GIDDY | INTERVIEW + TRACK REVIEW

GIDDY isn't interested in grand declarations or neat endings.

On her debut record, songs for awkward spaces, she turns her attention to the moments most people struggle to talk about — the tensions, uncertainties, repairs and quiet emotional negotiations that exist between the beginning and end of a relationship. Rather than chasing cinematic highs or heartbreak anthems, GIDDY finds beauty in the messy middle.

It's a fitting approach for an artist whose path to music has been anything but conventional. From working as a refugee lawyer to discovering singing later in life, GIDDY's creative journey feels less like a carefully planned career move and more like a gradual return to something essential. The result is a collection of songs that feel deeply human, thoughtful, vulnerable and full of care.

We sat down with GIDDY to talk about creativity, emotional honesty, kintsugi, healing, handmade art, finding your voice as a beginner, and why sometimes the most powerful thing a song can do is remind someone they aren't alone.

TRACK REVIEW - salt

"Salt" opens beautifully, with delicate piano and what sounds like either a harp or softly plucked nylon-string guitar creating an intimate atmosphere before GIDDY's vocals enter. It's the kind of introduction that immediately asks you to lean in and listen closely.

What struck me most about this track is the honesty. There’s no hiding behind metaphors or dramatic theatrics. GIDDY captures the emotional exhaustion of loving someone through a difficult season while trying not to lose yourself in the process. Lines like "I don't think I could ever hate you, but I'm almost there" perfectly capture that uncomfortable space between love, frustration and heartbreak that so many people experience but struggle to articulate.

The songwriting throughout feels deeply personal, yet incredibly relatable. The recurring image of someone "pouring salt into the wounds you know are deepest" is powerful because it acknowledges both pain and intimacy. The person causing the hurt is also the person who knows you best, making every wound cut a little deeper.

Vocally, GIDDY delivers these emotions with a sincerity that never feels forced. Every lyric feels lived-in, as though you're reading pages torn directly from a journal rather than listening to a performance.

By the time the song reaches its closing moments, you're left sitting with a complicated mix of emotions, hurt, love, disappointment and hope all existing at the same time. "Salt" doesn't offer easy answers, and that's exactly what makes it so affecting. It's a beautifully written reflection on the people who know us best, and the scars they sometimes leave behind.

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You describe songs for awkward spaces as focusing on the “messy middle” of relationships rather than the cinematic highs or endings. Why do you think those in-between emotional spaces are so rarely explored honestly?

What an interesting and deep first question!

I think we’re conditioned to feel most comfortable when we’re looking at things in a very binary way, and that affects how we see and talk about our relationships as much as anything else. As a society, we often cast people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we look at endings in a very definitive, irreversible way and we romanticise the idea of a ‘happily ever after’ where we’ll never experience problems again, if only we’re lucky enough to find it.

In reality it’s not like that at all, and every one of us is navigating complexities and shades of grey in our relationships all the time – but I don’t think the way we function as a society always makes it safe to talk openly about that.

I don’t think it’s about a lack of honesty exactly. Giving people the highlights reels of our important relationships can be a way of protecting those relationships. When you’re trying to move through a difficult space with someone you really care about, it can be sacred and bonding to figure it out together in its own time and its own way, and sometimes it can be quite destructive to invite other people and their perspectives in.

The flipside is that it can be really lonely to move through a difficult space with someone and carry that experience on your own. It can help a lot to let it out, when you find an environment where you can do that.

I guess I wrote these songs as a way of letting out some of my feelings, and maybe they will help someone else to feel a bit less lonely.

It’s incredible that you went from never singing — not even in the shower — to releasing such deeply personal music. Did learning to sing feel more like discovering a new skill, or rediscovering a part of yourself that had been buried?

Learning to sing came totally out of the blue for me.

My mum is a really great singer. She’s untrained but just an amazingly intuitive vocalist – very naturally connected to her voice. I was never really that way, and even though my parents have only ever encouraged me in every way, I somehow got it in my head at a young age that singing just wasn’t something I could do.

I actually got started with it because mum had felt like she’d forgotten how to sing. I knew that wasn’t true, so as a Mother’s Day gift a few years ago I booked a singing lesson for the both of us. I just went as moral support, but I found that singing connected me to my body in a way that was really good for my mental health, so I just kept going.

I think my journey with it has felt like discovering a new skill as well as rediscovering buried parts of myself. I’m a creative person at heart. I wrote a lot of stories and poems when I was growing up, and I’ve come back to that periodically. I flirted with becoming a fashion designer, but ultimately went to law school. While I was there I fell in love with photography and almost packed in my graduate job to do that. Then I was a dancer for a while.

