Sarah Meth is a London-born singer-songwriter who started singing in a children’s choir at age four. Taking guitar lessons at school, she then wrote her first song at nine – about two classmates that had broken up, she recalls – and went on to attend the BRIT School alongside alumni including Olivia Dean and Lola Young. Maintaining a bedroom pop intimacy, she wafted through vocal and production styles throughout her early work, including 2020’s Dead End World, 2022’s Leak Your Own Blues, 2023’s Steps EP. Last year saw the release of the ‘NY ILY’ single, which alludes to a spontaneous New York trip that ended up informing much of her debut full-length, Something Shameful, released via her own imprint, Wishbone, with distribution by FADER label. With songs taking shape between Meth’s South London home, 4AD’s studio with in-house engineer Fabian Prynn, and with Sorry’s Louis O’Bryen, the record is by turns skeletal, eerily fleshed out, and altogether wondrous, gnawing at relationships whose blurry edges match their intensity. “The pleasure was painful/ The pleasure was mine,” she sings, not burying it inward like any vocalist on a slowcore song titled ‘I gave you a shell (because I felt like one)’, but taking ownership more like her favorite crooners would.
We caught up with Sarah Meth for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about going to BRIT school, making Something Shameful, the duality of introversion and extroversion, and more.
I read an interview where you said that, “contrary to popular belief,” Sarah Meth is your actual name. Do people not believe you were born with that name?
No, everyone thinks it’s a stage name. And that it’s some sort of I don’t know, like rebellious alias or something, but it’s my real name, and it originates from Austria, because my grandpa was from Vienna. I never met him, but it holds quite a weight, because it’s my grandpa’s name. It’s funny, actually – I went and saw my parents when the album came out, and I was asking him if he grew up with the same kind of flack that I’ve gotten my whole life. He was saying he hadn’t, because it’s quite a new recreational drug. For a while, I was feeling a bit doubtful if keeping my name was the right thing to do. I think it’s always helpful to have that separation of your artistry and that worldbuilding to who you are as a person. It’s like that weird juxtaposition where it’s not who you really are, but at the same time, it’s your truest, most vulnerable parts of yourself.
But I think when you’re born with a name that stands out, then it makes sense to make use of it. I’ve been releasing music since I was really young – I’m still young now, but I’m not super new to this; although, in some ways, I am. But it just felt right to keep the name, because it’s all come from the same place even if I’ve changed artistically. It’s actually Austrian for mead, like the alcoholic drink. [laughs] I’ve only been to Austria once. I don’t have any family there; my dad was born in London, so it’s weird having a city that is such an important part of your story, but not really know much about it. I’d love to play there one day.
Did you have conversations about the record with your parents at all?
Yeah, they’re super supportive and quite involved in the sense that they come to my shows, and they love hearing anything that I have to offer them, even though I’m quite selective. I feel like in some ways, they’re my biggest critics, because they’ve seen me since the start doing this. But they take it seriously. None of them are musical, but they’re all such big fans of music, and I grew up listening to a lot of music because of them, so I think it means a lot to them. I feel lucky that they’re understanding and really supportive and encouraging.
When you say they’re your biggest critics, I’m thinking of how shame is a big theme in your music, and I’m curious if the vulnerability of what you choose to share is part of what you fear people close to you may be critical about?
It’s actually not. I feel like no one around me questioned that. I feel like I was questioning that a lot to the people that had been involved or heard the record, but they were all just really like, “This is what is natural to you, and you should do it.” No one kind of paused and was like, “Are you sure you want to do that?” And they’re definitely not critical about that. I think they can see how much it helps me, and it kind of makes me feel good, and it empowers me.
Obviously now that it’s out, and the title is something shameful, and it’s kind of packaged in that way, I’m able to reflect with that lens on songs. But when they were written, and when I was making it, it was never like, “I want to make a project about this.” And even having press written about it now, it’s made me kind of see into how I write and notice things about myself that might seem obvious to the consumer, but I’m a bit more oblivious, maybe, because I’m in it, and I’m going off of intuition. Sometimes it’s hard to be super analytical about what you make until it’s out, and then you’re kind of digesting it differently. So much of making an album is just about getting it to the right place where it’s done. It feels strange to have it across the finish line now, and to be able to dissect it beyond just musically, in ways I hadn’t really paid that much attention to.
