GIRLI on Fighting Back: Activism, Safeguarding & Turning Rage Into a Rallying Cry

0:00Eliza Hatch:Have you ever walked down the streets with your keys in your knuckles? It's something that a lot of women have done and do very often. It's something that men do probably quite rarely. And I think that the fact that as a guy, I'm saying that at the start of a podcast, and the fact that I know that the audience of this podcast skews ever so slightly more male than female, I just thought it'd be worth saying to start because it's a line from a brand new single from GIRLI. and it has an accompanying video which we'll get into in this interview which is really powerful it's powerful because it uses statistics alongside a song and a message one of the stats that comes up on screen is that 71 ,227 rapes were reported in 2024 in the uk and by the end of that year charges were only bought in 2.7 percent of cases and yet if you watch the news you would think that these cases are charged on much higher levels.

1:02Eliza Hatch:You would also not know that lots of rapes are not reported. And whilst this podcast will contain some triggering topics, I promise that it's not that heavy on the R word. It goes much more into harassment and systemic solutions, well, systemic problems and some of the changes that can happen to cause those solutions. and part of the reason for that is not only did girly make that great new track she's also been working with youth music who if you've been a regular listener to this podcast you would have heard her speak to the ceo and attend their awards they recently released a report called just the way it is and the report has 19 in-depth focus group testimonies and it has a social media snapshot of over 50 respondents.

1:52Eliza Hatch:There are some quite big stats in it. 72 % of people have felt unsafe in their working environment within the music industry, 90 % have been paid unfairly for their work, 90 % feel unable to speak up about unfair practices, 75 % have considered giving up their ambitions due to unsafe or unfair conditions and that relates to obviously the last two points there and then 85 % have felt inspired by artists like Ray. Youth Music calls that the Ray effect and if you've not followed what Ray's been talking about she has been brilliant at speaking up for rights, for payment, for people getting what they deserve.

2:31Eliza Hatch:So in this episode of the podcast I speak to Gurley and she talks me through why she's got involved in this kind of activism, some of the things that she's faced and some of the solutions that she sees. As you would expect from the Drown in Sound podcast, we are trying to help music fans make sense of these things so we can work together on some collective solutions. I think this episode will really engage a lot of men in a lot of the issues that men are not talking about. And in a week where the news is full of stuff that awful men are doing. I hope that the guys listening to this will tune in, lean in and think about what they can do going forwards.

3:16Eliza Hatch:As ever, I'll be back at the end of this episode, which is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Cobuzz, the ethical music streaming platform. And for this week's playlist, I decided to create a playlist entitled Believe Women. It opens with tracks by Tori Amos, Gurley and of course there is lots and lots and lots and lots and hours and hours of incredible music and I even included a few men there's some Nirvana and Fugazi on there if you're paying attention you will see some linked themes including people talking about having their keys in their fists. Simply head to dranninsound.org forward slash playlists and you'll find our companion playlist to this episode and lots to go with recent episodes plus a free 30-day trial to check out Cobuzz and listen to music in very high quality, which is very satisfying to my audiophile ears.

4:13Eliza Hatch:And also, yeah, it's just better to be paying the artists a little bit more every time you stream music. So yeah, head over to joinitsound.org forward slash playlists and you will find the playlist that goes with this episode.

4:49GIRLI:Hi, I'm Gurley. I am a singer-songwriter from London. Although singer-songwriter, I feel like, makes me sound like I'm going to be the female Ed Sheeran, which I'm like definitely not

5:02Eliza Hatch:it's very euphoric

5:04GIRLI:I know yeah it's more of a alternative indie pop vibe

5:11Eliza Hatch:asking artists to describe their own music is cruel

5:14GIRLI:horrendous no it's actually it's a disgusting question but yeah I think that's how I would describe it alternative it's getting angrier every album as well so yeah

5:28Eliza Hatch:pop alternative music You've just collaborated with one of our former podcast guests. Yes. From Cheer Up Love. How did that collaboration come about? And what can people expect from the video if they've not seen it yet?

