Ruby Vectra Interview (June 2024)

Did you play any instruments or anything when you were growing up?

I've almost always been in a choir. I've always loved singing. And then in primary school, I started the guitar, loved it, went to secondary school and didn't like the teacher. So quit.

And because I'd quit, I was like, oh, I still really like music and I like the singing. So let's try something else. So I try piano lessons for two years and was still like, I'm not really feeling this either. So then dropped any musical instruments. I've always been quite a sporty kid. So that became where all my time went. And then in lockdown, I was like, oh, Mum's guitar's in the loft. I'm going insane so let's try and teach myself the guitar. So yeah, since then, I've been playing the guitar pretty much every day.

I'm not good. Considering it's been like.. four years now, I still say I can only play guitar well enough to help me write songs. I never play on someone else's track or like do anything like that.

Was music something that you wanted to get into, or did it come about in an unusual way for you?

Um, I think because I've always enjoyed the singing part of it there was a tiny part in the back of my mind that got smaller and smaller as time passed like doing musical theatre and that. Really, that's not me. I don't think I'm particularly like theatrical, but a part of me knows I could be.

But how I got into like writing my own stuff is I would occasionally write down little notes of like if I read a book and I really liked a phrase, I have like a quotes catalog. Then I was like, oh, okay, let me try and write my own stuff based on this. But it was always like a couple of lines.

It was more like poetry. Then, someone in my family was actually like ‘I've started writing music’. They played me one of the songs and I was like, ‘oh my God, this is amazing’. They're like, ‘well, you could do it and you could probably do it better. So just try it’.

I was like, oh, okay, I didn't know that was something anyone can just try and do. In my head, I was like, I'm not a songwriter, so I'm not going to write songs. But I then tried it and was like, oh, I actually like this and I think this sounds good. So I showed it to some friends and they were like, this is actually quite good. It's a really weird way to start.

How did come to the decision to make this EP? Was it a conscious decision that you wanted to take this like traumatic event and turn it into art? Or was it more so where your music was at anyway that you were like, yeah, I'll just use this?

It was less I'm gonna make an EP, I'm gonna make a collection of songs and put them out and more I wrote maybe 20 songs over that break up, like fully, like I'm sure I wrote more unhinged notes. It got to a point where I loved them as a full song, maybe like 10 of them. I work with my producer over in Belfast and was sending him kind of all of these little snippets. And he was like, I do feel like some of these could belong together so like, sit down with them, play through them, see if any of them feel like they link or like, did you write any of them near the same time, blah blah blah. Because that's the other thing, even though the breakup is this initial like, awful pain that lasts however long it lasts, I wrote these probably across like, two and a half years post-breakup. Just because sometimes the feelings just crop up, you know?

So no, I didn't write it as, I didn't sit down and be like, I'm gonna write and release an EP. It was more, I found songs that were already there and kind of thematically or like, emotionally worked on and rewrote a couple lines here and there just to make it kind of flow.

What is your relationship with music like? Did you grow up listening to a lot of music?

I feel like a lot of the artists that I've made friends with have like always wrote music and have always been really musical people… that’s not particularly me. Like my dad is probably the most musical as in he listened to the most music when I was growing up. So, it was very much his musical taste that like fed through to me.

I'd say I only started like forming my own music tastes and actually choosing what I listened to at maybe like 17, yeah like once I had my own phone and Spotify account and all that stuff. I've never really had a CD collection or vinyls or anything. So I sometimes feel like I'm faking it because I have like.. a late connection to music.

I sometimes feel like I'm like, oh, I'm not doing it properly. But yeah, I'd say it's still a really good connection to music and I love listening to it but I've just started doing it way later.

Ruby Vectra is a singer-songwriter based in London. Ruby has recently released her debut EP ‘things she left behind’, you can read our review on it here.

A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to have a zoom call with Ruby and to chat all things music and what her future plans are after this EP.

We are so excited to see what the future holds for Ruby Vectra and the new tunes that will undoubtedly come our way!

What has the response to the EP been like?

Kind of crazy feedback. I feel so new to it, like I said, I kind of got into the music scene really recently, or at least taken it seriously recently. It's been amazingly good. It hasn't been huge. But there's been way more streams than I've ever had on any previous releases. That's amazing. I've had way more messages and like personal reach outs being like, this song is amazing, or like, I love these two. Yeah it’s been a lot more personal.