But my parents have never been critical or opinionated about any subject matter or songs. They’ll definitely be honest, like, there have been times where my dad’s been like, “I’m not sure this song shows the full range of what your voice can do, but I still really like it as a song.” And then I’ll be like, “Well, that’s not the purpose of this song; not every song can be an Aretha Franklin moment.” [laughs] When I say they’re my biggest critics, it’s probably because, in a weird way, their opinion means a lot to me – not because they’ve ever been harsh, but because they mean a lot to me as people. I’m close with my parents, and so much of what I make is an amalgamation of things I grew up listening to because of them. There’s probably a part of me that hopes there’s something they like in there, because they feel pretty prominent to the reason it exists.
When do you first remember feeling seen or recognized for your voice in that way?
I think by my mum. For years, my mum was the only person that I would really sing in front of, especially at home, because my parents were divorced, and it was just me, my mum, and my brother for a really long time. I would always be singing at home, and I think she could just tell that I was really into it. When I was really young, she signed me up for a choir every half term. She’d be working, so I’d be doing some sort of performing arts – I remember I did a Michael Jackson-themed one one week, and then a Wicked one another week. Those kinds of things were basically what I wanted to do as a child.
From what I understand, it was until around 16 that you were involved in choir, and that must have been when you got more into the songwriting and recording side of things?
Kind of, yeah. Sixteen was a really strange age for me; I think I stopped going to choir because I got my first boyfriend and just wanted to spend my weekends with him. I sacked off the big summer camp that I’d done every year to go to Reading and Leeds, and my interests and angle on music had changed.
By angle, what do you mean?
That summer, between finishing my GCSE exams and going to BRIT, was when I first got approached by the music industry from having demos on SoundCloud. Suddenly this thing that felt really private, just something I did in my room, in a matter of months became – I wasn’t expecting to get into BRIT, and I did, and then I had a manager. It felt like this path of me being an artist was possible. I remember at the time feeling strange and almost like it had been decided for me, but I clearly wanted it, otherwise I wouldn’t have applied to BRIT. That summer I became more confident writing songs and sharing them with friends and online. My angle of it being something that I’d done just with choir in these different communities was shifting, and it was the first time it really felt like maybe this is something that could be mine.
Lots changed that year, and I had a completely new normal where I was studying music every day at school, but in a way that was attuned to my way of learning. I still can’t read any music, I don’t know any music theory, and I struggled a bit in school with focusing and being academic. It was always a struggle for me to learn in a one-dimensional way. Whereas at BRIT, it was way more practical and hands-on. It was BTEC, which is a completely different educational syllabus to a normal kind of A-level, but you get the equivalent results. It’s really important that exists, because this one-size-fits-all approach to education and learning is not accustomed to the kind of age that we live in now where differences are being hyper-normalized.
In your mind, is there a precious feeling attached to that time when music was a private thing for you, between choir and music college?
I kind of feel like that feeling has never really gone. How I make music and how I write songs is by being alone. As a teenager, when I first started writing songs properly, I was having a lot of anxiety. I wouldn’t want to be social, and I would often cancel plans with friends, making up excuses that I was sick; actually, I’d just be at home writing songs. I remember it feeling quite lonely and isolating. I wasn’t super happy at school, but it wasn’t in a way that I felt like I could articulate why. Around 14 or 15, lots of things changed very fast – I had relationships and friendships change. I’d always sung and covered songs, but when I started writing more seriously, covering loads of different songs in private for fun was how I taught myself to play piano and instruments. Once I had a basic understanding by ear of certain chords and note names, I could apply that to making my own stuff.
Most musicians I’m friends with have had a period, often during their teenage years, where they just felt like they had no friends or didn’t want to see anyone. It wasn’t that they weren’t there, but I just felt unhappy and wanted to hermit. I feel like I can still be susceptible to that now. It feels comforting, and it’s a good way to channel things. But it’s a lot more balanced now, and on the other side of it, there were friends who also did music, who got it, and who I could share it with. Reflecting on those practices being so prominent to what I do now, it’s nice to think that I was doing the same thing ten years ago as a teenager – just with a different pool of people and different music, obviously.
