12 INTERVIEWS OF XMAS: LYRA - "I don’t want to just pretend to be this girl that’s like, ‘I’m such a powerhouse! I’m so confident!’ Because I’m not"

Originally published in Hot Press in April 2024:

In the run-up to the release of a debut album multiple years in the making, and in the midst of a phenomenally busy run of tour dates, LYRA is supposed to be sipping tea and taking things, in relative terms, as easy as possible. But as we’ve come to expect from the star – who’s got a penchant for both playful self-deprecation and bursting into song mid-conversation – those instructions are being followed fairly loosely.

“She has arrived!” LYRA proclaims at the outset of our conversation, backstage at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. “At long last!”

The ‘she’ in question is, of course, the Bandon-raised, UK-based artist’s self-titled LP – a project that marks the culmination of a remarkable journey through music, love, heartbreak and re-growth. As soon becomes clear over the course of our interview, the individual songs on LYRA are ‘shes’ too.

“I’m not sexist – they’re all just fucking about me!” LYRA – born Laura McNamara – laughs. “It’s a very personal journey. I write about everything that happens in my life. Calling it LYRA just seemed like the right thing, because there are 13 different LYRAs on there that people are going to find out about…

“The heartbroken one, the depressed one, the dirty one in LA… The one who had her first one-night stand! The one who got invited to a David Guetta writing camp that was totally out of her comfort zone. They’re all in there.”

With millions of streams to her name already – on top of high-profile collaborations, sold-out shows, and an Electric Picnic Main Stage set – LYRA has already secured a special spot at the forefront of homegrown pop. She first rose to prominence back in 2016, after sparking serious buzz with ‘Emerald’ from her independently released EP W.I.L.D, which was soon followed by releases for Polydor and Universal Music Ireland.

But the arrival of her first album, via Rubyworks, marks another crucial milestone for the Co. Cork star. Not long after our conversation, she’ll celebrate the release with a special Windmill Live launch show, presented by Hot Press, in Dublin.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she tells me. “I’m sure everyone else has too, to be honest. So many people are saying, ‘I can’t believe this is your debut album!’ I’m like, ‘I know! I can’t either!’ It still seems very surreal. I don’t know when the penny will drop.

“Last week I actually saw the sleeve of the vinyl for the first time, and I cried and cried and cried,” she adds. “I wanted to do a post about it – and four times I tried to do it, and every time I cried. I was like, ‘What’s wrong with you, girl? Stop!’ But I couldn’t, for two days!”

It’s an understandable reaction, given how long the journey to the album has been. Her original plans to release her full-length debut several years ago were upended by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. And, having missed out on performing in front of a crowd for the better part of two years, she was slow to rush the album out when lockdown was lifted.

“I wanted to get back out there, and have people see me again, and re-familiarise themselves with me,” she explains. “Rather than just smacking an album in their face like, ‘Hi! We’re all allowed out now, here’s my album!’

“People who are tech-savvy, or love social media, could keep themselves alive online,” she says of the lockdown period. “But I’m not very good at that, and that’s not me as an artist. I love the organic-ness of it all – so it did push me back a lot. But maybe that’s just what was supposed to happen?”

She tells me that LYRA is now an entirely different album than what she had originally planned, as she revisited songs and challenged herself to get “a bit more crazy with them,” as well as penning new tracks. But the sense of catharsis and emotional release in the music is as powerful as ever.

“Bloody everyone – and their cats, dogs, mothers and fishes – knows about my break-up now,” she says of the heartbreak that’s shaped some of the tracks on LYRA. “But I wanted to show a side of the break-up that not a lot of people share.

“When you go through a break-up, you try to put on a brave face. You’re like, ‘Oh yeah, it was coming to an end anyway’. Or, ‘It was the right thing to do, we both went our separate ways’. You do that, so you’re not ‘the one who got dumped.’

“But, I was the one who got dumped,” she adds. “And I did ask him to get back with me. I did say, ‘What can I do to make this work? What do you want from me, in order to love me?’ I thought he would be the one, so I was going to do anything I could to make it work. And I did try to change myself. So I wanted to write about that feeling.”

It’s important, LYRA explains, to let people see that side of her: “I don’t want to just pretend to be this girl that’s like, ‘I’m such a powerhouse! I’m so confident!’ Because I’m not.”

Being so honest in her songwriting has real-world consequences too. A girl she had previously been close with, who was in her ex’s group of friends, recently attended one of her shows. She watched from the crowd as LYRA spoke on stage about the break-up, as an introduction to one of her songs.

“I told them what he had said to me in the break-up, which was heartbreaking to me,” she elaborates. “And I’d say it was the first time she ever heard it – because he was definitely not going to go tell his friends what he had said. And I didn’t really talk much with his friends after, because it was like, ‘See ya! He broke up with ya, you’re out the door!’

“So I told her, ‘By the way, I’m sorry about all you heard about the break-up’,” LYRA adds. “And she was like, ‘Girl, if it’s getting you songs like that, it’s fine! I just didn’t realise that that’s the way it went down...’

“But it was very emotional, knowing that somebody who is connected to the other side has now heard the inside story,” she continues. “It took me back a bit – I felt very exposed. But it’s something that I’m going to have to get used to, because I want to be able to be honest in my songs.”

Of course, if it had been her ex in the audience, it would have been an entirely different story.

“I’d die if I saw him in the crowd!” she remarks. “I’d be like, ‘Can somebody please remove that guy?’ I’d probably just have to leave!”

