“The water’s warm! I may as well be on my holidays here,” Lyra laughs as she paddles at the edge of Sandymount beach.
“Tropical, even,” the Cork gal chuckles again, dancing, kicking and splashing in the shallows. “I was planning on heading abroad for a few days next month, but sure I don’t need to do that now! Remind me to get a postcard,” she bellows.
She has an infectious laugh, Lyra, and she’s one of those people who you instantly enjoy being around. She’s weird and wonderful and unapologetically herself – something she’s grown to love, after years of being torn down by bullies. Firstly in school when she was afraid to walk down the street in Cork for fear of someone attacking her, and then again later in life when she was told to look a certain way, to speak a certain way, to act a certain way. Now, Lyra does everything how she wants, blocking out the naysayers.
“Why should I feel bad for being me? Realistically, I’m always going to be this little weirdo, there’s nothing I can do if people don’t like that. I might as well enjoy myself!” And that’s where the inspiration behind her song Queen came from: “I remember the day I was writing it, I just felt so great about myself, it was like I put this armour on. It was as if I was saying f*** it, if you don’t want me, that’s fine, because I’m finally happy with myself.” As she should be.
Just before heading over to the UK where she’ll be based for the next few weeks working on album number two, we caught up with Lyra to chat about self-confidence, getting her sparkle back, and how her sister is the biggest inspiration in her life….
Lyra, that was a fun day! Thanks for spending it with us.
Ah it was great craic! I had really, really good fun.
No better way to let the hair down before heading into studio than spending a day at the beach!
I know! I’m really excited! I have so much that I want to write about. I have the memory of a fish so need to get it down asap. It’s very exciting, and obviously I’ve performed loads of shows this year, so it’s nice to go into quiet mode where I’m not bet into a leotard and sucky-in knickers with my thigh-high boots, I’m just fully relaxed and being creative again. I really enjoy that.
You joked with us earlier that the hair extensions will be taken out, lashes and acrylic nails removed. You’ll be stripped back, in hibernation mode!
I enjoy it, but after a few days the feet start itching and I’m ready to sparkle myself up again! I think one of my favourite parts of the music industry is the live performance element because being on stage, it’s real, it’s natural, and whatever happens, happens. It’s very in the moment. I sometimes struggle when I’m in the studio because you don’t have that. For the next couple of months I’d say my neighbours will hate me, because it could be 12am and I’d be lying in the bed watching some murder mystery but then I’ll just be like ‘Actually, I want to rewrite that bit of the song from earlier’, and I’ll just start singing it into my phone. They’ll be like, ‘Great, there she goes again’. They should enjoy it, they don’t have to pay for tickets, they’re getting a live performance! [laughs]
You’ll be based in the UK for recording, right? You’ve a place in Brighton.
Yeah, Brighton, right down by the sea. It’s just easier for going up to the studio in the morning and coming back in the evening and getting to stay in a bed that I can call mine. Everyone thinks that getting to stay in hotels the whole time is great, but I never stay in hotels. I bring my own pillow with me everywhere, and I need to have my own comfort and surroundings. Basically all the songs on my album start as ideas that I write down at home, so it’s kind of important for me to be in a place that feels like my own. I also have to be near the sea, I just love it.
Does being by the sea help you switch off? Or are you always on, thinking about music?
A couple of weeks ago I had some time off so I was going to watch the Celine Dion documentary, but during it I just couldn’t stop thinking about music, obviously because it was a music documentary. I had to pull myself up and say, don’t turn it into something, just eat your bowl of ice cream and enjoy it! So I do have to set a few rules for myself. If I’m going out for a walk, I leave my phone behind because if I have it, there’s not a hope in hell that I’m switching off.
How long will you spend over there now? Is it going to be a big chunk of time?
I’m hoping that I’m over there for the whole of August and September because I want to be in the studio full time. But I’m always dipping in and out of it, like I’m here now for the week and then I’m flying back to England for a few days to do some recording, then I’m back here for about a week to perform. It’s a constant back and forth.
Is it nice to have that balance, where you can go over there to work, then come home and see your family and friends?
