On her newest single, New Zealand’s rising star Molly Payton proves that she is in complete artistic control of where she chooses to drive her artistry. “Accelerate”, Payton’s most recent single to be released of her debut full-length album set to come out later this year, is an alt-rock anthem that comforts listeners while fueling the fire of their emotions. Accompanied by a music video filmed in the New Zealand countryside and Beachlands Speedway, “Accelerate” is a retro-infused project that marks a new creative era for Payton. As she finally emerges as an independent artist, Payton is ready to express the maturity she has developed in her sound as well as her ambition to continue playing with a variety of genres.
As she combines influences of shoegaze, singer-songwriter, rock and folk, Payton possesses an authentic musicianship. Striving to create the music that she wants to hear, Payton continues to express this innovative and unique musicality in this new era of creative freedom and determination. The “Accelerate” music video portrays Payton in a Bruce Springsteen-inspired outfit driving around in an 1980s Ford hot rod. Recalling themes of nostalgia and Americana, Payton expresses this aesthetic as a documentation of her multi-layered personality and signature raw musicality. As Payton sat down with Melodic Mag, she talked about the inspiration behind the “Accelerate” video, why cars are a recurring symbol in her work and what listeners can expect from her upcoming debut LP.
Super excited to chat with you today, Molly! I’m very excited to talk about the new single “Accelerate”. I love this song and I love that it symbolizes this new era in your career. You’re independent now, and I imagine that comes with so much freedom as an artist. How does it feel to finally be behind the wheel and in control of your own artistry?
It feels really good. I think a lot of it was realizing that I actually have been in control in a lot of ways the whole time, but I didn’t know. You only know how much you are driving the ship when you don’t have anyone. But yeah, it’s been amazing and I’m really glad I was in New Zealand while all of this was going down, because it would have been a very different story I think if I’d been in London at the time. But being at home and surrounded by all these other incredible artists who are doing music because they love it and not to make money and because they care about what they do, it was just a really amazing period of time for me when I was recording that song and shooting all this stuff.
Now that you’re in control like you say, what do you hope to do differently now? How will your music and your songwriting be different?
I think it took going through everything that I went through in that space of time to realize that you shouldn’t do music to try and make money off of it. You do it as a career, but you shouldn’t do it just to have a career, which might sound so common sense. I got into the industry when I was 16. By the time I was 20 I was freaking out that I hadn’t made any money here, because I thought that that was going to happen by the time I hit certain milestones and no one had really explained that to me and I wish someone had. That just doesn’t happen, especially in the age of streaming. You just don’t make money off of music and it’s so weird because it’s not why I started. Obviously I was 16, I wasn’t thinking about any of that, but it becomes what you’re trying to do. I was living in London at the time. It was so expensive and I could work full time and still not have enough money to pay rent. I was just like, I have to crack this industry. But being at home I got a job and realized I could just make music for the first time again without any of that pressure and everything I made in that time was just so much better than anything I’ve ever done before. It was just such a good thing to figure out, and I wish there was more conversations happening around this because so many people seem to think that music is something that you can do and live off of when most of the time it isn’t. And you’re always going to fail if you start thinking of it that way.
It’s crazy how many artists are doing music and also working full time. It’s too bad that that’s how it has to be sometimes when you’re pursuing music.
I think it’s good creatively, though. It’s a good thing to do. If you can fully separate your art from anything monetary it is just naturally going to be better because you’re not thinking at all about how it’s going to be received. It’s just a natural thing that happens. I would almost recommend to anyone that I know, even the friends who are successful, to work. Just because it makes it your hobby again and makes it the thing that you just want to do in your free time, and that’s such a gift.
You tend to write the music that you want to hear rather than what you think other people will want to hear. If it’s more of a hobby, then it’s more natural and it’s more authentic.
