Molly Payton on Balancing the Bruises of Adolescence While Becoming a Rising Musician
Written by Serena Ferrari
Photographed by Ava Marks
We were lying on the trimmed grass of the Heath, the sun heating our skin. It was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon and Hampstead Heath was empty except for a few clumps of people. As Molly Payton, an eighteen-year-old singer/ songwriter, basked in the sun in a summer dress and cowboy boots— her most treasured possession and an ode to Jim Morrison— I noticed a group of middle-aged men jesting and glancing over at us. They were uncomfortably obvious about their interest, especially towards Molly, and she instinctively pulled the hemline of her dress down.
Molly is a tall, slender teenager with short, fringed hair and a gap-toothed smile. Born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, she moved to Northern London two years ago, and has felt like Dorothy in OZ ever since. She left behind not only childhood friends and the comfort of familiarity, but also a "settled environment" of "very normal people, good normal people, who don't really care as much about the silly stuff like clothes and money," things that were important to her peers at the new school in London.
This uprooting of her life, and attending a school that makes Gossip Girl look like kindergarten, sparked a crisis in Molly's adolescence, one of self-doubt and ever-changing identity. "I got a bit freaked out," Molly admits. "They were all really attractive for some reason. I don't know if that was the novelty of the British accent for me, or just the fact that they have so much money that they can put heaps of effort into themselves… I felt like 'oh fuck, I am nowhere near good enough for this.'"
To survive this "competitive, rich kids society," Molly became a broken chameleon, picking out one of her friends, whom she thought was cool, and emulating her for a few months, then exchanging the look for someone else entirely. "Last winter, I had bleach blonde hair and massive eyelash extensions." She laughs, recalling how she pulled out her actual eyelashes along with her fake ones. "I had no eyelashes on top, and long ones at the bottom, and my hair was black until there [mid-length] and then white. I looked like such a crack-head. It was during exams as well, so I had massive bags under my eyes, no eyelashes, and crazy hair."
But it was because of some of the friendships Molly made in her nightmarish school, particularly that of Oscar Lang, a fellow musician, that she even considered pursuing music. Besides learning the piano at age three, Molly's relationship with the art had been sporadic at best and her singing non-existent. But upon Lang's encouragement, Molly released songs online, and one in particular, a grungy ballad called “Skaterboy”, instantly caught the interest of many in the industry.
Despite her buzz among industry folk, Molly still feels "insecure musically," wondering if the hype around her is just because one person decided they liked her and everyone else followed suit. However, the young singer recalls her performance at Greenman Festival back in 2018 and admits there was a lot of head bopping. "It wasn't anywhere near a mosh or anything— people were just sitting down having a good time, but seeing people come in and listen and nod. That's all you need to be like, ‘maybe I'm alright.’”
After a long gestation period, Molly's single “No One Else” from her soon-to-be released EP Mess came out on January 29th. Layered over gentle guitar strumming, reminiscent of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You, Molly's omnipotent voice, at times guttural, and at others, angelic, is a bird meandering between melody and range. The confessional single is about the painful love that sprouts from a toxic and self-destructive relationship, embodying the kind of vulnerability which feels too raw and too uncomfortable to share intimately.
Claiming that her most definite inspiration is emotion, Molly adopts a fearlessness when it comes to her own emotional experiences. She prefers to position herself on the frontline of an emotional risk, rather than shy away from it entirely. "I rather be really bad or really good, than be safe." She believes emotional safety could be the death of her creative endeavors, describing her emotional risk-taking as a type of harvest for writing material. "I had an intense couple of months of really bad writer's block, and I was kind of like 'ah, imagine if this happened and I could write a really good song about that.' As a joke initially, but then I was like, 'you know what? Kind of true.'" In other words, Molly is not just taking an emotional risk but seeking one out to achieve honesty and catharsis in her songwriting. But it is a high price to pay, and there is a fine line between emotional exploration and self-exploitation.
Molly soon discovered that fine line. When she was younger, she was circumspect of bruising herself emotionally and had enforced boundaries regarding her vulnerability. At the mercy of her new surroundings in London, Molly fell down a rabbit hole of experimentation that tested her emotional pain tolerance. "I went from really protecting myself and never putting myself out there to going way too far in the other direction and really fucking myself up. I was consciously doing things that I knew were going to hurt me." Yet through her music and writing, Molly has attained a kind of therapy to cope with her bruises: "I much rather go through bad stuff, feel it completely and write about it, and work through it in all those ways than protect myself from it and not have anything good happen ever. I think it's tied together— you can never feel bad without feeling good. And vice versa."
But when I ask her about feeling “bad”, she is quick to clarify. "I'm not depressed. I'm not anything." She describes being a teenager nowadays as being emotionally "competitive" and "out of respect for the people I love" Molly prefers not to self-diagnose her mental health. "I am trying to be careful about this because I've got friends who are diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and stuff, and I see what they go through... Everyone has that baseline state. You always return to your normal. And I think for me, my okay is okay."
It's hard to bear in mind throughout our conversation that Molly is just eighteen years old. It's rare to see a teenager so comfortable with the lulls of a conversation. Instead of responding at the tail-end of my question, Molly takes the time to assess how she feels before answering honestly. She is not intimidated to sit in silence for a beat or two, scanning her mind for her truth.
As the sun lowered onto the surrounding treetops, the male group across from us dwindled to one man who boldly approached Molly and I. He wore sunglasses and a too-friendly smile. He asked if he could sit behind us, which was odd given the ratio of space available. He then asked if we minded he smoked. We shook our heads, trying to shake him off too. He lit up a joint and proceeded to ask more questions, including if we wanted a drag. "It's not a cigarette," he said with cheekiness. We ignored him as much as we could, and Molly played me one of her new songs on her iPhone.
Her distinctive voice, deep yet feminine, permeated the open space of the park. Like a haunting lullaby, soft melodic strumming provides the perfect backdrop for her voice to glide into uncharted melodies effortlessly. However, in her third single “Corduroy”, the introduction of other instruments, including a piano and drums, adds an exciting dimension to her sound, one that dramatizes even more the emotion in her voice. Desperate lyrics are counterbalanced by a dignified delivery, a longing for someone who is wrong to love. It is clear that her music isn't about making sense of her feelings but penetrating the feelings that don't make sense at all.
"Wow, beautiful music!" Like a sailor beckoned by a siren, the man slid closer towards us. “Who is the artist?"
Molly smiled to herself, not for anything else but the compliment alone. Instead, I swallowed the words "Fuck off mate, she is only eighteen," and whispered to Molly that we should go. We left the park, but the need to defend her continued to nag me. It was clear that Molly had a hypnotic effect on others, an effect elevated by her current self-acceptance. Her hair is back to its natural color of chocolate brown, her eyes are no longer lined in heavy black eye-liner and it seems that Molly has become all the more alluring for shedding the superficiality.
Keep up with Molly.