I caught up with Kildare-raised singer-songwriter Shiv to talk about her recently released debut EP ‘Me 2 Me’. Shiv who is now back in Ireland for Christmas tells me how she crafts her songs, what sparked her to venture into a career in music and her new found joy for the family chaos Christmas brings.

“I think everyone’s really looking forward to the craziness because it’s been such a dead year, and coming up to Christmas you have time to relax, but it can also be fairly stressful and busy but I think it’s a welcome busyness this time around for a lot of people.”

Shiv has released her debut EP ‘Me 2 Me’. She wrote, produced and recorded her six-track debut EP during a year of self-discovery. However for Shiv the crafting and sculpting of this EP was more nerve-racking than the process of releasing it into the world.

“I think I had all my nerves when I was making it, if that makes sense. While I was doing it I was really apprehensive and really anxious and overthinking every lyric, every chord. But once I made the decision to release it and once I had the first single out of the way, I was happy. I’m happy with the EP and, obviously, I want people to like it but I was comfortable in the fact that I was happy with it myself. So I think that really helped, taking the time to sit with it way before the release.”

The EP is a great collection of tracks saturated in R&B and Soul with tropical elements peppered on top. Shiv explained being exposed to various genres has helped craft her sound.

“My dad used to play such a variety of stuff when we were growing up so I think that’s where the influence comes from musically. In terms of songwriting process. I like to come up with lyrics first.I try to write poetry as much as I can and then sometimes those poems turn into songs, but usually if I have an idea I want to get down or if I hear a word that I think will be really cool or phrase that I think would be really nice in a song I try flesh it out. Then I get down to the piano, play a few chords, see what sits right, see what melodies come out. From there then, it kind of flows. I’m lucky enough that I do have an idea of production and it’s easy enough to translate the ideas that I have in my head into a real song so yeah that’s usually the way it goes.”

Shiv shows her deft lyrical capabilities within this EP. She presents intimate and honest, accounts on a variety of themes from anxiety and longing to loneliness. I wondered if this feels exposing, releasing these personal thoughts into the public and are these feelings and emotions just as raw performing the songs now.

“Yeah, absolutely. I think that was part of the struggle as well being so vulnerable and so honest is quite a scary thing. You’re letting people into your mind and letting people see your flaws and your insecurities. I suppose it’s just part of being human as well. I feel that’s the best way to connect with people, if you are your most authentic self that translates and that’s what makes people connect to whatever you’re doing, people can sense the authenticity. But yeah, it’s definitely a nerve-racking experience especially during the writing process. More than post writing. It can get easy being caught up in your head and be like, oh, should I really be saying this should I really be exposing this part of myself. But all in all it’s such a rewarding thing and such a freeing experience because you know you are being true to yourself and expressing yourself in the most honest way that you can.”

“I guess it’s a processing thing I suppose. If you write a song about something and sing about something it is kind of, a relief. It’s like you’ve freed yourself from that in a sense, and obviously it’s never going to be perfect and the emotions are still going to come up but I guess it’s a way of processing the emotions so they’re not as raw. You know when you’re kind of anxious about something or overthinking something and it’s always in the back of your mind and it’s never really resolved, I feel writing and releasing songs, for me anyway gives things like that a sense of resolve. Then performing them afterwards, I think it’s easy to go back into that frame of mind. I can put myself back to how I was feeling but it’s not something that is overwhelming it’s not bringing me down or bringing me back to that point. I can still feel free.”

The instrumentation Shiv uses is light, bright and almost bouncy which creates a wonderful contrast to the emotive lyrical content. Shiv’s songs unfold and blossom almost naturally.

“I find it hard to picture in my head, what exactly I want something to sound like. I follow a feeling, when I’m producing stuff so even from lyrics, that shapes what chords I’m gonna play. The chords shape the melody and then the melody shapes everything else, so it fits in together, not necessarily all at once. Each song encompasses the whole feeling of my emotion, if that makes sense. Each song is a representation of whatever feeling I was trying to convey, just in my own way.”

