'I don't make things easy'

Some think she's the greatest singer-songwriter of her generation. So why haven't more people heard of Thea Gilmore? Stephanie Merritt talks to her about artistic credibility, her depression and the pressures on young women in music.

Thea Gilmore, singer. Photograph: David Sillitoe
 
Bruce Springsteen has her on his iPod, Joan Baez invited her on tour, and she has collaborated with members of the Zutons and the Waterboys as well as Martha Wainwright. She has been described as "the best singer/songwriter of the last 10 years", is not yet 29 and has just released her seventh album of self-penned songs (having written her first when she was 16). Yet there's a good chance you've never heard of Thea Gilmore.

"I constantly get people telling me I should be selling as much as Katie Melua," she says with a smile. "But there's a reason she sells that many and I don't - she makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone. I like to provoke a response, whether that's someone telling me they love what I do or throwing a bottle at me. The trouble is that the bottle-throwing faction won't buy the album. You've immediately limited your audience."

In an industry that so often treats women as product, it has taken character - and a degree of what Gilmore cheerfully describes as "arrogance" - to resist being moulded by A&R men. In her early 20s she was courted by all the major record labels, but turned them down; creative control has always been a greater priority for her than any financial incentive. "I hate the business I'm in," she says. "I was under a lot of pressure to make records that sounded the way other people wanted them to sound. That was intrinsically wrong to me." It is this artistic and intellectual integrity that has made her something of a role model for other musicians - that and her ear for a melody and her ability to adapt her voice to a variety of musical styles.

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