Just down the road from her childhood home in Donaghmede, Dublin, we meet grammy-nominated singer-songwriter RuthAnne Cunningham at the Croke Park Hotel, with her husband Ollie and their two adorable girls, Lili-Mae (3) and Monroe (1). “We’re based in London now, but love coming back here any chance we can get,” she says with a smile. “I obviously adore it, but the kids, well they just can’t get enough of it! My parents are just around the corner so that’s great and the girls get so excited whenever they can spend time here, with them.”
It’s all go for the songbird right now, as not only does she have her new album The Moment coming out this month, but also a book, It’s Not Just A Song, too, about surviving the music industry – which she knows about all too well. Over the last two decades, she’s not only penned chart-topping hits for herself including The Vow or Safe Place which featured on US drama Grey’s Anatomy, but she’s worked and written tracks for some of the biggest names in the business globally; Niall Horan, Britney Spears, JoJo, John Legend and Martin Garrix to name just a few – so even if you’ve somehow missed one of her songs, you’ve definitely heard her work.
“I love what I do, it brings me such joy. My favourite part of it all is sitting in a taxi or walking through a supermarket and I can hear one of my songs playing that I wrote for someone else. Nobody knows it’s one of mine, or that I worked on the track – I get a kick from it!”
Here, RuthAnne discusses her decision to swap LA for London and why life Stateside isn’t for her, working with the biggest names in Hollywood, finding her feet in the industry and how she uses songwriting as an outlet for some of the toughest times of her life…
RuthAnne, welcome home! How does it feel to be back?
I love coming home! I wrote and recorded a lot of my new album here. It’s where I feel the most stable and grounded, it’s where most of my friends are too. There’s no feeling like being home, I just love it. My husband and I always talk about moving back, or the ultimate dream would be to have a house in London and one in Ireland. We’re over so much though, and whenever we do come here, we stay with my parents. Plus it’s only an hour on the plane, whereas when I was in LA, I felt way further. I love the comfort of knowing I can hop on a flight and be home quickly whenever anyone needs me or whenever I need home comforts. I don’t feel too far removed.
Do the kids enjoy it, coming to see where mammy grew up?
They love it! Lili-Mae is almost four now and she loves going to nana and grandad’s house. She loves seeing her cousins, too. There’s this connection to Ireland they’re always going to have. Every time we get on a plane, she’s so excited to come here. She embraces her Irish heritage, I’d love her to learn some Irish dancing or learn to play the fiddle, just something to carry some Irish culture with her, well, with both of them.
You’re based in London full time now, do you enjoy having the best of both worlds, being in the music hub there but close enough to home?
Absolutely! You can write songs from anywhere, but London is a great hub for me. LA felt way too far away and the culture wasn’t for me. The UK felt a lot more culturally where I fit in, in terms of the people, the humour, going to the pub and having a roast. Everything in the States was so Hollywood and that was so foreign to me. Although I tried for years to make it home, it never felt like that
and I didn’t fit in. The UK was the compromise work-wise. I knew I could be based there and still be near the Irish music scene and so it felt like the best decision at the time for my husband and I. And the truth is, a lot of Irish artists have to move abroad to make a living.
Speaking of the industry, you’ve a new book coming out, a guide for surviving the space. As someone who’s been in it as long as you have – 20 years now – what are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
I wrote It’s Not Just A Song, because it’s a book I wish I had starting out. If I had this, I’d be on a yacht somewhere, fanning myself! I went through the last 20 years, made some mistakes, got money and went broke again. I had to learn but the book is about navigating and telling people everything I figured out. I interviewed the biggest and best producers in the world right now who share their wisdom, these are people who are living it day in, day out. The main takeaways were being prepared for those lucky opportunities but knowing it doesn’t equal immediate success. Most people are successful because they didn’t give up. In the face of so much failure and rejection, they just kept going. Everyone’s journey is different, and you have to play the game.
You started chasing this dream as a child with a tape recorder and a mic at home, it must be surreal when you look back at that and see how far you’ve come?
It was always what I wanted to do, whether I got paid for it or not because I love it, but if you told the 17-year-old me who landed in Hollywood from a middle class background, that I was going to be part of a song which 20 years later would still be known in the world, that I’d write for people like Britney Spears, John Legend, be a grammy-nominated artist, I’d have said no way! It’s crazy to think back on it all.
The journey probably wasn’t linear, can you describe the road you took to get here and how you landed where you are now?
The music industry is the most toxic, worst boyfriend you’ve ever had. It’s that one boy you keep going back to even though they keep breaking your heart. It’s a thousand almosts, it’s hurry up, then wait, it’s the expectations and some songs you thought would be massive hits totally flop and vice versa, it’s surprises, constant instability and you have to be ready to go at any time. It’s rejection central so you have to get used to hearing the word no. You have to put your armour on and go into battle ever day. But it’s also the most amazing highs you’ll ever experience and you have the greatest connections with people all around. The love of music is the best thing ever.
Rejection is such a big part of the industry and those blows must be tough at times! How do you pick yourself up and move on?
You remember that art is subjective. For all the millions of people who love the pop song you wrote, there’s another few million who hate it. There’s millions of people who walk down the aisle to your song and another million who haven’t even heard of it. You have to understand that you could be the best songwriter to one person and the worst to another. My number one way to deal with it, is going
back to a safe place and that’s where you make music. That’s untouchable. Nobody is in that space, it’s the most pure part of the music business, you’re making something for the joy and love of it. That’s the only place where it all makes sense for me.
