Interview Katy J Pearson: “I am the leader of the new country scene!”

It’s barely midday on a sunny Thursday in Bristol, but Katy J Pearson is already on the sauce. “I’ve had a cup of tea, and now I’m having an oat milk cappuccino,” she exclaims animatedly, picking up the phone in the middle of an impromptu coffee meet at lively pub-cafe The Gallimaufry. And, as words stream out of her mouth faster than a spilt flat white, the bubbly singer clearly isn’t stuck for chat ahead of this month’s debut album ‘Return’.

Born in Swindon (“famous for the Oasis Leisure Centre”), Katy was brought up in Cirencester, a market town in the Cotswolds barren of musical opportunity in spite of its lush surroundings and country pubs. It was more of an “Oh, you should go on the X Factor!” kind of vibe, she says, exaggerating her West Country accent to mimic the advice she was given growing up.

Gathering inspiration on yearly camping trips to Devon, where she would spy on Kate Bush’s cliffside house with her dad, Katy did opt to give the major-label route a go in the early stages of her career. But the glitz and the glamour wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and when an early project with her brother “went to shit”, Katy was, frankly, relieved.

“We were sharing a twin room in a Premier Inn, doing writing sessions five days a week,” she laments of her early forays to London. But with another West Country girl in PJ Harvey providing some much-needed inspiration (“She went to London and was like, ‘Fuck this, I’m from the West Country’”), Katy eventually moved to Bristol to start afresh. “We were really happy to get dropped,” she concludes. “We went for a curry after.”