Credit: Aaron Hurley

The album charts the various stages in LYRA’s personal growth over those tumultuous years of her twenties. She tells me about coming across a photo taken from around the time of one of the LP's more emotional ballads.

“I don’t even look like myself,” she reflects. “I’m wafer-thin, because I’m so unhappy. I’m so white, and my eyes are drained, and I’m just sitting there. I look at myself, and I can feel the sadness.”

But there are other moments on the LP that capture her “glow coming back,” she points out. ‘Queen’, one of the album’s stand-out singles, marks a particularly significant shift.

“When you’re in a relationship for so long, you think as two,” she reflects now. “You always have somebody that you go to, either for advice or to make decisions with. You run things past them all the time. So, realistically, you’re never making full decisions by yourself, because you’re always emotionally connected to that person in some way.

“So I got to the point where I was on my own, and I had to go back to making my own decisions,” she adds. “I had been a very all-or-nothing girl – like ‘Right, when am I meeting your mam?’ Or, ‘Are we getting married?’ But I decided, ‘You know what? You don’t fucking have to be like that now. If you like this guy, and you want to snog the face off him for the night, and never see him again, that’s okay!’”

But she does take this opportunity to clear up one thing about ‘Queen’ – specifically the part of the song referencing luxury brands like Gucci, Miu Miu, Fendi and Prada.

“I’m living in my queen world in this song – but the only designer thing I actually have are these Balenciaga glasses, and I got them as a present!” she laughs. “That’s it! If you do see me with a Prada, it’s definitely a fake from the beach, from my holidays in Spain!”

LYRA likes to embrace more of a “DIY Barbie” approach to style (“I’m fucking sticking diamantés onto my outfits before going on stage!” she says). But she’s spoken openly in the past about the pressures of the music industry, particularly where women’s body image is concerned. Although she feels protected now by the strong team of people around her, she reckons that such issues are “still going on” in the industry.

“But what’s changed is that we’re not accepting it as much,” she notes. “Artists are getting stronger, and we’re getting our voices out there a bit more. And we’re saying ‘no’ more. We now have platforms where you can do a lot of stuff for yourself – whereas before, you needed a powerhouse behind you. Whatever they said was worth its weight in gold, so everyone did what they were told. But now, we don’t have to bend and break ourselves in order to fit into this formation that they want.”

Several of her all-time favourites have played a role in bringing about that kind of change, including Dolly Parton, Rihanna, Whitney Houston, and Beyoncé (“She could do anything,” LYRA says of the Cowboy Carter singer. “She could go into yodelling, and I’d buy it!”). But there were also powerful women even closer to home that she could look up to in music.

“Sinéad O’Connor was a massive inspiration,” she nods. “Not only musically, but even her as a person – showing that you don’t have to go with the grain. And Dolores O’Riordan singing in her accent – that really helped me, when I was told that I shouldn’t sing in my own accent.

“Both Sinéad and Dolores gave me the confidence to realise that we don’t all have to sound so polished and refined, and pronounce our ‘ths’, and have great diction,” she continues. “We can be a bit raw, and we can sing with our soul. For me, that’s all from them.”

Reclaiming her sense of freedom, and sensuality, ultimately became a central theme of the new album. ‘Drink Me Up’ is a defiant celebration of “wild drunk sex” – though LYRA admits she still gets “really awkward” when explaining the track to people.

“I do love her, but it’s something that I have to try and get comfortable with!” she laughs. “I definitely couldn’t talk about it on the radio – they’d be like, ‘Oh my God, just get off the air!’ And any time it comes up I’m like, ‘Dad, can you skip that track, please? Do not fucking listen to that!’”

That said, her parents have remained her staunchest supporters throughout her career.

“I’m lucky that I never had to come up against questions like, ‘Do you have a second plan?’ Or, ‘Is there another option?’” she reflects. “I was always like, ‘If I have a plan B, then I’m kind of giving up on plan A already, emotionally and mentally.’ So I was always allowed to go as hard as I could with the music.

“I worked in Tesco for a while, doing promotions, selling baby food,” she adds. “But my dad saw how much it was killing my musical side. So he helped me bring out my first EP. They’ve always had my back, and now they come on the road with me. I was in bed with my mam the other night watching the Oscars! I come home and she has my nightdress on the radiator, and a hot bottle in the bed. I love having them with me.”

Of course, LYRA’s also guided by her own remarkable drive. The wealth of creative talent in Ireland has only made her more determined to push harder and break through.

“I never give up, and I never will give up,” she tells me. “So at some point they had to recognise me, and they had to see me. Because I’m not going away!

“I used to be the person that was like, ‘I would love to get this, and this,’ she continues. “I’d live my life always reaching for such high goals, and if they weren’t achieved, I’d be sad about it. So I’m just embracing the now. I have an album that I’ve wanted to put out for years, and I’d love it to be No.1 in Ireland. I’d be so grateful. And then, I’ll push forward to another goal – and I’ll see where it takes me.”

When it comes to the special moments she’s already ticked off her list, there’s one milestone that proved particularly unforgettable: her Main Stage performance at the exceptionally scorching Electric Picnic ‘23.

“It was amazing – I nearly died!” she laughs. “From just being there doing it, and from the heat! I was wearing silver, so I was like a Christmas turkey up there. Like, ‘Howya, I’m baked! Put a fork in me, I am done!’”

LYRA is out now.

See LYRA’s full list of upcoming tour dates at lyra.ie