Erin Wharton
About Erin Wharton
Erin Wharton is a composer and singer-songwriter from Glasgow who's music typically covers genres such as folk, americana and country.
Experienced in writing from personal and other people's experiences, Erin is continually expanding her musical horizons and always keen to write in new, creative ways.
Following the success of her debut single, 'Watercolour', Erin is working to release her debut EP this summer.
I Have Changed
‘I Have Changed’ is a concept EP derived from the differences and similarities between change in varying people’s lives. The idea came from my desire to write from new and varied perspectives. The notion of change is something universal and ever present in all our lives, be it for better or worse. It can be widespread or very contained and personal. Either way, it can cause huge emotional turbulence.
I wanted to gather real and honest perspectives of people’s experiences with change so I created an anonymous response form which I sent to everyone in the Reid School of Music, with the prompt:
Describe a significant change in your life recently and how this has impacted you.
I received an abundance of deeply personal responses to this prompt and carefully selected three responses to focus on. As the responses are short, I have used them as prompts when writing these songs and have tried to reflect on how the person was feeling as opposed to creating a story around the response.
17
‘My father walked out on the family...there was some relief, but also dread. He was a key part of who I am, for better and for worse...’
I wrote 17 in the ‘valley point’ of this project. I was struggling to cultivate fresh ideas so booked out the Reid Concert Hall and sat down with this response in front of me at the piano and this song came out.
It’s the most upbeat track on the EP, however, this isn’t derived from joy but from anger. The refrain of the song is ‘I’m still here’ and this holds a lot of anger and despair. Although I don’t know how old the writer was when this occurred, I have decided to take a teen-angst tone in this song.
Break-Up Song
‘I got out of a long-term relationship a year ago...it’s been diBicult to adjust to not having someone around.’
This response got me thinking about how strange it is coming out of a relationship and losing a piece of yourself with that person. The song explores how isolating this can be and how even one year down the line you can still feel raw.
This in mind, I wanted the song to feel very personal and intimate. There is a sense of acceptance alongside the raw pain in the lyrics and the music.
Sand
‘My dad’s been in the hospital and it’s been really diBicult while trying to start my fourth year of uni’
‘Sand’ was the last song that I wrote for the project. I found it di>icult to approach the subject of grief initially, but I feel this song captures it in a nice way.
The song is folky and dreamy with a gentle sort-of sadness to it. It aims to particularly capture the denial of losing someone and their sudden absence in life.
Homeland
‘Homeland’ is the only song on the EP that is not related to a response, but is personal to me. The song is about looking towards the future and feeling torn between wanting to do everything and wanting to do nothing.
I wasn’t planning to write a personal track for this project but as I began thinking about change this song came to me and I feel that it fits beautifully with the theme.
Erin Wharton
