INTERVIEW: Cat Burns on her slow burner hit 'Go': "I want people to listen to my music and feel like I wrote that song directly for them."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
The UK’s Cat Burns has had the kind of year that most up and coming artists dream about. Releasing music since 2016, in 2020 she released a gorgeous ballad called ‘Go’. A stripped back pop track with minimal instrumentation and a hint of gospel, it sees Burns resigning herself to a relationship ending despite her efforts to save it. “I should have listened to my friends / They always know best….pack up your things and go” she sings.
This year, almost two years after it’s release the song gained immense popularity and has soared into the top 10 on the UK singles charts, currently sitting at number 5 and being certified silver for over 200,000 units/sales.
A black, queer artist Burns has built a range of diversity into her music, particularly with ‘Go’, which not only broadens her appeal but allows listeners to find meaning in her music that applies best to their situation in life. It is an approach so smart and empathetic, yet simple, you have to wonder why it isn’t more widespread. For example, her lyrics are gender neutral and she has released multiple versions of ‘Go’ - from a piano ballad version to an electro-dance version - allowing you to enjoy the song in your favourite genre.
Hailing from Streatham in South London, Burns says she is ‘helping you get through shit, one song at a time’. She creates music that is thoughtful, frank, confessional, heartfelt and intensely moving. It is always beautifully understated, which in turns makes it incredibly powerful. 2022 is shaping up to be the year Burns becomes a major star and we can’t wait to hear more new music from her. We recently caught up with her to find out more about her music and career.
Hi Cat it is so good to chat to you. I'm just going to fangirl a little bit, because I think your music is wonderful. So thank you for making it and sending it out. It's just a joy. You have been releasing delicious music since high school. I want to kick off our chat talking about the beast that is ‘Go’. I want to hear about it from you, and where it came from?
My friend at the time came to me in 2018 and he had told me that he got cheated on. He described the story of how it happened, and it was so vivid. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so dramatic, it could 100% be a song’. That week, I went home and came up with the hook instantly. I went into a session with George Morgan and we wrote a little bit of it together and I left that session thinking there's more that needs to be said in this song, so I kept writing it. I brought it to producer Jonah and we got nine or ten different versions of the song because it started being super produced. It gradually got less and less as I moved through my career and figured out what kind of music I wanted to make, and how I wanted my production to complement my lyrics and voice rather than overshadow.
I teased ‘Go’ on my TikTok back in May of 2020 and it was just received super well. I released it July or August of 2020 and it did well, it got to a million streams. It was first song I've ever had that got to a million streams and I saw it the song that people will get to know me, but not on this scale. In December 2021 it just randomly had a resurgence. Young people on TikTok re-found the song and just started making videos with it. We put out the ‘lower and slower’ version, the ‘drum and bass’ version and that took it over the line and now we're here where it's at number 5 in the UK charts, which is just crazy. It's been a slow burner, but the last four months have just been so quick.
What do you think it is about the sentiment of ‘pack up your shit and go’ that everyone suddenly went yes!
I think it's the bluntness of it. As a whole, the song isn't a mean song, it just states the facts. The storytelling is in the verses, you're hearing how it's going, or seeing how the story unfolds in your head watching the video, and then the chorus kind of just says, ‘Cool, well, you've told me, or I’ve found out, that you've cheated on me so this is the end of this relationship, cool. Go.’ There's no faff about it. I think because I'm British, and you can still hear my accent, there's a bluntness to it that people enjoy. Where I'm from in South London, that's just how everybody is. We're very blunt, straight talkers. People like how there could have been a prettier way of saying ‘pack up your shit and go’, but instead it's just ‘pack up your shit’. It's just as simple as that.
It needs to be blunt, and it's delivered with such sincerity. You said about wanting to be sure, in the sound that you're putting out, there was a very concise decision about how you wanted to go forward musically. I love hearing that you had nine to 10 different versions of this one song, but you wanted to hone it in - ‘this is the one that's going to dictate where I'm going’. If you were to describe what that sound is that you see yourself creating what do you think that is?
I would definitely say stripped pop music. I've always loved Tori Kelly and Ed Sheeran and pop artists who generally make really beautiful music, where the production always complements whatever it is that they're saying. The songs I've always loved were the songs that felt like they were written for me. I remember when I was younger thinking ‘I want to be that artist for other people.’ I want people to listen to my music and feel like I wrote that song directly for them. Just because I feel like it builds that connection even more. So I definitely say stripped pop, where every sort of every element of the production is thought out and not just there. I hate when something's there for no reason and it doesn't actually complement anything, it's just there to make it sound fuller. TikTok, especially, has shown that so many people still love a stripped song and people still love a ballad. This idea that it's only dance songs that are doing really well, it's just so incorrect, because the songs that see from TikTok that blow up are always a heartfelt, honest, authentic song where there's barely anything else on the track, except from the artist, their voice and their lyrics. That's something that I personally love.
