Young Heart

After the release of her third album Beautiful Lies in 2016, Birdy was craving some time out. “It’s been one thing after another—making records and then touring—since I was 14,” the British singer-songwriter, real name Jasmine van den Bogaerde, tells Apple Music. “I needed space.” The five years between that third record and her fourth, Young Heart, was “kind of like a gap year”, as Birdy puts it. Then there was the fact that a breakup had left her with a serious case of writer’s block. “It took such a long time to get to a place where I felt comfortable writing about those things, because a lot of them were too painful,” she says. Rediscovering the conversational songwriting of Joni Mitchell shifted something in her, and she eventually began work on her next musical move. Written and recorded in LA and Nashville just ahead of the UK’s first 2020 lockdown (and perfected during it, at the singer’s family home in the New Forest, South East England), Young Heart is a bare exploration of heartbreak from an artist still working out who she is; the theatrical sounds of Beautiful Lies are replaced with something altogether more delicate, as the singer embraces folk with a ’70s Laurel Canyon feel. And for all that writer’s block, it turns out there was quite a lot to say: This album’s 16 tracks document the ups and downs of calling time on a relationship, as Birdy contemplates and often celebrates her innate need to be alone. “The whole record has been quite difficult to start and finish,” admits the singer. “But I'm way more attached to this music than I've ever been. I feel really protective of it and passionate about it.” Read on as Birdy guides us through her raw fourth album, one track at a time. “The Witching Hour – Intro” “I originally wanted to call this album ‘The Witching Hour’. For me, that hour is at 4 am, when I do a lot of writing. A lot of my music is inspired by classical music, because that's what I was brought up with. I wanted to show that side of me.”