Irish born singer-songwriter Megan O’Neill has recently released her highly anticipated new single ‘Wildfire’. Megan O’Neill’s songs have received great attention over the past year – including her recent single ‘Ireland’, which hit over 400,000 views on social media during release month. The video was also picked up and shared by none other than Olivia Newton-John as well as being added to the RTE Radio 1 playlist for three weeks running. Megan O’Neill released her second full-length studio album last year (March 12th, 2021) – titled ‘Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty’. This much-anticipated album follows her last release, ‘Ghost of You’ (June 2018) which hit #1 on the iTunes singer/songwriter charts in the UK and Ireland, and two EP’s previous to this (‘Coming Home’, 2015 and ‘Stories to Tell’, 2017).
I caught up with the singer-songwriter to discuss her new single, what we can expect from her upcoming EP, ‘Time (Thought You Were On My Side)’ and, the excitement and anxiety surrounding the return of live shows.
‘Wildfire’ marks a shift in O’Neill’s sound. It’s a cinematic, powerful song that ventures from folk to indie and electronic to create a wholly consuming and hair raising anthem for listeners to enjoy. We discussed what sparked this musical change in direction.
“I guess for me it was a lot of time spent over the course of the last two years exploring different sounds and styles that I liked. I think with music, we’re all so busy, whether it’s gigging or preparing the next record or collaborating, that there isn’t a lot of time to just sit and explore. So having that time throughout the pandemic led me to try writing in different styles, with different sounds and collaborating with new people and then eventually discovering this new sound and style that I loved. So that’s where Wildfire was born from.”
The track is a passionate and heartfelt tune filled with uplifting tones and beautiful imagery as O’Neill croons, “ We got that love that lets you burn it down, So you can re-grow, When the summer’s gone Like a wildfire, like a wildfire “ over a building backdrop of soft keys, pulsing beats and suspenseful electronics. O’Neill explained to me what inspired the lyrics.
“So it was actually an idea around prescribed burns, which is when farmers set fire to their agricultural land in order for it to become healthier and grow better crops the year after. I thought that was such an amazing visual of actually setting fire to something in order to promote healthier growth. So, when I heard that idea of prescribed burns, I was like, oh, that’s cool. I really want to try and make that into a song somehow. So myself and Richey McCourt, who I co-wrote this with, we were exploring ideas and I brought this up and we compared that to life rather than agriculture land and used that visual of sometimes [you] need to burn down parts of life whether that’s relationships or ties or where we’re based or any of these things with the human experience in order to grow from there.”
O’Neill recently released a touching video for the song that depicts the moving relationship between a grandfather and grandson. This uplifting story adds a new facet to the meaning behind the song.
“This is always the funny thing about when somebody else hears your songs, they can interpret it in a completely different way. Lucas [Mac Diarmada], who was the director for the video, and produced the video with me, he had this totally different idea when he heard the song of what it was about and that’s it, you’re always listening to something from your own perspective and your own life experience and then gathering from it what you will – what it means to you. So he got this idea that it’s all about picking each other up to a certain extent, which he wanted to visualize with this Grandfather/Grandson relationship. I just loved that idea that it was not an entirely different thing than what I wrote about but a different relationship than what I wrote about, but still human to human and somebody close to you in your life that was trying to help you out of a situation and so it was a collaborative molding of both of our ideas.”
‘Wildfire’ is the first glimpse of O’Neill’s upcoming EP ‘Time (Thought You Were On My Side)’ which is set for release on the 8th of April. The singer-songwriter told me what can we expect from the EP.
“The EP takes on that style of Wildfire. Wildfire is the introduction to the new sound, I suppose what feels like a new era for me as a songwriter and an artist. Stories for me will always be the focus of my songs and my songwriting. I have to tell a story. So all the songs are still based around stories, that will come across lyrically, but with more pop elements in the production. It’s five tracks, one of which you’ve already heard with Wildfire, and they were all recorded and written during the course of the pandemic. We recorded them last summer. I’m really excited about the songs. It’s very different than anything I’ve ever done before. So it does feel like a new beginning. But I’m really really proud of the sound and the style and I think it’s a left turn for sure from what I’ve done before but the response so far has been great.”
‘Time (Thought You Were On My Side)’ is a great name for an EP. It provides food for thought while remaining relatable as it alludes to many types of scenarios as well as the inevitable concept of ageing and how we all at times feel as if time is running out in our lives. However, this EP takes its name from elements within the collection of songs.
“One of the tracks is called Time. Another lyric in the song is “thought you were on my side”. I just came up with a name for the EP after we recorded everything. I was listening through all the master tracks and I already knew what the messages were but I suppose I was listening to all the messages collectively and what they could say. That song is really personal to me. It’s probably the one that was the hardest to write and record. So I “thought you were on my side” can be referred to a lot of different themes in the song. It can be referred to people, can be referred to obviously time, as a concept. It can be referred to people in your life or your career or just all these things where you’re thinking that you have time or you have this person with you or you have these opportunities or any of those things and then you’re thinking that these things are on your side, that these things are with you and then they’re taken away. I think that was a big theme with the pandemic for an awful lot of people, we all thought we had loads of time, be that in relation to anything whether that’s getting older or time with people or time to travel or time to work. So I suppose it was a running theme in the songs. But it’s also a thought directed at multiple themes.”
