Our Play Irish Artist of the Week on Beat Breakfast is Orla Gartland with her new single 'Zombie!'
Of the track, Orla says: “'Zombie!' is about repressing emotions until one day they burst out of you all at once. Specifically it's about a very common, very male kind of repression I witnessed in a boy I loved once - I could see that he felt things but there was a barrier stopping him from expressing them. I hated that for him, it made me so angry at the societal pressures that led him to that place. For me living "like a zombie" became a metaphor for this way of living; someone so seemingly unemotional on the surface they barely seem alive. I scream my head off in the outro of the song and that scream is meant to feel like a huge release, like the moment you let it all out.”
Earlier this year Gartland shared her acclaimed single ‘More Like You’, which has since been streamed over 2 million times, and follows ‘Pretending’ as a taste of her eagerly-anticipated, as-yet-untitled forthcoming debut album, due for release this year. The new tracks arrive after Gartland’s first two acclaimed EPs, 2019’s Why Am I Like This? and the follow up Freckle Season, which was released in February last year. Between them, Gartland’s songs have amassed over 55 million streams and more than 750,000 monthly Spotify listeners, and seen her compared to artists such as Stevie Nicks, St. Vincent, Regina Spektor and HAIM.
Born and raised in Dublin, Gartland started writing songs when she was 14 years old. Unable to convince any of the 18+ local pubs and venues to let her perform, she honed her craft online, before heading out on tour the day she finished school. On her return she packed her bags and moved to London, spending the next few years writing, recording, touring and gathering fans apace.