Shiv has a degree in psychology which has helped her understand her feelings and emotions. This has aided her to express a true and organic version of herself within her songs.

“Yeah I did. I was going into educational psychology and then when I didn’t use my degree I thought it was a waste, but psychology is one of those things… it’s people you know what I mean and that’s a lot of what life is about. It’s aided me in that sense for sure. I’m definitely, for being able to process emotions, being self aware and being able to be real with myself and talk through things with myself…which is what songwriting is for me, it’s the talking through things. That background in psychology has helped me understand feelings more and be able to translate them from just a vague abstract feeling in my brain to a physical manifestation of it via lyrics and music.”

I wondered if the change in career from psychology to music was a difficult decision. There is so much uncertainty within a career in music and to take that jump is a brave decision.

“It was a process. Music has always been a part of my life. Like I said, my dad used to play so much music for us growing up and my mom used to sing with my sister and I a lot. I sang all the way up through school, I was in choirs and I sang with a couple of my friends. It was always something that I had and something that I always came back to, but I never really thought of it seriously as a career, just because it seemed unattainable. It was one of those things that you know, only one in a million really makes it but I guess the model changed for the music industry and it became more of an achievable goal. I’m so lucky and grateful that I have a family that really does support,they are so supportive. It just made it easy then to see that goal as something that I could possibly slide into.”

“How I really got started was my sister was getting married, and I was her maid of honour. I was meant to make a speech for the wedding. Public speaking is just not really my thing. I was not very good at it so I said instead of that,I can write a song maybe and see how it goes. So I wrote her song, which I posted on YouTube and I ended up getting scouted by this management agency in Dublin. That gave me the drive to start seeing it as more of a concrete possibility. I started off timidly and I approached it as though it’s still a hobby and slowly it began becoming more real and more solid as I progressed and transitioned into being a full time musician, which is something I never really thought I would be doing. So it was just a process, it was something that’s always been with me and then just ended becoming more and more of a theme in my life .”

Shiv explains it wasn’t an automatic or spontaneous decision to change career and because of this, the change in career was easier to process.

“Exactly, yeah, it made it easier to digest and be serious about it and get used to the idea in my head that, I’m a singer now, you know. If I just made the switch I don’t think I would have been able to have as much time to figure out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I possibly would have ended up giving up before I could even get ahead because I wouldn’t have been secure in what I was doing.”

Choosing to sing at a wedding rather than deliver a speech is not the decision most people would make but Shiv was always comfortable with her own voice.

“It was something I always did. I was…I don’t know eight or nine, and there was this scene in my town it was called Shepherds Watch and it was basically a Christmas Carols sort of thing. I was singing, as part of a choir and then one of the organisers came up to me at the end of practice and was like ‘oh you should do the solo’. I was like what !, obviously I always enjoyed singing, my mom used to sing with us, as I said, and it was just something that I always had but I didn’t really think I was talented at. After I did that solo and I loved it so much, I loved the performance aspect of it. It developed into something more serious for me.I could recognise that it was something that I was good at and something that I really enjoyed doing.”

I was interested to know of Shiv’s experience with DJing and how this aided her production skills. She explains how DJing gave her the foundation she needed to produce her own songs.

“Yeah, absolutely. I did DJing for a while as it was a great way to make money. It was also a lovely way to be able to express myself in a musical form that’s not necessarily singing because I didn’t think that was a real option. So it was a really nice way to get a sideways door into the music world and made me feel I could teach myself or learn how to produce because that falls on the more technical end of music, I just played instruments, but I didn’t really know that much about production. DJing was definitely a nice stepping stone”

Shiv has also travelled quite a lot while she was creating this EP, travelling from Paris to Mozambique and this travel gave her the space and time she required to tap into her creativity. 

