July 11, 2024 at PDT
Vertigo
When Griff was writing her debut album, she went alone to a variety of homes and Airbnbs to get it done. That’s how the UK singer, songwriter, and producer (real name Sarah Griffiths) found herself in Imogen Heap’s old home, now a residential studio, piecing together song ideas. The house was round, and in the middle was a staircase. During a FaceTime call with friend and collaborator Congee, they both noted how the stairs might give you vertigo. But the album’s title has a more layered meaning, too. “It’s this idea of vertigo in an emotional sense,” Griff tells Apple Music. “All of these songs are written from a place of autobiographical, emotional vertigo. The physical condition of vertigo is the idea of dizziness and a loss of balance and the world spinning and not really being able to grapple and find your feet in all of that.”
Vertigo arrives three years after Griff won the prestigious Rising Star award at the 2021 BRITs, having started as a teenager teaching herself production via YouTube. A lot has changed since then, but much of this record’s DNA is still in that DIY place. “The genesis of almost all these ideas has been me by myself making beats and lyrics,” she says. (She also worked closely with her core team of Congee, Lost Boy, and Siba, who she says are “like brothers” to her.) The result is a debut record about losing parts of yourself to time and hurt, and wondering if you’ll ever get them back—and a collection offering a vast array of feelings and energy. Here, her big, unfaltering voice is met with synth, piano, and guitar, all drenched in both euphoria and melancholy. “I love how in pop you can have such a spectrum of feeling,” says Griff. “That’s really the goal for me with this album—that people are moved, whether it’s that they want to dance and scream it out and it’s super cathartic, or they hear all the notes of loneliness and sadness in there. I wanted to explore the most extreme emotions.” Here, Griff dives into her debut, one track at a time.
“Vertigo”
“The song’s really simple at its core. Congee and I wrote it all over one note, so it doesn’t really change. It was only later that we started putting in chords and the bridge to make it feel like it’s building. We created that climax journey where all the synths are getting more and more layered, and that was very much to create that vertigo feeling. I really love the production, and I love that the drums and the rhythm are very hip-hop-inspired, even though it’s such a pop tune. Even the BPM of it, I think we were very much inspired by old James Blake beats and 808s & Heartbreak and that world. It’s fun to disguise those kinds of rhythms and grooves in a pop melody.”
“Miss Me Too”
“I wanted to write a song about the idea of missing an older version of yourself for a while. There was a version of yourself that used to exist that wasn’t so heartbroken, it wasn’t so cynical about love and people, and it had this trust in the world that you feel like you’ve lost. I wrote this with Lost Boy and Siba—Lost Boy came in with the more pop, almost dance-y piano chords. And it just felt right that it would be super euphoric. I like the sense that it’s not really a love song; it’s more a conversation with yourself and about trying to get yourself back.”
“Into the Walls”
“This is one of the first songs I wrote on this album. Again, I love that it’s not really a love song. It’s basically about being at such a low, numb point in yourself that you look at the walls around you and you’re almost jealous of their existence because at least they’re strong and they can hold something up and can watch the world go by. And that’s almost more than you can say for yourself. It’s a bit of a stream of consciousness. It’s all pretty true to the first time I improvised it. ‘Today, I really, really don’t think I can do this’ is the essence of the song. And it’s that fantasy, it might be nice to disappear and to not be in my body for a second. It’s quite an innocent metaphor, but also very heart-wrenching.”
“19th Hour”
“This is probably the one I mainly produced for myself. It’s about how hurtful the words ‘I love you’ can be when it’s not said because someone means it, but almost as a last resort, or just as a way to cover up all of the issues. And it’s about being almost too optimistic. I feel like in a lot of our lives, we can be pessimists with everything, but actually when it comes to that one person, for some reason you’re an optimist, hoping they’ll change, hoping they’ll stick around, hoping it’ll turn a corner. It’s sitting in that place of knowing maybe things aren’t right but wanting them to be. The production really sums up the album to me, because it starts off in a super melancholic way, but it builds into such euphoric big drums and those big stabs.”
“Astronaut”
“I was alone in a house, sitting at the piano. I started with the chorus lyric: ‘You said that you needed space/Go on then, astronaut.’ It’s got this tongue-in-cheek style. That line kind of came out of nowhere, and then made sense to what I was trying to write. It’s almost dealing with rejection by going like, ‘Go on then. But it really hurts. But go on then.’ Everyone’s got this weird mindset with dating where there’s a million fish in the sea, and everyone’s constantly thinking the grass is greener, and there’s more out there. I wrote it originally on piano, and then for some reason shied away from that and produced it up into something that was a lot more synthy and almost spacey. I’m so glad that with Chris [Martin], we ended up stepping it back and putting it on piano again, because I think the lyric deserves that. It was surreal having Chris on it [Martin plays piano on the track]. And very special.”
