Q&A: Tabi Gervis Captures the Confusion of Early 20s in “Twenty-Two Parade”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
WHEN YOU’RE GETTING READY FOR ADULTHOOD, YOU ARE FILLED WITH HOPE AND DREAMS—Then you become a young adult and the reality of how difficult and complicated reaching the life you set out to achieve hits you. Tabi Gervis intended to capture the whirlwind of figuring out that period of time in spite of the situation you’re in.
Gervis is a Brighton-based independent musician whose genre-blending artistry surrounds pop, soul and R&B. Her creativity doesn’t limit itself to her music. Gervis fashions a standout aesthetic that she inculpates in her career as well. Love is at the core of her inspiration for music.
“Twenty-Two Parade” shows a groovy pop-soul soundsphere. While she describes the lyrics as originating from a place of self-deprecation, the combination with the sound makes for a hopeful tune. Gervis wrote the track about her experience being an independent artist and all the difficulties of making it in the music industry. However, she insists on the broad nature of “Twenty-Two Parade” and how it’s meant to be “for everyone.”
Luna caught up with the artist to discuss her new single.
LUNA: Could you introduce yourself for our readers?
GERVIS: I am a pop/soul singer songwriter based in Brighton, UK.
LUNA: Could you explain the backstory behind “Twenty-Two Parade”?
GERVIS: I started writing it late 2024. For me, it's about being an independent artist. Having to be everything and you're not having a team. Being everything, as well as being creative, wanting so deeply for your work and your endeavors to pay off but not feeling like you're there yet. I wanted it to be not exclusive to music. In the second verse, you can hear me talking about me listening to the radio and hoping that I'll hear the crowd singing back to me. A lot of it is coming from a place of self deprecation. Sonically, it’s a very happy, groovy song, then when you actually listen to the lyrics it's a bit more self deprecating. It's like, “Well, maybe it will never happen. Maybe all of this work that you're putting into this passion of yours may never even come to fruition.”
It's still a very hopeful song for me. It's one of my favorite songs that I've ever written, because it just is. I'm still very much in that place now. I resonate so much with this song. I think it's for everyone. I feel like in your early 20s or even late teens you're like, “When I'm 23, I'm gonna know exactly who I am. I’m gonna have my shit together.” And then we're actually here, and it's like, “I’m not in education anymore. I'm barely earning any money working in a cafe, but I still don't want to give up on these dreams that I've had forever.” And so it's all figuring it out, as hard as it is.
LUNA: It has a really interesting sound. Who were your musical influences?
GERVIS: I have listened to such a wide range of music my entire life. As a kid, I loved listening to Moby with my dad and ABBA with my mom. I've always loved music that made me feel things. I was an emotional child. I remember I would cry when I listened to “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” So fucking stupid. It is an emotive song, it's very sad sounding. My entire life, I've taken a lot of passive inspiration, subconscious inspiration, through listening to so many genres of music. As I've gotten older, I've started turning around and hearing these people who come through in my music. I was a big Billie Eilish fan back in the day and you can hear her influence sometimes in my vocal technique. I love Lianne La Havas so much. I think she definitely comes through in my melody writing. I absolutely love ABBA so much. When it comes to songwriting, they're a huge influence for me.
I love to have an amalgamation of all these different sounds kind of come together in my music. I always say that I'm a pop artist first and foremost, all of my music is very structurally and melodically pop heavy. You can sing back all of my melodies, they get stuck in your head, but I want there to be some runs in there that you would hear in jazz, and drums that you would hear in R&B. I love to have pop music at the center, and then have all these lovely other genres be the planets around the sun that is pop for me.
LUNA: Where do you find inspiration for your music?
GERVIS: I write a lot of love songs. I love singing about love. I'm very much like Paul McCartney in that way. I think there's a reason why so much music is about love. It's such a shared experience amongst humans, platonic love, romantic love, family love, whatever it is. A lot of my songs on my last EP Fall Into Me were very much focused around that. I also love writing about self reflection and looking inward. A lot of the time I will write songs to myself and then not necessarily realize that they are to myself, and then listen back to them a year later or something, and be like, “Oh, so I wrote for future me.”
It's interesting because I do a lot of writing in sessions with people as well, or sessions where I'm not necessarily writing for me or for any particular project. Just for the sake of writing with a friend and being creative. I'm good at creating a person or a persona of someone who has been through something, building a character in my head of that person, then writing a song from their perspective. I don't necessarily always write about personal experience, and I do think that songwriting always has some sparkle of someone's personality inside of it. I enjoy taking myself out of it sometimes, or if it is something that happened to me, let me write from the other side. I do also like writing about random, pretty things, what I wear, how I dress, the sky.
LUNA: You have a very colorful style. What do you look for when you choose your clothes, your accessories? Is there something that you keep in mind when you do that?
GERVIS: Oh my god, I love that question. I'm a thrifty girl. I'm a big secondhand shopper. I'm always buying from charity shops or thrift shops. I was always a very mismatched child. I loved a pattern clash. Moving into my teenage years, I doled my spark back a little bit to conform, as we do when you're a teenager. Since I was 17, I've wanted to get back to being a child again and finding the joy in my outfits. I genuinely have such a connection to clothing that if I don't feel amazing in what I'm wearing when I leave the house, I will just have a bad day. I'm so deeply connected to being outwardly colorful and outwardly bright, and that's the point where it does affect my mood. I love wearing loads of necklaces in my outfit. Accessories can bring an outfit to life. You can be wearing a t-shirt, if you wear six necklaces with it, it's like, ”pop off.” I used to throw everything together but now I'm trying to be more thoughtful with it. As long as it's bright and colorful and loud, like when I'm walking the street, you can hear me before you can see me, that’s where I’m happiest.
LUNA: Are you working on a specific project right now?
GERVIS: I should have a project out later this year. A few more singles leading up to that, which is exciting. I've got a new single coming out at the beginning of April which is really cool. The promo for “Twenty-Two Parade” was a quirky birthday party. For this one, we're moving more into the party. We've got a disco ball going on, lots of shimmer, lots of shine. It's very much like the more upbeat older sister to “Twenty-Two Parade.” It is in the same kind of vein lyrically as well. “Twenty-Two Parade” is being self deprecating and unsure, the new single is like, “I'm taking off the blindfold, and I'm trusting my feet to take me in the right direction.” The next song is trusting my gut and being sure of it. I'm really excited for it. I'm gonna have another release party for that one as well.
LUNA: My last question is where do you picture yourself in a few years?
GERVIS: Oh my gosh, I would love to be doing this full time. That is the dream. I will have hopefully released a couple more projects, maybe even an album. Obviously, the big dream is to be prancing around on stadium stages and wear big dresses and necklaces flying everywhere, and whole stage setups. Something that I'm really into is the visual side of music as well as the audible side of it. I want to have more themed parties. I really enjoyed the “Twenty-Two Parade” release show because it was birthday party themed. Everyone that came got a party hat to wear that I made to give out to everybody and that's just me doing that out of my living room.
One of my biggest dreams is always – this kind of goes back to the thrifting thing – if I had the budget at shows, I would love to have a screen printing thing for t-shirts. I would love people to bring their t-shirts to my gig, and then I would print it so you'd have one of a kind merch. It doesn't have to be a t-shirt, could be jeans and stuff. That would be so cool. Write for other artists as well, I would love to get into that and to be less stressed. I'm very happy with the journey that I'm on and how it's going thus far.