Yeah. That’s the vibes. All of this is so much easier said than done, especially over here. But in New Zealand, like the “Accelerate” video for example, the budget for that was like 2000 pounds or something. Which is crazy if you think about all the vintage cars and the Beachlands Speedway and all of that stuff. But everyone there is just so keen to make stuff. It’s such a community and I think I notice sometimes that that’s kind of missing over here in London. I don’t know what it’s like in the States, but I’d love to start creating more of that vibe in London where people just want to make stuff together outside of the financial side of things.
You mention the video for “Accelerate”; I love the video so much and I feel like it pairs with the song so well. What went into the inspiration behind the video? You shot it at Beachlands Speedway, why did you choose that location?
When I recorded it with Oscar Lang, who co-produced the record with me, he had lots of car noises in there and it felt natural that we were going to go in that direction in terms of the car stuff. I was sitting down with Damin McCabe, who’s been making the visuals with me, and Oscar Keys who directed that video, and we were talking about what we could do in Auckland, the city where I was living at the time in the North Island of New Zealand. Obviously I’ve been paying for everything myself, and then later I got funding from a great company called New Zealand On Air, but it was still not a lot of money. There was nothing we could do that’s within budget, like renting a car. Damin piped up and said, “My dad lives in the South Island and collects vintage cars, he’s been collecting vintage cars his whole life.” That, combined with the fact that they knew the guy that owns the speedway down there, meant that basically all of our costs were gone. So we flew down there and spent three days staying with Damin’s family which was so nice and shot this amazing video. Part of the reason why I ended up making the call to go down there was I feel like people don’t get to see those parts of New Zealand that much, except in fantasy films. So it was really cool combining that with the Americana styling and the sound of the song. And there’s all these Easter eggs as well. There’s a visual symbol running throughout the whole project of a horse. In the “Asphalt” video there was this white horse and then in the “Accelerated” video, this horse that we stumbled across looked exactly the same as the horse from the first video. I’ll let people watch it, but there’s lots of other little links between the two.
Going off of that, both of those songs share similarities. Both have mentions of cars and they’re almost like two sides of the same coin. In what other ways are the two songs similar but different?
It’s funny because if they were similar I definitely didn’t intend them to be, but I guess the project as a whole captures that time of my life. I think I’ve just been super unstable. Although “Accelerate” is obviously more positive than “Asphalt”, both songs in a way are about instability. “Asphalt” is about being at the tail end of it and feeling the non-exciting part of the instability of being a bit lost and disconnected and looking for some kind of connection. “Accelerate” is at the beginning of it, where it’s throwing yourself into a relationship or just hitting fast into something without worrying too much about the consequences.
“Accelerate” was the last song that you wrote on the upcoming album, and you said it filled in the holes of what the album was missing but. How did “Accelerate” complete the album for you?
I just wanted a fun song. There’s other rock tracks on the project, and that’s probably the part of the record that I’m most excited for is to play those songs live. There’s a lot of that shoegaze, fun, rock stuff, but they still have a bit of a darker lyrical content to them. A couple of them deal with heavier stuff like my relationship with my father. It’s not exactly fun listening, so I just wanted a song like “Accelerate” that’s just driving and fun and joyous.
I wanted to ask also about the symbolism or the potential meaning behind the car imagery. Both “Accelerate” and “Asphalt” mentioned cars and driving. What does that imagery symbolize for you?
Although I can get deep sometimes, the car thing is always more of a detail or setting for me. I think so many of my favorite songs have that really descriptive quality to them where you can feel like you’re somewhere, and it just so happens that at the time that I wrote the album I had just bought my first car. Obviously in the UK I’ve been using public transport for five years, so having my first car and being able to go wherever I wanted anytime all the time was just a big part of my life, which might sound stupid. But driving became my thinking time and often when I was coming up with lyrics I would be driving to work or driving home or driving home after a fight with my boyfriend. It was always my time to think, so I guess it just ended up coming up a lot.
I know we mentioned the upcoming album, which I’m very excited for. Without giving too much away, what can people expect from the album?