5:40GIRLI:So I've known Eliza for a while and I've been following Cheer Up Love for a while. And I love the content she puts out. And when I wrote the song Slap on the Wrist, which is about the justice system, letting down survivors of sexual assault and the sort of systematic way that we dismiss victims um in society i just instantly thought of of her photo project that she started cheer up love with which was she would photograph women in places that they had been assaulted and it was like this really beautiful and harrowing and powerful kind of photo series because it was these women having the guts to go back to somewhere that was really traumatic um and say you know i want to reclaim this space but it was also amazing because it highlighted that you know sexual harassment and assault doesn't just happen down a dark alleyway by like a masked man with a knife you know it happens every day in normal places yeah places that you should be safe i mean you know everywhere should be safe for everybody but you know in the day at work pushing your baby in a pram you know and i just loved the concept of that photo series and um i messaged her i was like would you be down to direct a video version of this basically um and because the internet can be ruthless we were like okay we're not going to actually have real survivors in the video we'll get actors to sort of stand in for them but we will collect real testimonies of of you know experiences and we'll kind of put together a list so eliza collected loads of testimonies through the cheer up love instagram and we you know they were all anonymous and we had a look through and we were like okay a lot of people say they've experienced harassment at work in the office they've experienced it at home because you know the other thing is most of the time it is someone you know actually um they've experienced it walking in the park they've experienced it going for a run they've experienced it at the pub with their friends so we kind of put all these locations together and and yeah went out and and shot these kind of stills in these places and um we worked with Rape Crisis UK and Ireland and they they provided us with some statistics and so we kind of made this I guess sort of yeah documentary style video that that was like a pure kind of collaboration and yeah I'm so I'm so proud of it and it is like the dream combo for me of like music and creativity and then activism as well so no it was really powerful and when it popped up

8:45Eliza Hatch:I was like yes someone is because like I loved what Kate Nash did last year with the statistics yeah so good around trans rights yeah she's so inspiring the amount of like this podcast has become much more political like minutes before you came in I was just chatting to Gazelle Twin about boycotting King's Place there's Lockheed Martin with one of the sponsors and like we've talked about how things are funded how things are not funded but yeah looking at things like accountability in the industry is really challenging because obviously there's libel laws and things we can and can't say if we can't prove them but the statistics are undeniable like the low levels of convictions the yeah like consistent stories around the police like a friend of mine nina creswell is currently suing the police in up north um because she also managed to change the law with a good law project so that she could publicly name her abuser and that changed the precedent because it was in the public interest because he was a tattoo artist if I remember right so he would constantly have access so it's like that's a really big shift and I think that like Patsy Stevenson speaks really powerfully about how bad the police are in many different circumstances and i think that the data itself is much harder to argue with than yeah any individual anecdote any male supremacist translation of like well this woman might have been lying and what was she wearing and all those nonsense things that people say yeah and i think it was just really powerful to see it like pop up on my feed and um i knew you were already involved in the campaign with youth music um which is why i'd already asked whether you were free to pop on the podcast yeah um and I think that I'd be really curious as a musician growing up did you see other people doing this that sort of gave you a bit of a blueprint I definitely was

10:45GIRLI:really inspired by artists who were outspoken and who were unafraid to be themselves um I mean I grew up listening to Amy Winehouse who was your classic you know in quotation marks loud woman you know she she really had no fear um I listened to a lot of Lily Allen another artist who again was was gobby in the best way and you know Kate Nash actually that we've mentioned you know that was listening to her her first album and MIA was another artist I was listening to a lot who again has always been really political um and actually the other day something popped up on my feed of um Sinead O 'Connor which like she was in her heyday I was not born yet but um but I remember being so inspired by her and her story because you know she paved the way I mean she basically committed career suicide by calling out um the pope right the catholic church and uh in a time where like artists were just not being political unless it was something that felt really friendly political like palatable like you know oh i'm supporting this charity for you know hungry children it's like oh that's okay but you know if it's calling out sexual abuse within the church it's like get back in your place you know and i mean yeah there's a certain level i think

12:21Eliza Hatch:you can go to with a lot of protests before people are like no you've gone too far yeah right and it's actually because it's starting to resonate and it's starting to cut through and you're starting to speak truth to power rather than speaking truth people that don't have power or perceived power and i think that's a really because i think it's interesting with the data because i've seen a lot of the stats that you've put out and like i've also seen the campaigns around all of the like the stop the boats brigade talking about um the kind of like levels of sexual abuse from people that are immigrants and things like that and you're like the percentages are so like percentage of percentages versus the person that you're more likely to live with or be your teacher or be your priest or it's like the data is and it's but the data shows a system and i think the system people don't quite understand and it's i think it's really powerful to lay it out as starkly as you did whilst also having a song that people can bab to yeah i mean it it's so

13:30GIRLI:it's so like it's it's textbook that whole thing of um you know i was actually i'm reading this book called how to kill a witch a guide for the patriarchy which is um a book about the the women who were accused of witchcraft in scotland specifically scotland um in you know the the 1600s and it makes this point where it's like time and time again history repeats itself where where those in power will find a minority to scapegoat and tell everybody, look, all your problems are because of this group of people. So we're going to silence and eradicate them, and then everything will be good again. And it's to redirect the attention away from the fact that it's those in power with privilege who are actually ruining your lives.

