An Interview with Artist, Holly Maguire, about her debut EP: Still Smiling.

Holly Maguire is a lyricist for the band WINTER and a performing solo-artist from Belfast whose debut EP, Still Smiling, produced and co-written by her best friend, Max, blends emotional introspection with a pop-rock sound that blends genres into an act of theatrical and abstract storytelling that will all-at-once make you cry, laugh and dance.
It was a pleasure getting to chat with Holly about her musical journey, the meaning and roots of each song within her EP and about life challenges, community and discovery through art. 

When did you start making music? 

So growing up, I was always in school of choirs, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do long-term. Then, one day in lockdown, I got a piano and a ukulele and started creating songs in my bedroom. All of my set-paths and life-plans began suddenly shifting. I just felt I had to follow music. 

But it was really scary because I knew how much it demanded and I have really bad stage fright as well. 
So, before applying to music in Queens, I was always like why did I do this? I won’t be able to do this but as my family and friends put it: Holly, you’ve already done it, there’s no going back now…and then when I got into the course, I absolutely fell in love with it.
The two components of the course were solo and ensemble performance. I got to join a band and found I loved performing with others, just going crazy on the stage. However, I still couldn’t perform solo 

Then the second year came around; new band, but this one was going through a rough patch and it took getting stranded in Dublin after a performance to finally break us up, haha.
Six O’clock on a Tuesday morning, after staying up basically all night, I decided, what if I just did it? Create music without a band. My best friend Max is a producer and has always asked me to write songs with them but I would just say no… out of fear.
But I finally went for it, I contacted a booking agent, started doing tiny gigs for like four people with a shaky voice, dreadful recordings that should never see the light of day and a guitar without a plugin… but I made a start and have never looked back. 

So coming up to now, I have found my little happy place. I wanted to have ensemble fun again so I joined this pop-punk-emo band Winter and they’re amazing and then I continue to make music with Max, facing my fears of solo performing one gig at a time. 

Do you want to walk us through your debut EP, Still Smiling? 

The EP came about in a really, really rough time in my life. We were working on it for eight months, and then in December, my mom passed away. At that stage, we didn’t have a name, we didn’t have an intro, and we didn’t have the final song ‘Told me So'; we had a couple of tracks… but we didn’t know where or why we wanted to put them either. 

We began with the intro, and Max had the idea for me to formally speak and introduce the EP. I stated that Still Smiling about losing things too fast and having to grow up too quickly; the encapsulation of eight months of my life that couldn't be told in person so was placed into song. 

The first song, Rock the Boat is about that resistance to bringing up the problems in a relationship, which you know are there…just because you fear rocking the boat. 

I Don’t Wanna Know also explores the denial within relationships where you don’t wanna know about what’s wrong in the relationship, you don’t wanna hear the bad news, you don’t wanna hear what your mind already knows, but at a point it becomes impossible to silence. 

Then Tides and Satellites was initially written as a fictional story about a couple where someone passes away and they have a fractured conversation with both of them looking in from these two separate plains and saying you can’t see but I’m still here. It was always my mom’s favorite song. So when she passed, the story really morphed into my own life where I was trying to communicate I’m still here but you’re not, you can’t see me. I dedicated the song to her. 

Dry Your Eyes is a weird ‘I hate you, just dry your eyes and get over it’ kind of song haha…we wanted to make it theatrical so we told a spoken story in the bridge and we tried to bring in lots of weird humour also! 

Then we finished the EP with Told Me So which is about such a weird, complex feeling …being angry at someone who you can’t be angry at anymore for leaving you. When my mom passed away, I had so many feelings of anger and confusion that I still do have and I really didn't know how to deal with it and I didn't want to tell people that I was feeling angry and confused because I didn't want to speak it into existence.
Told Me So battles with how difficult it is to overcome this feeling of anger as the world and confusion with loss and translating this emotion into music was the only way I could. 

So, the whole EP told a story that I couldn’t tell myself …and I just wanted to make it something that I enjoyed and other people could enjoy … to say, if anyone has similar experience then – dance to them. 

Where are you from here, and what does it mean to be creating music in the Belfast community right now? 

Yeah I’m still a very active artist, writing and recording, maaaaybe going in the direction of a new album. I’m writing more now than I have in a long time, coming up with lots of ideas with Max. WINTER is currently waiting for the release of our second single and we’re working on our first album. Apart from that, lots of life admin and trying to apply to festivals haha! 

When it comes to the music scene in Belfast, I have met the best people and my best friends from it. It’s a growing scene and to critique one thing, I wish we had the same ‘pay the artist’ scheme …I think artists deserve to get something…even if it’s something small. 

But aside from that, the scene is so supportive, I adore venues like Queen’s SU bar or the Oh Yeah centre which runs gigs for all ages and lets young people put on gigs with ‘Volume Control’ often for charities which is really nice to see. There's also great promotional magazines such as ‘Girls with Guts.’ I’m really passionate about this magazine because it supports female artists, promotes all ages gigs and their zine is just so supportive and great for the community. But yeah, the people who just like music are making the Belfast industry and I feel so grateful to be a part of this growing community.

Written by Ben Lynch (ben_lynch__)

Edited by Shaunamay Martin Bohan @f4wnfatale