Belle Mt.
Photo Credit: Sara Lincoln
Straight out of London, Belle Mt.’s a worldwide hit. Their top 3 fanbases span 3 countries and 2 continents, and the trio is renowned for their acoustic and electric hits alike, from “Origins,” to “Let Me,” to their most famous single, the acoustic version of “Hollow,” released on their debut EP, 2018’s Volume I. And if that title tells you anything, it’s that Belle Mt. is only heating up. Described by BBC as having “one of the fastest-growing, loyal fanbases in new music,” their music is a delectable mix of alt, rock, and acoustic, with the occasional sound experimentation, as seen in the beginning of “Hydra.” It’s only been two years since the release of Volume I, but in that time, Belle Mt. has raked up tens of millions of Spotify streams, hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners, and spots on a handful of the much-coveted Spotify-curated playlist, finding themselves among the likes of Ed Sheeran, Hozier, Harry Styles, and dodie. We recently spoke with Belle Mt. about living in London, how the pandemic has affected their flow, and more!
How did you get started making music?
It feels like I’ve always been interested in making music but I didn’t quite realize what songwriting was until my mid teenage years. I’d sit for hours at the piano and make up tunes and melodies and separately I’d write little poems but I didn’t put them together until I first got my heart broken aged 17 or 18. My first song was called “Canadian Friend,”. It won’t be winning any awards.
The reception on “Hollow — Acoustic” was obviously tremendous. What was it like to get this reception so early on?
That whole time was a bit of a whirlwind. We put out that song first to launch the project, expecting a slow build and hopefully eventually some attention from DSP’s. But I woke on day one and it was on huge playlists from Spotify’s New Music Friday USA to Apple Music home page and playlists on Amazon Music. Obviously that was a dream reception, but at that point the team was just me and my Producer Femke and then we had Ben and Chris in the band at home. It was a lot to have to handle the industry interest side of things, but thankfully I soon found a great manager in Bruce Kalmick and he helped us navigate that. One side effect of that early reception was that we had to take some time away to make sure we built the team right and that slowed down the frequency of releases for quite a while, it feels so great to be back putting new music out now.
You released a new version of the song earlier this year. What was the reasoning behind this choice? Did you always feel like it needed this type of treatment?
We signed to a label at the beginning of this year (Bee & El/Warner Records) and everyone felt that Hollow still had a whole world to reach and a whole other life to live on radio, so we took a full production we’d created early on and gave it the full mix and master treatment to see how it would sound. I love this version and it probably sits closer to my own music taste than the Acoustic version, but i love that fans now have the option of both!
Discuss one real-life experience that led to the creation of a song.
In 2017 I flew to Nashville via Atlanta for a writing trip. Within 6 minutes of getting my rental car I’d crashed it by making an English driver in the US type mistake. All I could seem to write about that whole week was car crash metaphors; see - “I took a turn and caused a wreck it was my fault in that respect, nothing you’ve ever done or said has caused a damage like I left” from verse 2 of ‘Origins’. Oh and thankfully no one was hurt!
Has living in London affected your musical style at all. If yes, how so?
I think the life experience of years being poor in a rich person’s city has definitely worked its way into my world view and my lyrics. London has a great music scene and I ran an open mic night at the heart of that scene for 6 years, I watched and learned from so many great artists and performers and it’s all still in there somewhere. You can learn a whole lot from surrounding yourself with musicians who are better than you and then just watching and listening.
Your Spotify bio reads that you have one of the” fastest-growing loyal fanbases” in the industry. How much does fan feedback play into your motivation to make music?
By the way I didn’t write that and it wasn’t independently verified! …but it is nice to have affirmations to live up to. I really value the fans we have and try to find ways to make myself accessible to those that connect with our music on a deep level. But I don’t let anyone else dictate what the music should sound like or what the direction should be, or you’d just get an album of 12 songs that sound like Hollow (Acoustic) and that’s not interesting to me because we already did that one. I like to challenge myself and I can only write from my view on the world and guide the sound through my own filter. I hope and believe that our fans are there because that ‘artists journey’ interests them.
Walk us through your typical songwriting process.
I usually write in quite a linear way. I stumble upon a sentence or a concept that grabs me and work to write the most captivating first few lines possible, so that you’re hopefully all in with us from the start. From there it’s lyrics and melody happening side by side with me jumping between the acoustic guitar and piano whenever I hit a block. Usually with a room mic and a bunch of reverb in my headphones.
How has the pandemic affected your ability to make music?
We’re quite fortunate that we’re all pretty good at home recording as we were doing a lot of it already before all of this. So I guess the difference is that it’s switched from 50% studio/50% home to 100% home recording and so our Producer Femke hasn’t been able to be in the room with us at all, she’s been directing things from Nashville via zoom and with quick song bounces being sent back and forth using dropbox. I’m happy that we’ve been able to put together this next set of songs during a national lockdown and I’m so excited for the world to hear them, but I’ve definitely bothered my neighbours a bit more.
What can we catch you doing on your day off?
I’ve been playing tennis in the real world and shooting Zombies in VR lately.
What’s next for Belle Mt.?
We’re releasing again and we don’t want that to stop… there is a big big folder of songs to be recorded and put out into the world. As soon as it’s safe we want to come back to the US & Canada and do the tour we were booked to do with Kaleo this year until the world pressed pause.