I’d say it’s something for every type of fan that I would have, because I’ve released a lot in quite a short amount of time of very formative years of my life. I think I’ve played around with a lot of different writing styles and genres, which everyone should do, but the album is just settling into what I think my sound will be going forward. I realize that I actually don’t want to pick any one genre. I don’t want to be a singer-songwriter. I don’t want to be a rock artist. I want to be all of it at once. I think what we ended up making was a really great mix of the shoegaze aspects of what I’ve done and the folk aspects and all of that good stuff. It’s a good emotional ride. I think there’s a lot of range in there.
Now that you’re independent, did you ever face pressure to pick one genre or only stick to one thing? Do you have more freedom to experiment now?
I don’t think I’ve ever been pressured into one or the other, but even in the last two videos, someone commented on “Asphalt” saying, “You should go back to the Nirvana vibe.” I didn’t even know I ever had a Nirvana vibe. And then someone commented on “Accelerate” saying they preferred my voice over folk music. It comes back to what I was saying before about how you can’t make music ever thinking about how it’s going to be received. Because you’ll never win. You can’t make it for anyone other than yourself because there’s too many other people and they all have different opinions. I just hope I always make things that I love and that I want to listen to, which – stepping into the production role more now – I’ll hopefully be able to do.
Going off of that, your last EP was in 2022 and this upcoming album is your debut full length release. How is the new album different from your previous work? How has your sound changed over time, if it has?
I think I’ve always been trying to do the same thing. I’ve only just learned how to articulate that in the studio and get the sounds that I want now that I’ve been doing music for a long time. That’s why I can’t listen to my first couple EP’s because I just absolutely hate the way they sound. But I wouldn’t take it down or re-record it or anything because you need to do every track that you’ve done to get to a point where you’re learning. I’m only now at a point where I can be in the studio and ask for a specific tone and ask everyone that’s playing different instruments for an exact part. I think that’s what’s changed, is that I can control how my music sounds. Whereas when I was younger, the only thing I could control was the songwriting. Otherwise I’d just go into sessions and be like, “Can you make this sound like a cloud?” I didn’t have the language or the experience to get things to sound how I want them to.
Ultimately, what do you hope to express through your music? What do you want people to get out of it or learn from it?
I get asked this question a lot and I never know what to say but because obviously it changes all the time. Right now, I think making this record was a very big deal for me because I wrote about stuff that I’d never written about or spoken to anyone about before. They’re parts of my life that I kind of put in a box for a bit because I was too young and I didn’t know how to handle it. This record is the first time I’ve really been super open and transparent about all of it, and it was the most rewarding experience ever. It actually helped me articulate things in a way that then led me to talk to my friends about it and have more open conversations with my family. That was an amazing, incredible setting. In saying that, I would hope through being super open about what I’m going through and how I feel in my music other people will also think about being open with people in their life and sharing stuff a little bit more. It’s a scary thing to do, but it’s the best thing we can do.
What pushed you to open up a bit more and how did that feel for you?
It’s scary, and obviously it’s still scary because I haven’t put out any of the songs that cover the subject matter. It feels nice knowing that I’m not hiding anything anymore. I had this big secret on my chest for my whole late teens and now it’s gone. I just feel like I can live my life and make decisions and do everything without even thinking about this bad thing that happened now that I’ve talked about it because it’s out in the open.
Thank you so much for taking the time!
Thank you!
MOLLY PAYTON TOUR DATES:
August 31 Manchester, UK – Manchester Psych Fest
September 1 Edinburgh, UK – Edinburgh Psycho Fest
September 3 Leeds, UK
September 4 Nottingham, UK
September 5 Bristol, UK
September 11 London, UK
September 12 Paris, France
September 13 Brussels, Belgium
September 14 Amsterdam, Netherlands
September 18-21 Hamburg, Germany – Reeperbahn Festival
Keep up with Molly Payton: Instagram // TikTok // YouTube // Website