Yeah, it is great. My friends are probably reading this thinking ‘See her friends? She barely sees us!’ [laughs] There always seems to be something on, whether I’m going somewhere or doing something, which is unfortunate, but yeah, it is nice to be able to go back and forth. I mean, living out of a bag is not that fun and glam, and Ryanair is not my friend. They hate me. I’m literally there with fifteen coats on, walking through the airport, and they’re like ‘Yeah…we know you, surprised you don’t have the thigh-high boots on as well’ and I’m just trying to shove everything into my bag. My mum’s attic, God bless her, it’s full of my outfits. Jesus wept!
Are you a home bird, so?
Oh my God, yeah. I’m obsessed with being back. I love being home. I obviously love my mum’s dinners as everyone knows by now. Her roast chicken, which I am having tonight, is just like one of my five-a-day. I bloody love it. My sister has three kids and I am obsessed with them too, so being able to come back and spend some time with them is great. They got to come to Kaleidoscope with me, and they came up on stage too. Sharing this journey with them is great, and every time they see me on TV they say “You were in a movie! We saw you in a movie!’ Indiana wrote about me in her school and I went in to visit them all. I love being able to do things like that. It means a lot to me, because my family are everything, they really are. It would be a very lonely world without them, I’m not going to lie.
Talk to us about growing up yourself, what was your childhood like? Were you and your sister super close?
Oh yeah! We are, we were, and we always will be. I think in our lifetime we’ve had two arguments. We’re just best friends, I love her to death. She’s actually the one who got me into music. She’s a fantastic singer, and obviously everything my older sister did, I wanted to do, too. I was always her shadow. I had a great childhood growing up. We spent a lot of time with my nan and she’s why I wrote Emerald. She lived up on these castle grounds almost in the middle of the woods, she had a little bungalow and we’d go out making mud pies or picking gooseberries off the bushes before making tarts out of them. It was just a very innocent kind of country living, which I loved. Then obviously I grew up a little and went to school and had to go through stuff like being bullied, and that side of it doesn’t bring back great memories of my childhood. There would be days when I’d be nervous to walk down the town in case someone would pull the head of hair off me. So I also had that but I really remember my childhood being very wholesome, with my family, in my nan’s especially, with sing-songs galore. Sure any time there was a family gathering we’d be stood up near the fireplace singing away, or playing tin whistles and bodhráns.
Being bullied must have broke your confidence for a while. How did you get that back?
It did, yeah. To be honest with you, it was actually very simple, looking back now. My mum just said to me ‘You just have to be the best version of yourself, and you never have to apologise for that.’ That’s exactly what I did. My dad used to say the same thing to me, ‘Never apologise for being you.’ I think that’s what made me think, why should I feel bad for being me? Why do I feel this guilt about being who I want to be? Why do I think it’s my fault that I’m being bullied because I’m different? I decided it’s not my fault, it’s the bully’s fault, they’re the ones bullying me. They were probably going to bully me anyway, so I might as well enjoy myself, instead of pretending to be the person they want me to be so I could fit in and seem cooler and they’d leave me alone for a week. Realistically I’m always going to be this little weirdo, there’s nothing I can do if people don’t like that.
Was it triggering then as an adult when people were trying to change your image, telling you to be a different version of yourself?
Yeah, it still does trigger me to this day. It’s something I feel will always be with me. When someone says something negative about me even if it’s online, it triggers me and brings me back to those times in my childhood. I feel like it’s something I’m always going to live with it but I know how to deal with it now. I know how to react within myself and I know how to not let it affect me as much. When you’re bullied like that growing up, and then when you’re asked so often to change, it always sticks in your mind that you’re not good enough. Some days I’ll see someone commenting about me on social media and it just brings me straight back there. I don’t know if it will ever really go away.
Is that where you got the inspiration for Queen from? The track is all about empowering and loving yourself.
Yeah! I was fed up with it all, I really was. I was just sick to death of people wanting me to sound like this and look like that and talk in a certain way, be like this or be like that. I was so drained of having that feeling of never being enough and always feeling like I had to be someone else to be accepted. I was so bloody sick of it, I just thought f*** this, and that’s where Queen came from. I remember the day I was writing it, I just felt so great about myself. It was like I put this armour on. It was like, well, if you don’t want me, that’s fine because I’m finally happy with myself. Whenever I sing Queen my confidence goes right up, I feel so proud of myself when I perform it. I love that song.