Did that need for community, or even that need to be alone, change shape when you went to BRIT, where your friendships could become part of your musical growth?
Definitely. BRIT school felt like a playground of figuring out who I could be as an artist. I started so sure that I wanted to be a soul singer because I loved Amy Winehouse and Nina Simone. I still love them, but once I got there, I realized every other singer in the room had that. [laughs] Naturally, that pushed me to reject it slightly, because everyone was doing it. I’d never really liked folk music; I’d always found it boring. Then suddenly I became obsessed with Karen Dalton. She was such a gateway because she has such a crazy, powerful voice, but it’s all on acoustic guitar. Through her, I got into Nick Drake and John Martyn, and I had a huge phase with all those singers. I left BRIT school such a different type of person.
When you get discovered by the industry at such a young age, so much of it is based on potential. They can see that you have something, but we’re evolving throughout our whole lives as people, and tastes change and evolve with you. I have some friends who have been making music from that same time, and their sound is not that dissimilar to how it is now. I think that’s so credible and rare because they knew who they were at such a young age. Whereas for me, my transition from my teenage years into adulthood was about being a sponge and soaking up as many different genres and artists as I loved – not just artists online or from the past, but also friends who grew into artists, or artists that became friends.
What you’re saying makes me think about a couple of pop singers who were kind of pigeonholed by their first albums and took a different direction on their second: Billie Eilish taking inspiration from soul and jazz singers, and Clairo drawing from Karen Dalton and that era of folk. It’s interesting that those shifts were happening around the same time.
I obviously can’t speak for them, but when you’re an artist, so much of it is your sound and all these things, but we’re probably all just artists who love to sing. Naturally, the way I sing still feels really inspired by a lot of those old croonery singers. That’s part of the influence I still carry with me, even if sonically or musically those influences are now different. The use of backing vocals and having quite a croonery tone is something you can hear in the earlier work, and it’s still there. People like Karen Dalton or Nina Simone are just some of the best and most iconic voices that have ever existed. When you’re a teenage girl who loves to sing – and you sang before you really became an artist – it makes sense that your idols are going to be big voices, or voices that move you. So there’s probably an element of that as well.
I know some people you went to BRIT with play on the record, like Kit Derbyshire and Charlie Read Clark. Was Cameron Picton there at the same time?
Yes, Cam was the year above me, and we’ve been good friends ever since.
Something that surprised me a little was seeing him credited with synth on ‘Care’.
We tried a few sessions with it, and while nothing really came of it overall, there was one synth sound from those sessions that I ended up using in the middle bit. He wasn’t playing synth in a traditional way; it was more of a textural sound. But it adds so much to the song, so I kept it. He’s also playing second guitar on the title track, which was nice.
Speaking of this whole group you’ve known since then, why do you think you’ve remained collaborators? What made you feel confident bringing them into the world of the record?
Friendship is honestly just the crux of it. When you’ve been friends with someone for so long, you’ve seen each other through so many different eras and chapters of your lives. Last year, we spent a lot of time together because we were both working on our records – I sang on [Cameron Picton’s] record [as My New Band Believe], he played on mine. These things don’t feel like favors; they feel like luxuries and things I enjoy doing because I love Cameron and his music.
It feels emotional to bear witness to the things that make up these songs, because they’re real to us and our friends in a way that is maybe different than to people who don’t know us. [laughs] Less so with Cameron, because we’re quite different people, but he knows the stories behind all of my songs and has lived through it with me. It’s really nice to have friends who have been along for the ride and can contribute to it. So much of it is also just loving how they think musically and as people, so having that trust to bring them in, have a play on it, and see what happens is nice. I think so much of music is a language that can only really be translated in that way, which is why so much great music happens between friends or people who have known each other through all kinds of different dynamics. It taps into something kind of mystical. It’s not about having the craziest skill or ability; it’s their taste and their scent that helps linger on something.
Part of the album gets at the uncertain vulnerability that comes with the beginning of something, especially a relationship. Did you feel a similar kind of uncertainty in beginning Something Shameful in earnest?
