TAHM
We talked to Katie about their latest album and also learned a little more about them.
–When people sing the words back to you, that was the dream, really.–
‘Say Wahetever’ is your latest release — is it the prologue to a new project? And if so, will you be releasing songs little by little before the end of the year?
Yeah, we’ve got certainly one more song that we’re releasing, probably late November, plain of time. And then, yeah, we’ve actually got another four recorded, mixed, and ready to go. So, I think we’ll aim to release one roughly every two months, so we’ve got enough to get us through till next month. And we’re still writing, so we’ve got what’s in the pipeline as well.
‘Little Devil’ talks about a toxic relationship that’s reached its limit, right?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think it was… Yeah, maybe a bit of a difficult subject matter to write about, but it was very cathartic writing the song, or actually writing those lyrics down. And yeah, it was about kind of navigating that kind of relationship with somebody who’s got a bit of an explosive temper, like treading on eggshells. But yes, I was really glad it came out as more of a, that’s it, had enough, moving on. So, it felt like it wasn’t too much of a, you know, dwelling on the awfulness, more kind of fighting back and saying ‘yeah, this is enough.’ So, yeah, it felt kind of positive in that way.
Ghosthed deals with something that has always happened — do you think it happens even more now with social media?
Oh, definitely. I mean, it’s always happened, hasn’t it? You know, people could always not respond to a phone call. But yeah, it’s so much easier to do now. I guess you can just block someone out with a click of a button. So, yeah, definitely. I think that’s something that probably most people have experienced, either doing it themselves or having it done to them. And yeah, yeah, it’s quite a harsh aspect to social media. But it can bring so much joy and positivity. But, yeah, it’s interesting times. All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t have that when I was growing up. When I was a teenager, it would…
[laughs] have made life much harder, I think.
17 YEARS — is it about how ‘the good old days’ were better? Especially adolescence?
I think, again, it’s a bit of a song about coming through a tough time and kind of celebrating that tough time being over. So, a bit more of a playful vibe on that one. Just a feeling of… Yeah, these times were tough, but let’s let it go and move on. Yeah, whilst maybe being a little bit critical of the person it was about, which was quite good fun to do as well.
Tonight we are strangers— is it about a relationship where love has disappeared, leaving only physical attraction while everything else is a lie?
Well, it was interesting, actually. That song and all the six songs from that EP were cowritten with Tom from Kiwi. It was a collaborative project. And I’ve never done that before, actually — kind of co-write lyrics with somebody. So, a lot of them ended up being kind of… Like… That two sides of the relationship perspective. So, it was really interesting. Either Tom or I would come up with the first verse or the first idea, but then the other person would almost write a conflicting opinion or perspective. So, yeah, very much about two sides to issues in relationships. But I really enjoyed doing that, actually.
Partly it takes the pressure off you. If you’re just a sole writer, that’s it — if you’ve got a mental blank, there’s nobody to help you out. So, I loved actually writing with somebody. But having that other perspective was great. I really, really enjoyed doing that.
What’s your opinion about social media and music? Do you think it becomes a kind of slavery, having to constantly be on Instagram, X, etc.?
Yeah, it’s another world. I mean, obviously I used social media myself before starting to promote TAHM but having had a music career back in the early 2000s, you know, the difference is absolutely phenomenal. And the main difference in social media is our self-promotion. And it has been a massive learning curve. I mean, obviously, we knew how to put a post and have the music, and the technical side of things. But I think it’s been really interesting, actually, just seeing how other people promote their music. You know, you can’t just put a song and say: ‘Hey, listen to our song,’ because people will scroll past it. And so, then you kind of end up going down that rabbit hole of what makes a post interesting, you know? How do you manage to entertain people? How do you manage to get them to stay? Because I think I’m right in saying, I think you have either one or three seconds whilst people are scrolling. And most people scroll on mute, so they haven’t even got the sound. So, you’ve got to have something on the screen within one second that’s going to grab their attention. Hence doing things like dressing up with a rabbit’s head, or in a robot suit. I don’t know whether you’ve seen our Instagram. But yeah, just trying to think of what’s going to hook people in. Yeah, it’s been really interesting. Really hard, actually. Yeah, as the line continues, you know, we’ve got the next song to promote. What are we going to do that’s going to be different, that’s going to grab people’s attention? But on the plus side, it’s great, because then you can, you know, back in the day, we were lucky
enough to be signed and have record labels. And yeah, you had a team of people doing that for you, but it was very much out of your hands. Whereas now it’s 100% in our hands. So, we’ve got that creative control, and we can do whatever we like. Yeah, so the balance is great on one hand, you know, you’ve got this freedom. And on the other hand, it’s so hard, because you’ve got to always be thinking, what to do next, how can we make it better? Yeah, big learning curve for sure.
