Lucky number Seven

Waterford singer-songwriter Carrie Baxter told David Hennessy about her debut album Seven, performing at the recent St Patrick’s celebrations in London and how London and this album have shown her the artist she is meant to be.

London-based Waterford R&B/ neo soul artist Carrie Baxter has just released her debut album, SEVEN.

In it she tackles recurring themes of faith, mental health, and personal resilience.

It is also a personal journey through identity, healing, and growth.

She would mark the release by performing for the Trafalgar Square crowd for the St Patrick’s concert that weekend.

This was meaningful as Carrie has been resident in London for roughly 15 years now.

Carrie took time to chat to the Irish World about the new album.

The album seems very autobiographical. Very cohesive as an album, there seems to be several themes running through it..

“Thank you.

“That means a lot, that I’ve made a cohesive body of work.

“It didn’t start like that to be honest.

“This has been a very different process for me in terms of how I made the album because usually I will select a concept or a theme.

“I already can foresee how it’s going to roll out and what it’s going to look and sound like, but this worked in the opposite way.

“I just started writing tracks and then the album revealed itself as it went along.

“I didn’t set out planning to make a debut album at all.

“In fact this album was meant to be an EP.

“We started writing and I was like, ‘Wow, I really love these tracks’.

“We got to about five and I was like, ‘Right, I’m done now. I finished it. Another project done’.

“However any creative will know that once you start and you can’t stop, you just have to keep going when the music is coming.

“That was kind of what happened.

“Any time I was in the studio to finish a track or lay down some vocals, we’d have an hour left and we’d just write another song.

“They just kept coming quite quickly and then we got to ten and I was like, ‘Okay, right. This is an album, amazing’.

“It was a different reversal of the process for me which was so refreshing and just a little bit more interesting rather than starting the way that I usually do.”

The album deals with themes such as identity, longing and change..

“I think the themes that came through were just what I was going through over the last three years so it is a very heavy leaning self-discovery project.

“Of course it will cover a little bit more relatable themes.

“Well I guess they’re all relatable to a certain degree but there’s obviously some songs in there that are very romantic love leaning.

“There’s a lot of faith themes in there and just sort of questioning who you were and who you are now becoming.

“That is the way that I would describe it in one sentence just because there was a lot of dismantling of old patterns and old versions of myself through the music and you can hear that because the album starts in a much darker place and then it gravitates gradually into a little bit more lightness and relief and healing and uplifting sounds.

“That also was not done on purpose but there’s no coincidence.

“When I listened to it back I was like, ‘Oh, it’s literally a complete reflection of what I’ve just been through’.”

The first single was St John (Be Good to Me) which deals with the faith theme that you speak of. I’m wanted to wanted to address religion in your own way coming from a very traditionally Catholic country..

“Yeah, St John was actually the first record I wrote from the album which was funny because it ended up being the last one on there.

“It just made sense for it to be a standout track for me.

“We put a lot of time and resources into the video because videos matter a lot to me.

“I think some people connect with music, some people connect with words, some people connect with visual references so it was just important that I told the story visually as well as sonically.

“As you said, Ireland is a very Catholic associated country.

“You are brought up in Catholicism through communion, confirmation, things like that and I think it was less about religion for me and more about understanding faith as a deeper concept.

“When I wrote that track, I had actually just come from mass.

“I was at Christmas mass and at the time, there was just a lot of stuff going really just not as I had planned in my personal life.

“It was that that led me to question the faith that I lean into or don’t lean into or how I ask for help and if I do or do not, and that’s actually just where the song came from, feeling like you just don’t have the answers anymore and if there is something there that can help you in those moments.”

It’s not the first time religion has come up in  your music. I recall the last time we spoke in 2021 you had a single called Pray..

“Well spotted, it does come up a lot and that’s actually something I’ve only really recognised since I wrote this record.

“I’m starting to notice a lot of the lyrics will mention the word pray.

“I think what I was trying to do in St John was less about, as I said, religion but the notion of how you understand religion as a child and a teenager and how much of that you take on in terms of virtue and sin and what you consider to be bad about yourself and asking for forgiveness.

“These are all things that you’re taught growing up and it’s how do you sort of allow those teachings to be malleable enough to turn into something that now works for you as an adult rather than sort of just sitting in what you’ve been told.

“I think that’s mostly what I learned from writing that song.

“It’s coming back to a faith that I grew up with but just in my way now, so that’s what the video is about.

“I actually shot it in the most amazing church which I found randomly.

“I was like, ‘Yes, because this actually looks like St John’s Church’ which is in Waterford.

“Rebirth is a big word but this is what I’m trying to sort of communicate, refinding something that you already know but just doing it in a way that feels good for you.

“I guess that was what it was about me getting into the pond at the end of the video.

“It was kind of to symbolise a rebirth or a re-Christening.

“It was an interesting day, and it was freezing before you ask.”

The title Seven comes from the meanings that that number has..

“Yes, very much so.

“Again Seven didn’t come until we had finished the project.

“It just kept revealing itself one step at a time, when I was ready.

“I didn’t have a name for ages and then Seven just kept popping up randomly in my life and then I just got curious about it.

“It is actually widely known in the Bible as the number of completion and I thought there is such a strong reference to faith the whole way through this, it would just make natural sense for me to call it that.