You spoke earlier about when you were 17 you wrote Too Little Too Late for American popstar JoJo. You’ve written for Britney, John Legend… how does that all even come about?
It’s a long road, you’ve thousands of hours behind you, have worked on your craft, done meetings, networking, then have to go in a room and deliver the song the best way you can. There’s a million different pieces of the puzzle. With Britney, the person I wrote that with went to work with Will.I.Am and put it in a song he done, so sometimes it happens in a crazy way. To work with John Legend, it’s a privilege. With Niall Horan, I’d written with One Direction and he brought me in for his first two albums, so it’s all done over time.
You and Niall seem to have formed a lovely working relationship now…
Yeah, it’s not like we’re best friends or anything but we’ve always had such a laugh in the studio together. We’ve written great songs together and he’s such a great guy. Celebrities like that, their lives are so busy and they’re working at a pace of a million miles per hour. He’s such an amazing artist, working with people like that throughout my career is special.
When it comes to writing songs, how do you decide if you’re doing a track for yourself or using it for someone else?
It was very clear to me that I had a lot of life lived and a lot of stories to tell, which I couldn’t tell through other artists. Becoming a mother, finding my husband, I started having stories I felt like only I could tell. When I’d write with other artists, it’s usually with a team but when I write for myself, I’m self contained. I write those songs incredibly quickly because I’ve been storing them up. When I’m making an album, it’s very intentional, I know exactly what songs I want to write. For other artists, sometimes they want the big radio pop song but for me, it’s about vibes influenced by Carol King, Stevie Nicks, Aretha mixed with Fleetwood Mac, so it’s very easy to separate them.
When it comes to your music, you take all your personal experiences and pour them into what you create. Do you find it cathartic?
Oh yeah, I do! It’s my number one way of processing things. If something bad is going on, I take to the bed for a day, I wallow, cry, do the moany thing and then get up the next day and figure out what I’m going to do about it. Normally, I take the steps to realise it’s out of my control and write about it, maybe it’s just a verse, a chorus or one line, then I can accept and let go then. It frees my mind from a spiral.
One of the times you took to the bed and wrote was during an endometriosis flareup, when you suffered from 24hr chronic pain…
Oh, I’ve spent a lot of time in bed with that pain. It’s like labour contractions. In those moments, I have to take pause, slow down, but I wrote the chorus to the song The Way I’m Wired, through tears, in pain. I was so sick of being sick. Endometriosis and living with chronic illness is a journey. There are days where you can handle it, and days where you’d do anything to get rid of the pain. You feel like a burden, and that’s something I’m still navigating. There’s no cure for it so it’s something I have to live with. I’ve gotten better at being aware of my limitations. I had the mind of a 19-year-old but the body of a 90-year-old. My brain can run a million miles but my body can’t. I have to accept and be aware of what I can physically do. It’s a balancing act that I’m still working on.
According to the World Health Organization, almost 1-10 suffer from it. Some people don’t get diagnosed until it’s too late and the damage sadly can’t be repaired. What do you think can be done moving forward?
Yeah, I had surgery in 2019. The endo was so bad, my surgeon was four hours getting it out and said if I left it much longer I’d have lost my bowel. If I was on a public list, I’d have actually lost my bowel, so I had to go private. I had to fly to the UK to get it done, it was before I moved to London. I’m really trying to advocate for endo warriors, especially in Ireland because we need a huge amount to happen. It’s an epidemic in Ireland, I think it’s more than one in ten, the figures are now closer to one in five here. We need to do better for women in Ireland. There are too many very young people sitting their Leaving Cert trying to deal with that pain, women trying to raise children but they’re not able to get out of the bed, and I have my own children so I’ve had to deal with that as well, it’s devastating. Then there’s the fertility issues, so the earlier you can get diagnosed the better but we’ve one of the worst waiting times in the world.
Suffering this trauma to your body must be very draining, physically and mentally. How do you mind yourself?
Self care is something I’m not great at! Being a parent of a one-year-old and a nearly four-year-old, I wouldn’t say I have the time to do much for myself, but for me, the thing that makes me feel good, is a bath! When you’re running around after two kids, you’re a full-time working mom, getting a bath with nobody looking for you for an hour, it’s bliss! Or when the kids are in bed, getting to lie on the couch and watch stupid, senseless tv. My husband and I love a lie in, so sometimes he’ll say, ‘I’ll get up with the kids’ and I stay in bed for an extra hour or two, then I’ll do the same another day for him. It’s all very simple, but it’s my church!
You’ve so much going on now between the music, book launch, signings, will there be much time for lie-ins or is it go, go, go?
[Laughs] Oh the entire year has been go, go, go but I love what I do and I want my girls to grow up watching their mom doing what she’s passionate about. I do it all for them. I love it! I want to make sure I’m present, still with my girls, so I want to be busy but still have time for them. I took them to the cinema the other day, so making sure I’ve time for them and that they don’t feel like I’m gone, is the most important thing. With the music industry, the most amazing part is that at Christmas everything shuts down and we’ll have the chance to have a nice holiday then. So right now, it’s go, go, go and then I’ll really be able to enjoy that break. I’m really excited about it – especially as we’ll be home in Ireland for it!
