Are you grateful for having won ‘New Zealand’s Got Talent’, or do you see it as something of an albatross around your neck?

It was a very surreal experience! It was only four years ago, but that does feel like quite a long time. It was a mixed bag to be honest: it was an amazing experience, and out of that I met a lot of really good musicians; I got to do recording in a studio which as a 15 year old is a pretty cool thing to have under your belt! But on top of that it meant that from a really young age, I suddenly had to decide whether I wanted to be a musician; whether I wanted to drop out of school; what kind of musician I wanted to be. Yet I was dealing with record labels, and obviously didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. As much as that though, New Zealand is a lovely place to have to go through something like that, because it is small, and the people there are really nice. Even though I was with a big record label they were really lovely and supportive. They accepted that I needed to take a step back and focus on my school, and now I’m in a position where I’m wanting to get back into music; I have that kind of experience under my belt so I feel more confident in dealing with those kind of situations now than I did when I was 15.

Do you think those kind of programmes are a legitimate and sustainable way for people to break through into the music industry? 

If you’re going into these kind of competitions with the mindset of ‘I want someone to make me famous, and I don’t have a vision or a plan’, then I think you’re setting yourself up for a fall. I think original music does make a big difference; I was adamant from my first audition that I wanted to do original songs, and I was pushed to go into the direction of doing covers, but I resisted and I’m really glad I did that. Writing your own music is what will give you an edge, because otherwise you’re dependent on a marketing team and a team of 100 songwriters trying to write a hit. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Do you think children or teenagers can work in the music industry?

It’s not about it being cut-throat, and therefore you needing to be older to fight. It’s more that when you’re a young person, you’re too busy trying to figure out who you are as a person, let alone who you want to be as a musician. I think that’s why I decided to put it all on hold; even now my music is constantly changing. It’s really important to be able to explore that in an atmosphere where you’re not under pressure to conform to some kind of commercial agenda. I was told this thousands of times as a 13 year old, and I never listened, and they’d say “you’re really good, but wait until you’re older”. Now, I just want to work on my music, but I would say that to anyone because it’s really important to take the time to let your music grow, because you don’t know everything! Even when you’re a 45 year old musician, you still don’t know everything.

Do you think that doing English Literature helps you as a musician?

I think anything helps you as a musician! That’s why I wanted to come to university, and while it’s impossible to do a degree and be a musician, because it is a full time job, I was clear that I wanted to do something that would make me think interesting things, and be exposed to interesting things. I’ve written a song that’s got Paradise Lost influences, which is very pretentious! It’s quite interesting thinking about poetry and lyrics, because it’s easy to think that writing a song is like writing a poem, but actually it’s quite different. A poem has nothing to support it: the rhythm and the melody of it has to come entirely from what’s on the page, whereas with songs you’ve got the advantage of melody to support it. I’ve been trying to make my lyrics as strong, poetically, as they can be. My rule now is that if it’s not good enough to stand on its own as a poem, then it’s not a good enough song. It means it’ll last beyond the melody.

What do you think about authenticity in music, and how important it is to write your own songs?

It’s really important for me; you can’t really say for anyone else. I think it depends on the authenticity of the song, rather than the authorship. I do find it a bit weird with some pop music, when you find out how those songs are written: they have 12 writers and they’ll choose one line from each. But I think that’s different from something like Beyonce’s Lemonade, which is obviously trying to get across a political message. I always struggled because I was a very guarded person, and I hated the idea of writing something that was really personal. But then I realised that people are inherently very selfish, and they’re only going to hear their own story. When I listen to music, I don’t care what Fiona Apple is going through, I’m thinking about how her lyrics explicitly relate to my life at that point, which is really liberating. While your Mum hears everything you’re saying, and questions you on every line, no one else will; they’ll hear themselves!  Songwriting should really be about is expressing the extremely personal in a way that’s universally understandable; and to come back to Fiona Apple, what I want to achieve, which I think she does, is using these really beautiful, poetic vagaries to get across really universal feelings. It’s universal, even though it’s such a specific circumstance.

From a musical standpoint, who would you cite as your biggest influences?

In New Zealand there’s this artist called Bic Runga, and she was probably my main influence as a child. I remember my Dad bringing me her CD back from New Zealand, and she was my main influence for a very long time. My voice sounded almost identical to her at the time, because I really liked her affectations. Following that, people like Passenger, whose lyricism I really admired: the honesty in his lyrics, and the simplicity in his music. Fiona Apple is probably my biggest influence at the moment; I really love the way her lyrics are so visceral, and she has really made me focus on trying to make my songs more like poetry, and making the lyrics part of the rhythm, rather than just having them sitting on top of the melody. Her songs go through really interesting modulations, and they take you places you don’t quite expect. 

Clara's Soundcloud page can be found at: https://soundcloud.com/clara-van-wel

Clara plays at Hot Numbers on Mill Road, on the 13th May