Q&A: Track By Track Through Rosie H Sullivan’s ‘In My Nature’
NATURE IS A MAJOR SOURCE OF INSPIRATION — for Scottish singer-songwriter Rosie H Sullivan. Her first single, “So It Is,” was recorded in her parents’ garden, and now she’s expanding on her admiration for rural Scotland in her new EP, In My Nature.
The indie-folk EP also includes themes of feminism, empowerment, the passage of time, and growing up. Each track is personal, illustrating Sullivan’s introspection in connection to her relationship with the world.
“It is in my nature to write these words and songs and hold them in my heart,” Sullivan says about the EP. “I’ll also be found never too far from nature … By a stream, in the woods, in the long grass, by the sea.”
Read below as Sullivan walks us through In My Nature track by track.
LUNA: Let’s start with “Wildflowers and Cobblestones,” which is the currently unreleased one. It’s about change and reflection. The lyric “As long as I’m living my imperfect life, I’ll be happy and sad at the same time,” is actually a perfect summary of the EP as a whole. Could you talk about the song?
SULLIVAN: [“Wildflowers and Cobblestones”] is a bit of an extension from the first EP, [123° East]. It kind of has a similar theme, but in a wider sense, like the duality between me living at home with my family in the rural countryside of Scotland, and then moving to a bigger city. The second verse is [about] going to university [and] living in student halls. You’re in this shared space with people you don’t know and it’s a really peculiar feeling that you’re not used to. You’re in a big city and you feel like you’re on your own.
LUNA: What do you think has changed the most about you musically since the release of that first EP?
SULLIVAN: For the first EP, I was really keen to keep it [just] acoustic guitar and vocals because that’s what I’ve been used to for so many years. I really wanted to keep that route — that raw nature to the songs. As it was my first EP, I didn’t want to stray too far out of my comfort zone. For this EP, I opened my mind a bit more and [was] more experimental. At the core of it, I write all my songs on guitar and with vocals, and that’s how I’ve always done it. I think that is the root of my music. Then I can [try] different ideas. Being in the studio, I’ve definitely learned recently that it’s okay to be a bit scared… You can always try something, and if you don’t like it, you just take it off.
LUNA: Let’s talk about “Only A Woman,” which you wrote with Katie Sutherland. You spoke with her about it in an episode of your In Conversation with… series, where you mention that Emma Thompson’s appearance on The Late Show inspired the song. That story shows the power of women inspiring and appreciating other women. Do you have any thoughts on that?
SULLIVAN: Absolutely. When I first started writing the song, I’d recently seen that interview with Emma Thompson. I think there was a lot of [other] stuff in the media last year, and I was just fed up. I ended up sitting down with my guitar and writing this really tongue-in-cheek [song]. It’s a difficult one to get the balance of so I reached out to [Katie] and I was like, “I’ve got this song and I really want to write it with you.” She’s an amazing woman. She’s an artist, songwriter, and mother. She’s super inspiring and has done a lot in her music career. She’s a little bit older than me so she’s been through what I’m doing now. It was nice to have two different perspectives and bring a combined force of being a woman together [to the track]. I felt super lucky to be able to do that.
Honestly, we just sat and had a rant about being a woman. It was like a therapy session, and we condensed it into a song. The Emma Thompson interview was something that has always stuck with me, [where she explained how] we waste our life’s purpose worrying about our bodies. That just hit so hard, and it was true. We are the only constant in our lives — we will be here forever with us. I wanted to get that into the song. I kind of took a fragment from that interview and put it into the second verse.
LUNA: I imagine this is the type of song you’re really writing your entire life, whether you realize it or not. Maybe it’s a specific moment that becomes, “Right, I’m going to write this now.” An accumulation of experience. Did you feel that way?
SULLIVAN: Yes, [Katie and I] spent most of the day just chatting about what the song was about and the themes behind it. We had so many lyrics that we had to condense down into it and so many feelings. So yeah, it was super valuable to be in a room with another woman. If I’d written the song myself, I don't think I would have dove as deep with it. Especially having Katie there who is a mother and is at a different time in her life than I am. We can have those personal aspects going into the song [too]. But as a woman, these are shared things as well.
