Q&A with Phoebe June

Phoebe June writes the kind of songs that feel like reading someone’s diary at 2 a.m.; intimate, honest, and just a little too relatable. Her new EP, Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate, brings together songs written across different chapters of her life, revisiting old heartbreaks and emotions with the perspective of who she is today.

Drawing on love, longing, distance and the complicated spaces in between, Phoebe turns deeply personal experiences into songs that leave room for listeners to find pieces of themselves. We caught up with Phoebe June to talk about revisiting her younger self through songwriting, the realities of writing about heartbreak, finding strength in emotional honesty, and what she hopes someone listening alone in their bedroom takes away from Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate.

1. You write very openly about love, longing and heartbreak. Has being emotionally vulnerable in your songwriting always felt natural to you, or have you had to learn how to let people into those more private parts of yourself?

It’s always felt natural to be vulnerable in my writing. I write to understand what’s happening in my head and it always helps me understand my emotions better. It’s therapeutic, like I’m writing in my journal. There’s times it’s easier for me to explain something I’m going through in a song.
I’d say it’s easy for me to let it all out on paper but sometimes I have to brace myself when I’m first showing someone. It really is like letting someone read a part of your journal.

2. As a woman writing about relationships, how do you navigate the expectation that female artists should either romanticize heartbreak or turn it into a story of empowerment? Do you feel there is room for more complicated emotions than that?

I think that love is never black and white and there’s so many stories to tell and different ways to tell the same heartbreak. Emotions are complicated in general and someone can look at you writing a song and dumb it down to a sad girl writing a sad song because she’s going through a break up but it’s never that simple. It is unfortunate and I have experienced the expectation of writing a song while going through a heartbreak but at the end of the day, it’s genuinely a way I cope so I can’t not write that song and I’d like to think that if my songs can help even one other person feel like their not alone and feel heard, then it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. At the end of the day we’re all human and all looking for places where we feel seen, you just have to find your people.

3. Some of the songs on Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate began years ago. When you returned to that earlier writing with more life experience behind you, did you hear yourself differently?

I did see how different my writing was but I’m still the same girl and I still remember how I felt in those moments when I wrote these songs. I decided to release this EP with old songs because I thought they deserved to be shared, I was and still am proud of them. I thought it would be a shame to hide them away in some notebook collecting dust. When I decided to move these songs forward, I revised some of them and I think they turned out even better and in some ways it almost felt like older me and younger me working together which I think is pretty special. I did add one recently written song which is Ophelia. I thought it would be nice to end on something that I’ve written now that still ties into the narrative and vibe of the whole EP so it could still resonate with the person and songwriter I am today.

4. The lead single, “Thursday”, is built around distance, waiting and the possibility that two people might find their way back to each other. What did writing that song teach you about the difference between holding onto someone and holding onto hope?

This song was interesting to write because I had imagined it as a duet and ended up writing from both perspectives. It allowed me to put myself in the other persons shoes and see the pain from both sides. During the process of writing I went over a lot of things I was going through and I realized that I would only be willing to make it work if the other person would which is how the song came to life. Holding onto someone who isn’t equally as willing as you can be a huge impact on your mental health but I guess for me, holding onto hope in that moment helped me get through that period of time and just the idea that maybe it could work but I’ll focus on myself for now and maybe down the line we’ll find ourselves in the right place at the right time.

5. Your influences include artists such as Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, all of whom have very distinctive approaches to writing personal material. What have you learned from women whose songwriting has made emotional honesty feel powerful rather than vulnerable in a negative sense?

I’d say it’s the same as what I hope for others listening to my music, just feeling heard. I think when a writer is true to themselves and emotionally honest, that is so powerful and the more vulnerable you are the more it’s going to affect the people listening as well. I also love writing scenarios that I may not have necessarily lived through but maybe my friend told me about it or I read it in a book but even those kind of songs have a power to them. But overall, I think when you’ve lived through something painful or can relate to it, you can feel it through the words and the music. I think that’s how you get a crowd of people to scream the words you wrote when you were probably crying alone in your room.

6. You describe music as a place where listeners can find pieces of themselves. What do you hope a young woman listening to this EP alone in her bedroom might take from it?

I hope whoever finds this EP can find one song that helps them through whatever their going through. I know music has always been something that keeps my head afloat when I feel like I’m drowning. But also if someone relates to anything other than ‘Everything You Are’ and ‘Dead Sea’, I’m so sorry and I promise it gets better. I also hope that these songs can help someone in their healing journey as much as it helped me to write them and remind them that their not alone.