Q&A: Billie Marten Brings Love to the Forefront Through “Drop Cherries”
“I THINK I WAS STILL KIND OF LYING ON THE LAST ALBUM — in terms of processing what I was feeling,” singer-songwriter Billie Marten said in a press conference regarding her new album, Drop Cherries. “The narrative here is much more stable.”
The 23-year-old musician released her fourth album earlier this month on a topic she had yet to write about until now: “To put it simply, the theme is the purity of loving someone,” she explained. The love in Drop Cherries is simple and patient. It’s an act that you choose to do again and again. Buy cherries for your lover, a divine offering, and let the blood red stain you forever.
The Yorkshire artist’s career began at the ripe age of 16, when she was nominated for BBC's Sound of 2016. She’d later release her subdued folk debut, Writing of Blues and Yellows, the same year, followed by Feeding Seahorses by Hand in 2019. An experimental sonic shift and a record label change brought about her third album, Flora and Fauna, released in 2021. The through line in her past three projects is that Marten usually takes to writing about herself — confidence, maturity, and running away from public expectations allowed Marten to bloom.
This time around, Marten finally makes the leap to revel in the embrace and vulnerability that comes with newfound love and relationships. Recorded on tape in Somerset and Wales, Marten leans back into a smoother and shadowy soundscape. Reminiscent of Elliot Smith and Beth Gibbons, her approach to Drop Cherries leaves lots of room for clarity and appreciation. As Marten explained in her press release, “There was no need to shout this time.”
Read below to learn more about the album, what Marten is looking forward to as she preps for tour, and what got her into music in the first place.
LUNA: Your newest record, Drop Cherries, is now out to the world — how does that make you feel?
MARTEN: Even you just saying that sentence is overwhelmingly lovely. I'm just having the most positive response, and I am a person that needs a lot of reinforcement. My natural character isn't the most self-confident, as you've probably heard. So when people say nice things about the music, it just is a complete and utter dream fantasy world I'm living in.
LUNA: You did a wonderful job — it's an amazing album. I love how personal your songwriting gets. Do you have a specific process that you work toward when you create a new album?
MARTEN: There’s always a very immediate impulse, where an idea will come to me or lyrics will come and then I just have to find the time to get it down immediately.
LUNA: I love that. In your bio, when you describe the album you say, “Imagine stamping blood red cherries into a clean, cream carpet and tell me that's not how love feels.” I love that visual, — it's a great analogy. How did that inspire you and make its way into the theming of the whole album?
MARTEN: The whole cherry thing was a story that a friend was telling me at the pub one day. I was trying to pick people's brains around the time of making [the album], to ask them about any intense relationships that they'd had. I was kind of going around and … lots of couples can kind of get complacent, and they didn't really have much to say about the beginning bit. Then this one friend came out with an entire cinematic story that I want to make into film one day because it's so good.
But part of that was they couldn't be together and they knew that they couldn't be together. So towards the end, they were doing random acts of love and symbols of love. And one of those was buying a carpet from IKEA and buying a load of cherries, and being barefooted with the other one and kind of making a physical representation of how they felt. It just was a lightbulb moment for me. It was certainly a unique perspective. I think when you're making an album about love, 99.9% of all other records are also about love. I was trying to find something that made it unique.
LUNA: Absolutely, and it is. It's incredible — that visual really drives home the whole point of the album. There's also the Drop Cherries film that was released alongside the album — congrats on that as well.
MARTEN: Thank you.
LUNA: What inspired the making of the film, and is that something you've been interested in pursuing for a while?
MARTEN: Yeah, I'd always wanted to make a proper live performance because I felt that was something that was missing in terms of online presence. Obviously, people go to see your gigs, but they're very fleeting moments. You're battling with sound or lighting or the venue or you're not having a good day or whatever. The director I'd worked with for the old album — the last album — let me try this idea out on him, and we were both not feeling particularly inspired by the idea of a normal music video. I always find that they're kind of becoming less and less relevant unless they're really good. I've always had visual concepts, but none of them really rang as true as just doing a live performance with the band that made the record with me. And then Joe said, “Well, can you do it all in one take in a row,” and it became this whole thing moving into each room of the house where we shot all the stills for the album. It became this massive feat, and we all managed to pull it off. And Dom, who's the producer I worked with, essentially made an entire studio in a few hours in this random house. It came out really well — we had a screening for it the other night, and that was very fun.
