Photos courtesy of Griff
In the six years since the release of her first single, 24-year-old British singer-songwriter Griff has undoubtedly announced herself as a force to be reckoned with. Having opened for pop superstars like Sabrina Carpenter, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, and Taylor Swift all while creating, releasing, and touring her debut album Vertigo, Griff’s fairytale rise has been impossible to look away from.
I had the opportunity to meet with Griff ahead of her two night run opening for Gracie Abrams at the Kia Forum to discuss “last night’s mascara,” growing up biracial, and the rise of British women in pop.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity purposes.
Kiara Mack: I thought we’d start off with some quick little icebreakers, if that’s cool with you. What song is on repeat for you right now?
Griff: Oh my gosh. What song is on repeat for me right now? Honestly, “Summerboy” by Lady Gaga.
Kiara: I just saw Lady Gaga!
Griff: Oh, my God. How was it? I really wanted to make it down, but I couldn’t. Was it amazing?
Kiara: It was incredible. “Summerboy” was probably my favorite part of the set list. That’s a perfect choice.
Griff: Yeah, I’m one of those where the song completely slipped my universe when it came out, so I’m kind of living for it now.
Kiara: What’s your favorite movie?
Griff: God, I’m gonna be terrible at these icebreakers. I’m so indecisive. Honestly, my favorite comfort movies are Madagascar and The Devil Wears Prada. I’m very excited for the reboot.
Kiara: I’m so excited for that too! All the paparazzi photos from the set are making me so excited.
Griff: I know! I kind of feel like I’ve seen the whole film, but I’m still into it.
Kiara: What’s a song you wish you wrote?
Griff: So many. I wish I wrote “Issues” by Julia Michaels and “Supercut” by Lorde.
Kiara: Those are perfect answers. To keep on the theme of the week, what’s your favorite Gracie Abrams song?
Griff: Not to be like “I was a day one.” I love “21.” That’s my favorite.
Kiara: Yes! I’ve been going through a big minor phase recently. I’ve been listening to that EP a lot. Speaking of Gracie, I was so excited to hear that you’d be opening for her LA dates, and I was wondering how you two first met because you obviously both have opened for Taylor, but you also started releasing music around the same time. I’m curious how far back your friendship with each other goes.
Griff: When did we first meet? I think a few years ago, we were both aware of each other online. I think either one of us might have commented or something on each other’s posts, but I think we first properly met at Paris Fashion Week. We ran into each other because we were staying at the same hotel, and I was going to a Miu Miu show, and she was going to a Chanel show. We both knew of each other, and we saw each other, and we were like, “Oh, my God, you’re real.” That’s the first time I remember talking to her.
Kiara: You’ve opened for so many superstars at this point, but when you get the call asking if you happen to be ready to open for a couple Gracie Abrams arena shows this summer, do you still get nervous about those sorts of things? I mean, you’re about to play the Forum and Red Rocks which is wild, but you’ve also played so many iconic venues that I’m curious if any of it still fazes you at all.
Griff: I feel really nervous because I feel quite rusty. I haven’t done any shows this year, and I think every support is really different. Even though I’ve done so much of it, you still never know what the crowd is like. Last year with Sabrina, I started getting a bit more used to it, and then, it’s been pretty much a six month or more break, so I feel very, very rusty.
Kiara: You’ve also headlined a few of your own tours now. What do you feel like you’ve learned from opening and being able to watch how your fellow artists tour, that you’ve been able to apply to your own shows?
Griff: So much, but I think each tour has influenced me at different stages. I remember writing a lot of the album when I was touring with Coldplay. I just think that the euphoria that a Coldplay show gives you really injected itself into my writing. I feel like touring with someone like Sabrina, when touring with the girls, you realize just how they’re such pros. You can see the years of dedication and hard work. I think there’s so much added expectation for a production standard when it comes to the girls, but every single one just shows how much of an absolute pro they are at their craft. Whether it’s Taylor or Sabrina or Dua Lipa hitting every single mark, it’s really quite inspiring to see performers on that level.
Kiara: I also have to talk about “last night’s mascara,” which I think has been one of the coolest trajectories for a song I’ve seen in a minute.
Griff: Yeah, thank you.
Kiara: What has that experience been like for you, and has it maybe given you the encouragement to keep experimenting with your live performance in that way, to just perform unreleased songs on a whim and see what happens from there?
Griff: It was really cool. It was very crazy. My album had come out, and honestly, I was at a point where I just wasn’t sure, when I was making the album, what would connect or not. I had such a graveyard of songs because I think I was so reliant on looking to my team and seeing what they thought was going to be the song. It just kind of got me a bit twisted, so it was almost a really nice encouragement to directly test out music to an audience and see how they react. In the future, I would love to do it again, but it also takes a lot behind the scenes. Even though I was literally putting out the song and mixing the stems as I was performing it, there was still so much back end work of all the content and getting it all ready. I remember it was so non-stop that I would have loved to do it on this tour, but I just wasn’t ready. I feel like when the time is right, when the stars align, if you have a really good tour moment and you have a song ready, then it’s perfect, but I couldn’t get my shit together for this one.
Kiara: I know you’re Jamaican and Chinese. My dad is African-American, and my mom is from the Philippines.
Griff: Oh my gosh, no way! That’s so crazy. I still kind of get giddy when I meet other Blasian people because I think it’s a bit more common in the US, but in the UK, it’s so rare, so I’ve never really met that many.
Kiara: I was wondering if your mixed race identity, your family, your upbringing, if any of that influenced your decision to go into the arts and become a performer and a songwriter.
