It’s a song about unrequited love told through the lens of a text he was too scared to send. “Started to write what I wanna say, deleted the message / But I still remember it said ‘I wish I was who you drunk texted at midnight,'” Moodie sings on its skyscraper chorus.
Henry Moodie’s relatable songwriting style is partly inspired by Taylor Swift – he’s a fully signed up “Swiftie” – and he attributes his emotional literacy to his mother, a therapist who gave him a guitar to help him tease out his teenage emotions.
“Because of my mum, I’ve always tried to rationalise life and put an explanation on everything,” he says. “So I do think a lot of my music naturally falls into that sort of, like, therapy, sad-boy pop [genre].”
He mentions his mother on Good Old Days, the wistfully anthemic title track from his impressive new EP, which is out today.
Her influence also looms large on Bad Emotions, a more subdued but equally melodic song on which Henry Moodie grapples with anxiety. “I’ve spent my life wonderin’ what’s wrong with me / Why is my chest so tight and I find it hard to sleep?” he sings.
Here, he discusses the importance of singing about mental health in his music and his work with Teenage Helpline, a charity that provides peer-to-peer mentoring for young people under 25.
BIG ISSUE: Where do you think your urge to write songs comes from?
HENRY MOODIE: I was trying to unpack this the other day because it’s such a deep thing. But basically I think it started because I was bullied in school – I never belonged in the rugby team or the maths group, so music was where I found my place. Every break and lunchtime I’d go to the music block and just sing Taylor Swift covers. Her Reputation album came out when I was 13 which was a difficult time for me because I felt so insecure. I really needed something to empower me and her album did that. That’s when I fell in love with songwriting because Reputation showed me how much music can help people get through hard times. I knew I wanted to write songs that could do that for other people.
You sing very frankly about your mental health on Bad Emotions. What kind of message are you trying to send with this song?
Basically I panicked on the way to the studio – it was so bad that I was like, “I don’t know if I can go in. I don’t know if I can even speak to anyone today.” But then this voice in my head – my mum’s voice, really! – was like: “If you go home, you’ll just sit in your anxiety and regret cancelling the session, which will make it worse.” So I went into the studio, scrapped the idea [for a song] I had in mind and wrote about what I was going through that day – almost as a way of getting through it. I wanted to put Bad Emotions on the EP because hopefully it can help other people who get overwhelmed by their emotions and struggle with anxiety.
The music industry is a notoriously unpredictable beast. Does that make it harder to keep tabs on your mental health?
I think the most difficult thing about this job is the lack of routine. I do try to create a sort of routine for myself – like, I go on runs every day, I go to the gym. But touring is probably the closest I get to a real routine. You have a show every day, then you sleep on a bus and wake up in a different country. There’s a lot of overwhelmingness to [that experience], but it’s also one of my favourite things to do. I guess I’m still figuring it out but ultimately I’m doing my passion as a job, so I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
On a related note, how did you get involved with Teenage Helpline?
My mum’s colleague Josh [Towers] founded the charity when he was, like, 14. I think he had a similar [experience] to me where he didn’t feel like he quite belonged in school, so he’s dedicated his life to helping young people who struggle with their mental health. When I heard Josh’s backstory, I just felt a natural connection and wanted to get involved. I’ve been to Pride in London with them for the last couple of years – anything that helps people going through a hard time, I’m all in. I wish I’d had something like Teenage Helpline when I was growing up because school is such a brutal place for so many young people.
Do you think of yourself as a role model?
It’s not something I think about specifically, but actually there’s nothing I do that’s, like, controversial – I’m a pretty PG artist to be honest! But I do think it’s important to spread mental health awareness if you have a platform. Luckily I grew up in a household that wasn’t toxic in any way, so I’ve always been open with my feelings. I know a lot of people grow up with, say, a dad who’s always suppressed his emotions. So then they feel like they can never really talk about their own feelings. A lot of guys are scared of showing their vulnerable side in that way so I do want to help normalise it a bit more. Because I do think that toxic masculinity is the root cause of so many issues in this world.
Do you think it’s getting better? It feels as though we’re at least talking more about mental health now.
Yeah, 100%. But I also think social media is polarising people so much because our algorithms are so tailored to what we like. On the opposite end [of the spectrum], people are going even further the other way. Do you remember when Andrew Tate started going viral? I feel like that shows how dangerous social media can be because it changed so many people[‘s views] and created such a toxic masculine mindset. So I’m very aware of that [problem] as well as things improving in other ways.
Henry Moodie’s Good Old Days EP is out now Robots & Humans/Columbia.
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