Carnivali – Butterfly Girls

By starrymag | July 16, 2024

By: Jamie Steinberg

 

 

 

Q) Your music is often a mix of reggae and pop music. How do you tend to describe the music that you make?

A) My music is ever-changing and, although it has pop and reggae elements, life is always changing, and I feel like whatever mood I’m in different styles of songs will come to suit the mood as life is ever changing. We go through ups, downs, love and loss and music is a personal way of letting out these emotions. For example, some of the songs I’m writing for my album have different feels and sounds. Some have a gospel feel, some have a pop feel, some have a reggae feel and some have an Afrobeat. I feel I do not want to be labelled with one genre. I do think the best songs I am going to write are yet to come and I actually think the next single I release will be the best one yet. It literally had me crying in the studio at the emotion of loss that I was feeling. One of the parts we did in one Take and my voice actually cracks in the middle of it and it shows a vulnerability. which is why we decided to keep it in. I want to keep evolving and I want to keep surprising people with the music I make and I just want to move people emotionally.

 

 

Q) Who are some of your musical influences?

A) My musical influences are life. I think the biggest influence on my music was the loss of my mother and then the loss of my best friend to cancer. Now, this may not sound like musical influences, but this was the catalyst that made me write down my emotions and really write songs from the heart in the first person and get out all my emotions. So, basically, life is my musical influence. I don’t tend to be influenced by music that I hear because I just think that’s a form of plagiarism and I think your music should come from your soul and your heart. So, life is the biggest influence I have. My life biography would be a fun read and I want to put that in musical terms. I think life is the biggest influence to my music.

 

 

Q) Talk about the story behind your new song “Butterfly Girls.”

A) “Butterfly Girls?” I was having life-saving surgery and coming round in the recovery room were two lovely nurses. Before I went under the anesthetic, I obviously wondered if I was going to live or die or come out the other side. And to come around in the recovery room to have these two nurses singing to me and telling me everything was okay – they were butterfly girls. And I went home from hospital, and I started writing “Butterfly Girls” thinking it was about all the nurses in the world that save peoples’ lives and then I thought that the first butterfly girl I ever met was my mum who carried me in her tummy for nine months. My mum was there, and she held my hand when I took my first breath, and I was lucky enough to be with my mum holding her hand when she took her last breath. So, she’s a butterfly girl. I think a butterfly girl is anyone who is in a difficult situation who can grow wings and fly out of that difficult situation. So, butterfly girls are all around us and they are fighters. They are spirited, they are tenacious, they are determined, and they are people, girls and guys, who need to grow wings to escape difficult situations.  Butterfly Girls always show kindness to others.

One of the last things my Mum said to me was “be a star,” so I don’t want to let her down!

 

 

Q) How does the video for the track play into the message behind it?

A) I was lucky enough to work with a very talented video director called Jason Flinter who heard the song “Butterfly Girls” and immediately fell in love with it and wanted to do a video.

 

 

Q) What kind of fan response have you been receiving to the single?

A) The song has luckily had lots of acclaim and it’s already been played on over one hundred radio stations, which I’m really pleased about, and the video has had over 40,000 views in two weeks, which is really pleasing. But more so what is really pleasing is people are commenting on the visuals of the video and how it fits together with the lyrics, and it gives people a feeling of hope and inspiration. And people are saying that they haven’t seen anything like that before, which is exactly what we wanted. We wanted to have girls flying in the video as Butterfly Girls and we finally achieved that in a neon world and in a jungle world. The response to “Butterfly Girls” has been brilliant and I’m really touched that it moves people. One person said to me it gives them hope and inspires them and that was what we aim to do from the outset. I have a dear friend in America in his last days of terminal illness and he wants me to succeed. This keeps me going every day. What was great was recently appearing on the BBC and the DJ was so touched by both my singles that he played movie town girl my first single and then “Butterfly Girls” in succession which brought a tear to my eye.

 

 

Q) What is your song writing process? Do you need music before you can create lyrics?

A) My songwriting process starts with a huge emotion. What do I want to say with this song? It has to have a huge theme for example movie town girl my first single was all about me falling in love with a famous actress. My second single “Butterfly Girl”s was about me having life-saving surgery and seeing butterfly girls as nurses or people who save other people lives. My next single is about loss and heartbreak and losing a love of my life and also the loss of my mother and my best friend and using these as metaphor for loss. So, I will start first with the big theme. It has to have a big theme song and then I start to sing along to some rhythms or some beats to write the song. And then I meet up with my producer and I play him what I’ve made up and he translates this to full song form. Then we have other engineers that work it up to the full production, with session musicians and our production techniques. So, it starts as an idea and I write the vocals and the melody, but the key thing is the theme of the song it’s got to have a huge, huge theme that I believe in lyrically and vocally to put in a good vocal performance, but then I have a team of producers around me to formulate the song to the end product. I’m also lucky enough to work with some of the best singers in Bristol and in my first single I worked with one of the greatest singers in Zimbabwe.

 

 

Q) How much of a hand do you have in the production of your music?

A) Oh, this is quite an easy question to answer. I oversee the song from its fruition to its ending and I’m invested all the way through the process, although I let my two producers make all the key decisions on how the song should sound at the end. I really try to keep away from those issues around mixing and sound because this is probably the hardest part of the song writing process – agreeing on the final mix! So, although I’m heavily featured all the way through and consulted, once we get near the end there’s a team of three of us and we all have to agree 100% that this is the final mix. Otherwise, we can go on forever and a day until we’re happy, but luckily enough with each song so far, we always get to that time between the three of us. We can decide, yes, this is it and we’ve got all got to be 100% behind it. So, I would say I have a big role but I’m in a role of three people that decide the final product.

 

 

Q) With “Butterfly Girls” out now, will there be a full album or EP coming in the near future?

A) An album is written, and we are currently mixing single number three as we speak, which we think will be a huge song. I hope to release another two songs before the end of 2024 an Autumn song and we’re gonna have a go at our first Christmas song. Things are getting exciting. Each song HAS got to be better than the one that came before!

 

 

Q) Where are some of your favorite places to perform and what makes those locations so significant to you?

A) I flew to Zimbabwe to shoot my first video and I did a couple of live performances there so that was a special place. As soon as I’ve released six singles, I will start touring substantially and everyone tells me that “Butterfly Girls” is an ultimate festival song. So, festivals will be a must.

 

 

Q) Who would you most like to collaborate with on a song in the future?

A) I made a pact with my late friend who I lost due to cancer that one day I would sing with Chris Martin of Coldplay, so that has got to happen one day. I’m not sure how it will happen but that’s going to happen because I made a promise.  We recorded a video together with me mentioning Chris Martin so who knows?

 

 

Q) What artist/musician are you currently listening to and why do you dig them?

A) How long have you got? I listen to a lot of music. I’m listening to a lot of Afrobeats at the moment and Rema’s “Calm Down” is one of my favorite songs of the last few years. I listen to Bob Marley a lot. I listen to The Police a lot. I really like Dua Lipa. I really like Sabrina Carpenter. I really like Billie Eilish. I really like Lana Del Rey. My favorite band are Interpol who are an alternative rock band, so I have quite an eclectic mix.

 

 

Q) What would you like to say to everyone who is a fan and supporter of you and your work?

A) I love you and thanks for listening. I write music from the soul to move people, to lift them up, to communicate and hopefully inspire and entertain. Thank you.