The Jordan star Caroline van der Leeuw has found recording her debut solo album both liberating and reaffirming.
The Back It Up star, who topped the charts as frontwoman of Caro Emerald, returns in February with ‘Nowhere Near The Sky’, introducing a bold new sound worlds away from the jazz-pop collective.
It’s been a decade since Caro Emerald released their most recent album, ‘The Shocking Miss Emerald’ (2013), and speaking in RETROPOP’s January 2023 issue, the singer opened up about her early success.
“I guess there’s two things that can happen if you’re //that// successful: either it makes you feel bigger, or it makes you feel really tiny. That’s what happened to me,” she says. “At the start, it made me feel more confident; like I was wanted and, knowing exactly what people would want from me, that I could give that to them.
“But another part of me just shrunk, because I felt I couldn’t compete with myself or with my success. I felt like a fraud; like I could never live up to all these expectations that people had of me. And it made my self esteem really low.
“I guess it was low and I never realised it until I started working on my own. Then I realised how little self esteem I had, and that’s kind of painful,” she candidly shares, admitting that venturing into the creative process for her first solo project was a leap into the unknown.
“I was very insecure. I didn’t think much of myself as a songwriter or as a businesswoman. I wanted to learn but I also felt like I didn’t really have the talent for all of that. However, throughout the process I learned that I have more talent than I recognise myself for.”
‘Nowhere Near The Sky’ clocks in at 15 tracks – featuring 12 new songs and three interludes – and delivers a deeply personal and probing narrative, written by Caroline alongside collaborators such as David Kosten and Eg White, that explores her journey in music and life so far. ‘Is there anything you wanna know about me?’ Caroline asks on the second track, What Was, Was Not. ‘Anything you didn’t know before?’
Of writing so candidly, she confesses: “It was therapeutic. It was sometimes very confrontational. These lyrics are sometimes very angry and it’s rough – even for myself to read what I wrote is still a bit awkward. I don’t always want to know that some of those feelings are there. But at the same time, I think that’s the beauty of it and that’s the beauty of art. That’s the kind of artist I want to be.”
‘Nowhere Near The Sky’ is out February 10 and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the January 2023 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
