Freya Ridings on buying a plane ticket and reclaiming her career: 'I felt like a naughty schoolchild'

The singer defied her team and fled to LA to record a new album. It was the best move she's ever made.

Just because the strident crunch of Freya Ridings' recent singles conjures up images of a medieval army riding into battle, that doesn't mean she's a warrior queen blessed with bottomless self-confidence.

If anything, the recording sessions initially found the singer-songwriter at an all-time low, floored by nerves.

"I was questioning and doubting myself more than I ever had," she tells BBC News.

"I was actually having panic attacks in the studio... but I was determined to write my way out of it."

The crisis of confidence began with her previous album, Blood Orange.

Ridings had been thrust into the limelight with her Brit Award-nominated debut in 2017, celebrated for her rich, pure-toned vocals on ballads like Lost Without You and the summery pop masterpiece Castles.

But while that record was largely written at home and recorded with her friend Ollie Green, Ridings says she was pressured into working with a host of A-list producers for the follow-up.

"I hated it," she says. "It wasn't my choice to be with those people."

Looking back, she says, the recording sessions were in "very masculine-dominated" studios, which made it harder to "open up and be vulnerable".

"I got hammered a little bit. It kind of broke my spirit."

Compounding the problem, her record label had downsized during the pandemic, and the people who'd nurtured her first record had left. To make matters worse, her relationship with her manager had fallen apart.

Looking back, Ridings calls the situation "toxic". Although she remains proud of songs like Weekends and Face in the Crowd, she made compromises that went against her instincts as a musician.

"I felt petrified because other people were petrified for me," she says.

"It wore me down to the point where I was like, 'Sure, maybe you do know better than me'.

"But as an artist, that just can't be true, because if you're being authentic and that's what's connecting with people, anything in between just gets in the way."

Blood Orange was a Top 10 hit in early 2023, but it vanished from the charts after a week.

Soon after, Ridings was dropped by her label. She broke the news to fans in an Instagram live in the midst of what she describes as a "full-on breakdown".

"I was falling through the cracks," she says, "but my fans caught me". With no label and no budget, she sold out a 32-date European tour.

Plotting new music, Ridings wanted to work with Jen Decilveo, the US producer behind Hozier's Francesca – "one of my favourite songs of all time".

Her manager not only discouraged the collaboration, but failed to mention that Decilveo had expressed a reciprocal interest in working with her.

It was at that point, she realised, that "I needed to take power away from the people who were controlling me".

"So I paid for my own ticket and I got on the plane anyway.

"I was crapping myself," she laughs. "I felt scared, like a naughty schoolchild, because this was the first time in a long time where I hadn't done exactly what I was told.

"But I lit up. It was like I was possessed. I knew I had to get on that plane."

Energised by her act of defiance, Ridings spent a year in Los Angeles, writing her way out of despair.

"I didn't really have the money to do that, but I was determined. I still believed there was something here. It wasn't dead, and I wanted it to grow back."

The song that illuminated the path back home was Euphoria, an absolute earthquake of self belief, where Ridings screams with "the rage in my heart as red as my hair".

"I was stuck and trapped, but I was like, 'Who would I want to be right now?'" she explains of the character she summoned from her Celtic heritage.

"If anything, I was trying to convince myself of the confidence that I once had so effortlessly."

It's a theme she returns to across the record.