I love the notion that you want to make those songs that an audience goes ‘oh, that's my song’. I want to talk about ‘Into You’, which I just love so much because it's so bloody sweet. There’s that feeling you get when you've dated someone and it's just so relatable. Can you talk me through that track?
I wrote that song over Zoom with this guy called Yami and Jonah again, he was the producer. My guitarist at the time, Charlie Morton, in another session was playing a little riff that I loved and I've voicenoted him playing that. In next session we had I asked him to play it again, and for some reason, the song kind of just wrote itself, Immediately when I hear this, I think of you've just had a first date and it went really, really well, and you want to see them again but you don't know the best way to play it. It wrote itself in about two hours. I wanted it to be as conversational as possible and really tell the story perfectly so that you could just imagine the whole song in your head. With that little voice notes section, I just wanted to really show that most of the time, after a first date, we will always call our friends especially if it was a good one and you've had rubbish ones up until that point. I wanted to just show that excitement that you get after after a really good first date with someone.
This is a song you give someone that you like, because you can't say it yourself, which is great! But you speak about it with so much weight to it, and I don't think people hear that enough when speaking about heartfelt, stripped back pop. People tend to put it into the category of breezy and easy and busking, so this is really beautiful to hear. You sound like you've got such a vision and creative control. Have you always been like that with your music and with your life?
I tried to be, but I definitely got rid of for a couple of years, where I let other people use their expertise and saying maybe we should try this, maybe we should try that. But doing that made me realise how much I do need to be in control. Once I took that control back and just started going with my gut, which was always stripped music, and running with that I saw the success come with it pretty much instantly after, because I just knew inside that there was a demand for that. I've always loved it, but I knew that there was a demand for it because there just hasn't been many black girls doing pop music and playing the guitar. I knew that people wanted to see that, especially now we're in a time where more black artists want to showcase the fact that they don't always just do RnB or don't want to just do rap. They want to make indie music, they want to make pop music, they want to make rock, they're allowed to have a broad range of music interests. Even from when I was 14, 15 I knew that was the music that I wanted to make. I tried to make some RnB songs that I put out on Spotify, but it just wasn't me. I'm an avid listener of RnB and I love it, but I just knew for me, stripped pop was where my heart connected to the music and I knew I wanted to make music like it.
Do you think that also comes with the longevity of a song, that unless the artist goes into it with 100% integrity, the audience, even if they don't register it, can hear that and it becomes forgettable?
Yes, because when an artist is authentic, it just helps massively. Because I try my best to write about things that won't ever go out of style - someone will always have a breakup, there will always be friendship breakups and there will always be these things. So I don't think there will ever be a time where people wouldn't be able to listen to my music, because I try my best to be as authentic and as vulnerable as I can for that purpose.
You started singing, like a lot of people do, singing covers and uploading them. Can I ask you what was that metaphorical straw that broke your songwriters back or were you always doing it and it just took you a while to write and release your own material?
I've always been songwriting, actually, I started doing it when I was about 13. All the songs then were awful, they were really awful but I needed to get it out of my system. My friend's dad in school was a producer, so he always would say, ‘come over, I can just teach you and show you how to use the stuff and we can record.’ And that really helped get me even more experience in writing. And he was like, No, you've got something really, really good and he saw that in me at 14. I'd always been writing and it was just sort of getting better as I got older and as I figured out my songwriting style and how I wanted to say things. It just improved and improved and improved.
Gorgeous. Now you have these beautiful lyrics like ‘you only call me when you're drunk’, like oh my God we’ve all been there. You have a glorious EP coming out soon. Can you tell me a little bit about what's coming up for you?
The EP is coming out very, very soon, it's a very exciting time, I think people are going to really like it. It's very personal, it talks about a wide range of stuff. It talks about my struggles with anxiety, and having conversations with myself, asking if I'm able to do things without being anxious sometimes. There’s another song on there that talks about abandonment issues and commitment issues and expecting people to leave even though they've actually given you no indication that they will. Another one on there, my personal favourite, is called ‘We're Not Kids Anymore’ and it's about the sombre feeling you get when you and your childhood friend just sort of drift apart, and life just happens and you no longer see each other. And you only can see them through pictures and memories, you can't have that same friendship you once had. There's one that talks about mental health and just taking mental health breaks.
But other than that, it's just loads of gigs this year. There's festivals, some support tours. This year is really about building. Because I grew my following throughout lockdown, normally when there's new artists, their main way of growing their following is through live shows. I've kind of done it backwards where I've grown the following, and now I’m building my confidence and experience on stage and building people's, hopefully positive, view of me.
‘Go’ is out now via Since 93/Sony Music. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Cat Burns you can follow her on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter.
