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Music

Falling for Flo Morrissey

The London singer hails from a family of nine siblings, dresses like bohemian pixie, and makes music to daydream to.

Myspace may largely be remembered as the birthplace of selfies and awkward public overshare, but it was also the forum where Lily Allen got her start back in 1995. Ditto The xx and Arctic Monkeys. At 14 years old Flo Morrissey was so fantastically precocious that two weeks after picking up the guitar, she was uploading her music to the social networking platform. She then proceeded to make home videos to accompany her songs, popping them on Vimeo and sending them to blogs to drum up attention. In one such video—for “If You Can’t Love All This Goes Away”—Morrissey is captured largely underwater, by her younger sister Millie. It’s very Sofia Coppola in its hazy imagery, and along with Morrissey’s timeless tones—which could slot seamlessly beside Joan Baez, Marika Hackman, and Milk & Bone—it's easy to see why the teenager’s output rose above the clamor. The fact that she can sing effortlessly in French, like a young Francois Hardy, and decks herself out in bohemian-chic vintage garb, her wrists and digits arftfully decorated with pretty bangles, doesn’t hurt either. “I found that it felt very natural coming from a pure place, rather than I was picked up at the age of 10 by a record label and I was manufactured into a puppet,” she explains of her early work.

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Now 20 and signed to Glassnote Recordings, with her debut album, Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful dropping on 7.17, Morrissey looks set to move beyond the blogs and prove she’s more than just this month's crush. We talked to Morrissey about the allure of 60s style, female collective World Wide Women, growing up in a family with nine siblings, and how this Londoner found creative freedom in LA.

Noisey: Can you tell me a bit about the homemade video for “If You Can’t Love…”?
That was recorded in France. I asked my younger sister who was about 14-years-old at the time to film me. I recorded the song on my laptop so it was very DIY. I had the idea of an underwater theme to it. Since then, she’s done the cover art for my album. I’m one of nine children, so family is really important to me. That especially was the first gateway into creating with members of my family. It felt really nice and it was how blogs started to pick things up. Videos and visuals are really important to me. I don’t think they’re always necessary, but for my world, it shows a new dimension and understanding.

Did growing up as one of nine children play into your album at all?
Probably more subconsciously because it shapes you into a person. They’re my favorite people so I spend a lot of time with them. I’m the oldest of six girls so that’s quite a responsibility sometimes. Because it can be quite chaotic, it’s hard to find quiet to write. Sometimes I think it’s good because the chaos does something really special and unique. Sometimes you have to have that pressure to produce something worthwhile and that you’re proud of. With that added pressure of hearing someone screaming in another room, or someone watching a movie or playing, you have to make use of what you’ve got. Maybe that was what was important when I was writing the album. Going away to LA to record was good as well because it put me in a different space. I wasn’t with any of my family. I wasn’t babysitting at night—I was just focusing on [music]. It made me appreciate what I had when I came back to London.

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Are there any themes that shine through on your record? Did you write all the music together?
The songs were written over the past five years. The song “Show Me” was written when I was 16. That’s one of the earliest songs on the album. Then they kind of accumulated over the next three to four years. I recorded the album when I was 19 and I’m now 20. It’s kind of pigeonholed my life as a teenager and my take on the world. The title of the album [Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful] really draws that feeling that I want to express: as you get older, you have to work at everything a bit more. As you get older, you have to find beauty in the ordinary and see that everything can be beautiful. The song is seemingly sad on the surface, but I don’t want to be a girl on the guitar all doom and gloom. I want to have a message that we can have this hope for the world, and that’s what I want to get across to people.

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You have a great fashion sense and spirit. Who are some of your favorite designers?
I guess my style—I always feel embarrassed when I say it—it’s more bohemian than hippie. I used to be into the hippie stuff. It’s strange because it was never a thing where I was like, “I want to dress like they did in Woodstock.” I always just loved jewelry and bracelets. It’s only been now that I’ve been exploring what I used to wear and taking inspiration from it. Now, I’m really into the 60s style. My favorite designers are Missoni, Chloé and Louis Vuitton. I think they’re all coming out with amazing 60s and 70s-inspired clothes at the moment. It feels annoying sometimes because it’s like, "Oh no, it’s now on trend," but I like it.

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What’s your favorite piece of clothing that you own?
I do have an amazing pair of vintage Missoni flares from my mum. I wear them as uniform when I play sometimes. I’d say those are my favorite. I have these beautiful moon and sun earrings as well. There’s this amazing English designer called Talitha and she makes these amazing capes. I wear [her designs] in the cover art for “Pages of Gold.” I love her style and design. She’s someone that’s new at the moment.

You were the muse for British-born artist Anouska Beckwith’s solo exhibition in Chelsea. How did you become this source of inspiration for her?
She’s my closest friend. It was strange because I met her through her collective called World Wide Women. Two of the women in the collective said Anouska and I should meet and that we’d get on really well. I was going to Paris for a month in November—before my first single came out—I love France, so I wanted to explore on my own for a month. [Anouska] lives there, and we became really close friends straight away. I feel like she’s a very good person to get out the real me. It’s really nice to be inspired by like-minded people. I’m really lucky.

Anouska Beckwith’s portrait of Morrissey.

How did your aesthetic complement Anouska’s art?
I think some people think I’m all trees, plants and roaming in a field. I do love nature and I am very into that realm of things, but I’m also quite headstrong and grounded too. I feel she finds that balance of having me stand alone in nature, but also merging together. It’s something that’s quite tricky because it’s very easy to dress up a girl in a flower crown and be done with it. I think that’s pretty, but I think it’s important to add another element to things, and she brought that out of me.

Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
I don’t know. It’s annoying to say, but I generally just take the day as it comes. If I plan too much ahead, it’s counterproductive. In this industry, it’s so great I have this wonderful team around me, and I’ll just trust that they’ll bring out the best in me. I just hope to have done more of that and have recorded more albums and songs. It’s quite simple for me. I’d just like to see where that takes me. You have to be open to being last minute about stuff and going with the flow—literally. Ilana Kaplan is on Twitter.