Do you think that that's kind of maybe as a result of kind of having more vulnerable lyrics?

Yeah, because I think that I do that if I'm on Spotify and I'll occasionally I'll find a nice playlist and I'll reach the end of it and it start generating songs for me. If I find something on that randomly generated list and I love it, I'll find their Instagram and I'll message them and be like, ‘hi, this is so random. Spotify gave me your song and I love it’. And so when people do it to me, I'm like, what just happened?

What has been your favourite track of the EP?

It’s hard like I think it is kind of like I want to give the answer that most people have liked, but that's not necessarily the one I love the most. I think if you're, if you're talking about, like putting it out there and having those feelings be out there, I think it would be…I don't know! I think it would be ‘empty spaces’.

I think empty spaces is just, like, that was really cathartic and, like, it's just nice to have that listened to by other people and then be like, Oh, my God, I know this feeling, but I couldn't work out what it was. In terms of writing, I know that's not the question you asked, but in terms of writing, like, ‘curtains’, it was crazy. I open the window, and it was actually fucking freezing. It was so cold.

I don't know why I did it, it was just an instinct. Like, normally, when my ex had been here, it would be really hot by whatever time, and we'd open the window. So, just by instinct I did it, and I was like, 'Why did I do that?' And then I just, boom, like, just wrote it, and it was crazy. I didn't do any rewrites for that. I think I finished it within that day and maybe the next day, and it was just done.

Did you ever find yourself listening back to what you had recorded and feel yourself having an emotional reaction?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. To be totally honest, like, if I don't give myself goosebumps, I rewrite, or I move on to a new idea or something. Like, if I want other people to get the emotion I'm trying to get out of me, I have to also feel it again when I hear it. So once I'd written ‘curtains’, I think it did make me cry, because I was like, Oh, my God, so many things just came out of me so quickly. Like, so many feelings. I'm quite, like, emotionally available, and, like, I let people know how I'm feeling. And so, that definitely goes into the songs. They make me emotional writing them as much as they maybe make people emotional hearing them.

Moving forward with your music career, have you got any idea of what direction you're going to take? Is there going to be an album?

I think, I think singles are probably next on the list, I've been doing quite a few co-writes, and I love those way more than I thought I might. So, yeah, I think there's a few singles and stuff like that in the works. But, yeah, I hadn't even thought about an album because like I said, I didn't think about an EP. It just kind of fell into place. So I think if there was an album, it would kind of come about in the same way.

So yeah. Singles for now.

Do you feel you have found your niche within songwriting or is that something you kind of want to stay away from in the terms of being typecast by your own themes within your music? Like, for example, some people are like, ‘oh, girls always sing about breakups or heartbreaks’ is that something want to avoid or is it something you're like, I'm just going to see where life takes me and what comes out of this?

Yeah. More the latter. I'm of the mindset, if it happens, it happens. I'll write about what I want to or need to write about and it is what it is.

I'll always write what I need to write. But like, you make a good point. I don't know whether I'd only release kind of the heartbreak style of things. I think I'd be happy to kind of keep everyone up to date with whatever emotions it was, like whether it was heartbreak or like something happier. I wouldn't actively try and keep myself in a box.

You should release whatever you're wanting to release. And the people who are going to find it and are supposed to find it will.

What kind of direction do you want your career to go long term? Is music something that you do full time? Is it something that you would want to pursue full time?

I would love to be a songwriter. I think it's like the big thing, like I love performing and I love singing, but I write way more. I don't know, I just, I love writing and especially since I've started trying the co-writes and actually really enjoying them, I can see myself doing that full time.

I'm not currently a full-time musician. I do occasional gigs and I write my own songs. But if I could venture into the kind of writing for other people and doing loads of co-writes and getting paid for that stuff, that would be, that would be the goal.

Do you find that you get inspired when you listen to other music? Do you ever feel like you want to write like that or in that kind of way?

Um, less so in trying to write like them, but I'll hear a line or I'll hear or sometimes it's like the beat of a song and then it's like different tempo or I'll like a particular like chord progression or whatever, but it's more lyrically. I'll hear a phrase and that one phrase made me feel this thing. Yeah, I'm not necessarily going to write that phrase into a song, but I want to write that feeling into a song.