LUNA: “Fragments” is about Scotland and its vast beauty. When it comes to music, what effect does your physical environment have on your creativity? Do you ever seek different environments in moments of needing inspiration?
SULLIVAN: I grew up on the Isle of Lewis, which is a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland. It’s a rural, wild place. Growing up somewhere like that — my family is completely outdoorsy — I was outside a lot. I was always in love with the landscape, the sea, and nature. It definitely fed into me as a human being. I think now that’s fed into me creatively and inspires a lot of my writing.
I started writing “Fragments” when I was on a trip back from the island… I was on the ferry. I was looking out the windows and I could see the rugged landscape of the island coming out of the water. It was a really nice day, which is rare. It’s usually windy and rainy. So it was a lovely day and the sea was calm. It was just the perfect picture of my love for Scotland. All I could think was, “I’m so lucky that I come from this place and I can feel it in my bones that this place will always be a part of me and I will always be a part of it.”
So, definitely — a lot of the time I’ll be super inspired by nature. That’s something that fed into the title of the EP, In My Nature. [There’s a] double meaning there. It’s about me and my love for nature, but also it is in my nature to do what I’m doing and to write the songs.
LUNA: I think “Timeless” has a similar double meaning in terms of the love you have for Edinburgh, which inspired the song, but also the memory of Hamish Gow. In terms of your writing, what’s your ideation process? Do you allow ideas to develop from one another freely?
SULLIVAN: It’s totally different for each song. I think if I had a very strict process and rules for writing, I just wouldn’t write anything that was very good. There’s definitely times where I’ll [feel] like, “I’m kind of feeling like I want to write a song about this.” And I’ll sit down. But then you have those moments, little glimmers where you get a bit of inspiration, and then it all kind of comes out and you’re working on it. That’s most of the time what I do and what works for me.
I can never tell what I’m going to be inspired by. “Timeless” was originally inspired by a radio interview that I had done. I was sitting on my windowsill in my flat in Edinburgh on the phone with this lady, and we were talking about Edinburgh. She said something like, “Edinburgh has such a timeless beauty to it.” And I was like, “I’m gonna write a song with that.”
LUNA: Could you share what “Timeless” means to you?
SULLIVAN: It’s about my love for Edinburgh, but it’s also about my love for Scotland as a whole. Especially now, in the 21st century, we feel like there’s a need to always be moving forward and making sure we’re producing things all the time. Sometimes life can feel crazy and super busy, which is quite stressful. I really like the idea of getting lost in time and feeling like there are no constraints and you are timeless.
Looking back, I grew up with stories [about] this guy called Hamish Gow, who was a pioneer in the kayaking world, and he was a really close friend of my dad’s. I grew up with all of his stories, films, and photos in our house. It was something that was super special. [He had] beautiful colored pictures and films from the 1960s — which was super rare for the time — and to be able to have first-hand access to that was so inspiring. When I started writing the song, I really wanted to have Hamish’s voice in the song. When I first heard that in the studio, I burst out crying because my producer had put [that part of the song] on and [added] strings. The [music] video has a lot of him [too] and it’s the perfect balance — exactly what I wanted. It really captures the essence of what the song is about.
LUNA: “Chapters” is sonically the more traditionally folk track on the EP. There are nods to Feist on it. Could you talk about the sound, maybe the production? How did it come together?
SULLIVAN: I actually wrote the song when I was 17, [but] I wasn’t sure about it. One day I went into the studio and my producer was like, “Why don’t we work on ‘Chapters’ today?” So we sat down and wrote the bridge section. The bridge [is new], and the rest of it was from a few years ago. I completely fell in love with the song all over again. I was really keen to add in some Feist vibes. This one is a little bit more upbeat, and I wanted to put some trumpet in it, get that little drum groove in, and just experiment a bit. This whole EP has been about more experimentation and more instrumentation. It was a super fun one to work on in the studio. Hearing it all all done together with the trumpet and the layers of harmonies — it was like a vision coming to life.