In your music, you sing bout everything from sex to heartbreak. It’s like releasing your diary out into the world. It’s very autobiographical, but is it hard putting so much of yourself out there?
There’s some songs I put out and I’m like ‘Oh God…’ [grimaces] but I don’t think I’d have it any other way, because I really wear my heart on my sleeve and it’s very important for me as an artist to have an open and honest relationship with the people who listen to my music. I kind of feel like this is me giving back and saying ‘Come into my world. Come into my life. Let’s share this together’.
When it comes to the heartbreak tracks, you’re like Cork’s very own Taylor Swift! She gets a hard time for writing about relationships but it’s great inspiration!
[Laughs] I think with the amount of relationships we have in our lives, it would be hard not to write about them! Not even just relationships with men, I’ve written a song about my mum, a song about my nan. There are songs in there about my best friends and us going on a night out. They’re all relationships, at the end of the day. It’s just unfortunate that the people who break your heart maybe get a few more songs.
Well sometimes they deserve to be called out.
They do, they bloody do!
How’s the dating life right now, Lyra? Are you seeing anyone at the moment?
I am actually. Juicy! [laughs] It’s going great, it’s going good. He loves my weirdness. Obviously, it must be hard for anybody to be with someone who travels a lot, even if it’s just between the UK and Ireland. I mean, it’s not like I’m jet setting to LA every second week, I’m not Taylor Swift yet. But he’s accepted it really well, and I think the one thing I really needed in my relationship was somebody who was confident enough in themselves and to be ok with me not being around as much. It’s just important. So yeah, everything’s going great, so far so good. I’ll let you know in album two. If that album is about heartbreak and exes, you’ll know it didn’t go so well, let’s put it that way!
Do you feel any pressure regarding album number two? Obviously the first one surpassed Beyoncé and went to the number one here, do you think that helps or hinders you going into the second?
You know what, it definitely helps. Bringing out Lyra, the first album, it kind of cemented for me that feeling of, I’m doing well. You know, my heart is in the right place and I’m reaching goals that I set for myself when I was a young girl. It gave me a lot more confidence as an artist and a songwriter, that maybe I was lacking before. I feel accepted for the first time and I feel like I owe it to the Irish public for giving me that extra bit of sparkle back. Going into album two, I’ll test the boundaries even more.
Are you good at celebrating the wins, and giving yourself a pat on the back?
I’m actually not great at that, I’m not gonna lie. I don’t know if we are as a nation. With the album, it definitely took a few days for it to settle in. I was still waking up at night with the anxiety of wondering how the album was doing, even though it had already happened and went to number one. When it did sink in, I sat down, had a glass of champagne with my family, and started roaring crying. It was the best feeling of my life. I thought ‘We’ve done it. As a collective, as a family, we’ve done it.’ I look at that number one and think what the hell? It’s very surreal. But I do need to get a bit better at that, and I suppose I’m the type of person who’s always ready to just jump into the next thing.
So tell us, how long do you think it’ll be before we hear that next thing?
I don’t want it to take that long, to be quite honest with you. I personally don’t think Lyra would’ve taken as long either without the little two year interruption that we got with Covid. I’m flying back to England tomorrow to be in the studio, and record a song to be put out in the world. So the wheels are already in motion, and I’m hoping to keep that momentum going. And when I say I’m going to be writing my arse off in September, I mean I’m going to be writing my arse off! If I can come out of those two months with a good chunk of songs done, it’ll make this process a whole lot faster. But you never know, some days I write like shite and think, ‘God almighty, that’s absolutely appalling’, I’m not going to lie, it’s not bangers all the time!
And you’re gonna be heading on tour as well, so there’s lots of excitement coming up!
Girl, I can’t bloody wait! As I said earlier, being on stage is my favourite place in the world, because it’s right there and then, there’s no hiding. I’m already planning the production for the tour. I mean, I’m probably going to be broke after this one because we’re going big, but we’re going to have so much fun, I really don’t care. I’m going hard.