LUNA: That's amazing. It also came out incredible, so congrats again. You also have an upcoming North American tour starting in LA on June 6. What are you looking forward to most about this?
MARTEN: I can't wait. I just think North American touring goes above and beyond my usual service stations in Manchester … It’s a dream, and this time around I'm working with a band that I've never played with before. I'm meeting them out there and we're going to have a couple of days [of] rehearsal and then we go straight into living with each other for a month. So we're going to be into the community aspect of US touring because in the past, budget certainly didn't apply to anyone but me, and I think it's good to travel with people that really know what's going on and where they are … so I don't have to figure everything out for myself. So they'll guide me through the process.
LUNA: Is there a certain city you're most excited about visiting?
MARTEN: Anything with sun. Look how pale I am! We haven't had sun. I mean, this is just going off the last run of shows I did, but the best shows were LA, New York, and Chicago.
LUNA: Definitely fun cities.
MARTEN: Yeah, but we get to play — I think — Minneapolis and Boston and places I've never been. So I guess I'll find out.
LUNA: That's very exciting. Is there a certain song that you're most excited to play live off this new album?
MARTEN: “Nothing But Mine” is quite fun. It's very ballad-y and kind of Tom Waits-y, which I like. It's a good one to perform, and at the end of the song the UK band has been kind of going off on one with saxophone and guitar and stuff.
LUNA: Oh, that's awesome.
MARTEN: Yeah, I think it's one of those songs that will sound completely different every night. I'm just looking forward to reworking all the songs.
LUNA: So exciting. You also released your first EP at 15 years old but have been writing music long before that. How did starting out so young with your music help you find your voice as you entered the music industry?
MARTEN: I just wasn't aware of [age] until all the taglines of the first YouTube video that kind of … said, “This is amazing for 12 years old,” “12-year-old girl sings this song…” and … it became one of those Ellen Show moments. I was thinking at the time, “It's really annoying, I'm just trying to be me” … a tiny 12-year-old person thinking that she was a full-blown adult. But I guess it's a hindrance sometimes, and it's also a benefit. I've got so much time still to go and so many more records to make, and I'm kind of lucky that things started so early.
LUNA: I love that. What inspired your love of music from a young age?
MARTEN: My family. It's all come from them. My parents got together because of their love of music. My dad taught me guitar and [my] mom [taught me] piano. My brother sings and plays and the whole wider family just loves music. So it was bound to happen.
LUNA: That's amazing. Is there a certain song or a series of songs that you resonate with most personally from this new album? I know a lot of your songwriting stems from personal experience — is there a certain one that sticks out most to you?
MARTEN: I think the song “Arrow” is probably most accurate in describing me as a whole. If someone could only listen to one song on the album, it'd probably be that one. Just in terms of the narrative, every time I sing the lyrics it feels incredibly true.
LUNA: I love that. In a few months, you're going on your North American tour. Afterward, what can fans expect from you? Or are you keeping it on the down-low for now?
MARTEN: No, I guess I don't even know what to expect by the time I get home. Definitely a summer full of music-making because after you get home from a tour, you tend to just want to make another album, and then hopefully returning to the US on a joint tour in November.
LUNA: Obviously singing, songwriting, and touring… it's a big process. Is there anything that you do to help if you get nervous performing, or are there any hobbies that you've been into recently to keep your mind calm and relaxed through all these big changes?
MARTEN: Well, I'm a huge nester, so the rare moments when I'm at home, I just make sure that I've made it the perfect environment for relaxing. And I love to garden; I really love cleaning my house, … [that] makes me so happy. But in terms of nerves, I think I'm learning that my stomach gets really tight behind the guitar and it's so easy to stiffen up my body. So as soon as I feel the nerves, I just take a breath. It sounds so simple, but it's something that I've only just learned to do.
LUNA: It's important but it's something we so easily forget.
MARTEN: Yeah, just let that belly expand and go out. I'm realizing that I need a lot of oxygen; I need to breathe much more than the average person. Yeah, just learning to look after the body … I don't need the beer, I don't need the cigarettes. I'm learning that … water does the job.
LUNA: What kind of things are in your garden right now?
MARTEN: Well, we're just getting into some kind of good weather — although it keeps raining — but I've got beans and peas growing, radishes, tomatoes, cauliflower. Sprouts breeds.
LUNA: Lovely, lovely. Wrapping things up, if you could only describe “Drop Cherries” in three words, what would they be?
MARTEN: Close. Settling. Warm.
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