The Lady Liv-terview: An Extended Interview with Lady Liv!

Hiya!

Welcome to the FIRST EVER QUEASY CARDIGAN INTERVIEW, where my first interviewee is the lovely Lady Liv!

Lady Liv is an independent musician, producer and sound engineer based in York. She played an integral role in the University of York’s Music Society as their Head Technician. Liv also released her debut album Emotional Support Forest in 2023, which was a project that she had been working on since she was just 16 years old. Lady Liv simply has a knack for creating amazing music, and she has an ever-growing and versatile discography that ranges from the genres of indie rock and metal, to experimental and atmospheric pop.

The interview (or the Liv-terview as I like to call it) was recorded on 6th February 2025. You’re currently reading a written version of it, but if you’d prefer to listen to our conversation, the full audio version of our chat is available on the Queasy Cardigan YouTube channel.

In our interview, I spoke with Liv about her progression as an artist, her debut album, as well as all the other amazing projects that she has going on.

Lady Liv’s Artistic Journey

I first began our interview by asking Liv why she chose ‘Lady Liv’ as her stage name to which she explained “ That's an easy one. When I turned 18, I had a friend post on her story just to wish me a happy birthday, and then on that post she called me Lady Liv. I thought it had a bit of a ring to it. And then when I came around to releasing my first single, ‘Eleven Days’, I realised I needed an artist name, and that one just came to mind.”

Just in case you were worried, they are still friends now (the friend in question is currently working as a paramedic in London - how sweet!)

I also asked Liv a few questions about her general songwriting process. She explained that her songwriting used to be a lot more experimental and free, but now, whilst she has maintained a dynamic workflow, her creative process has become more focused and methodical. She gave the example of how she might aim to “sit down for a four-hour guitar session without having anything written [and say] I've got to have the structure laid down for a song by the end of this.” Liv notes that there’s an art to balancing where you place limits and freedoms when it comes to making music. She concluded her thoughts on this subject by warning that “when you sit down with the intention of writing a song you often hinder yourself”.

During our conversation, I also asked about which artists inspire her, to which Lady Liv remarked her music is influenced by “ a lot by artists who kind of change their sound quite regularly (...) Anyone who knows me in real life will not be surprised by me saying ‘King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’ [are] a huge inspiration. Then there are other bands like, ‘Bring Me the Horizon’ or more recently ‘Sleep Token’.” Lady Liv then noted her debut album Emotional Support Forest was inspired by Alice Phoebe Lou’s Paper Castles. She stated that it was “hugely influential even if I didn’t really think that at the time.”

Into the Emotional Support Forest we go!

We then took a deeper dive into Liv’s creative process and development of her aforementioned debut album. Liv shared that she chose ‘Emotional Support Forest’ as the title track as it’s the “most centrally themed” song on the album. She achieved this by cherry-picking parts from other songs in the album, such as the guitar element of ‘Rose Gold’, the same organ sounds from 'Pipe Dreams’, and even the space-like synth from ‘Cosmic’. How ingenious is that?!

We then discussed the length of this eponymous track, which stands at a whopping 11 minutes and 16 seconds. Obviously, this is a lot longer than your typical song duration (the average for the 2020s being three minutes and fifteen seconds). Liv confessed that she has a “ tendency to write longer songs", as she doesn’t tend to account for song length when writing, and simply writes until she feels she’s encapsulated the message behind the song.

Also, she's a “prog fan”. For those that don’t know, a “prog fan” is a shorthand way of expressing your love for the genre ‘Progressive Rock’, characterised by its extended song structures and avant-garde style (learn more here).

Moreover, Liv confirmed that the ‘Emotional Support Forest’ is indeed real. Specifically, it is the Bourne Woods in Surrey, which she exclaimed is the forest in which  ‘Gladiator’, ‘Wonder Woman’, and the music video for ‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay were filmed. She recalls frequenting there a lot during lockdown, when it was harder to connect to people; so these woods helped Lady Liv connect with nature instead. She even stated how she would often “ go out in there and intentionally get lost so that I would have to find new ways home every time.”

Regarding the reception of the album, I wondered whether she was surprised by its positive acclaim. Specifically, I asked whether she is shocked that ‘Astronaut’ is one of her most popular tracks on Spotify. She responded, “ It's funny because I almost didn't even put it on the album. I was kind of convinced like, oh, this one doesn't fit. And that’s not representative of the effort that went into it, 'cause it was one of the (tracks) I worked quite hard on (...) it's kind of ridiculous I didn't make it a single.”

Lady LIVes Her Life in ‘Pink Lucid Fuzzy Dreams’

‘Pink Lucid Fuzzy Dreams’, one of her latest singles, has metallic remnants that deviate from Lady Liv’s other works so far, which makes an amazing addition to her already diverse discography. Liv explained the history of the song by stating that she “originally wrote the basic riff for a band [she] was in at college.” However, no one in the band could play it so Liv spent quite some time “practising odd time signatures”. If you didn’t know, time signatures are, put simply, notations that are used to describe the rhythmic structure of a given piece - there’s more to it than that though (learn more here). She further noted the song’s complexity by stating that “it's quite experimental in that it's also micro tonal.” Microtones, in music, refer to the notes in between the notes, so to speak. ClassicFM explains that they cannot be found on a standard Western piano or keyboard, and are more like any of the possibilities you might hear in between any two consecutive piano notes, or notes in standard scales.

