Embracing Chaos, DYLAN Talks ‘The Greatest Thing I’ll Never Learn,’ Paving Her Own Path in the Music Industry & More
“IT’S LIKE A ROMANTIC COMEDY, EXCEPT — we’re not the whole way through the movie yet,” DYLAN said of new EP ‘The Greatest Thing I’ll Never Learn’ at a recent 1824 press conference. “We’re at that really messy part in the middle where everything starts to go wrong. Most of the stuff in my life at the moment is a little bit laughable, a little bit unexpected, and the rest of it should be really, really romantic but is completely not.”
In a hotel room somewhere in the north of England, rock-pop artist DYLAN arrives on Zoom, her eyeliner a little smudged and nails painted black. With big dreams of headlining Wembley and an even bigger work ethic to get her there, she has sky-rocked to success through the genius handling of social media, touring with the likes of Ed Sheeran and creating a cult fan base of young women adorned in cowboy hats. With punchy singles such as “Nineteen” and “No Romeo” under her belt, DYLAN’s recent release, The Greatest Thing I’ll Never Learn, is another charming, fizzy collection that encapsulates the 23-year-old’s experience of love, heartbreak, and discovering her identity. In the midst of a buzzing UK tour, DYLAN sat down to speak candidly to talk about her love of bad dancing, gaining confidence in the studio, and sexism in the industry.
DYLAN comes across as an open book. She laughs at herself constantly, embraces her own chaos, and doesn’t seem bogged down with the upkeep of a carefully crafted persona. There’s still a sense of relatable youthful nervousness there, but she certainly remains a role model for young women in the industry, feeling like a breath of fresh air.
“The title The Greatest Thing I’ll Never Learn came from something my mum used to say to me a lot, which is, ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return,’ and as a 23-year-old with an incredibly chaotic personal life, that is something I have struggled with massively, and so the whole mixtape is just about learning — or, rather, not learning — how to deal with feelings and emotions,” DYLAN explained.
It seems like this mixtape is a moment of snappy yet satisfying catharsis for the young musician, and DYLAN admits that the mixtape came out of a “shitty year last year.”
“I went through a lot of loss … and that sort of switched my feelings off and I’ve been really struggling with, you know, ‘boys’ and relationships and friendships and the way that people can sort of leave and enter your life whenever they feel like it,” she said.
Like many musicians, the COVID-19 lockdowns served as a difficult but important time of musical evolution. “I was going through a whole load of identity crises, just because I’ve only really been in the industry since I was 18,” she said. “I didn’t really know who I was, despite the fact I was 18 and thought that I knew everything. I was trying to be everyone that was successful. I was not being myself at all, constantly making changes — huge changes — to my sound just because I felt like I wasn’t good enough, who I was naturally, and going into lockdown kind of changed everything because you were forced to go back to your roots.”
So what if lockdown had never happened? “I don’t think I’d be having this conversation,” DYLAN admitted. “My music would probably be terrible if it hadn’t been for that sort of time I had in my bedroom, trying to finesse everything by myself. It really meant that I’d sort of established who I was again, rather than feeling too influenced by other voices and other people.”
DYLAN speaks of the writing process affectionately, confidently, and, like everything, speaks candidly of her journey to come to this passionate confidence. “When I was younger, I loved it — it was what I spent all of my time doing until it felt like a job,” she described. “When I hit 18, it was more about ‘Oh, this has got to be a really good song, otherwise no one’s gonna like me,’ so I kind of lost my love for the writing side. But then coming out of lockdown and sort of finding myself again, letting it be a 15-minute process I’ve really got my love back for it. And going forward, it’s the one part I’m actually pretty relaxed about. It’s all very honest and straight to the point. It’s kind of like when you get too drunk and you can’t stop talking and then it comes out and you’re like, ‘Oh no, should I have said that?’ That’s what my lyrics are.”
Starting so young in the industry, DYLAN is unafraid to share her downfalls as well as her successes, constantly offering a candid and refreshingly honest depiction of what it is like to be a young woman in the industry. “It’s so nice to be able to walk into rooms now and have the confidence to be able to pick up a guitar because I was so under the impression at the beginning, when I was 18 or 19, that I couldn’t pick one up because I’m not Jimi Hendrix,” she said. “And I used to never play the parts in either because I felt like the producers knew what they were doing and I didn’t want to step on their toes, but recently it’s been so great for me to be able to be like, ‘This is how we’re going to do it, these are the guitars I want, these are the sounds I want, these are the drums I want, and I really need you to do that for me.’”
