Connie Constance's Miss Power, track-by-track

In the Beginning

From as early as I can remember there have been fairies scattered around my childhood home and living in the bottom of my garden. This is my invite into the world that my mother created for me. When Sam [Knowles, Constance's co-writer on Miss Power] and I first began making this album, I said I wanted to create it from the perspective of an ancient fairy that has been frozen in time for tens of thousands of years and awakened now in our present world – how would they feel, what would they see? Intertwined with my life experiences, and diary-like lyricism I wanted to take people on a journey of the trials and tribulations of being a young person in today's society.

Till the World's Awake

The beast, the party, the anthem. Day one of this saturated over-stimulating world and everything feels possible. For the most part, this song was just the indie dance single of my dreams. It's truly a letter to the universe, to what some people may call God, others Allah, and so on. It's a song that says thank you for looking out for me, thank you for the chance of making my dreams a reality, and thank you for the beautiful people that you have kept around me.

Miss Power

The feeling when you leave everything behind and head into the uncertain but electrifying future. It's day two and we’re not sure who we are, but we know now that we’re in the driving seat of this Journey. It's a fairy boss bitch anthem that I actually needed myself at the time. During the pandemic I was cleaning offices and toilets once a week to have enough money to come to the studio and to keep up my training in dance, it can be quite hard to keep a dream in your mind whilst squirting bleach down a toilet. This is my empowerment anthem.

Never Get To Love You

If fairies had a Skins-themed party this would be the backing track to that scene. I think this song is where all the field recordings that we did in the New Forest really shine. Me, Sam and his friend Nic went out to the country and frolicked with wild horses recording all the mystical sounds that we could muster. Lyrically this song is about an ex-lover and how we grew apart and all the dreams we made together actually will be lived out separately as we just aren’t in love anymore. 

Mood Hoover

The writing of this song came from one of my mum’s classic phrases: “mood hoover”. She would call my adolescent brother [that] when he would finally make it down to dinner to be around his out-of-touch parents and uncool siblings, and not really want to engage in our family chit chat. I was in the studio with Sam Breathwick and Sam Knowles and we were jamming through some ideas. Sammy K said to me that it would be fun if I wrote a song about me and my man but from more of a love hate perspective; all those bits about your lover that drive you nuts but you couldn’t live without. I had "mood hoover" written down in my notes... From there I dived into my little bit sarky, little bit cheeky and a little bit moody perspective.

Heavyweight Champion

I had been wanting to write about this concept for a while. I had just started having quite a civil relationship with my father for the first time ever. And I wanted to write about the fact that we may never get to reconcile on the past. Writing this song kind of helped me understand that that’s okay.

Hurt You

My revenge song, this is a song for all the villains that are just a product of their environment. This is for the Joker and Harley Quinn. In this realm the villain is the people's champion and anarchy reins.

Kamikaze

Mwahahahaha where do I start? I was on stage with Hak Baker playing an unreleased punk song we had written earlier that year and Sam & Baz came down to support. I jumped off stage after being part of Hak's electric sold-out Village Underground show and was raring to go. Me, Sam (karma kid) and Baz (bondax) went round the corner to the studio in Old Street and Sam and Baz said we need to capture the energy of your performance in a punk song for the album. They barely had a bassline going and I was shouting 'TICK YES TICK NO, there’s no in-between / They want me to look PRETTY and they want me to look CLEAN'. And my feminist anthem was born.

Home

This song is my anxiety made beautiful, it’s for when you’re right in the thick of it. When you can’t silence the intrusive thoughts and you don’t really know what to do. This is another song where the field recordings shine! They’re so lush, the way they create this Fern Gully-type bed for the rest of the music is so satisfying. And in comes my good friend Hak with the most beautiful spoken word poem that we honestly wrote in about three minutes. I wanted Hak to imagine I was a haggard looking fairy and he was a jolly troll trying to cheer me up with his riddles. Which is quite a characterful depiction of our relationship really. It really created one of my favourite moments on the album. 

YUCK!

One long freestyle. We wanted to make a song for the album that was a stream of consciousness. And the only way to do it was to actually do it as a freestyle. I wrote down a couple of subjects that had been floating around my head at the time and got up to the mic and delivered the stream of consciousness from start to finish in one take.

Blank Canvas

This song is really a cry for peace, for a fresh start. I’m not ready to uncover the story behind my writing for this song. But I’ve been more than ready to be able to write this and have a song that I can relate to when I think back to a traumatic time. When you just wish that you could wipe everything blank and start again. This is that song. 

Red Flag

Our final hurrah, the big finale. I actually wrote this song after one of my dearest friends went through something that I’ve experienced myself, but less complex. It’s really about that friend, lover or family member that is definitely meant to have your back but actually instead of protecting you from others, they are the chaos in your life. I feel as though this song also has that feeling of being on the other side of trauma and that’s why it is our grand finale. The album really started when I made Prim and Propa. This song, for me, carries that same energy so it’s only right that it closes this era. 

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Miss Power is out now via Play It Again Sam; Connie Constance plays The Great Western, Glasgow, 12 Nov