When you’re an independent artist, it’s completely in your hands to find the team and the village of people who are happy to step into that world with you. Some artists will have a crazy whirlwind year where a label says, “You need an album right now, go write as many things as possible,” and that becomes a testament to that period of their life, which is also really cool. But the nature of how this album was made was completely in people’s spare time for free, as favors with no recording budget. There comes a lot of earnestness, love, care, and support in doing that, which I’m so thankful for.
How did you decide to independently release the record?
It just felt like the right thing to do for this album, and to have it out at this time. Last year was mainly spent finding the right team to do this with me, which was a process in itself. Some of the songs were written last year and were late additions, but finding the team tied in nicely with the album’s themes. I started working with my manager and my press lady last year, and they’re both women. It feels pretty monumental and different for me working with a team of women. It’s super validating to not have anything questioned or toned down, especially with lyrical content, and to just have it celebrated.
For distribution, I met the Fader label when I was in New York. I got coffee with one of them, met the team on my own accord, and that felt really good. Bringing everyone together and being the leading factor in everything was a really big confidence boost. I realized that if I’m proactive, curious, open, and honest – the same traits that are kind of themes within the album – those traits lead me to the right people to do this with. It’s been very rewarding to have people work on it who care and have given me full creative control and agency. Those are things that should not be taken for granted in music, even with indie artists. I feel like I’m at an age and point where I’m much more confident in my abilities than I was previously, so everything has aligned very well.
I’m curious how these traits you mentioned are related to a sense of place. Part of what I hear in this record is this push-and-pull between loneliness or introversion and this extroverted self, which also feels tied to the duality ofLondon and New York. Could you talk about what these places bring out in you and how that was revealed through writing these songs?
It feels like the ever-going battle of my life. [laughs] I think we live in such a day and age of seeing things so binary – everyone wants labels for things to help them understand them better, or we’re constantly looking up horoscopes because these names and categories help us feel more together with other people. But at the same time, it can separate us and create divides. Rather than just being introverted or extroverted, I feel like I’m someone that can easily feel really immense pain, but the flip side of that is I can also feel immense joy. There’s not really such thing as a sad person or a happy person, we’re all nuanced. It’s like with trees, their roots are always growing underneath, and obviously we don’t see them. Everyone has those underground roots of themselves still growing, and just because they’re not visible doesn’t mean they’re not there. I sometimes find it hard to balance the parts of myself that can be incredibly happy and joyous with the parts that are more sensitive.
I don’t necessarily feel more one or the other in New York and London; I just feel like it’s important to meet all the different parts of myself in both places. The first time I went to New York, I was so rose-colored glasses – I could be so confident and open there. That’s still true, and it was important for me to meet my insular self there as well, to know what it’s like and how to deal with it. Having been born and bred in London my whole life, going somewhere that makes me feel open in a way nowhere else does forces me to be curious in a way that feels celebrated and normal, and like, not weird. In London, I can be prone to feeling a bit closed and having an outer shell. But the more time goes on, the more I want to apply that openness wherever I go. I don’t have to be there to tap into it, because it’s nice enough just having it reflected to me there that it’s possible.
You preserve a confessional, lo-fi quality in some of these songs, but it’s also clear a certain magic happens when you bring your friends into the production. What was it like this time to allow yourself to be more open at this stage of collaboration, to let these songs take different shapes, and hear your voice processed and filtered?
I honestly feel like I’m craving that openness and collaboration of it all, because I love doing it by myself, but anything to do with music is so much better shared. So much of being a musician is low-key being a loner, so to have people step into that and elevate it with you is just always the best feeling – especially in the studio doing the songs with Louis [O’bryen]. Even when I rehearse with my band, whenever I’m feeling down or not happy, as soon as I’m reunited with them or do a session with Louis, I leave feeling so much better.
There’s only so much you can do on your own. When I was younger, I felt a real need to prove all these things that I could do as a solo female artist. Sometimes that is what’s best – like with ‘Horses’, I feel like it makes sense for that to be a solo thing. But even that was engineered by Fabian [Prynn] at 4AD, which I couldn’t do at home with my laptop and my SM58 mic. That needs his spin on it. Even the most alone things are always a collaboration in some sense, because it’s always written about someone or because of something you consumed. Being able to physically share that with other people makes me feel a lot less alone.
