One of the best things about having my new home studio is that I can work on session vocal jobs as well as songwriting pitches - and today I found out my vocals have been taken for a TV spot in Italy for Brancamenta Liqueur. This was a fun little job and I’m really happy to be involved! It will be airing in Italy from this week :)
I now have a Songwriting Showreel online featuring all my major cuts and placements from the last few years - it feels like such an achievement to see them all together in one place! Looking forward to getting this out there to people and hopefully finding some new work from it. Thank you to all the co-writers, producers and song pitchers who made these placements possible and thank you Matthew Harrison for putting the showreel together for me. I'd love to know what people think! :D
This week I launched a brand new pop music podcast which I have made with my bestie Paul Lees - RATE MY BOP!
In this show we discuss the back catalogues of all our favourite pop artists, rating every one of their albums and going through stats, facts, highs and lows of every era. The first artist of the show is Little Mix and we will also be discussing Paloma Faith, Lily Allen and Avril Lavigne in the coming months.
This is something we did for fun and we’ve had such a laugh making it - we’d love it if people listened and joined in the debate!
Thank you so much to the Portsmouth Evening News for featuring me in this double page article in last night's paper! The piece is all about writing for the J-Pop and K-Pop market, songwriting camps, making musical friends, Honeymooning in Japan and even a little about my fiction books. I am very chuffed to have been labelled "The K-Pop Queen" of Pompey! It is so lovely to get support from my city and all my friends and family, thanks to everyone who has read it! You can access the digital version of the piece at the link below:
This week sees the release of the first full-length album by K-Pop band OH MY GIRL. “The Fifth Season” features Shower as Track 2 which is a song I worked on with Steven Lee and Willie Weeks.
The girls have been performing the song across TV stations in Korea as part of their album promotion and Steven who is in Seoul at the moment says he can hear “Shower” being played on the streets and in shops everywhere he goes! It’s been so lovely to be involved with this release and to also hear all my ad-libs in the track exactly as I wrote them! Watch one of the TV performances below:
This morning I woke up to the news that Red Velvet performed You Better Know on The FACT Music Awards in Korea - this is a huge fan-voted awards show that all the big K-Pop stars attended including BTS! This song which I co-wrote with Kanata Okajima and Pontus Persson is now 2 years old, but still getting so much support from ‘Reveluv’ fans on Twitter, it’s such a lovely boost to see it being performed again and have people talking about it. Thanks RV fans!! And congrats Red Velvet for 2 award wins too!
Ridiculously excited to announce that two of my co-written tracks are being featured in the Disney Channel show Penny On M.A.R.S this month! The story follows a girl named Penny and her friends/love interests at a prestigious music school, It’s such a cute TV show and it is honestly a dream come true to be involved with music for Disney!
All For One has two videos so far - an official lyric video (above) and the TV version (below). This was a song I toplined solo to a track from Enrico Kikko Palmosi and team, and I am soooo proud that it was my first cut from my new home studio!
Timeless is a song by Enrico and team which they asked me to contribute a rap section to. I am not normally asked for my rap skills so it was really awesome to be asked and use a different skill for a music job. The song is so beautiful and I’m thrilled to have been involved in a small way.
You can watch All For One on Season 2, Episode 5 and Timeless will follow - and maybe it will show up in a few more episodes! Thank you to all the writers involved, Baby Angel Music in Italy and 3ZERO2/Disney Channel for the amazing opportunity!
I was recently interviewed by the subscription box service Inspire Me Korea for their monthly magazine. Louisa from the company asked me lots of very thoughtful questions about songwriting for the K-Pop market and musical goals for the future. She also interviewed my good friend Val Del Prete about her K-Pop experiences.
It was so lovely to be part of the magazine and you can now read the full article online too:
INSPIRE ME KOREA FULL INTERVIEW - CLICK HERE!
Last night one of my co-written tracks Dancing With The Stars (written with Ash Hicklin, Pete Barringer & Chris Wortley) was performed on the first heats for Lithuanian Eurovision. Sadly the judges didn't score it enough to make the next round, but Voldemars and his team gave a heartfelt, artistic performance to be proud of. This was an older song that I wasn't sure would find a home, so I'm still really pleased it got a moment to shine on TV!
