Having just turned thirty this summer, Nina Nesbitt takes a pause to look back at the songs that have shaped her, talking Thomas Turner through the tapestry of the mood board for her fourth studio album, Mountain Music.
“All the songs on my car rides know me better than my ghosts,” Nina Nesbitt sings on “Pages,” a single released ahead of Mountain Music, and a vignette of what promises to be her most confessional, reflective and piercing album yet.
Indeed, not only does music have the power to soundtrack significant moments in our lives, accompanying us when experiencing intrinsically personal emotions - whether that's contemplation, break-ups and celebrations – but it also can be the very thing that strikes a chord and inspires those transient and all-important decisions to be made.
On an uncharacteristically drizzly September morning, we spend an hour with Nesbitt discussing the most impactful songs of her life, and she starts by explaining how she approached her Nine Songs selections.
“I’ve picked songs that have either inspired me creatively or marked a significant time in my life,” she shares behind a thickly woven turtleneck. “Mountain Music is a very reflective album, mainly from my 20s to my 30s, but these songs span across my whole life and have been real moments for me.”
Whilst Nesbitt has been in the spotlight for over a decade now and has always loved songwriting, Mountain Music represents something of a fresh start. After leaving her record label to start her own, Apple Tree Records, and finding herself with a “Monday to Friday job writing for other people,” she recounts some love lost in her own musicianship after the release of her pop-speckled and melody-forward album Älskar in 2022.
“I didn’t really have any intention of putting another album out because it’s a very weird time being an artist right now, and I found on my last one I was actually making no music, it was all just social media stuff. I really wanted to reconnect with music.”
However, having pawed over the cathartic folk of Bon Iver and Sigur Rós in the making of Mountain Music, Nesbitt recalls the ease with which the new album flowed out of her when she started writing. “It took two or three months, all sat in this room.”
She gestures to a piano and a guitar in a case that sit just out of frame behind her, “recording it was a little more tricky, all over three days in a studio in Devon with live musicians. It was a really natural album to make, but I definitely had to let go of a lot of the stabilisers that pop music gives you. It was really liberating, it felt like an escape for me.”
That feeling of release is woven into the album itself: of running away from the shackles of the city and fast-paced pressures that come with it, of returning to nature and restarting. A true champion of the cohesive and well-conceptualised album cycle, Nesbitt has laid out clear markers for the visual, material, and sonic aesthetic behind Mountain Music.
Atop a graphics-coloured forest-neutral on Instagram she explains that the album is “wet hair dried naturally,” “knitwear, wool, hand wash only,” and “bio-dynamic wine. Not sure what it is, but it’s everywhere.”
Having gifted five singles from the project, she brims with equal enthusiasm about its release so far, ready to usher in so-called “mountain season” proper. “I am so excited to get it out into the world. When I finished this album last year, I wanted to put it out as a whole, just get it out there” she explains.
“It’s such a product and a body of work that it was hard to decide how to roll the singles out, and I’m so excited for people to finally get the full picture. It’s a bit of a genre shift for me and listening in full will let people see the whole world around the album.”
Celebrating her thirtieth birthday in about as Mountain Music style as one can manage in central London, Nesbitt recently opened for Stevie Nicks at BST Hyde Park. “Stevie Nicks has always been a huge inspiration of mine whether that be music, fashion, hair — she’s got it all. I didn’t even know it was happening until quite close to the gig. I said to my mates as a bit of a joke that I’m turning thirty, let’s celebrate it there and see if I can get on the bill”, Nesbitt recalls.
“We were manifesting with our crystals very Stevie Nicks style. And then it happened! It was the best birthday present.”
In an apt and interesting twist, Nesbitt’s Nine Song choices both tell the story of her falling in love with music as a teenager, but also her re-earthing her passion for the craft as an adult.
In making Mountain Music she absorbed herself into her treasured list of old, reliable, car ride accompanying favourites, allowing us a glimpse into why these songs may know her better than her ghosts.