There are these interesting vocal glitches and flourishes throughout the record, but ‘Horses’ stands out as a closer because it amplifies your voice in this wonderful way that feels so suited to the song. Tell me more about how it came together.
It was the last song that I added to the album. It was going to end on ‘Sonic’ – that’s why it says “Bye for now” at the end – but then I made ‘Horses’ and it just felt like the right end. With a lot of songs on acoustic guitar, I write to the acoustic guitar, but with ‘Horses’, I actually made the drone that goes throughout the song first and just looped this chord building with all this textural stuff happening. It’s two different audio files on Logic, and then I wrote the guitar over that. I was trying to write it on guitar and it just wasn’t landing; it was kind of there, but it wasn’t. Then I made this drone, played it out of my laptop, and started playing along to it. Often when I’m writing, I’ll hear melodies and hum them so I don’t forget them. I was doing the “ah”s with the intention of writing lyrics to them, but the more I played around and freestyled over this drone, none of the words sounded right. It kind of took a life of its own.
Occasionally a song just pours out of you, and for this album, that was the last time I really had that. I wrote it as soon as I got back from a trip to New York. It’s my first queer song, and it’s also a song of acceptance. A lot of the first songs lyrically on the album are very reactionary and sitting in impulse and those consequences, whereas ‘Horses’ is reaching much more radical acceptance, and I think it shows a maturity, maybe, that I hadn’t found when I first started making the record.
Do you feel like being on a long-haul flight or in transit allows you to sit with a feeling or experience in a way that gives you space to write about it?
Yeah, 100%. I hadn’t even thought of that, but that’s probably the main reason I’m so inspired after I go. I always write lyrics and come up with song ideas when I’m in transit – when I’m walking, on public transport, or in the car. It’s never when I’m sat in bed or in a studio. It’s always when I’m in motion, observing, but also reflecting. You’re able to just put headphones in and tune the world out. I guess a flight is a perfect time to do that because you’re forced to.
Some of my favorite lyrics on the record are on ‘Sorry I’ve been busy living’, where you sing, “There goes the way I’ve been feeling, making meaning.” I’m taking the lines out of context, but it got me thinking about how so much can come in the way of just sitting with a feeling, which can be quite fleeting, and making something out of it.
Yeah. It’s funny, because that song is called that because the person it’s about hadn’t seen me in a while. I was like, “Why haven’t I seen you?” and they kind of just said as a throwaway line, “I don’t know, sorry, I’ve been busy living.” I remember going home thinking, “What the hell, who says that?” [laughs] So I wrote it down and made a thing of it. Sometimes there are moments that make you realize it’s time to move on from a person or a chapter of your life. It’s often hidden in weird engagements or unexpected things, because we don’t always get really clear closure unless you ask for it – and even then, it’s not guaranteed. It’s always in those weird little things, like how someone looks at you or acts with you compared to before, that make me go, “Okay, something’s changed, this is done.” Or the opposite for the more hopeful songs. [laughs] There was just a moment where I realized this person had been fueling my fire all this time, but it was time for something else.
I wanted to go back to what you were saying before about some of these moments being real to you and your friends in a different way. The record is titled Something Shameful and traces your relationship to shame, but I was also struck by the phrase “something real” that comes up on ‘Sonic’, which would have been the closer. That’s just as much a theme on the record, the idea of authenticity as something subjective and worth striving for.
I never even realized that; that’s so crazy. That was not deliberate at all, but it does very much sum up how experiences can feel with people that are intense or murky. A lot of this record explores those things – it’s not exploring one relationship from start to end; it’s exploring all these different characters that have in different ways felt like such a huge part of my journey. I think there can be shame in feeling whatever you feel about something that is intense and kind of falls into your life and explodes. But from different experiences, the takeaway can always be the elements of that which I’ll take with me, and that’s real to me. It doesn’t even have to be with that person; it can be how you dealt with something or how you handled it. I feel like so much of being an artist is being delusional as much as it is being real, and art sits in this weird subjective place in the middle. It’s not factual, but it comes from a very raw place that feels real to whoever made it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Sarah Meth’s Something Shameful is out now via Wishbone.
