Singer-songwriter Gabrielle Aplin grew up with a guitar in her hand and has gone on to amass an army of fans and over a billion streams. Here, she talks about her strong connection with nature, talent for thrifting – and love of lambs
Words BECKY DONALDSON Photography GEORGIA BALDWIN Styling LAURA WEATHERBURN
R elinquishing the ties of her urbane life in London and then Brighton, Gabrielle Aplin moved to Glastonbury in Somerset during the pandemic: two life-changing experiences that contributed to the back-to-basics layers of her fourth studio album, Phosphorescent.
The move was triggered by a feeling of, “Why are we here? We don’t need to be”. Then, when her dad found a befitting property next to a dairy farm and surrounded by apple orchards, her and boyfriend, Alfie Hudson-Taylor of Irish duo Hudson Taylor, decided to go for it, taking their three Boston terriers with them.
“It was just one of those mad opportunities,” she tells us when we chat. “I thought, let’s just do it and see what happens. The fact that it was during lockdown and nothing felt real anyway… we said, ‘So many bad things have already occurred, what’s the worst that can happen?’”
When she began writing songs from the album, it was purely as a creative outlet; the freedom of not working with a team expecting new songs every week, meant she felt the same liberation as when starting out.
“I’d completed Netflix, made all the banana bread recipes and cleaned every area of my house. I had nothing left to do. So, I was like, I guess I’ll write some songs. And it was just for myself, just an expression more than anything else. They weren’t for anyone. This treatment is something I’ll definitely carry forward.”
Serendipitously, producer Mike Spencer, who worked with Gabrielle on her gold-certified debut album, English Rain, in 2013, contacted her. “He came to me with the idea of making an album. And I was like, ‘Well, that’s great. I’ve got songs’,” she laughs.
Recording at Mike’s countryside retreat studio, The Lark’s Tongue, is the next layer of the album’s connection to the environment. “There were so many pillars of the album I’d made where nature really made itself very known, it was amazing. Mike lives in the middle of nowhere, he has beautiful pastures and everything about him acquiring this place was about rewilding the land.”
She would travel to the conv