O’Neill is a professional artist who provides a first-rate standard across all she does. This applies to her poetic songwriting, rich musicianship, beautiful visuals and artwork. The cover of ‘Time (Thought You Were On My Side)’ is the perfect example of this. We discussed how difficult it is to choose artwork that does justice to a collection of songs
“I always find that part so hard. A lot of visual things will come up for me when I’m writing and recording and working on the songs but picking one visual for every song that’s got to cover all bases is really hard. But we worked through a bunch of different ideas and you can also get lost in that regard and spend, you know, a year trying to decide on the right cover. Eventually you just have to say, Okay, that one fits and just have to go with that. Because you could overthink it forever. It is a really hard thing, though, to pick one that will cover all bases.”
Like all musicians of this generation, O’Neill has the influence of streaming platforms that give artists huge exposure however they do not generate a lot of revenue for musicians. We discussed this paradox.
“Oh, yeah. So overwhelming and really frustrating because making records is very expensive and everything that goes into them. That’s not even talking about when you start preparing for live shows and you’re buying instrumentation and with this next level for me, which is this new sound, it requires new instrumentation when you’re playing live so everything is expensive. When you’re putting it out and not really seeing a lot of return because of streaming platforms, it is hard. It’s also really hard to get recognized on those streaming platforms, getting selected for the right playlists and getting the right attention. You’re directing all of your traffic towards Spotify, and then it’s kind of a one-sided relationship. So yeah, it’s incredibly frustrating and it’s overwhelming and life, in general, is overwhelming at the moment. You’re trying to navigate all these different streaming platforms, constant influx of information from every source you look at. Then knowing what the right next step is in terms of releasing and how to release and where to release and where to put your money and where to direct your traffic. It’s just endless options, really. So I think the whole world at the moment feels a bit overwhelming to navigate, when it comes to online and releasing music.”
O’Neill was able to tour Ireland and the UK last October/November. She explained to me how exciting it is to be able to plan for shows again as well as her plans for the rest of the year.
“Oh, definitely. I think that’s something that we were all really missing throughout the last two years is being able to plan something and get excited about it. That excitement was gone, because even if you were planning to go and see a friend and travel, there was no real guarantee that was going to happen. So it’s a great thing for all of us to have back. In terms of shows this year, it’s still a little bit hit and miss because an awful lot of shows are rescheduled from last year. All of the festivals will kind of be rescheduled acts from last year in Ireland anyway. So there’s still a little bit of a backlog to get through. But in general, yeah it’s fantastic. We’ve got a show coming up next week in London and then a couple of bits in the summer and some touring which has yet to be announced. But all of that is great, to actually be able to plan for it. Also, there’s so many things I now have to think about. I’ve gotten used to being in my studio just creating songs for the last two years. Now there’s, a whole world out there that I need to open up to. So it’s really exciting. It’s also a little bit scary.”
“It’s very overwhelming and also very overwhelming on my bank account. But yeah, re-entering the world … I think that’s gonna take some adjusting as well. I have always really loved playing live. It’s always been a huge part of my career and then that was gone the last two years. There’s a part of me now that’s anxious around live gigs and anxious around touring. I did a tour in October, November last year of the UK and Ireland, which was amazing, but there was a ton of anxiety around that whole experience because it was just all of a sudden foreign and there was so much to plan and if anybody got covid then the whole thing was pulled last minute. There was a lot of money on the line and planning and people depending on it, and all of a sudden that comes back as pressure, you know, so re-entering that whole world is a little bit uncomfortable. I think it’s that for a lot of people because it’s all of a sudden the unknown, whereas two years ago, obviously, Covid was the unknown. So it’s weird what we’ve kind of all adjusted to.”
“So, the EP is out on the eighth of April, very exciting. Then we’re just gonna do singles after that. So a single every two months, and they’re all in the works at the moment. So I don’t know if they will form a second EP or if it’ll just be standalone tracks, that’s yet to be decided. But yeah, this year, will be predominantly focused on releases. There will be shows dotted around but the shows are actually not the focus of this year more of the focus is the recording and the writing and getting the songs out there. Also, there are some exciting shows that I have yet to announce and some exciting projects as well that I’m working on at the moment that I’ve yet to announce, but in general, it’s gonna be a lot of songs this year. Yeah, very excited.”
Megan O’Neill is an exciting and diverse artist who captures heartfelt emotion through passionate and evocative musicianship. Looking forward to hearing much more from this songwriting treasure.
Stream ‘Wildfire’ below
Author: Danu