14:28GIRLI:It's like they're the ones hoarding the wealth they're the ones you know they're the reason that the prices of milk are going up you know not the person who came to this country running away from war who just wants to like be a member of society it's like you know it's why the rupert murdoch cookie meme is so

14:47Eliza Hatch:powerful i haven't seen that so he's sat there and there's a guy with a cookie in front of him and it's like this guy wants your cookie and behind him are loads and loads of cookies oh my god yeah And it's such a simple meme. And it's like, I think for a lot of people, it's like, I keep seeing it shared and you're like, okay, you've finally got it. Yeah. Because it's such a penny drop thing to see it so viscerally.

15:08GIRLI:Totally.

15:09Eliza Hatch:I realize I'm not asking questions and making statements. But I think that's the interesting thing about when you lay out data, it provokes people to pay attention to the information. and i think that we live in a information age um but actually there's a there's a low level of knowledge and understanding and i think that if you can nudge those things out there whilst also making music that you're proud of like that's a big thing for an artist to do and i hope that other people look at what you're doing and go why aren't i doing that like joining those dots i think is really important um yeah so you're working with youth music on a report called just the way it is um which is a provocative question what did you discover that you didn't know about music from kind of reading that report yeah i mean unfortunately i didn't discover

16:05GIRLI:much that's new to me as an artist because i was like oh yeah all of this is painfully relatable um is it just the way it is no i mean that's the thing i mean i think that's such a clever title because it it's that thing of the amount of people who brush something off as well that's always the way it's been is the reason things stay stuck in this you know dysfunctional way is by saying oh well the music industry has always been uh corrupt dangerous um you know only for the privileged so whatever what's the point in changing it's like well the point is that so many people are suffering why would you not want to change that how did you end up working with youth music on the campaign i think i mean i saw um that they were doing this campaign they were putting together this report and it was just all i mean about stuff i've spoken really

17:04Eliza Hatch:openly about in the past people the kind of top level of what the report is before we talk about Yes.

17:09GIRLI:So the report is about experiences that young people have had in the music industry to do with discrimination, to do with unfair pay, to do with, you know, long, long working hours and issues around safety. And it's basically sets out all of the things that are wrong in, you know, how this industry operates for young people coming in and, you know, starting out. And I really related to that because, you know, I started in the industry when I was 17 and was so naive, obviously, because I was a teenager and, you know, had so many things. Now looking back, I'm like, my God, I was like really exploited there or, you know, I really should have been explained to what this contract is.

18:07GIRLI:and you know i shouldn't have been put in that room late at night in the studio with some random producer i'd never met and you know it's like safeguarding things and the report is called just the way it is question mark because that's something i think it's a tale as old as time of like oh it's always been that way yeah um that doesn't mean that it's right if you applied that

18:31Eliza Hatch:to evolution we would all still be in the sea so yeah so true it's like you'll be a little fish the music like i've worked in the music industry since i was 16 i worked in a record shop in a venue and then i started drowning sound when i was 16 17. i was doing my gcse's and stuff and i've seen the various eras of people calling things out people saying things are going to change hearing the most disgusting stories um being like being involved in a stalking protection order like knowing that the industry does not have a way of self-regulating because it's still freelancers it's still people that enter into it when they're 17 yeah who don't know what the industry's like who are told well that that's just the way things are yeah the industry hasn't for all the noise for all of the stuff that happened with me too like there hasn't been a movement moment in music really no and there hasn't really been changes like yes there are changes yes there's more visibility of women but there's also now more people in the industry than ever like yeah it's true there's less money than ever which makes things more precarious and makes the things that people will tolerate like the barriers of those things shift and yeah the power and manipulation that comes from that it's like they're all really like when you're not financially stable in a like like being in with a producer and it's like yeah it's either you're spending 500 pounds of your own money or they're doing you a favor by letting you have the studio for the day or something and it's like yeah all of those things yeah are the tale as old as time totally and yeah it's true it's like you know it's it's like the wild west there's no you know when there's no especially if you're an independent artist you know um it's like what where's the

20:28GIRLI:the hr department you know like there needs to be more put in place to support especially you know young people yeah because there's a lot of initiatives and i think the

20:39Eliza Hatch:thing that struck me when i read this report and some of its findings was just how much it sparked people to urgency and i think also if it can make younger people aware like this isn't normal like yeah these things are bad and they're bad at a scale but they're not normal like what did you think when you first saw the the sort of data points and things was there anything that

21:00GIRLI:stood out unfortunately i wasn't surprised um because i know from my experiences from all of my friends in the industry um but yeah like there is there is there are deep-seated issues with um and you know i don't know one artist who hasn't experienced either being paid unfairly um being blindsided legally you know cheated with a contract or being trapped in a deal they don't want to be or um you know being in an uncomfortable situation and they you know they don't they're scared to be blacklisted you know that was a big thing that came up in the report which is so so true as if people are interconnected