But eventually I got into a pretty intellectually-heavy and all-consuming line of work and just lost touch with all of it, and I don’t think that was good for me as a person. I think having a creative practice is my version of mindfulness, and without one I get out of balance and am not the best version of myself. Learning to sing has put me back in touch with my creativity, and has kind of helped all the parts of me to click together in a way that they hadn’t quite before. It does feel a bit like a homecoming.

But at the same time, it has absolutely felt like learning something brand new. I’m not a natural singer – I needed a lot of hand-holding to get used to my voice, and honestly I still don’t feel like I’m really there. I very much think of myself as a beginner.

But I actually think this really helped me to build a good relationship and sustainable practice with music in a way I never had before. A lot of the things I’ve spent time doing have been things I was told I was good at from day one, and while that’s a lovely and encouraging thing to hear, it creates expectations immediately, which for me produces anxiety.

I didn’t have any of that with singing – I was just there to be curious and see where it led me. And when you start from that point I think it’s easier to keep taking the next step. I just kept doing that, and it led me here.

Coming from a background as a refugee lawyer, you’ve spent years surrounded by very real human stories and emotional complexity. Do you think that shaped the emotional honesty in your songwriting before you even realised you’d become a musician?

I actually think it’s more the other way around.

I’ve always been a very emotional, people-focused person, since I was a little kid. I feel a lot, to the point where it can be quite overwhelming.

I think going into law was almost a kind of insulation for me. I was drawn to it because I enjoy the intellectual puzzle of putting a good argument together and because I saw it as a way to fight for justice – but the way that you frame legal arguments is pretty dispassionate and technical – you have to take the emotion out of it or it will be seen as undermining your argument.

I think law felt to me like a way to make a contribution that can change people’s lives, but from a position that protected me a bit against emotional overwhelm. Working in an area that is characterised by emotionally-charged human experiences, this didn’t always work though. I have had a lot of sleepless nights and have shed a lot of tears.

If anything, I think songwriting has become a way of processing all my feelings so that I need less of a buffer as I go about the world.

I like that music allows me to connect emotionally with people in an incredibly direct and intimate way. You put a fragment of your heart out there and in the space of three minutes someone who comes from a totally different walk of life can meet you right there.

I think that kind of thing – just meeting people where they are – can create great change in its own quiet way. I think all change really starts with enough people seeing a piece of themselves in people who look different on the surface, and music can really facilitate that.

There’s something deeply symbolic about naming your first single kintsugi — the art of repairing broken things visibly rather than hiding the cracks. Do you think your music is trying to heal wounds, or simply honour them honestly?

That’s a great question!

I’m not exactly sure. I don’t think I’m trying to do anything with my music except express something real that comes from whatever place I happen to be in when I write.

But making music is healing for me, and if at least some of the people who vibe with my music are similar to me, then maybe it might have that effect on others too.

I was having a great conversation with a few songwriter friends about whether there’s a core feeling or essence we reach for in our writing. I think mine is that I’m always looking for the glimmer of light in any situation, no matter how bad it might be.

So I suppose I do try to give people something hopeful to hold on to in my songs, even when they go to darker places. I’ve actually written a bunch of new material which was all born out of navigating something that was quite traumatic for me.

I haven’t started recording it yet, but I have it in my mind that I want to make sure I take care of anyone who listens, and give them an honest but safe experience that has at least the potential to feel healing, rather than dumping them in the middle of my unvarnished mess without a way out.

Your approach to your broader release feels quite personal - you've got handmade vinyl, handwritten lyric sheets and kintsugi pendants embedded with NFC “goodie bags” in the works. It feels almost like resistance against disposable streaming culture. Was it important for this project to exist as something tactile and deeply human?

Honestly, I just wanted to release this music in a way that I could look back on and feel proud of.

I’m brand new to this, and I’m not a great advance planner when I’m doing something for the first time – I kind of need to follow my gut and just notice what I gravitate towards, what I’m doing well and what I could do better.

So I’ve been doing that, and a big thing I’ve noticed is that I care very little about attracting the largest possible audience in the shortest possible time, but that I will put a huge amount of effort into creating things that are very hands-on and personal.

I think it’s because I value deep one-on-one connections so much. I find it really mindblowing that there is anyone out there that connects with these little pieces of my heart, and I just want to create the nicest thing I can for the people who do.

