Sparked from an apocalyptic dream, 21-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brigitte Bardini is ready to stun the world with her debut album Stellar Lights which holds an incredible 14 songs, each one better than the last. Having already released three singles to date – ‘Wild Ride’, ‘Heartbreaker’, and ‘Aphrodite – which we’ve already been grooving to, plus a slew of other songs that we’re beyond keen to dive into, she’s dazzled the music world with this debut album.
On the album, Brigitte Bardini recalls waking up in a bit of a sweat when the idea came to her in her sleep, and she remembers feeling a bit vulnerable, and really understanding “how vulnerable we all are as human beings,” which brought her to pursuing music as “the sole thing” in her life – thus, Stellar Lights was born.
“The thing I learnt in creating these songs was to always be honest,” Brigitte continues. “No matter how silly it may sound, or how brutal it may sound, how over-dramatic, just be honest. I knew that would work. Because I can always hear in a song when I’m not being honest. You can tell in your head when you’re holding back something.”
With honesty at the core centre of Stellar Lights, and in celebration of it hitting our ears today, Brigitte Bardini has walked us through each track to give us a bit of an idea behind her thoughts and beautiful sounds. So, without further adieu, here’s Stellar Lights in Brigitte Bardini’s own words.
Check out StellarLights by Brigitte Bardini:
1. ‘Heartbreaker’
‘Heartbreaker’ is about entering adulthood and fearing the loss of those things in your life that have become very important to you. It’s about the anxieties that make us linger on the past and catastrophize about the future and how we try our best to embrace and enjoy the moment despite all the things that could go wrong.
I think when I wrote this track I was listening to a lot of Daft Punk and Chemical Brothers which I feel naturally inspired some directions I took in producing it.
2. ‘Wild Ride’
‘Wild Ride‘ is about that moment in my life when I was at a crossroads and had to choose between a more conventional path or a path with greater risk that I knew would make me happiest. The lyrics describe how I made the decision to follow my passions and made that leap. Looking back, I really feel grateful about those choices as I wouldn’t have made it here, releasing Stellar Lights, if I hadn’t.
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3. ‘Everyday’
‘Everyday’ is one of those tracks I feel was really driven by my subconscious as I struggle to pin it to one specific person or event. I know that it’s about caring so deeply for someone, how this can be challenging and how your barriers that you thought you might maintain for a long time naturally have to fall to be where you want to be in a specific situation.
I remember experimenting with the way a heavy synth can work with a more soft rock style sound and with this I learnt a lot about how certain frequencies counteract with one another and the importance of this in a live setting.
4. ‘Inside Your Head’
‘Inside Your Head’ involved a lot of trial and error. This track was different to the rest of the tracks in terms of the approach I took to writing and production and experimenting with speeding it up, slowing it down, moving structure around and seeing what works in a more backwards way. The track is about loving someone but also wanting to know that the other person is desiring, embracing and loving you the way you want them to.
Check out Brigitte Bardini’s ‘Heartbreaker’:
5. ‘All My Life’
I wrote ‘All My Life’ right after I got gifted an acoustic guitar for my 20th birthday. This track is very personal as it’s about my own internal battles that I’ve faced over the years. It felt really powerful to find a way to sing about those kinds of experiences having reached a point where I’m evolving so rapidly and entering a new phase of my life where I’m letting go of old ideas of myself and patterns of thinking that don’t serve me anymore.
6. ‘Made Of Gold’
I remember having very vivid imagery in my head as I was writing ‘Made Of Gold’, hence the way the lyrics paint out a very clear picture. This song is like a note to myself and others to always remember how valuable we all are despite how easily certain ways of the world can try to convince us that we’re not, or that value is defined by things that don’t really matter at the core of things.
7. ‘Breathe’
I wrote ‘Breathe’ as a recount of a really special experience I had with a friend. It was incredible to be able to show her this track and see her feel everything that we felt in that experience together in the form of a song.
It gives me so much satisfaction to know that we have a time capsule of that moment that we can always relive if we want to and the door is wide open for listeners to experience that moment along with us.
8. ‘Aphrodite‘
‘Aphrodite’ came out when I was listening to a whole lot of Brit-pop and trip-hop tracks. I found that I soaked up so much of that music and subconsciously laid it down in ‘Aphrodite’.
At the time, I’m not sure where, but I somehow learnt about the mythology behind ‘Aphrodite’. How she is a goddess of love but is ridden with lust, jealousy and spite. I think I organically used this metaphor and intertwined it with an experience I had with someone who wasn’t treating me in the way I felt I deserved at the time.
Check out ‘Aphrodite’ by Brigitte Bardini:
9. ‘Feel My Love’
From the title, I think anyone could know that this is a track about loving someone – that kind of feeling where you’re totally at it’s mercy and your pride just goes out the window.
I had been experimenting a bit with piano and trying to write a piano driven track prior to writing ‘Feel My Love’. I think I just knew that the right riff would come along when I needed it and I feel it came about exactly the way I needed it to in this track.
10. ‘Could’ve Been’
I was on a night walk with a friend one night and came across this old Yamaha Hammond organ sitting on the street as hard rubbish. I automatically called my dad to help us load this big chunky thing in the back of my hatchback and brought it home.
I was so excited to play around with it as it had these gorgeous sounding bass pedals and an overall pure, rustic sound. This track that is focussed around heartbreak and feeling a sense of grief about how things could’ve been was written on this beautiful hard rubbish organ.
11. ‘Moving On’
‘Moving On’ reflects a lot of the album’s overall themes in the sense that it is about embracing your experiences, learning from them, and not sweating the small things in life because there’s so much beauty. I think the bright optimistic tone of the track that comes through in the flute, guitar and piano layerings all organically reflected the ‘glass half full’ perspective that I held in the lyrics of this track.
12. ‘Peacemaker’
I wrote ‘Peacemaker’ as an ode to my experience with depression. This track was influenced by Radiohead and the orchestrations in Beck’s Sea Change album, and holds so much significance for me in the way that it resembles all the moments I had feeling down and how you can enter those valleys again without expecting to.
13. ‘More Like Love’
‘More Like Love’ is about how we don’t desire a person or a partner but rather the feeling itself of being in the dream-state that comes on when we’re in love or deep infatuation. It’s how when we come out of that state we begin to miss that feeling even while we’ve totally moved on from the person that has brought it on.
14. ‘Stellar Lights’
This instrumental track was a lot of fun to make as it allowed me to play with layers and that heavy dream pop influence that is evident in the ambient, shimmery sound. I feel that it perfectly reflects the album and brings out that apocalyptic imagery that comes to mind when I think of the vivid dream that triggered me delving into music as my sole focus.
Check out Brigitte Bardini’s ‘Wild Ride’:
Stellar Lights is out now via Spotify and by digital and physical media via Brigitte Bardini’s website.
