The Bittersweet Making of Tally Spear

Tally Spear’s music is orientated between two opposing ideas; the good and the bad, the hurt and the ultimate healing that follows. The very idea that these two things can and do exist at once is the very premise of her new EP, Bittersweet. Spear’s reality, and ultimately music has been drawn from grief after the sudden passing of her father.

Bittersweet was the only way I could describe what I was doing at that point, because it’s sweet to be able to make art and be creative, but the nature of where that stems from is sadness and grief at the time.

In the midst of this period Spear knew she had an EP to create, but whether she would deliver one was something that challenged her during this time. “My dad was a very big inspiration to me musically and there was a big part of me that was actually worried that I wouldn’t know how to write anymore, or I wouldn’t know how to be an artist anymore without his presence and his guidance in my life, and going through grief as intense as we were, I was like ‘how am I gonna create? How am I gonna find it within me to want to write music again?’” But she is now able to describe this EP as her evidence, “of evidence to myself that I can still create despite having gone through that and despite not having him there. It was proof that I still had it within me to do that.”

The EP consists of five tracks, all written within quick succession of one another. “The songs that are on the EP are the ones that I wrote in the space of a couple of months.” Tracks like ‘Upside Down’ are a clear example of how Spear builds concepts to explain heavy feelings like the isolation that follows in the aftermath of loss. Readjusting to a new normal in a place that was once so familiar is something she explores in particular. “The world around you can look and feel so distant and so dark depending on how you are.” “That’s how my house felt, going back to my parents’ house after such a sudden trauma that we went through and feeling like a stranger in your own home.” Seeing how art can echo and sometimes help make sense of reality is something Spear found comfort in. “I love it when there’s concepts in films or in books that kind of are thought provoking and echo things that I considered or am going through in my own life.”

It’s why her work draws on and discusses mental health in a very open way. Her most recent single ‘How Are You’ continues to explore these aspects without trepidation, in the process hoping to find a common ground with those who listen. “Whether they’ve lost someone as well, or whether they’re going through something unrelated to loss, but nevertheless with the theme of mental health, I like the idea of just using music to connect, so that’s all I can kind of hope for.”

Lyrically it approaches a reality that we all know too well; the decision to say ‘I’m okay’ versus the decision to open up and be truthful about our state of mind. It is just another example of how Spear captures the duality of life continuing amidst tragedy. She oscillates between these two opposing forces candidly and shares that even “before that period of time, I liked to write kind of emo songs that have undertones of emotion and dissatisfaction and things, but with also an air of defiance and inspiration, making it into a song that you can feel kind of empowered by as well.” Being lyrically driven by such themes but ensuring the production follows this defiant tone has opened up a new aspect of the music when performing it live. “Having never written songs with live performance in mind, it was interesting to see how the set flowed.”

The music that shaped Spear growing up has ultimately had an influence on the music she makes. Citing pop punk as an influence thanks to her older brother having been in a pop punk band while she was growing up, she favours both the genres of pop and rock for their melodies and composition. “Strong hooks, strong melodies, but also energy and fierceness, which is what pop rock and pop punk have.” It lends itself to her stage performances, influencing the way she sings these songs even subconsciously. “I did a show at Electric Ballroom a few weeks back opening for Bad Suns, and someone from the crowd came up to me after the set and he was like ‘I love the anger in your set and in your music.’ I never really thought I made angry music at all.” Relatively new to translating her recordings to the stage, they now influence and inform one another as Spear is “Trying new music on stage before releasing it.” Doing so is opening her up to “thinking about how you can bring more of that energy into the recording, and it’s an interesting way to do it.”

“I think one of the differences between my sound in the recordings and onstage is the energy… I think the rocky energetic, maybe angry element comes out more when I’m playing live.” Hearing the feedback from the people in the crowd is only opening up new facets for her to think about. “Maybe I need to lean into the anger a little more.” Despite the stage showing this new side of Spear, the new EP itself focuses on the core feelings that were shaping her life.

It’s softer and a lot more emotional than anything I’ve done before, but it represents a moment in time.

Despite this tonal shift, Spear always returns to the core music that she grew up listening to and surrounds herself with. “I’ve spent a long time experimenting with different styles and sounds and trying things out but I always seem to come back to this baseline foundation of what I was raised on, what I grew up with, which was a lot of pop rock music. Pop rock is kind of the thing in common that all of my eras still have, it’s got those pop tendencies.” It ultimately evokes the early 2000s music that she knows and loves. “I think it’s accidentally nostalgic, because it’s just my roots.”

Other influences include “Bob Dylan poetically and lyrically” but also The Beatles. Growing up like many young girls at the time she also traversed between the likes of Hannah Montana and Speak Now era Taylor Swift. Such wide ranging influences are an indication that lyrical content is at the forefront, hoping to help not only herself process life’s curveballs but also help others.

I hope that people feel connected to me, to someone else, who maybe understands how they feel, I hope people can just feel validated.

Upside Down follows such a throughline. “The song also talks about how carefully I tread and how much I worry.” “That excessive worried thinking, making decisions and doing the right thing to make the outcome the right outcome, and sometimes no matter how much you overthink something and carefully tread around the world, shit just happens.”

New experiences that include performing and touring are currently informing her own music making process, as having performed an unreleased track live for the first time she realised that “I actually prefer it onstage to listening to it.” “When I went on this six week tour in autumn it was the first time I really got to know myself as a live artist and my set as a live set and having never written songs with live performance in mind, it was interesting.” Between finishing the Bittersweet EP and now, Spears has been writing and experimenting. “ I think I’m just trying to figure out what makes sense as the next body of work and how all the new songs I’m writing relate to each other.” For now though, the focus is on the EP and the hope that people embrace it as much as she has; connecting the dots of her own narrative as well as hoping that others follow suit.

The origins of the Bittersweet EP are ultimately the origins of Spear. It is what makes her who she is today due to her life experiences and the music that soundtracked that time. “I think the EP is called Bittersweet because that describes where I was at at the time.” She tells me how upon her father’s passing she read the book ‘Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole’ by Susan Cain as a way to make sense of this tumultuous time, but the word itself also sums up what she is drawn to in terms of her writing style. “Bittersweet kind of describes my genre in a way, as well as the themes.” And if she were to sum up the body of work, she shares that “Bittersweet does sum it up the best. As a song lyrically, as a sort of piece it’s a summary of it all.”