Singer Nina Nesbitt on her changing relationship with Scotland

Nina Nesbitt gave herself one of the most important presents when she turned 30 a fortnight ago.
“It’s such a huge milestone, and I allowed myself to look back at my career,” says the Edinburgh singer songwriter. “The older I get and the more shows I play, I look back now and realise I forgot to enjoy a lot of what I’ve done. I was so worried or nervous about making sure it was all the best it could be. I’m trying to let go and enjoy these things more, but it’s easier said than done. I have these butterflies, constantly.”

Nesbitt has played with some of the biggest names in the business, from Coldplay at Hampden to Stevie Nicks in Dublin, and has even been given the seal of approval by reigning pop queen Taylor Swift, who has playlisted her tunes and mentioned the Scottish singer in a speech at Billboard’s Women in Music awards in 2019. “I’ve had so many great opportunities in my career and sometimes I’ve been too nervous to enjoy them,” she says.

Her new-found determination to live in the moment was road tested earlier in July, when she opened for Fleetwood Mac legend Stevie Nicks in Ireland. “It doesn’t matter how confident you feel, or what else you’ve done, doing something like that is daunting – sharing the stage with Stevie Nicks. Her fanbase are such serious music fans and I have her music on a pedestal. I was able to watch her show afterwards and it was incredible. It was hand on heart the best gig I’ve ever seen. It really was next level. I felt like I had been transported back in time. 

“Some of her bandmates were her housemates before she was even in Fleetwood Mac, and she was telling these huge stories between songs. When stories are as good as hers, you just want to hear more.” Seeing Nicks with her long-standing bandmates sounded a chord with Nesbitt similar to themes explored on her forthcoming album Mountain Music.

“Turning 30 is a huge milestone and I feel like when I was younger, I didn’t notice the difference between me and friends as much,” says the singer, who grew up in Balerno. “They were at uni, I was touring, but we’d go on our nights out and I’d feel like we were on the same path. “People make such major life decisions in their 30s and it feels like we’re going on in our different directions more now. It’s a weird age to be at in this industry. Seeing my mates move back home, settle down, have kids, has made me think. The first records were about running away and now I’m trying to figure out what my home is.”

Nesbitt lives in the countryside outside London with her boyfriend, and her family home in Edinburgh is now that of someone else’s, following her parents’ separation. But she returned to the capital in search of inspiration for the songs. “I did a lot of exploring when I went back home. My parents don’t live there anymore, and I don’t have that home to go to now. I don’t have a place to shut the door and go: ‘I’m home!’ As I’m getting older I feel that slipping away a bit, and so maybe this record is me clinging on to it, and thinking more about what home means to me. I’ve done a lot of trips back and forth and it’s really nice to reflect on growing up there.”

(Image: Nina Nesbitt)

Her parents’ split was “a big moment, a big change”. She says: “It was a huge part of what I was going through. But it’s something I don’t want to talk about too much because they’re private people and they have their own thing going on.” Inevitably, such a seismic shift influences the tone of her new record, which carries a sense of introspection, searching for place. She says: “For so long I felt like the outsider. A lot of people you come across are from London, which is fine, but rather than trying to fit in with that crowd, I’m now embracing that my story is different. It’s like growing up and realising the things that make you different are the things that are most exciting. A lot of this record is about that sense of self-acceptance. It’s about finding your home within yourself. There’s a lot of that on this album.”

The record is less concerned with continuing along the pop path she was launched into when first signed by Island Records in 2014.  It leans into the open-road wistfulness of classic American country and folk, influences she Nesbitt has picked up with playing gigs around the States in recent years. She cites American country singers Tyler Childers and Zack Bryan as influences, and references the mellow folk of Bon Iver and Conor Obert’s Bright Eyes. “But I wasn’t hearing the folk music with the stories I wanted. I’ve never been to Oklahoma but Zack Bryan swept me into it, and I wanted to make a record about my world and take people to where I am from.

“I moved out of London two years ago, and that was a huge shift for me. I live in a field in the middle of nowhere now and it has made me remember where I grew up. When I was a teenager all I wanted to do was leave that village in Scotland and see the world, but it’s different now. Moving out here reminds me of home, and it has made me reflect a lot.” Canadian Alannis Morrissette, best known for her 90s album Jagged Little Pill, is another touchstone for Nesbitt.

“Her lyrical style has been an influence, encouraged me not to hold back.” she says.  This influence is perhaps most noticeable on the new track Anger. “I’ve never really known how to express my anger before. It’s not something I know how to express every day. We push things down or have unhealthy coping mechanisms, we get drunk or whatever, but it has to come out somehow. 

“My channel for that emotion is my songwriting. I find it harder to express what I feel outside of songwriting. Anger is the most intense track. I felt a whole weight was lifted after I finished that song. It felt like a year’s worth of therapy in one experience. There’s no textbook on how to deal with anger and we are so conscious of being called crazy or mad, we often don’t to express it.”

Nesbitt launched her own label Apple Tree Records this year, taking control of all affairs with her manager in an industry where females are all too often commodified by men in boardrooms discussing budgets. She says: “But things are getting better for female musicians, I think. When I started, they [industry marketeers] were trying to start a fight between me and Gabrielle Aplin, and created a really toxic environment. In those days, if you wrote a song about a break up, people would say: ‘She’s crazy!’, but you just need to look at Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo to see how it’s encouraged now. Things are better than they were for sure.”