For those who may be watching the English dub of anime movie Dragon Ball Super Broly over the new year, listen out for the English version of Blizzard by Daichi Miura which features lyrics by myself and my friend Kanata Okajima.
It’s always so exciting and challenging to rewrite foreign songs into English, making sure to keep the original meaning whilst also keeping the right flow and rhythm. We put our all into this and feedback from fans has been incredible. The video is already up to 300k views which is a huge achievement - I can’t wait for the movie to hit UK cinema screens at the end of Jan!
Happy New Year everyone! And what a nice way to start 2019 with the news that Kana Nishino released a tour DVD over the Christmas period including my co-write Best Friends Forever.
It’s so magical to see such a huge crowd listening to one of my tracks and I can’t wait to see the live performance - the DVD also went straight in at #1 on the Japanese DVD chart! I am unsure if it stayed there for the official weekly charts or whether it slipped to #2 (can someone please help me navigate Japanese news sites?! haha), but either way, I’m so proud to have been involved with the release, woohoo!
If you’re feeling festive, Reasons To Love A Nerd Like Me - The Christmas Special is now available to download on Kindle, or read on KDP select! This short story is about Scotty searching for the perfect present for Vincent and is designed to make you feel warm, cosy and fluffy over the holidays.
Buy on Amazon UK
Buy on Amazon US
The audiobook edition of Reasons To Love A Nerd Like Me is now available to download from Audible! I narrated the story myself and I’m so excited for fans of Scotty & Vincent to hear all their favourite scenes come to life.
The audiobook is 11-hours long and £22.89 to download, or one Audible credit. Check it out at the links below:
UK Audible Link
US Audible Link
Happy to announce that the new advert for Italian tights brand Golden Lady features my session vocals! This was a job where I was hired to sing a pre-written song, however I loved singing such a beautiful track and I’m so excited to hear my vocals on this super-chic ad.
Thank you Sing Sing in Italy for the job, hope to work on more in the future!
Hi everyone!
I'm really happy to announce that I am performing a headline show on Sat 2nd June at The Wave Maiden in Portsmouth. The tickets are £4 in advance (if you get in contact with me or on the event page) or £5 on the door.
This is my first full-length slot for a really long time and I'm so excited to be performing a set of brand new material!
Support will be from acoustic singer-songwriter Marley Blandford.
Hope to see you there!
The next book in my Love Stories series is now available to buy or rent from Amazon Kindle!
Taylor & Benjamin's Love Alphabet is a collection of mini-stories from A to Z all about the characters Taylor and Benjamin from my novel Could You Love An Apple?
I'm super excited to release all the romantic, unwritten moments from two of my favourite characters and continue their story on in this novella. A huge thank you also goes to Kendal James from Eyecandy Designs for yet another beautiful cover design in the series.
Click here to buy from Amazon!
Last year, my Swedish friend Malin Johansson asked me to help with English lyrics for a track she was working on with her co-writers - I am pleased to announce that Disarm Me has now been remixed by Dutch DJ Sem Vox and released on the dance label Armada Music. So happy to have been involved with such an awesome track! Malin's vocals sound amazing and the video has already hit 8000+ views in one day! Good luck with the release everyone and thanks to Malin, Sem Vox, Simon Jacobsson and Sonny Grootscholten for the collaboration.
K-Pop girl group Gugudan have taken my co-written track "Silly" for their new single album titled "Cait Sith". I wrote the song with Kirstine Lind and youwhich during a Danish writing camp a few years ago, and it's second on the tracklist. I'm so happy that such a fun, happy song got taken - especially with a band who have such a dedicated following. Take a listen to the song in full below!
FAKY are finally coming to the UK! The J-Pop girl band have signed with a new UK management team and I'm very excited to announce that I worked on the English lyric translation of Someday We'll Know.
This was a very different way of working for me as I wanted to keep the meaning of the original (written by my friend Kanata Okajima) as well as keeping the original's English phrases in the same place. It was definitely a challenge, but I hope that fans will enjoy the new English version. Fingers crossed the girls will tour here next year too, eek!
Very excited to announce that Best Friends Forever written by myself and Chris Wortley has been cut on the new album Love It by J-Pop superstar Kana Nishino.
The album reached #2 in the official Japanese Billboard Charts and best of all, I was in Japan during the promotion of the album and even got to hear the song playing in the HMV Kana Pop-Up Cafe! Such an amazing experience :)
