Nostalgia as Inspiration: flowerovlove
So let's get started. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in London. Well, I was in born southwest. Then I lived in south for quite a bit. Ater that, I lived in Essex for quite a while and now I'm back in London. So I'd say I spent most of my childhood in London and it was great because I got to be around lots of different types of people and food, while remaining close to my culture.
Are there any early influences that continue to shape your music and your personal style?
I think all of my early influences. The feeling that I draw from is always nostalgia. So I'm always thinking about how I felt when I first listened to music. When I'm creating I want to recreate that feeling because I feel like music is a massive healer, music has so much power to make you feel good.
Lovely. So you write a lot of music with your brother. How did that first begin and how does he fit into your creative process now?
So it was his idea; he started producing music just for himself. Everyone knew I could sing as I was always singing, in school plays and stuff like that. So he suggested we make a song. The first one I made was a rap song – mostly out of boredom because I didn’t have that many friends at the time and we hung out a lot. He was like any of my other friends. Then I backed out and decided I didn’t want to make music because I just didn’t feel confident at the time. Fast forward and a couple of years later, which is around 2021, that's when I started becoming a little bit more confident and thought, “no, I do want to make music, you know.” And at the start, when I first made songs, it was mainly him writing and doing the production stuff. But as I grew my confidence, in my identity and in my sound, it's become a lot more me.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to hear that rap song you put together. Have you listened to it recently?
I have not listened to it recently. I think I'm gonna wait so I can forget about it and then hear it in a couple of years and be like, “oh my God.” I'm thinking I might do something like that for my Grammy speech or something. Just get my phone and play the demo. Just something silly, because why not?
How does it feel to grow up now, especially as a musician, navigating the public sphere? What's it like being in the public eye, being a musician in these formative years?
It can be a bit tricky sometimes because when you're a teenager, you go through lots of different types of hormones and so much comes with that, such as growing up and thinking, 'Oh, what do people think about me?' Teenage years are the peak time when you're really discovering yourself, and if that's happening in the public eye, there’s a lot of responsibility. It was just for fun a while back. But now it's like an actual job and it feels like so.
It's crazy because it's almost like the job is you.
The job is my life. Sometimes its hard to separate yourself from the job, which is why I think it's good to have a different name. This is flowerovlove and then this is Joyce and she's living her life. It makes it easier to separate work and life, although I am doing both.
Yeah. Yeah. Trying to find some boundaries and separation. I feel like that's so important. How do you maintain belief in yourself and faith in your path?
That's a really good question. I think if I’m ever in doubt, I just go and listen to my music and recognize how good it is. It truly hypes me up. Like I said, music heals everything, and especially mine. I'm literally my biggest fan. I listen to alot of my own songs.
Okay, so some more of the themes in your music are gratitude, reflection, meditation, self-improvement. What part do these rituals play in your own musical creation?
These are things that exist in my personal life so its quite easy to write about those things because I'm living them. They are my hobbies, and my self care, which is what I spend a lot of time doing. I write about those things. Recently I have started writing in other perspectives because I noticed that I started using the same words a lot and it was becoming too similar and I'm not about that life.
Oh, cool. So taking maybe a little bit more of a conceptual route with some newer stuff.
Yeah. Writing about other people, even if I don't know them. There was this one guy who was in the same building and I decided to write a song about what I thought of him.
You've started to do more live performances and are playing several festivals this summer in Spain and the UK. Do you look forward to traveling and performing in front of different audiences? How does that feel?
I'm really excited, actually, but I've done shows in Spain – Barcelona – so I’m very interested in seeing what the festival crowd is like. I know what the festival crowd is like in the UK, but haven't been to one abroad, and I'm not the biggest festival girl. I just know it's going to be hot, but I'm also doing a festival in Belgium which should be fun.
You've done a whole bunch of runway appearances, campaigns with Gucci and Maison Kitsune. Is there a favorite? Someone you’d love to work with in your career?
Oh, my number one is probably Miu Miu. I definitely see that happening. That's it. That's like my one where I'm like… Yeah. Miu Miu.
How do your interests in music and fashion converge? Do you keep those worlds separate?
Oh, yes. I think there's a definite similarity. I'm not sure if I look how I sound, but I dress as my inner child, so I dress in what six year old me would want to see someone wearing and think, “Oh, wow, that's really cool.” That's how I dress now, because it makes me feel very fulfilled and at peace. And I'm also not always comfortable when I dress. I used to be, but now it's more just like, I'm dressing and whatever the weather does, the weather does. I'm not dressing for the weather, so I'm usually cold most of the time. But I write my music from a similar place.
Last question, which song of yours should newcomers listen to first to get the most representative flowerovlove experience?
Oh, I think if you want to get a glimpse of me, my personality, I'd say listen to “Hannah Montana”. That song is lots of fun. Very cute. And I still love it to this day. It's not one of my old songs, where I'm like ahhh I kind of want to unrelease this. But if you just want to hear new flowerovlove then you should listen to “Love You”.
