Georgia: ‘My drinking got quite heavy over lockdown’

After the pandemic, singer Georgia Barnes’s first instinct was to fling back the shutters and let the sunshine in. It’s why she called her new album Euphoric. Brimming with disco belters, the record is a love letter to shaking off the lockdown blues, appreciating the positives in life – and refusing to be defined by the negatives.

“Learning to enjoy the moment rather than escape the moment,” explains the artist, who performs as Georgia. She’s speaking from London, where she is fighting jet lag, having returned from a press trip to Mexico.

She sees Euphoric as the spiritual opposite of her 2020 album, Seeking Thrills, a critical hit that earned her a Mercury Prize nomination, drew comparisons to MIA and Robyn and opened the door to working with big-name collaborators such as country superstar Shania Twain.

“It’s about facing things rather than escaping them,” she elaborates. “Seeking Thrills was, for me, an escapism record. This one, it’s less about escapism. It’s more about enjoying and facing up to life. Facing up to the highs and the lows”.

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She’s cracking company, full of banter and laughter. But she has had her struggles, too. Georgia (33) has learned the hard way that some problems have to be confronted sooner rather than later. In her 20s, she struggled with addiction and once told a journalist that she would “drink to black out – it was destructive and dangerous”. In the end, friends and family intervened, with apparently positive results. In 2019 she gave up drinking and became vegan.

The bad days were behind her. Or so she thought. Then Covid hit. In the loneliest moments of the great global shutdown, the demons returned. The world had gone into hibernation; there was nothing to do but stare at the walls. For a while, chasing oblivion felt like a sensible response.

“My drinking got quite heavy actually, over lockdown,” she says. “As did a lot of people’s.”

It became clear quite quickly that she needed to make significant personal changes. That’s another of the themes of Euphoric: that you can love yourself while confronting things in your life you are unhappy about.

It’s something we’ve not addressed since returning to regular society. People suffered in those two years. And they are not being able to get the help they deserve

—  Georgia on the pandemic

The idea that self-improvement is something you can actively reach out for is writ large across the project, which blends escapist dance beats with big, belting choruses. On glitteringly propulsive single Give It Up for Love, for instance, she reflects on her tendency to get caught up in the downsides rather than celebrating the positives and resolves to be more optimistic.

“Now and then I get lost in dysphoria,” she sings, referring to “a mental state of profound sense of unease or dissatisfaction. I want your love but I’m worried it’s too much for you.”

“That [drinking] was something I re-evaluated definitely,” says Georgia. “Those two years were disastrous for people with alcohol problems, drug problems.”

She feels she isn’t alone and that post-lockdown trauma is an issue with which we yet to come fully to terms. “It’s something we’ve not addressed since returning to regular society. People suffered in those two years. And they are not being able to get the help they deserve.”

Georgia was born in London in 1990. Her father is Neil Barnes, co-founder of electronic band Leftfield. She was a talented soccer player, lining out for youth teams affiliated with Queens Park Rangers and Arsenal. But she drifted from the sport as she got older and finally gave up following the death of her coach (“It just got a bit too intense,” she said in 2015).

She was by then attending the Brit School, alma mater to Adele, Amy Winehouse, Freya Ridings, King Krule and others. Her adventures in music had started behind the drum kit and stints playing with composer Kwes and performance poet Kae Tempest.

As a songwriter, she seemed to arrive fully formed and in control of her artistic vision. Her 2015 debut, Georgia, earned comparisons to Missy Elliot. That was followed by Seeking Thrills, a UK top-30 hit praised by the NME as a “jubilant celebration of the dance floor”.

Euphoric is her most commercial record yet. Where her previous work had chart-friendly elements, this time she has gone all in and created a big, emotion-filled pop odyssey. It’s a departure in another sense, too, as it’s her first album with an outside producer in Rostam Batmanglij, former Vampire Weekend guitarist and collaborator with Haim, Clairo and Carly Rae Jepsen.

“It was a new adventure but it was something I was really after. Me and Rostam got on so well in the studio. I wanted to pursue it: I knew I would learn lots. He’s such a giving person. I knew he wouldn’t dictate: he’s not a dictator. Saying that, he did steer the ship sometimes. Which was fantastic: it allowed me concentrate on my vocals. Which was freeing: this new record, is a vocal-led record. The vocals are centre stage. That’s what I wanted. Rostam was so encouraging to me.”

Her struggles with alcohol through lockdown represented a bleak moment. But there has been lots to celebrate too. One big positive was an invitation in 2022 to come to the studio and work on song ideas with Shania Twain. It was a fruitful collaboration: the track they made, Got it Good, ended up on Twain’s recent LP, Queen of Me.

“My mate, Mark Ralph, who I worked with a lot on Seeking Thrills – he called me up and was like, ‘Do you fancy coming in and doing a writing session with Shania? She’s in my studio for the next week.’ I was like, ‘oh, yeah, that sounds amazing’. Suddenly, I’m in the studio with Shania Twain and managed to write a song that made it on to the record.”

She’s been around famous people before. But she was struck by the degree to which Twain, with 100 million album sales to her name, has stayed grounded.

“It’s like a dream come true. Because you never know with legends. You don’t know how you’re going to get on with them. She was so lovely. She’s an amazing woman. First in the studio, last out: fantastic work ethic, a beautiful person. Very honest. She is very willing to open up about her story. A very kind woman.

Given the Leftfield connection, it’s no surprise she would grow up loving dance music. Her real icon, though, was and remains Kate Bush. So it was both a surprise and a thrill, during the lockdown, to watch Bush embraced by a new generation when Running Up that Hill (A Deal with God) was featured on Stranger Things.

“A selfish side of me was like, ‘You know, we all knew Kate was fantastic [before Stranger Things]. But actually it’s been so incredible for her. And so well deserved: [Running Up that Hill] is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. Apparently she’s the only artist of her generation to get to a billion streams or something. I wish her all the happiness: it’s such an amazing record.”

Bush was a hero – but a role model, too. In the 1980s she was that rare female artist who called the shots over every aspect of her career.

“She was ahead of her time. She flew the flag for weird and wonderful artists – artists who were a bit different and who had something else to say. For us women in music, without Kate Bush we wouldn’t have the privileges that we have. She opened the door to a lot. She wrote her music, produced her music. And made the videos for her music – quite phenomenal if you think about it, back in those days, when it was all blokes.”

Barnes was born just as dance music was going mainstream, and her father’s career with Leftfield was taking off. Rave beats and strobe lights soundtracked her childhood: in a photograph that recently did the rounds on social media, you can see the artist as a six-year-old on her father’s shoulders as he bangs a keyboard at a Leftfield gig in Scotland.

“I think my parents felt a bit bad about me being exposed to so much of Leftfield because a lot of it was quite hedonistic,” says Georgia. “I’d say to them, ‘If it wasn’t for being exposed to that, I wouldn’t be where I am’. I’m thankful to my mum and dad for taking me to those gigs. Because I saw things very few people get to see: it was an incredibly inspiring time for my mum and dad. It changed our lives. Looking back now, with no ear protection, you wouldn’t do it. But I love that picture: it’s very touching.”

Euphoric by Georgia is released on July 28th