“Songbird” by Eva Cassidy
NINA NESBITT: I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I heard this, but I was a child, I’m going to guess maybe eight or nine. I grew up with non-musical parents. My mum is Swedish, so we had a lot of ABBA in the house – stereotypical pop mum! I had a lot of favourite pop divas: Mariah, Britney, Whitney, Cristina, all of those artists. I loved reading the lyrics in the albums and singing along but I just didn’t have a voice like any of them.
I don’t know who gave us the Eva Cassidy Songbird CD but I put it on and I remember instantly being so relaxed, so calm. Her voice is incredible, and she has a really interesting story, she didn’t release much music and she tragically passed away quite young. I remember being really interested in that story and thinking that her music was going to live on forever, it’s so beautiful.
I became totally obsessed with those songs and “Songbird” was one of my favourites. It was the moment I realised you don’t need to be a big belter of a singer to be able to sing, and it encouraged me to find a way of using my voice that felt natural. I loved the stripped back nature of it. It’s the first piece of music that I heard and wanted to try myself.
BEST FIT: I noticed you talked about this song ten years ago, and it’s still making the cut all these years later. Do you still listen to it just as much, and find it as impactful?
I actually haven’t listened to that album in a long time, but I watched an Eva Cassidy documentary recently. I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I believe some of her songs were recorded live at a gig and the vocals are just absolutely flawless. I remember being blown away from it. I think I watched it last year at some point on YouTube - I love a documentary on YouTube - but maybe I need to listen to the album again.
“Fifteen” by Taylor Swift
NINA NESBITT: This was a huge moment in my life and in my career. I was at the back of a music class at school, I heard “Love Story” playing on the radio and I remember thinking, ‘This girl is so young and is living her dreams, whilst singing about things that feel relatable to me’.
Now looking back, a lot of the songs I was listening to as a kid and a teenager were by female pop stars but written by men, and you can hear it now. That’s why Taylor Swift struck a chord with me, because it was a young girl telling her own story and it felt so real. She understood those nuances that people who weren’t a young girl wouldn’t have picked up on.
“Fifteen” was the standout for me. I think I was fifteen, or around that age, when I heard it - it just described everything. The heartbreaks, the things you feel at that age. I find it so inspiring, the idea that someone can pick up a guitar and change their life.
I was feeling really trapped where I was living, in a little village in Scotland. I never had access to a studio, or producers, or a label, and I was always thinking ‘How am I going to get out there?’ This song inspired me to get out there, grab a guitar and do it.
BEST FIT: You saw Taylor at The Eras Tour this summer. How was that? Is there an era of Taylor’s that you gravitate more towards or are they all pretty constant in your life?
I was surprised at The Eras Tour because I thought I was a folk girl at heart. I’m obviously a huge Swiftie and have loved all the albums, but I’ve gravitated towards the deep cuts, the lyrical ones like “All Too Well” and the songs on folklore and evermore. I’ve always loved her pop songs – I just don’t typically listen to that type of music as much.
At The Eras Tour, all of my favourite performances were the 1989 and Red bangers and I was like, ‘Ah, I completely get this.’ It was amazing to hear the crowd singing the words and it was such a euphoric feeling hearing those songs live.
I love her lyrics. To be honest, when I listen to any music, I’m only ever listening to the lyrics. I don’t really care about the chords and the melody is just subconsciously going in. I love reading books, I love listening to the songs for the lyrics and Googling them after. She is an amazing lyricist.
“You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette
NINA NESBITT: This again was a huge song for me to discover. I didn’t grow up with any rock or grunge or any of those genres. I’d heard Nirvana, but that was probably about it.
I was living in London in my manager’s spare room, I think I was about seventeen or eighteen. I was going through a breakup, and it was bad. I remember being sat in her car and she told me ‘You need this song, you should listen to it, it’s just pure rage and it’s everything you’re feeling.’
I listened to it and was like, ‘Woah, this woman is not holding back,’ and I loved that she was saying everything I felt but was too scared to say. I love that about songs or books, whatever it is, when people catch what it is that you think is such a personal feeling that you shouldn’t be having, and they put it into words and validate it.
