Interview with Megan Black: ‘I feel like a less cool, female version of David Byrne!’

West Lothian, Scottish singer Megan Black, has put together a new band and has just released a video for last year’s single, ‘Hang Out Dry’.

The track deals with the helplessness of addiction, as the lyrics show: ‘The drugs can’t help him no more, no more, no more, no more than I can.’ As Black puts it: ‘For me, it came from the side of dealing with addiction, having someone in your life who’s addicted and you’re powerless to stop it. We wanted to combine the upbeat rock feel with an emotional message.’

Black admits that, as a songwriter, it can be hard sometimes to know whether you’re writing something original or subconsciously regurgitating something that already exists: ‘I’m one of those people who can have a tune stuck in their heads for two weeks,’ she laughed. ‘I keep singing it! It’s one of the biggest dilemmas, did someone write this already or did I just make it up? It’s a constant struggle.’

‘Fur Coat Queen’ (2019), which is my favourite track of hers, is actually her coming out story: ‘I hadn’t come out before and I thought it was a good time,’ she explained. ‘I love women, I think men are ok but women are so inspiring and so bold. This patriarchal idea that women don’t like or support each other needs to go, it’s just not true. Women can be so in awe of other women.’ I ask her which women she finds particularly inspiring: ‘I get inspiration from loads of women on the street, like the lady wearing a crazy dragon hat. We have to celebrate that internal expression that we have.’

As the song goes: ‘My Fur Coat Queen, I believe you’ve got a thing or two to teach me and Fur Coat Queen,  I believe you’ll give me something more to say.’

‘I feel like a less cool, female version of David Byrne!’

I tell her that her voice reminds me a lot of Stevie Nicks, a comparison that she has heard before, and seems genuinely delighted by: ‘You know, I feel like a less cool, female version of David Byrne, the singer in Talking Heads! He’s so unapologetically weird, his dance moves are terrible but it works, there’s a connection.’

Other songs deal with her own struggles, such as ‘Wooden Woman’: ‘I kind of wrote it about my own experiences with mental health, when you feel like you’re someone else, that you’re not in your own body, when you can’t connect with other people. When I’m that person, I’m not myself, I don’t feel empowered. It’s an experience that most people have and I think everyone has their own way of expressing how they feel, there’s no right or wrong way, but it has to be talked about.’

Black is encouraged that Scottish music is increasingly in the spotlight, helped recently by The Snuts’ album W.L. going to number one: ‘I met their singer Jack (Cochrane) playing open mics with him, so people appreciating them now is amazing to see, it makes me happy. It’s nice to see people doing well, to see artists supporting other artists.’

She’s a big fan of West Lothian five-piece indie band, Mark Sharp & the Bicycle Thieves and pop singer, Be Charlotte: ‘She’s very young, she’s doing very well and she’s so nice.’

‘I loved Fleetwood Mac from a young age’

One song she wishes she’d written is The Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’: ‘I’d like to sing it on stage and do Mick Jagger’s dance moves,’ she laughed. Growing up, Bob Dylan was a major influence: ‘As a lyricist, I love him, he’s been my biggest inspiration for writing music. I had him on my first iPod! I loved Fleetwood Mac from a young age, I think I’m a 20 year old trapped in a 90 year old’s body! I heard their ‘Gold Dust Woman’ and loved it, I thought it was so cool. We’ve covered it a few times.’

Endearingly, Black names all of her guitars: ‘I’ve got a few guitars but the one I play at gigs is ‘Phoebe’, a Fender. I call her that, she’s my baby, if anyone touches her! If you name them, you have more of a connection to them, so I name all of my guitars. I have another one called ‘Olfred’ and I’ve got a ‘Florence’, which is what I’d have liked to be named myself.’

If she could have her music featured on any TV show, she picks a new show, It’s a Sin, a British miniseries set in the 80’s in London which depicts the lives of gay men living through the AIDS crisis: ‘It’s such a great show, it’s very insightful, it’s great for young people to educate themselves about it and it’s very entertaining.’