On what stage or in which country would you love to perform — the kind of place where you’d say, ‘getting here means we’ve made it’?
Well, we haven’t actually performed live for a very, very, very long time. So, I think, to be honest, anywhere would be a start. When this project started, it was very much just a studio project. We never thought about taking it outlive. But I guess that idea is coming into our heads now. We have started rehearsing, and it’s been so lovely because it’s been a really long time since we all got together as a band and rehearsed. Yeah, I think, to be honest, just a gig anywhere would be a massive step for us at the moment. But yeah, even back in the day, we never played out of the UK. So, I guess taking it abroad
somewhere, anywhere would be, that would just be really exciting.
Which band or artist who’s no longer around would you have liked to see live?
I do love a little bit of 70s Rock. I would love to have seen Led Zeppelin. As a kid growing up I was obsessed with them. My friends and I used to watch all the live videos over and over again. That would have been a dream. I would have loved to have seen them.
What’s been your most surprising performance — the one where you thought, ‘What just happened here?’
Oh, yeah, a real mixture. I’ve played in bands since I was very young. I was 16 years old when I started playing in bands. I’ve gone from the very smallest audiences — three people in a bar, who were just trying to have a drink and had their backs turned — to some bigger ones.
When people sing the words back to you, which only happened much later on after we got going, that was the dream, really. That’s lovely. And, you know, it will be great to get back to that at some point.
What’s your musical timeline?
Yeah, no, I was a very precocious child, so I was listening to bands when I was really young. I can remember being eight or nine years old and being desperate to be older so that I could go and see bands. And I guess, yeah, when I was maybe around 13, something like that, I started. Well, I mainly had the money to buy music myself. And then I went through phases of being very narrow in the genre and style of music that I listened to.
I went through various different genres but stuck to them quite rigidly. And then I think the nice thing about getting older is I really don’t mind what style. You know, I’ll happily listen to something that’s really alternative or something that’s super mainstream and pop. I don’t mind. A good song is a good song. And, you know, I’ll happily listen to, I don’t know, Taylor Swift or Metallica or… whatever.
Which movie would you have liked to compose the soundtrack for?
Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, if he were here, he would say something like Back to the future, for sure. Pretty much any of those 80s films, like, E.T., The lost boys.
Yeah! Do you know The lost boys? It was made in the 80s, it got some of the big stars at the time: Kiefer Sutherland, and those kind of like American movie stars from the 80s. But yeah, it’s kind of a vampire film, but it’s got a very cool soundtrack. Oh, it would have been brilliant to write something for something like that. Yeah, let’s go with The lost boys.
Can you share a funny or memorable anecdote that has happened to you?
[Laughs] Yeah, okay, go on. So, this is the name of the band, this makes quite a funny anecdote. So, as you probably are aware, when we first started this band with the current people, you know, it was kind of the 1990s, a long time ago, and then this current version of our music came about when we met somebody who was in another band, and we just had the idea to write a song together, and that’s how it all started.
The guy was called Tom, and at the time I think he was maybe 21, 22 years old, and I won’t say quite how much older I was, a few years, shall we say. And I always used to fuss around him, and somebody once said: ‘Gosh, you’re like his mother’. You know, he is an adult, you don’t need to fuss over him quite so much. And so TAHM, T-A-H-M, actually stands for Tom And His Mom, because everybody thought I was being his mother, which makes me sound very old. But yeah, so that’s where the name TAHM comes from.