I always keep that song in the back of my head when I’m writing songs and say to myself ‘Don’t be afraid to go there, don’t be afraid to really say it.’ It inspired my track “The Best You Had.” I wanted to write my own version, and that’s been my most successful song, so “You Oughta Know” is really important to me.
“Skinny Love” by Bon Iver
NINA NESBITT: I was maybe fifteen or sixteen, and I started being an indie girl. I cut an emo fridge and was wearing cardigans. I decided I was going to be a folk girl and this song was my first discovery of that world of music. My friend Vicky, who is still one of my best friends, used to make me playlists at school, she said I needed to listen to this artist, being a tastemaker, and sent me “Skinny Love.”
It sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, and the words didn’t really make sense to me, but I loved them. I listened to the whole album, For Emma, Forever Ago. It captures such a world and such a feeling when I listen to that album, it sounds like I’m in the cabin where he made the album.
I loved how experimental it was compared to the pop music I was listening to. I think it made me realise not every song needs to sound like it has to be on the radio; you can create atmospheric tracks or tracks that have a special something about them, and now I always try to have a balance of that on an album.
BEST FIT: I definitely walked around for at least a few years thinking the Birdy version was the original.
Oh my God! I feel like literally every singer/songwriter has covered that song at some point. I love that Birdy version. That album really inspired Mountain Music, maybe not the singles, but there’s a track called “Treachery” on it that’s actually written for a Bon Iver brief I received that nothing happened with, so I made it into my own song.
I was really inspired by Bon Iver for the more atmospheric ones. Sometimes it's good to get out of your own head and imagine writing for someone else.
“Sparks” by Coldplay
NINA NESBITT: This song just has something about it. It’s so simple, but the chords and the melody together make me feel something.
I had the pleasure of supporting them in Glasgow a few years ago. Hearing all of their songs live was completely mind blowing, and Parachutes is one of my favourite albums. I remember driving back from the gig the next day really hungover and totally overwhelmed that it had even happened.
I listened to that album for six hours on repeat until I got home. When I got home, I remember thinking “I want to make an album inspired by that”, because there’s so many euphoric moments on it as well as “Sparks.”
They do such simple things that really hit. I love a lot of their builds in that album, and that was a huge inspiration for a lot of the builds in Mountain Music, whether that’s “Mansion”, or “I’m Coming Home”, or “Parachute” for example – that’s a little nod.
BEST FIT: Having supported them, how has that changed your relationship to their music?
I think you appreciate an artist’s variation of genres and songs in their catalogues after seeing them live. Like I was saying with The Eras Tour, and how I now listen to 1989 in a completely different way. With Coldplay, they did a few songs from Parachutes on a different stage and it was really beautiful, but then hearing the big bangers in the stadium was ‘Oh my God.’
It made me think “I want to create music that has that euphoric feeling to it”, for sure.
“Hoppípolla” by Sigur Rós
NINA NESBITT: I love Sigur Rós and this was another influence of mine for Mountain Music. I don’t know what it is about them, but there’s something very special about them and something really nice in that I don’t know what any of the lyrics are.
I want to say I think he sings in a made-up language, which I love, because often I’m listening to the lyrics too much and forgetting to enjoy the music, but with Sigur Rós I’m just transported elsewhere.
I was very aware on Mountain Music that I’m not a rock band, or a band in general, and for the big builds I wanted to include those atmospheric noises. Sigur Rós are from Iceland and the music feels quite Scandic, it’s like putting on a knitted jumper and standing in the cold.
BEST FIT: Was it a case of diving back into these albums whilst creating Mountain Music or have they always been swirling around, and you could pull the inspiration from years ago?
They have always been favourites, but after my last album Älskar I definitely fell out of love with music, and I was struggling to understand and reconnect with why I did music. I read this book called The Artist’s Way and one of the exercises - I can’t remember exactly - was to do five things you liked doing when you were younger or listen to five albums you loved listening to when you were younger, something like that.
So I went back to when I was fourteen or fifteen and picked all of those core albums that made me fall in love with music. Parachutes, Sigur Rós, any of their music. It was really nice, and it’d been so long I felt like I was discovering them all over again.
“Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen
NINA NESBITT: Bruce Springsteen was an unexpected influence for me. I have always been familiar with his music. Obviously, I love “Dancing in the Dark”, and I love “I’m On Fire.” I’d never really dived fully into his back catalogue, but Peter Miles, the producer I made Mountain Music with is a musical genius and knows everything. He has the biggest vinyl collection you’ve ever seen in your life.
I was working on a song called “I’m Coming Home” and it has that Bruce Springsteen beat to it, which wasn’t a conscious choice, I just found a drum pattern I liked and thought ‘I’m going to run with this.’ I played the demo to Peter, and he said, ‘You need to go Bruce Springsteen on this!’ I said, ‘I don’t really know what you mean by that’, and he told me to listen to “Born To Run.”
It’s a four-and-a-half-minute song, it’s very visual, and it goes off in different directions. For the middle eighth part in “I’m Coming Home” Peter told me he thought I should do something like in “Born To Run” and even though I thought the song was done, I listened to it and felt really inspired to rework it.
I did a lot more listening to Bruce Springsteen, and I’m glad he put that on the map for me. I think he’s just got that beat that you could hear so easily over and over, it feels like it’s flowing, and I think you hear it a lot nowadays – in Sam Fender, for instance, and Zach Bryan. A lot of people take influence from that.
BEST FIT: You’ve described Mountain Music as ‘everything about the 1970’s’ - is this song part of that?
Peter is so 1970s. He records to this tape machine from the 1970s. The whole experience felt like I was going back in time, in a really positive way. With the live musicians down in the studio, they don’t care about how much makeup you’ve got on, or what you look like, or how many followers you have on social media. It’s all about creating something that means something to you.
“In Color” by Jamey Johnson
NINA NESBITT: I think someone showed me this in a writing session, and it’s one of my favourite country songs. I thought it was perhaps a really niche country song that nobody knew but then I went to Nashville, and I heard it in literally every bar I walked into – literally all the bands were playing it.
I want to have a breakdown every time I listen to this song, I don’t know why, the lyrics just hit so deeply. It’s so refreshing to hear a song that’s not just a traditional love song, it’s about Jamey’s grandparents showing photos of themselves back in the day, the grandson is looking at them and they keep saying, ‘Oh, you should have seen it in colour.’
It makes me think of my own grandparents – my gran in Sweden – it was the song that inspired me to write “Dinner Table” from my last album Älskar, which is one of my favourite songs I’ve written. It’s shown me that songs don’t always need to be about your relationship or the traditional topics. I love that about country music, it’s so out of the box.
BEST FIT: I think it’s one of those songs that makes the worries in your life seem insignificant. It’s like when people zoom out and think about the universe to make their everyday problems feel so small.
Yes, definitely! I agree.
“Classic” by IVE
NINA NESBITT: I write songs for other people as well as my own, trying out different genres, which I love,. Mountain Music is probably the genre I sit most comfortably in as an artist, but in my songwriting I do dance music, pop music, drum and bass and K-Pop.
K-Pop is something I got into the last couple of years, not really knowing much about it before. My friend Chloe was absolutely smashing it writing K-Pop songs, she asked me to come do K-Pop for a day and we had the best time.
It was like going back to the early ‘00s pop music, which is one of my favourite eras, and it was so fun. I was going through quite a lot in my life at the time. I was taking a break from writing for myself, and it reminded me that music can be so joyful, it doesn’t need to be deep and depressing all the time.
The first song we wrote together was this song “Classic,” and then it was cut by IVE, who are a huge K-Pop band. It’s funny, because I didn’t know anything about K-Pop and then we had a number one in Japan with it. It’s so bizarre to have success in a country you’ve never visited, you don’t know how to measure it because you don’t know the charts, and it was so weird!
I got to go to South Korea last year to write music over there - it’s such a fun industry and it’s opened my eyes to a whole new world. I’ve definitely got the bug for it, and I’d love to write more. They’re all so hardworking and they take it so seriously, which I love. There’s such attention to detail, the size of the teams involved to make it all happen is really inspiring and just something completely different.
I think there’s space for lots of songs to be cut, and so as a songwriter it’s really exciting.
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