Rhiannon Paige is a singer songwriter from Bristol hitting the UK country pop/rock scene with her strong vocals and fun lyrics. At Live in the Living Room Gives Back, Paige sat down to chat about her first writer’s round, her upcoming single and how she processes her vulnerability in her song writing.
Paige was part of the second writer’s round of the day at The Bedford pub in Balham, London. She shared an all-female stage with Jo Girdlestone and Cat Rose Smith, hosted by Owen Morgan who runs Live Country LDN, where the singer songwriters shared the personal storied behind their songs in aid of Dementia UK.
Rhiannon Paige is a fulltime musician, performing at gigs, festivals and events but this was her first writer’s round. “It was nice to be in an environment where everyone is sat down, truly listening,” she says as we chat after her set, “you feel like you can do songs you wouldn’t always do at shows – they’re slower, more storytelling”.
Her first EP, ‘PLAYING GAMES’, was released in 2023, with her most successful track, ‘So Damn Cruel’, forming part of the ensemble. “I know it’s only four songs,” she says about the EP, “it’s nice to have a body of work.” Paige had a sold-out launch party for the release and the response to the EP has been great. “EPs do naturally have some songs that fall behind which is sad but ‘So Damn Cruel’ and ‘All With You’ are still going strong”. Her favourite song to play is ‘All With You’ because it’s ‘more fun to bop along’ to, whereas her fondest writing memory comes from So Damn Cruel, “not that it was fun because it was a sad time but overall seeing that progress is my favourite”.
Not long off the back of that EP, Paige released her first cover track, ‘Holding Out For A Hero’ originally by Bonnie Tyler (not Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother in Shrek – although…absolute banger). Paige started to add this song to her gig sets and loved the feeling of empowerment she got from singing it. She’s slowed it down and her powerful voice carries the timeless classic well.
Paige is also releasing a new single on 19th April, ‘Easy Ain’t Right’, which she says is ‘the most vulnerable song’. She wrote it about a time in her life that was a struggle and I was intrigued to know how she felt about putting something personal like that out in the world. “Writing songs is really personal but it’s also an achievement,” she says as we dig deeper into the process behind her song writing, “nobody truly knows the full meaning behind it…they can relate to it within their own thing but they haven’t lived that moment”. Song writing isn’t a task that Paige has ever found easy, sometimes taking months to write a song or having big gaps between writing. “When I get one, you know, when you can truly feel the words… I think it kind of makes it all OK.” Paige is aware of her powerful vocals, calling herself a ‘belter’ but she says that this track isn’t like that, “it’s very much down in my range and it’s just truthful”. She envisages it cinematically, played against the backdrop of something like Netflix’s Heartstopper.
Influenced by her Dad’s strong rock affinity, Paige found herself listening to southern rock bands like Blackberry Smoke, moving on to artists like First Aid Kit and Ward Thomas as she got older. With the country community growing in the UK, Paige has had to think about how to bracket herself. “I’m not country country, but country pop…with my accent.” She talks of how it’s hard not to lean into the American accent when the genre lends itself to that, “I’ve always battled with myself, but I’ve got a good grounding now so I’m like, ‘it’s OK to be different’”. Paige describes her sound as ‘if P!nk and Kacey Musgraves had a love child’, using the power behind P!nk’s vocals amalgamated with Musgraves’ quirky writing style. We got a glimpse of Paige’s unreleased song, ‘Lemonade’, which definitely demonstrates those attributes. I asked Paige who she was listening to at the minute and we both spent a small moment fan-girling over new country artist, Katie Rigby (you can read her interview here) and bonding over our love of her ‘Nashville skyline’.
This interview was conducted in collaboration with Live in the Living Room.
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