“Anything”
“It’s almost a song of trying to figure out, ‘Do you realize the hold you have on me? And if you do, that makes this even more dark, and I’m letting you know I would’ve done anything you wanted.’ That’s why that lyric is screamed. It’s like you’re almost trying to get through to this person. It’s from a young female perspective. Often you get into relationships where there is a power imbalance, especially if it’s a first real love or a first real feeling of attachment to someone. Again, the production’s super upbeat and super cathartic and epic, and I love how dramatic the lyrics are in the chorus. The bridge is more in hindsight: It’s that feeling of how, at the end of something, often it’s your confidence that’s been completely ripped from you.”
“Pillow in My Arms”
“It’s the most reminiscent of some of my earlier stuff, because this one really was just me on production. It’s about loneliness and the idea that at the end of everything, once you’ve lost everything or everyone, maybe your pillow is your only companion. It almost reminds me of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, where she’s still in her wedding dress. You’re going through this denial and insanity, talking to this pillow as if it’s a human. And the production has that groove, and it’s really simple. It’s that one riff at the beginning that grows and grows throughout the song.”
“Cycles”
“I went on a writing camp with Congee, and we were put in a room with these amazing songwriters, Vera [Carlbom] and Minna [Koivisto]. Minna’s DNA is more in the dance world, so the original track was a lot more dance-y. By that point, I was aware the album was about vertigo and spinning, so it felt really natural to write these lyrics. It’s about how there’s not a linear chronology to heartbreak—you think you’re done, then you’re not, and it’s an endless cycle, and you’re exhausted, but at this point you’re just dancing in it. I got back to London and asked if Mura Masa would be down to reproduce it. We’ve worked together a little bit before. I’m a really big fan of his sound. He was an influence when I started out producing myself. So, it was a dream come true, and you can really hear his sonic stamp on it.”
“Tears for Fun”
“One of the really euphoric ones. I wanted to sing it with a big audience. I guess the concept is a question between yourself or God or something where you’re like, ‘Will I always be collecting tears for fun?’ It feels like, at this point, that’s what I’m doing. The chorus makes me feel really moved and like I want to yell it. I definitely think there is a second layer when you are a writer or a creative where you’re like, ‘Am I getting myself into these situations for the story of it?’ It’s all of those questions. I was listening to a lot of ’80s music, like Yazoo’s ‘Only You.’ I wanted to inject a bit of that into this song.”
“Hiding Alone”
“The song’s about that one person almost being your force field to the world. That one relationship or friendship that, when you’re with them, it’s almost like the rest of the world can disappear for a second, and that safety has been your bedrock. And as soon as that disappears, you’re like, ‘Whoa, who am I? What am I?’ I like it because it’s one of the only guitar songs in the album, but it just felt right.”
“Hole in My Pocket”
“In this album, there are a lot of metaphors and visual analogies about the idea of loneliness. On this, it’s feeling like you’ve got a hole in your pocket because you can’t explain why you’re in this place, losing things. There are romantic undertones to all of the songs, but a lot of them aren’t particularly romantic for me. At this stage in life, a lot of relationships are shifting, and with the nature of my life—going from COVID to touring to moving out of home, living by myself—so much about the relationships in my life is shifting. You’re entering adulthood and reflecting on what relationships matter and what relationships weren’t right.”
“Everlasting”
“I want to believe in the everlasting in that I want to believe that love can last and be good. But often, everyone carries a little bit of generational baggage into their relationships. And I especially think that’s real when you come from different ethnic backgrounds but grow up in the UK; you have a different idea of what relationships look like. I’ve always really been aware of my upbringing not being the tidy, neat picture of what often we see. I was always so aware because, culturally, I’ve got a Jamaican dad and Chinese mom. My whole upbringing was hectic in so many layers, in so many different ways. You’re confronted with it at different stages in your life. And in school, you’re confronted with it on maybe a beauty-standard level. But as you grow older, it dribbles into your relationships and everything. It’s a complex thing that will keep unraveling.”
“So Fast”
“With the journey of the album, it’s like we’ve built up to this bit and then it’s almost calm, simmering down, with lots of reflective songs at this point. It’s essentially a folk song, and again, it’s nearly a love song but not quite—it’s still from a point of loneliness. It’s about the end of the night or a party or whatever, and you’re having this moment with someone, and you’re like, ‘Actually I don’t want you to go so fast because I’m really lonely.’ But it’s almost like you’re too lonely and polite to say that outright. So, you’re like, ‘You don’t have to go right now if you don’t want to.’ It’s from someone who’s quite broken and doesn’t really want to put themselves out there. But it’s like, ‘I could watch everyone else disappear, but if you could stay here for a moment, that’d be really nice.’”
“Where Did You Go”
“I wrote this around the same time as ‘Into the Walls,’ so you can see where my head was at. I guess it’s a less conventional pop song. It felt right to keep it on vocoder and sprinkle around elements of synth. The story is basically about someone going missing in your life, and it splits into two halves. The first is like, ‘Where did you go? I’ve been looking everywhere,’ and then the second half is the person that’s gone missing going, ‘Sorry, but I’m leaving.’ For me, it was written about the idea of fleeing the nest and the guilt of that—a conversation between a parent and a child. But I’ve left it open—you could also hear it in a relationship sense. It’s the question of the album. I’m asking it about myself: ‘Where did I go?’”
19 Tracks
