Interview SPIDER: “What feels authentic to me is telling [haters] to go fuck themselves”

Growing up in a Dublin suburb as the youngest child “in a strict religious household”, the expressive, evocative statements that make up SPIDER’s music now feel like a direct response to the boundaries placed upon her back then. “I knew that, within my culture and that dynamic, there were things that I apparently shouldn’t say,” she recalls. “When I was listening to music, I was like, ‘Oh! I can just say it and no one’s reprimanding me for how I feel’.”

Having developed a keen interest in alternative music and its production thanks to the likes of Halsey and Lorde breaking through the wall of “very acoustic guitar, sad, white boy music” that dominated Irish radio at the time, SPIDER moved to London at the age of 18. Since then, she’s released two EPs - 2022’s ‘C.O.A.’ and last year’s effort ‘HELL OR HIGH WATER’ - along the way. Fronted by powerful single ‘AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL’, the latter’s disruptive lead track gave a frenzied insight into the musician’s knack for producing insatiably catchy but scuzzed up melodies, and her steadfast approach to carving out more space for Black, female creatives.

“I was very certain about wanting to do alternative music and, as a Black woman, occupying that space from probably when I was 16,” she explains. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing this’.” In the incendiary track’s video, SPIDER takes centre stage, dancing with a sense of abandon as a series of white men shout in her face; a very literal representation of her “own experiences online,” and how it can feel as a minority creator. “I remember my brother saying he’d shown some people the ‘ANTM’ music video,” she says. “He still lives in Ireland, and they were all quite taken aback and didn’t really know how to react or what to say. When he told them that I did music, they had all assumed I did R&B.

“Before, I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t be so persistent about this ‘being a Black woman in alternative music’ thing. I was like, ‘Things are changing, maybe I don’t need to shout about it as much’,” she continues. “Then he said that to me and I remembered there’s a world outside of my bubble. It brought me back to [the fact that] what I want to do is still important and needed.”

SPIDER’s next EP will see the singer tackle more powerful and thorny issues of “sex, objectification, desire and intimacy,” but she’s under no illusions that her offerings will win over everyone. “I’ve genuinely gotten some kind of hate on every song I’ve put out, regardless of subject matter, so it literally does not matter what I say; just the simple fact I exist is enough,” she shrugs. It’s an incredibly tough reality to contend with, but, says SPIDER, “all I can do is continue moving in authentic ways, and right now, what feels authentic to me is telling those people to go fuck themselves, so that’s what I’m doing.”

SPIDER's new EP, 'an object of desire', is out now.

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