Sharing the natural hesitancy to release the EP, she spoke on the track “Treat You Bad,” describing it as a significant track for her. “It’s my favorite to perform live from the mixtape because it’s like… that’s my guilty pleasure rock song, but the storyline of the song is basically ‘It’s your fault that I’m treating you badly,’” she said. “It’s a massive deflection of emotions, which I don’t think has been said in a while, especially from a female artist. I was very nervous to put that idea out for fear of being attacked, especially by the person it’s about, and it ended up being one of my favorites. Now that it’s out I’m really, really happy.”
And her perfect day in the studio to record such a track? “Burgers,” she declares. “And then I like to start either with something that I have already written the night before, because I get a lot of my ideas at nighttime so ideally: food, lots of food, and then sort of going off an idea that I had and building that quite quickly and adding instruments to that quite quickly. I think my brain works at a million miles an hour, which is not always a good thing, but everything happens very, very fast, especially when it comes to writing songs. If it’s a good song, it’ll come in 15 minutes. It’s more about letting the chaos happen than having someone try and control the chaos — that’s my worst nightmare.”She expressed that working in the studio is an equally exciting and anxious process: “Recently I’ve been working with some quite established producers and writers that I have sort of waited to work with for a very long time, so walking into those rooms I am absolutely shitting myself, and it’s just like, if they have an energy, if they match the energy then I’m absolutely fine, or if they’re welcoming to the energy, then I’m good,” she shared. “If not, then I can feel really awkward and like I wanna go home.”
DYLAN laughed, adding, “You’re basically dishing out your life details, so it’s super important [to be comfortable].”
Having recently supported Ed Sheeran on tour, DYLAN speaks fondly of the pop heavyweight, who has given her countless valuable advice from their very first meeting. “I’d just had my 19th birthday party and nobody turned up,” she said. “I’d got a table at a club and I was really excited about it because I’d never had that before. I'd just moved to London and I’d made all of these new friends and no one showed up and it was me and my best mate thinking, ‘This [is] the worst night ever.’ I met [Ed] a few weeks after that, and he’d heard [a] rumor that it’d gone really badly and he was like, ‘Look, you need to work out who your close friends are and keep them really, really close to you because you’re not going to be able to have many and that’s okay — it’s okay to be able to count your friends on one hand; it’s important to be able to do that.’ He said to me, ‘Just take in the now.’ What’s happening to me as an artist at the moment… that only happens once, and that can go by like that and suddenly you’re doing all of this promo and you forget about the rise and the sort of hardwork and everything starting to pay off. So it’s massively just been living in the moment and going for it and not thinking about what’s happening next year.”
As part of touring with Sheeran, DYLAN opened for his Wembley stadium show. “My dad has been training me to say ‘Hello Wembley’ for as long as I can remember — that has always been at the top of the dream board,” she said. “In my childhood bedroom there are all of these photos of these artists playing Wembley and I’ve superimposed my face onto them, so playing that was just ridiculous. I had such a good time — so much space for me to run and kick and jump and do my weird lanky dancing; it was very freeing, and that was probably my favorite show this year. I won't forget that very quickly.”
DYLAN glowed as she spoke of Wembley and of dancing on that world-famous stage: “I am an absolute sucker for dancing,” she shared. “I don’t know why — I think that maybe I was a ballerina or showman in a past life. I’m convinced because I can’t dance at all. If you’ve ever seen me live you’ll know, it’s just limbs flying everywhere with no control whatsoever, but I am just obsessed with people that can dance.”
Laughing at herself but still holding an infectious ambition, she added, “I wanna headline Wembley. I know it’s a big one, but it’s an important one. I’ve envisioned that moment every night for my entire existence; I’ve played that show a billion times in my head.”
Ambition and a recent EP aside, DYLAN remains grounded with a sharp knowledge of the institutional sexism that haunts the music industry. “One thing that has really struck out over the past couple of years that really grinds my gears is that two male with an acoustic guitar can exist in the same field and there not be competition, but there can be two women in completely different genres that are considered the same artist,” she said. “People like Taylor [Swift] and Billie [Eilish], and there are so many artists in the UK especially who are just brilliant women — they’re just so powerful and strong and it’s incredible to be able to watch them and learn from them and be completely unafraid with everything I’m saying and the way that I am as an artist. In the industry I’m very, very lucky to be surrounded by some incredible women.”
There is truly a fresh, bright confidence that shines from DYLAN, and she is sure to continue to dazzle us with her relatable, grounded, punchy music and easy laughter in the coming future.
“I feel like I’m only just scratching the surface on the whole DYLAN world because I was really proud of the EP that came out earlier this year, but this one feels like the beginning of something, like I’ve just got through the start gate now with who I want to be and the music that I want to write, so I’m so, so happy about it.”
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