MOLLY PAYTON: Do you really know how to have fun?

Words by Alex Cabré. Images provided.

Back in Aotearoa after living in London for three years, 19-year-old singer/songwriter Molly Payton is gearing up for the most exciting shows of her career so far. Over coffee in the Auckland sunshine, she exudes joy as we chat about ‘Porcupine’ and ‘Mess’, her two lush EPs released last year and bringing them to the stage for the very first time.

In April 2020, ‘Mess’ introduced Molly as a Kiwi kid kicking about in the UK with a knack for romantic guitar ballads, but her story started long before. Trained on the piano from age three - her mum’s decision, she notes - it wasn’t until recently she began channelling her talent into original material.

The catalyst? Moving from the Auckland house where she’d lived her whole life to the bright lights of London. There she befriended Oscar Lang and beabadoobee; wunderkinds signed to Dirty Hit, the hit-machine label of The 1975. It was Oscar who helped coax out her very first songs: “He gave me the confidence to record something on his laptop and put it on SoundCloud”. 

Of those early cuts, ‘1972’ is a highlight. With lyrics like “Cocaine, Kerouac, gin and juice”, the intent was “roasting soft bois, basically”, she laughs. “I went to this school in London that was very arty and loads of the boys there were like if you turned @beam_me_up_softboi into a real person. I think some of them were aware of it and up-played it”.

Sonically ‘Mess’ is a raw and vulnerable affair that takes cues from the most pared-back sounds of Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, and Nick Drake. “I think there’s a lot of honesty in those artists”, she muses, referencing the poetic nature of their lyrics as much as their technical simplicity. “I don’t like having anything in my music that I couldn’t replicate live. I used to be a very big purist. I wanted bass, drums, guitar, vocals—basically just guitar music. A lot of those songwriters never used synths... or, in the stuff that I like by them anyway”.

Released last October, her second project ‘Porcupine’ is a fuller, more upbeat experience. Written a full two years after ‘Mess’, its development was a conscious choice: “For a long time, song-writing for me was just picking at emotional scabs to make myself bleed until I got a fucking good song out of it. After ‘Mess’, which was very sweet and very sad and very 16, I wanted to have fun, and so I wrote ‘Porcupine’”.

This change is clearest on the wickedly hooky slacker-bop ‘How To Have Fun’, and ‘Warm Body’, on which she tears into some unspecified guy, showing off her no-fucks-given attitude. It drew from the the “vulgarity” of 60s artists like The Velvet Underground and The Rolling Stones, she explains. “I love vulgarity, especially as a girl. I had this whole thing where I wanted to be the female Mick Jagger for a while”, she smiles. “I wanted to write about men how men used to write about women. ‘Warm Body’ was me being like, ‘I want to fucking objectify you!’ I had this streak where I wanted to be a female it-man, you know? I’m kind of over that now; I just want to be a nice person”.

Because both EPs were released during the UK’s lockdown, her upcoming shows in Auckland, Lyttleton, and Wellington will be the first time most of the tracks have ever been played live. Her anticipation is tangible. “I’m probably gonna cry! I feel like this tour is me finally being able to celebrate the fact that I’ve released music. I’m not nervous at all, I’m just excited, and I feel like we’ve put a set together that’s just fun”. She’s been working on a special cover with her band and - spoiler alert - ‘fun’ is definitely the word.

Looking to the future, she oozes optimism. With a third EP in the works co-written in part by Jimmy Hogarth (Amy Winehouse, Paolo Nutini) big things could well be on the way for this promising new talent, who is also, as it happens, super modest. “It’s so weird to me, the idea that people who don’t know me are listening to my music”, she says. “When someone says they listen to my music I’m genuinely like, ‘What do you mean? Sorry?’” 

She’s ambitious, though, for what her music can become for people: “My whole purpose with music now is, I want to provide people with comfort. When I listen to all my favourite songs, they feel like a hug. I want people to listen to my music and feel that when they’re sitting alone in their room. She pauses. “That’s so soppy!”

For now, the novelty isn’t lost that she’s in a position that countless performers around the world are craving so desperately - being able to get up in front of a room full of people and perform her songs. “It feels like such a privilege... I’m gonna give it my fucking all. I’m gonna be crying by the end of it, and everyone else will be too.” 

Tour dates - tickets available from LiveNation

Whammy Bar, Auckland - Thursday 18th February

Wunderbar, Lyttleton - Friday 19th February

Moon, Wellington - Saturday 20th February