir, Process, due to be published in 2023.
The song Balance was written in August 2021 and went into her demo collection until one Simon Cowell heard it.
Yes, the X Factor supremo and fearsome talent scout plays a part in her recent story.
Despite having appeared on The X Factor, Lucy had never spoken to Simon Cowell before. But when she began work on her book, which details her time on the show, she reached out to him. “That’s how I met Simon because he called me and we just started chatting,” she recalls.
“He was the last person I thought I would really get on with – and I really, really do.”
Lucy is now signed to his publishing company.
She calls him a “really thoughtful and really intelligent man” and the pair have already made TV appearances together.
“He’s not afraid,” she adds.
“He has significantly more resources than I do but we have the same opinion – that you could do anything in this world. It is rare to find somebody who truly does believe that.
“I’m not scared of anything and he’s not really scared of anything. And it’s nice to work with somebody like that.”
More than a year on from writing Balance, has she achieved it? Not quite, she admits.
“Finding balance is knowing that the scales of life are forever going to fluctuate,” she explains. “People are looking for this thing where you end up stable. But the reality is that life will throw whatever it wants to throw at you.
“Genuine balance is being able to make sure neither side smashes into the ground. Being like, ‘This is trauma but we can navigate it’.” Lucy is known for her direct, autobiographical lyrics and Balance does not disappoint.
The track titles for her upcoming record including OCD, Cocaine, Underdog and Cost of Living.
The latter track was written before the term entered common parlance in the UK as inflation began spiralling and energy costs went up.
In fact, the track is about “the things that we say that are just so wrong”.
The track OCD addresses her experience of being diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder last January.
“There’s this whole spectrum of things that we are as human beings,” she explains.
Lucy tells me she does not think she particularly sits inside the “OCD bracket”. “But this song is about how misunderstood you can feel as somebody who suffers with sometimes negative mental health. “It’s about the truth of it.” Will people empathise? “I think so because we’re all a bit nuts,” she says with a laugh. “That’s the trip. That’s the long and short of it.” Balance also contains a heartfelt tribute to Caroline Flack, the former Love Island presenter who died by suicide in February 2020 shortly after her 40th birthday. Caroline presented spin-off show The Xtra Factor while Lucy was a contestant and the singer suggests their connection ran deeper than many know. “I had the pleasure of knowing her on the show and seeing her a few times after that. Anyone who has ever met her knew that she was truly authentic and bright and good – I always think golden.”
Lucy calls her death a “tragedy”. “There’s quite a lot in my book that makes the relatability that I have to Caroline make slightly more sense.”
Ten years on from her X Factor audition, Lucy is naturally feeling reflective, and her album and memoir both suggest a newfound sense of calm and forward movement. “The point for me is that I want to tell people that regardless of what happens to you, you can be all right, you can be OK,” she says.
“There are things that I’ve chosen not to speak about my entire life. “There’s various things in there that I chose not to speak about and it took me 10 years to heal enough to do that. “I want to tell people that if they’re at year one of that healing process, that eventually you keep going and you will heal.”
The single Balance by Lucy Spraggan is out now. Her album of the same name will be released on April 28 and her memoir, Process, will be published in July.
I had the pleasure of knowing [Caroline Flack] on the show and seeing her a few times after that. Anyone who has ever met her knew that she was truly authentic and bright and good – I always think golden. Lucy Spraggan on TV presenter Caroline Flack, right, who died in February 2020