I’m so happy and content with finding my people slowly – this stage where I get to play to tiny rooms and actually get to know the people in them is so special and rewarding – I wouldn’t miss it for the world and just want to soak it up as much as I can.

A lot of debut records are about trying to prove something. songs for awkward spaces feels more like an invitation into vulnerability. Did removing the pressure to appear polished make the record feel more honest?

I don’t know if it made the record more honest – there are a lot of ways to make a record and I’m sure this could have been done differently without it being worse for it – but I do think removing that kind of pressure made for a record that is really aligned with who I am as an artist.

I really have my producer Sean Carey to thank for this. I had never been in a recording studio and didn’t know the first thing about making records before I started this project. What I did have was a collection of songs on the same theme, a record concept with a name, and a fairly clear sense of myself as a person.

And Sean just immediately seemed to understand the essence of who I am and what I was trying to do, and he ran the entire recording and production process in a way that really protected this.

I appreciate this so much – a lot of artists seem to say that it takes them a long time to find a process and sound that feels right for them, and I feel so grateful to have got to make my very first thing with someone who made it so easy and natural to figure these things out.

I remember saying way back on day one that all I really wanted was to make the best thing I could and hopefully learn enough to go on to make something better, and I learnt so much more than I ever expected.

The title salt carries so many emotional meanings — healing, preservation, pain and tears. What did that word come to represent for you while writing the song?

Kind of all those things at once.

I remember viscerally how I felt when I wrote salt – like my chest had been ripped open and salt had been poured right on my heart – but I don’t remember why, beyond that I was having some kind of tension with someone I love to my very bones.

I was writing from that place, pouring my heart out and feeling pretty sorry for myself.

But as I was writing I started to reflect on how I felt this way because of the deep love that I was lucky to have. I think the people who love us the best also tend to hurt us the most – they know where all our softest places are, and we’re extra sensitive to everything they do.

And I thought to myself that the pain I was feeling was really just the underbelly of the love I had, and that when the pain had faded, the love would still be there – and that felt like healing to me, and like a reminder of my investment in the relationship.

I think love always stays, in some way. Not every relationship gets through its ruptures, but even when it doesn’t, you carry the love you gave and gained from it forward with you and let it out as you move through the world.

There’s a quiet bravery in being visibly new to music while still creating something this emotionally detailed and ambitious. Did being a beginner give you more creative freedom, or did it require a certain amount of trust in the people around you?

I do think there’s something very special about being a first-timer at anything.

When someone’s in a brand new situation, the way they navigate it reveals something about their core as a person, and I think that’s inherently quite fascinating.

I wrote some of these songs in my first few weeks of playing an instrument – I was still learning how to play and finding sounds by ear, and I’ve ended up with some unconventional structures and chord patterns that someone more musically literate might not have automatically reached for.

In terms of actually translating that into making this project though, I don’t think it’s that I came in with any great courage or ambition – it’s more that I was lucky to have the right people around me from the start.

My voice coach Dean Nash has really encouraged me to keep exploring creatively and moving towards new things – he always seems to give me a gentle push and the support I need just before I’m ready to take on something new, and it really helps me move past all the things that might be in my way.

If not for him I’d probably still be talking about recording my music one day, rather than where I am now.

And I didn’t really plan to make a whole record, I thought I’d start with a single to learn the ropes, but Sean looked at this whole set of songs I had and this project I wanted to do one day, and thought I was more ready to do it now than I realised.

I just trusted that, and we did it – I’d really never have had the confidence on my own.

Having the right people in your corner just makes everything so much easier, and much more fun.

Your whole project feels built around care — the care in the songwriting, the production, the handmade artwork, even the way the physical releases are assembled. Do you think care itself is becoming a radical act in modern art and music?

I kind of do, and I think we’re slowly seeing a renewed interest in this kind of small stuff.

I think the world is so loud and scary and overwhelming at the moment – there’s a lot of horrible stuff happening that just feels outside our control no matter what we do or how much we feel.

And I think more and more of us are responding to that by leaning into our villages and neighbourhoods a bit more, by looking for little glimmers in our day to day lives.

We can’t fix the whole world and it is depressing to think about that, but we can hug our friends and be kind to strangers and just care for what’s around us as best we can – and maybe if enough of us do that something really transformative will come of it.

I think art and music helps to facilitate that – it gives people something to connect with and bond over, can be a vehicle for seeing things from a new perspective, and protects us from numbing out and living our lives on autopilot – and I think all those little things have become kind of radical.