“That was actually the main reason because I felt like I had finished a massive chapter creatively, artistically.

“I was just like, ‘Wow, this has taken me a long time to write an album like this’ so it felt natural to call it that.

“And then obviously when you dive deeper into the number seven, it’s in different cultures across the globe.

“It’s associated with different things like introspection, transcendence, higher power, things like that so it just was a no brainer really.”

Does it feel like you have found yourself as an artist making this album?

“100 per cent.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.

“When I finished this body of work I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the artist I was supposed to be’.

“My previous work, don’t get me wrong, it is a very accurate representation of where I was and what I was trying to do but I didn’t understand what I had to say as an artist until I wrote this album.

“There is depth there that I have never touched before and that a lot of artists don’t touch either.

“I’m not going to use the word vulnerable, because for me vulnerability feels like I’m sharing something that I’m not ready to but, it’s more my understanding that my depth is actually part of my power and being able to confidently discuss these things in the album is actually part of the journey of becoming the artist that I was meant to be.

“I feel like I’ve stepped into something that I haven’t known before with this record.”

You came to London something like 15 years ago to study musical theatre. It is in London to have become the artist you have, it’s been a huge part of your journey, hasn’t it?

“Oh, a massive part of my journey.

“It has built me into the person that I am.

“I think you can’t help but grow in this city if you choose to stay here that long because it’s not easy and you’re faced with so many different types of people, different backgrounds, different genres.

“It’s just like a melting pot of music here and I think once you’re faced with so much stuff that you haven’t been exposed to, it’s just almost impossible not to grow.

“So yeah, it has largely contributed to not just me as an artist but just me as a person, I think.”

You must be pleased with the reaction to the album so far..

“Yeah, I’ve been crying all week.

“I think I stopped crying about two days ago.

“It’s been intense.

“I suppose it’s been like people have reacted to the album how I wrote the album.

“It’s not like I put it out for praise or validation.

“It’s just that it’s resonating with people and people are understanding what I’m trying to say so that means a lot to me.

“Of course it means a lot to me if people just enjoy the music but there’s been a lot of feedback out there like, ‘Wow, I really love this song because it reminds me of X, Y and Z in my life’ so it just is really nice to hear that the messages that I worked to write in those songs are landing with people.

“That’s the best part, I think.”

Do you feel things have taken off in the last year? You have reached 80 million streams… 

“Oh yeah.

“That’s largely due to some very popular records that I’ve written with other people as well.

“Streaming is important for me.

“Bigger artists will say they don’t earn from streaming and I do understand that, streaming is not done fairly at all but even the streams that I am earning, it is really important for me because that money comes straight back into me being able to continue to create so although I don’t agree with the fairness of it, it is also something that really contributes and benefits me when I do get money from streams.”

You got your career going in COVID times so it must have been a strange time to be releasing music..

“My first EP was a lockdown EP.

“It came out in June 2020 so for that whole year, you’re just kind of sat in front of a laptop really.

“Actually I noticed when we were all coming out of lockdown and then I was starting to move into live shows, I could not get out of the headspace of monitoring my numbers.

“And also, I massively burnt out.

“I’m pretty sure it was either ‘21 or ‘22 I had to pull live shows and I had to stop.

“Very luckily and gratefully the music started doing well quite quickly so I actually wasn’t prepared for the amount of stuff that was coming at me and also the demand of new music because I had been locked in a house.

“There’s just no feasible way for me to keep writing music if I don’t live so it was tough actually when I came out of lockdown.”

Writing so personally as you do I can understand how you would have little ‘fuel’ when life was on pause..

“It was more so the pressure to keep my momentum up and having to produce something else just because people were expecting me to keep it going.

“That’s what led me to have quite an extreme burnout because I was forcing myself to do all of these things.

“I was quite new to the industry.

“I was very new to the industry so I didn’t really understand why I had to then put out another project six months later, ‘Why do I have to have another six songs ready? This is impossible. I actually can’t do this’.

“It was a very steep learning curve.”

How did you enjoy playing Trafalgar Square for the Mayor’s St Patrick’s celebrations?

“Oh my God, it was so important for me to do that.

“It’s just because I’ve lived here for so long and I’ve been to that specific event more years than I care to remember.

“It just meant a lot for me to actually have that opportunity to come and play after all these years of watching it.”

You’re playing at home in the summer for a festival in Waterford, do you feel you get support from outlets at home?

“Hot Press have been amazing.

“Hot Press have backed me from day one.

“There’s not a time where I put music out where they don’t support it.

“Since the minute I came out Ray at WLR has been pushing my music a lot.

“2FM have massively supported this album and I did a live lounge session with them recently which has been pretty awesome.

“Across the board, the radio play has been crazy support over there which is amazing.

“One of my old managers is from Dublin and she went over to visit family and she sent me a video.

“She was like, ‘I literally just got in my rented car from the airport. This is you, isn’t it? You’re on 2FM’.

“She was like, ‘The first person I hear on the radio and it’s you’.

“It was so funny.

“Those kind of things are just so appreciated.

“Obviously for me it was very exciting being played on UK radio because obviously not being from here, that was very exciting as well.”

SEVEN is out now.

For more information, click here.