“YEAH, THIS IS HOW I TALK - GET USED TO IT”: BLAB ON LIVING UNAPOLOGETICALLY
Ahead of her support slot at our 2nd Birthday Bash, VOCAL GIRLS caught up with BLAB to chat about authenticity, unapologetic music making and the importance of not changing yourself for anyone.
There is little doubt that BLAB, aka 22-year-old Essex native Fran, is an artist who has always known what she wants. With feminist subject matters and a sound encompassing grunge-laden pop-punk, BLAB has burst onto the music scene with a bang. Having begun the year being crowned ‘BBC Introduction Essex’s Artist of the year 2021’ VOCAL GIRLS is incredibly excited to be hosting BLAB at our 2nd birthday event on the 3rd of February at the Shacklewell Arms, London.
BLAB has been making music since the age of 15, slowly harnessing her sound in the lead up to her first streaming releases in 2020, some seven years later. BLAB describes this seven year distance as an affirming process: “I’ve always known what I’m doing and who I am. But I think it took until recently for me to have the confidence to be able to do it and be fully committed to it.” BLAB’s creative awakening came in the form of a mid-GCSEs guitar-turned-procrastination-tool purchase, which birthed a new creative infatuation for the up-and-coming artist: “I just got really, really obsessed with playing the guitar!”, she tells me. There was never any doubt in BLAB’s mind about who she wanted to be: “When I was 16, I really knew what I wanted to do, and I was really like “This is who I am, this is what I wanted”, I had the name BLAB- I’m writing all these songs, but, I didn’t necessarily have the confidence to fully go for it. Now, I’m like fuck it”.
BLAB, an overt name with loud-and-proud capitalisation, reads as anything but subtle. For Fran, the name was an organic conception. “I thought of the name BLAB pretty early on”, she tells me. “I mean, everyone who has to name a band or an artist or project goes through this really arduous process of what do I call it? It’s so difficult. There were some really, really awful names…but I landed on BLAB, just because I felt like it represented me. I’m quite a jump in and just do it/throw yourself into everything kind of person…being upfront and forward about what you believe in and about, who you are, and being quite unapologetic. I think it just clicked as soon as I said it out loud.”
The name BLAB fittingly encapsulates BLAB’s synergy of an unapologetic sound and an unapologetic sense of self. The gap between first writing and first releasing music has allowed the artist to harness, refine and polish her sound: “It’s so easy to want to release all the time and as soon as you’ve written it, but it’s quite nice to have sat on loads of stuff for ages. It’s frustrating - don’t get me wrong! - but I feel like I had a chance to go through a lot of stuff in my life in that time, and it has shaped what music has become now. Now, I feel like it’s even more BLAB than it was when I named it BLAB, you know?” That said, as a young woman performing in male-dominated spaces, the road to creative self-acceptance has not always been easy: “When you’re younger, you feel like you need to do music in a certain way…especially growing up and being in bands with predominantly other lads my age, that kind of shapes you. So you end up mirroring what you’re around…it opened me up to all this stuff, and I just went, well fuck it, I’m just gonna do what I want to do rather than what I think my sound should be.”
With a sound straddling multiple genres, BLAB tells me how her fanbase seems to be as eclectic as the artist’s musical influences. “I feel like it’s [the fanbase] really mixed, which I get, because I’ve got a really weird taste in music. There’s nothing off limits when it comes to what I’m influenced by - if I like something and I get it into my head, I’m like, “I can riff off of this!””. BLAB reveals common comparisons she gets from fans: a sonic spectrum from Johnny Marr to Kate Nash, with the likes of Fall Out Boy, Paramore and Lily Allen plotted somewhere between the two. She tells me of an existential discovery following a conversation with a friend: “I’ve recently come to realise that I’m a massive emo, it’s ingrained into my personality. Yeah, I like Paramore and I grew up listening to All Time Low…but I’ve never considered myself as that type of person.” Someone recently likened her sound with that of 90s emo, a sub-genre which BLAB says she was not particularly familiar with: “Then I went and listened to a lot of stuff…I was like, how have I never heard this?! I’m now obsessed and I’ve gotten really into it. It feels like a second wind of when you’re 17 and first discover loads of bands - it’s like that feeling again for me.”
