Swiss folk-pop artist Mary Middlefield has been announced to play at this year’s Glastonbury Festival on BBC’s Introducing stage.
BBC Music Introducing supports the most exciting unsigned, undiscovered and under the radar music across the UK. Launching at Glastonbury in 2007, there are now over 200,000 artists that have uploaded to the platform. Introducing has helped start the careers of Slaves, Florence and The Machine, Catfish and The Bottlemen, Pale Waves, Idles, Little Simz, Sam Fender and Lewis Capaldi to name a few.
BBC Music Introducing has 38 radio shows across the UK finding the hottest acts on their scene and sending them through to BBC national radio. New artists can also get the chance to perform on Introducing stages at the biggest UK festivals, as well as internationally.
The announcement comes shortly after the release of Mary’s debut EP ‘Poetry (For The Scorned and Lonely)’. The release comes alongside her brand new single and live video ‘Poetry’.
The eight track project includes her latest singles ‘Sexless’, ‘Atlantis’, ‘Heart’s Desire’ and ‘Young and Dumb’ as well as four new songs ‘Last Letter (Acoustic)’, ‘Allodynia’, ‘Love Me Love Me Not’ and ‘Poetry’.
On the EP, Mary says “The EP is a collection of songs I wrote when we were on the verge of finishing and putting out my first album. I was itching to dive into something new. I wanted these songs to be edgier, more honest, and raw—especially when it came to addressing tough topics like abuse and grooming, which I hadn’t really explored in my previous record. I was going through a lot of loneliness and sadness then, but it was a different kind than what I was used to. I hope these tracks resonate with anyone else out there battling with those dark feelings of loneliness and sorrow.”
‘Poetry (For The Scorned and Lonely) is a purging of emotion, one that’s allowing Mary Middlefield to move forward with a clear mind and a clean palette. But for now, this is music for the people who are stuck, scorned and lonely. Mary invites you to suffer and yearn and scream alongside her. A lush eight tracks, the EP features previous singles ‘Sexless’, ‘Atlantis’, ‘Heart’s Desire’ and ‘Young and Dumb’, alongside the beautifully delicate ‘Last Letter (Acoustic)’, the interlude of ‘Allodynia’, achingly enchanting ‘Love Me Love Me Not’ and dreamy title track ‘Poetry’.
In Lausanne, Switzerland, wildflower-trails blaze with ultraviolet colour, mountains of myth surround a lake of sapphire. It’s a beauty so intense that it pacifies itself, turns still, and silent. Musician Mary Middlefield – who, for all her life, has called Lausanne home—splits the landscape apart, turning it into a wild scream. Her music is like a howl in the beautiful wilderness.
A former student of classical violin, 22 year-old Mary Middlefield now wields high drama, desire, and vulnerability as keys to making meaning in a complicated universe, where love and abuse coincide. Her roomy, stream-of-consciousness songs veer between a keening pop-punk fueled intensity and a lovely folk-inspired softness, inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, as well as more recent artists like Claud, Jockstrap and The Japanese House.
Her story as a singer-songwriter began three years ago with a broken heart and a bruised ego. “He dumped me in the middle of the day while I was carrying his groceries,” she says. With nothing to lose, she figured it was the perfect time to experiment. She picked up the guitar, and taught herself chords and riffs from Radiohead’s songbook. “I hope I’ll get their discography down to a T one day,” she says. From there, piece by piece and note by note, she began stitching herself back together, turning her pain into something generative, fortifying. Through song, she began to reclaim everything she’d lost in that relationship and its subsequent dissolution.
Poetry (for the scorned and lonely) – TRACKLIST:
Sexless
Atlantis
Allodynia
Heart’s Desire
Love me, Love me not?
Young and Dumb
Last Letter (Acoustic Version)
Poetry
