Expectations of women in society may be too much

Paloma Faith on managing motherhood

Paloma Faith’s heartbreak anthems have soundtracked many a turbulent relationship and break-up over the last decade. The free-spirited north Londoner has bared her soul on ballads like Only Love Can Hurt Like This and Picking Up The Pieces, but her latest album, The Glorification Of Sadness( below ), delves deeper than ever as she explores separating from her partner of nearly 10 years and becoming a single mother.

She announced her split from French artist Leyman Lahcine

– with whom she shares two daugh- ters, aged seven and nearly three – in August last year. Whiletracks on the record like Divorce offer an honest in-sight into her heartache, she channels an energy of female empowerment in singles Bad Woman and How You Leave A Man.

“The empowerment bit is wonderful ,” says Faith over a video call from London. “But there are songs that are a little bit more exposing and emotionally difficult.

“It’s a bit of a mixed bag, really.”

“When I was writing (the album), it felt very cathartic,” the 42-year-old muses.

“But now it feels like the process of promoting it, it’s slowing down the possibility of me recovering emotionally because it’s like picking the scab off all the time.”

Among the issues she was battling was the added pressure she felt as a mother-of-two in her situation.

“Our expectations of women in society are just, maybe, too much,” Faith says. “There is so much more pressure on us to be perfection than there is on men, I think.”

While there has been a degree of progress with women rights over the years, Faith feels “feminism has abandoned us halfway through its process”.

“We’re quite overloaded now. We wanted equality, equality is now packaged as what is essentially too much for us.

“I think too much expectation, and too much mental load, and too much actual practical load as well, because we’re raising children, working all hours.

“We’re condensing all of our personal time into their sleeping hours and that means working a lot of the time as well.

Alongside her musical career, Faith has also dipped her toe into the acting world, having appeared in films including 2007’s St Trinian’s and 2009 horror Dread as well as the DC Comics drama Pennyworth (inset, right) as well as acting as a judge on The Voice UK and on The Voice Kids.

She feels there has been a positive change in how social issues are approached, but thinks the actions are all “very conscious”.

Her hope is that this progress becomes “ingrained” in society “rather than just something you do foray ear to prove a point”.