Staying connected with online communities of fans is integral for any emerging artist. Yet, with authenticity as a central pillar to her artistic and personal identity, I was curious to hear BLAB’s thoughts on navigating the relationship between facilitating social media platforms as marketing tools, whilst not necessarily enjoying their performativity and toxicity. “I think just never let yourself get too into it”, she tells me, “I try to be quite mindful with everything that I do and apply that kind of principle to it [social media]”. She opens up about the struggles of growing up with social media. “I had a really tough time, and I felt like lots of my friends did as well. Especially being a woman, and being a young girl looking at other women on Instagram thinking “Oh, this is what I need to look like…”. I’m always really mindful of how I present myself now and how younger girls might view and interpret that…I think, for me, it’s just about being authentic…not needing to always have that validation element.”
Throughout our conversation, I’m struck by the openness and self-acceptance driving BLAB’s answers - although, she tells me, the road to living and loving authentically has not necessarily been a straightforward one. Having been crowned BBC Introducing Essex’s Artist of the Year 2021, I ask how, if at all, being from Essex weaves into the tapestry of BLAB’s identity. She strongly agrees, going further to say “I think it is a big part of my identity as Fran, as well. Obviously, you can hear me talk, but in the written interview people won’t hear me talk - but there’s no way I’m covering up this accent!”
University proved a revealing experience (“It was really, really eye-opening”, as she puts it), in people being struck by, or making note of, an Essex accent. Fran talks about the classist double standard underpinning the image of the stereotypically glamorous Essex person, as driven by media profiling (most obviously, The Only Way is Essex). To paraphrase her words; a glamorous, successful individual does not translate in the same way depending on where you’re from - if you are a successful and glamorous working class person from Essex, you are ‘tacky’, but for a middle class person with the same image, you are not. BLAB talks about the duality between this: “I talk like this. I know my shit. I take myself seriously. But I also have a laugh. And also really like having nice hair and looking feminine and wearing dresses. Yeah, I used to go out loads, and I fucking loved it and it was a great time of my life. Sometimes I go and have a party now. Does that mean I’m any less of a serious human being and that you should think I’m an airhead? No.” [...] “I did carry a lot of shame for a while about being from Essex…because of the general stigma around it in the UK, maybe it kind of stopped me from being my full self a little bit because I thought, wow, I can’t be seen as intelligent or as a serious musician if I am this Essex person as well. But obviously, that’s a load of bullshit. When I talked about being able to be authentically myself over the past few years and be fully committed to what I’m doing - part of that is being like yeah, this is how I talk. Get used to it…I used to change the accent for a while, and it was too much effort. I don’t think I should change myself for anyone, you know?”
For BLAB, the road ahead is undoubtedly an exciting one, both in terms of writing and touring. Alongside an upcoming UK tour supporting Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (aka Sam Duckworth) and a sentimental hometown show in Southend at the end of January, BLAB is setting aside plenty of time to make music. “I’m trying to write as much as possible, I’m just committed to making the best album I can - because I won’t be able to live with myself if it’s anything less than incredible”. So, what can we expect of her slot supporting Molly Payton at the VOCAL GIRLS 2nd birthday event? “I’ve got some great songs I know that you guys specifically will be super, super into. I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what I’ve released, what I can do and the voice behind it…maybe some more personal-hashtag-deep songs - maybe, maybe not! Definitely some new tunes and some old favourites. I’m so, so looking forward to performing with Molly! Obviously everything VOCAL GIRLS stands for is very synonymous with what I stand for, so that’s why I absolutely love what you guys are doing”.
Catch BLAB supporting Molly Payton at the VOCAL GIRLS’ Birthday Bash on the 3rd February at the Shacklewell Arms, London.