Griff: I think in many ways it did. I don’t know. It’s interesting. My mum, her whole story is that she was a refugee for so many years, left after the Vietnam War and just has seen a whole different side of life that I never have. I think I always grew up very aware, and I think a lot of immigrant kids are always very aware of the kind of sacrifice and the life and the opportunity that you’re standing on from your parents. I watched my mum work so hard and almost like jump classes in a way that growing up, it almost felt like anything was possible. Knowing that your mum grew up with bombs dropping in the back of her garden and is now living in a major capital city like London and raising a family, it just kind of expanded how ambitious we felt like we could be as kids. Then, on my Jamaican side, I think music was just so intrinsically a part of what my dad passed down as part of his culture. He lived and breathed soul music. I think there’s a lot of pain, obviously, from growing up Black and from Windrush parents that is passed down through music. I think, weirdly, they both combined to make me do this, but it wasn’t necessarily like they were like, “You should go be in the arts.” It was almost the opposite, but there’s something mold breaking about that kind of makeup of heritage that drew me to music.
Kiara: You’ve described songwriting as kind of being your initial artistic pursuit. Are there any albums or artists that you were exposed to in your childhood that you still feel very inspired by when it comes to how you approach your songwriting today?
Griff: I feel very inspired by Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige, and Whitney Houston. I think there’s a real freedom and soul in those kinds of songs that I don’t necessarily feel like I come by as much now with modern music. I still go back and listen to those kinds of records for reference.
Kiara: From the interviews of yours that I’ve read, I know Fearless by Taylor Swift was a big inspiration for you, so selfishly, as a Swiftie, I have to ask, what is your favorite song off that album?
Griff: It changes every day. I think it’s “Hey Stephen” for me, and then, close follower, “The Best Day” always, as a kid, made me feel something.
Kiara: This is my favorite question to ask singer songwriters, but is there any word or phrase that you’re trying to someday fit into one of your songs? In your case, every time I listen to “Vertigo,” especially, I’m like, “How in the world did she think to use that word in a pop song?” Are there any other words that have been like floating around your head that you’ve been considering?
Griff: That’s such a good question. I feel like there’s so many. As songwriters, our notes pages are filled with completely ridiculous things that will probably never, ever make it into a song. I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “melancholia,” and I don’t know whether it’s just a mood for where I’m at right now or whether it’s an actual lyric that might ever make it in or something. It’s definitely a bit of a tongue-twisty word, so I don’t know if it would make a sexy lyric, but I really like the word.
Kiara: Back on the subject of touring, are there any lyrics that you get really excited about hearing a crowd singing back to you?
Griff: The “Vertigo” lyric is always funny: “Couldn’t take the heat, that’s Mexico.” It just became a bit of a thing for my headline shows. I don’t really know if anyone here is going to actually understand or know that’s what happens, but it always makes me laugh. There’s always one or two people that scream, “That’s Mexico!” I’m intrigued to play “last night’s mascara” because it came out and I did my European headline run, but it was still really new in the set, so it’s going to be fun to play that one as a song that’s been out in the world a little bit longer.
Kiara: You seem to really value giving the process of making music as much time and energy as you can and instinctively know when it is or isn’t the right time for you to be writing and when to just be in the moment and sit with what has been made. Especially as your career has progressed so rapidly, how have you been able to find that balance and the self discipline to not feel like you constantly need to be working or putting yourself out there? I imagine that’s quite difficult in the current music industry landscape.
Griff: Yeah, it’s very difficult. I think I’m still figuring it out, to be honest. I think we all just kind of make decisions based off our past experiences, right? I think I’ve seen the years post-COVID where I was just on a treadmill for so many years. I was writing the first album on tour, and weirdly, it actually wasn’t that productive for the creative process and for my own confidence. I think songwriting really deserves its time to breathe. For me anyway, it’s such a different muscle that combining the two pulls me out of the zone so much. Then, you go back in it, and it almost reduces how satisfying the process is. This time around, I was very intentional to just take the time and really know what it is that I’m putting out.
Kiara: I have to say, I feel like British pop artists have been really killing it lately, and so many women, especially women of color as well, have had an incredible few years. Have you been able to put into perspective maybe why that is, why people globally have been resonating with the British pop scene in the way they have? I realize that might be an impossible question to answer, but as someone all the way in California, watching these artists connect with so many people out here even has been really amazing to witness.
Griff: I haven’t really thought about it, weirdly. As Brits, we’ve always seen really big, breaking artists that were white, you know? I’ve always really thought about that narrative of when you think of British artists, you think of Adele or Sam Smith or Amy Winehouse or the Beatles or something. I think it is in an interesting shift right now with a lot of the girls, whether it’s Rachel [Chinouriri] or Olivia Dean or Lola [Young]. I think there’s something in the London scene that is really empowering for young girls of color. There’s such creativity in London and a style in London that I think allows girls to develop and have their voice, but I need to give it a little bit more thought.
Kiara: To close things off here, you’ve done pretty much anything and everything a pop artist could ever dream of, but is there anything that’s still on your career bucket list that you’re hoping to achieve someday? A venue to play, an artist to collaborate with, anything like that?
Griff: There’s so much. What do I really want? I think I just want to play bigger venues as my own headliner. Support is such an amazing but weird one where you’re kind of getting the serotonin boost of playing a big venue, but they’re not actually your fans. I think for every single venue that I play as a support, it would be insane to know that I could do that as a headliner.
You can catch Griff opening for Gracie Abrams at the Kia Forum on August 6th and 7th.
Check out Griff’s socials and her debut album Vertigo below!