“Yeah I think so, when I went to Mozambique…my parents live over there and it was just around the time when I was starting to consider taking music seriously. I had written one or two songs but there was nothing that I felt confident enough to release. I was in Dublin and I was working as a waitress and doing the mid 20s thing of you know; working, going out and kind of the same thing over and over. So, my parents said take a break from work come stay with us and see what happens, give yourself six weeks, completely immerse yourself in music and just see what comes out. So I had the six week period of just writing…it wasn’t even necessarily a case of wanting to experience Mozambique or particularly to do with the country or where I was, but it was just the opportunity to get familiar with how I wanted to represent myself I guess musically. So yeah, that was that and then Paris. Yeah, Paris has definitely been an influence. I moved there last year and just having different environments and seeing different things and being around different people. It makes your brain, see things in a different way and think about things in a different way as well. I think it’s really important to take yourself out of your usual environment because it allows you to let different things come out. So yeah, I feel travelling definitely was an influence and driving factor”

The ‘Me 2 Me’ EP discusses anxiety, especially ‘Letting You Go’. It’s a personal note to Shiv to release the overwhelming grip of deep-rooted anxiety. I wondered if she had that anxiety travelling, and how she overcame it. 

“Yeah I did. I guess I’ve always been an anxious person. I do feel as a general rule our fast paced way of living doesn’t allow for you not to be anxious. After I’d released my first couple of songs, I hadn’t really been expecting anything to come from them and I was just excited and was like I just need someone else to hear them. They surprisingly got a really good reception, and that was amazing. But in another sense it was also crippling because before I was just writing for myself and I didn’t have any expectations. Whatever I put out was what I put out and it didn’t really matter because if no one heard it I’d be in the exact same position that I was before. But after I put out my first couple of tracks I felt a bit more pressure and I felt I had something to prove and that’s where it came out, when I tried to create….because I didn’t feel as free as I did before. I felt a bit more in my head about things and oh you know if I make this then it’s not really like this song that people seem to like, maybe I need to make more of that. So yeah, that’s where that came from. Writing the songs helped me work through that because I guess that’s what a lot of them are like, the EP is essentially a diary entry from me to me.”

I asked when we can finally get back to doing shows again, what can people expect from Shiv’s live performances.

“I’m still working on what I want to do. I do want to incorporate some live looping and stuff like that into my shows but at the moment, my setup is with the live band, which is great. It’s so lovely to have other people to bounce energy off as well.”

Shiv’s path to music is an intruiging one which has allowed her to indulge in her creativity and experience different countries and cultures. I wondered what advice she would give to anyone who wants to pursue a career in music.

“Take the time to familiarise yourself with the different technologies that exist. It’s so much more accessible now than it used to be a couple of years ago. Get familiar with GarageBand and that kind of production stuff, so that you can support yourself and move yourself through music without having to rely or depend on anyone else. Invest in a microphone so you can get your own demos going and mess around with stuff and just feel free to create. Also just be patient with yourself, that’s a big thing that I’ve taken away from this last year. Just be prepared that possibly not everything is going to be perfect, not everything is going to be amazing and that’s just part of the process. Be comfortable with failure and expect the failure and not to judge too much… try not to judge it and allow what’s going to come out, come out.”

Shiv has some exciting thing coming up next year so stay tuned to her socials

“Next year I have my first headline show, that’s going to be in April. I’m really looking forward to that and then I’m hoping for an album, that’s my aim. I’d love to have an album before the end of 2021. Hopefully when things get back to normal I’d love to be performing and possibly a tour but, who knows it’s difficult to say for sure what’s gonna happen in the next few months.”

Shiv creates deeply emotive and passionate tracks surrounded in lush tender soundscapes. Her ability to touch the soul with her silken voice and heartfelt lyrics is mesmerising and marks her as an artist to keep an eye on. Along with her charming persona and magnificent production skills there is something very special about Shiv. 

Stream ‘Me 2 Me’ below

Author : Danu