The messaging of the song is also so uniquely Liv, as the song title stemmed from her wanting a phrase “that summed up [her] ideas about gender expression.” The song sheds light onto her experience as a trans woman, with the key lyrics being “I don't like the code in my genes, I live my life in pink lucid fuzzy dreams”. To add further to why this song is so revolutionary, Liv explained to me the technicalities behind the screaming section of the track, stating that “the screams were kind of derivative of a song called ‘One of My Eyes is a Clock’ by Jamie Lenman, where, at the beginning, there's a very oddly long scream where you can kind of tell what's happened [is] the scream crossfades into itself. I thought, I'm gonna do that, but I'm gonna do three of them.” I then asked Lady Liv if she does, in fact, live her life in ‘Pink Lucid Fuzzy Dreams’ to which she exclaimed “HELL YEAH!”.

Who is ‘Fleur’?!

Lady Liv’s repertoire also includes another one of her latest singles titled ‘Fleur’. “Who is Fleur?”, you may ask. She’s only Lady Liv’s dog! Subject matter aside, it’s Liv’s approach to the second verse of ‘Fleur’ that particularly stood out to me, as she uses a more grumbly and gravelly sounding voice, which contrasts with the rest of the song. Her reasoning for it stemmed from when she saw King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, who she mentioned earlier are a huge inspiration for her music, live at Alexandra Palace. It was there where they performed one of their, at the time unreleased, songs called ‘Motor Spirit’. Lead singer, Stu Mackenzie, was throat singing over what Liv described as “some really eerie drums and guitar”. So, naturally, this caused Liv to research how to do similarly styled throat singing. In the end, she found a Mongolian throat singing tutorial on YouTube, which enabled her to employ such vocal techniques in ‘Fleur’.

So, what’s next for Lady Liv?

Liv’s upcoming projects includes a new album, which is currently under wraps, so I, unfortunately, can’t share too much about it yet. All I can say is that Liv has been taking a much more collaborative approach towards her music. Specifically, she has set a rule for her upcoming album that “ Each song (on the project) had to feature at least two other people. And so far that's the case, with all of them apart from one.” As well as the album, there are a couple of other projects she’s working on that I’ll briefly share with you now.

At the time of recording, Liv was gearing up to release a re-recording of her song ‘Pipe Dreams’, which features Niki Tsumagari as the lead vocalist. Liv had this to say about Niki and why she is re-recording the song:

“The version I released is a lot more intense and a lot louder than the version I had in my head. And that's okay, things turn out weirdly. (...) So I thought, well that's that, it's just gonna be not how I imagined it and that's fine. But then, last year I performed a Tiny Table concert with Music Society, [where for] a section of the performance I was joined [by] my good friend Nikki Tsumagari, [who’s] the backing vocalist on ‘Fleur’. And, we did a version of ‘Pipe Dreams’ and ‘Astronaut’, as a medley, where she was handling lead vocals because I wanted to just do something collaborative with it.”

Liv then continued to praise Nikki, sharing her excitement for the record:

“Her voice in there just sounded perfect. [She gave me] the perfect reason to do like a dream pop version where I kind of take inspiration from all what made me write it in the first place. (...) At the time I was really into early ‘Beach House’, like their albums Teen Dream or Devotion. So I kind of wanted to make something a bit more like that. And Nikki just had the perfect alto voice for it. And, really added quite a lot to it. And, um, yeah. I'm very excited.”

Outside of the projects mentioned, Liv also shared that she’s been producing a musical called ‘A Place It Can’t Reach Me’ (see more here) that’s written by  Sarah Nelson Jones. Liv said that “It's been really great to work with [Sarah] and it's coming together really nicely. We don't really have release dates in mind but keep an eye on [the] Instagram account.”

Just Where Can You Find Out More About Lady Liv?

Overall, it was a pleasure talking to Lady Liv, and I’m very excited to hear all of her new projects soon. If you want to find out more about her you can find her @ladylivmusic on Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr and Bluesky. Don’t forget you can also find out more about Liv by listening to our full conversation on the Queasy Cardigan YouTube channel.

Huge thank you to Lady Liv for being my first interviewee and a huge thank you to YOU for taking the time to read this Liv-terview! Also, GO LISTEN TO LADY LIV’S MUSIC! Lady Liv is available to stream on Spotify and Apple Music. You can also digitally purchase her music on her Bandcamp page.

BREAKING NEWS: At the time of writing (20/04/25), Lady Liv has begun teasing new music on her Instagram. Lady Liv has also informed me that 30th April is a key date we can expect something new from her - I’M SO EXCITED!