21:53Eliza Hatch:enough that you could blacklist anyone it would make any difference right but people think the

21:57GIRLI:industry is much more connected than it is right and especially when you're young you know and you're just like oh my gosh like if this if i if i speak out about this thing that's happened to me and then that person tells that person then my career's over you know because you think that You know, you think, oh, my God, this is my only way in kind of thing. And, yeah, you know, there needs to be so much more support for people to be like, no, I can call out bad behavior and my career is fine. It's going to be fine because I know I have this support network or I can go and get this grant or I can, you know, I don't need to rely on this one channel of income or connection, you know, connect or whatever.

22:40Eliza Hatch:you touched on something i was just about to ask the support networks have you found in speaking and being honest and being your true self and calling people out when you need to have you found that you've gravitated to groups and organizations and people that can provide that support i think well definitely being an artist who speaks out more online and in my music

23:04GIRLI:I've definitely found that my fans are an amazing, you know, source of validation of what I'm going through and I can connect with people. And I guess through that, you know, I also have met other artists who are experiencing similar things who will reach out and say, I saw that you posted about this happening to you. That happened to me. And, you know, that's a really amazing network. um but in terms of you know and i know i know there are some really amazing charities in in the industry who do offer support for me you know a big thing i've experienced is the mental health struggles that can really easily come up if you're you know it makes sense if you're an artist and then you're financially struggling and then you're also like in this really big confusing industry and there's a lot it's a real roller coaster there's a lot of ups and downs sometimes you can be doing really well and then you can suddenly not be and you know

24:10Eliza Hatch:that's really hard mentally you must have done some big shows and then the next day found yourself

24:15GIRLI:in co-op well right looking for milk or something yeah and been like you know so i think you know for me I was kind of lucky in that I was able to have my own support network you know I I can pay for therapy I have a supportive family I have supportive partner and friends but you know there are so many artists who don't have any of those things and um especially if you're an artist starting out and you're you know not you don't come from money you don't have you know a label deal yet or you don't have any kind of financial you know any investment i'm not surprised that so many people would just go i can't i can't do this i actually like mentally physically you know become discouraged really quickly and that's such a shame and also has an impact on you know the percentage of artists who are for example from working class backgrounds versus middle and upper class backgrounds and it becomes this really lopsided thing of well do the amount of artists does the makeup of the artists actually represent all of the people who want to be doing this or it's no it's just the people who can afford to

25:37Eliza Hatch:you know i now wonder how many of my episodes of this podcast you listen to because we talk about that a lot really yeah there you go um and i think that in amongst all of those things you often hear that like oh they just won't get out for it and all those it's like right if someone is going through a lot of the things you just talked about but they don't have the money to access support like there are organizations like help musicians and music minds matter that people can call and get support if they're musicians um i know that on the youth music site there's long lists of different resources and like lots of people have got good at compiling the resources um i worked on a project with someone called we are the music and all it does is lists all the different places to go if you're experiencing harassment and abuse and because it never actually been compiled anywhere and the most interesting thing was the un and the musicians union had a really similar campaign with the same name and they didn't know that the two campaigns existed and it's like so there's a lot of willing out there to make things better but it doesn't feel like again things aren't as connected as they could be and i think the very piecemeal fragmented way the industry works often things flow through the media so like i've spotted stuff because i've had press releases about four different campaigns and i search my inbox and i'm like oh this is the same campaign but that's that one yeah so i think that there's a lot of willing for things to change

27:07GIRLI:Hi there, it's Emma here. I'm gay crashing the podcast to quickly tell you about the Drowned in Sound newsletter. Every Wednesday, I invite myself into your inbox, with permission, of course, to share opinion writing and resources, tell you about cool things that you should be involved in within the world of music, activism, etc. I also bring track of the week and a little bit of hopeful news for you, because we all know that the news cycle can be grim at the best of times. Drowned in Sound newsletter every Wednesday in your inbox. Sign up now.

27:51Eliza Hatch:In terms of the kind of safety in the industry, what are some of the things that could be improved? Like you don't have to say stuff that's happened to you, but like what do you think would be some of the big things that you think would be beneficial to change i think safeguarding is so huge especially for young artists especially young artists from

28:18GIRLI:you know who are marginalized backgrounds or minorities you know i mean i remember being an 18 year old girl and you know being sent to LA on my own to go do two weeks of you know writing and it was just like well I don't know anyone here I'm on my own like this is the first time I've been to did you drive because I couldn't drive yet I like wasn't even old enough to like go.

28:51Eliza Hatch:Couldn't go to the drink. Couldn't go to the drink. Like most gigs are over 21.