EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS
ON GROWING UP SURROUNDED BY KINDNESS IN HER FAMOUS FAMILY
When Harleymoon Kemp decided to add singing to her already impressive CV as a songwriter, photographer and director, she was the first to ask: “Am I more ‘behind the scenes’?”
Watch her perform and there is no doubt that she is outrageously centre stage, although speaking of her recent appearances at Brighton Pride and the Big Feastival, she confides: “I don’t think it’s me out there sometimes, but once I put the cowboy hat on and I’m in character, it’s a party!”
Her famous parents Martin and Shirlie have always encouraged Harleymoon and her younger brother, Capital FM DJ Roman, to pursue their dreams.
WISE WORDS
“I was incredibly lucky to have such good advice as I was growing up. Dad believes that what you put out, you get back,” she tells us. “He says be grateful and humble, and that doing something you enjoy will be your best work.”
Meanwhile, she hasn’t given up on her love of photography. “I have so many hats,” she says with a laugh. “I’m still doing my photography and directing; I’ve just photographed Dad for his new clothing collection.”
And keeping it a family affair, it was Shirlie, who first found fame as a backing singer with Wham!, who took these gorgeous new photos of 34-year-old Harleymoon, shared exclusively with HELLO!. “Mum captured these new images. It is the great thing about living in a creative household,” she says.
NEW DIRECTION
Her first success as a singer came during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when her debut song Space went from an Instagram post with a home video to No. 1 in the UK Country Charts in 2020.
“I cried that people loved it enough to stream it,” she says. “It was crazy – I hadn’t had big dreams of anything happening with it. I’d just been sitting in my flat, needing something to keep me positive.
“I have this weird therapy gift in songwriting. When I need to reflect on something or feel tangled up, I hear it as a song, then I write it down and get it out of my system. I really am my own therapist.”
Like Space, her most recent release Home is “personal to me; stories written out of a diary”.
“It wasn’t until a producer told me I was very country and I went on a songwriting course in Nashville that I realised I was,” she says. “My shows are a night of bad dates and heartbreaks that sail through my love life very openly in a comedic way.
“I hope no one I’ve ever dated comes to a show,” adds Harleymoon, who next performs at The Grace in North London on 26 November.
The star grew up i
