FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Erin LeCount

FEATURE:

Spotlight: Revisited

Erin LeCount

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EVEN though…

PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard

I spotlighted her two years ago, I want to come back to the music of Erin LeCount. I want to start out with an interview from earlier last year, around the release of her E.P., I Am Digital, I Am Divine. DORK (who included in her in their Hype List 2026 in January) spoke with an artist who had this unconventional path to Electronic music. Through reality T.V. and Essex pub gigs, it was a modest and sometimes strange path to where she is now. From humble origins, Erin LeCount is hailed as one of our finest rising artists:

“The path from caravan park performances to crafting intricate electronic compositions wasn’t a straight line. By age nine, she was performing at open mics in Essex pubs, though as she notes, “I wasn’t really aware though, and not really consciously thinking about putting myself ‘out there’.” Under the guidance of her primary school music teacher, Peter, who owned The Hermit Club in Brentwood, she immersed herself in live music every weekend. “We’d practice every Saturday in a band, learning instruments and covering songs we liked,” she remembers. “I made silly amounts of money busking as a kid.” These formative experiences provided an education in performance that few could match.

At twelve, she was scouted for The Voice Kids, an experience that fundamentally altered her relationship with music. “I’d never had singing lessons; I’d never really wondered or questioned if I was a good singer or not. I just did it without thinking – it was fun, it was intuitive,” she explains. “Suddenly you’re surrounded by kids that starred on the West End, kids younger than you that are classically trained, and you’re suddenly being analysed and coached on how you sing, dissected on how you pronounce your words. I realised that it’s a sport and an art.”

That realisation came with a cost, but LeCount maintains a philosophical perspective: “I have opinions about it all, but I am a firm believer in sliding doors and that there’s something fateful about everything you experience, so I’d never take it back.” This early exposure to the industry’s more clinical aspects would later inform her approach to creative authenticity.

Now, nearly a decade later, she’s emerged with ‘I Am Digital, I Am Divine’, an EP that grapples with the complexities of human emotion through the lens of technology and spirituality. “It’s about feeling inherently dysfunctional as a person, like you’re a machine with a fault in your code or a piece of art, like a statue that has come to life and can feel everything in a way you’re not supposed to,” she explains. The collection emerged from a period of emotional hibernation and subsequent awakening. “A few years ago, I was quite unwell and dealing with a lot at once that I felt like all my emotions shut down for a good amount of time. When my life eventually started to open up again, I felt like I was a child experiencing every emotion for the first time, to its fullest extent, and that’s documented in a lot of these songs.”

Each track on the EP represents a different facet of emotional dysfunction. “‘Silver Spoon’ and ‘Marble Arch’ are two very different versions of feeling like there’s something very wrong with you,” she explains. “Feelings of resentment, performances of trying to be perfect, even if it’s self-sacrificial and you hate yourself and other people for it. The whole EP covers this spectrum of feeling dysfunctional as a person.”

Between recording sessions, LeCount maintains an eclectic set of interests. “I’m an avid car boot sale enjoyer – every Sunday like church, and not even the sexy London vintage kind, I’m talking local mums trying to get rid of their old night-out clothes,” she shares. “I like dance; I’d like to go back to dance lessons. I run a lot, and I lift weights; I’m quite strong.”

Looking ahead, she’s careful not to let recent success dictate her future direction. “I think I make good things when I’m not thinking about who’s listening,” she says. “Getting praise for something you make is lovely, but I’m very afraid of being redundant and safe in trying to recreate that same response over and over again.” She’s currently in what she describes as “a processing phase,” working on “the kind of things I’d dreamt of doing but didn’t think would happen for many years”.

There is something very special about Erin LeCount. Even though you might consider her to be an established artist, I do feel like she is someone still not known to everyone. Her new E.P., PAREIDOLIA, is hugely exciting and anticipated. I am publishing this just before its release, though I would suggest everyone digs it out. The songs released from it so far are among the best we have heard from LeCount. There are a couple of other interviews I want to cover before finishing off. A remarkable songwriter and producer, this interview from RTÉ was published around the release of her recent single, I BELIEVE:

“How would you describe your music?

I think if it was a person, it would have a pop heartbeat, but the body is a bit of a Frankenstein. Warped and slightly dark but there’s a lot of care and craft put into it, a lot of alchemy.

Who are your musical inspirations?

Kate Bush is really my north star, and the lineage of everyone she paved the way for like Imogen Heap and Björk. I love Robyn and Lorde, the synthpop outliers and Lana. I love Sampha too, he’s a special artist to me.

What was the first gig you ever went to?

I went to every random band gig/live show/open mic I possibly could at a really young age, I was obsessed with this local club and rehearsed there every single weekend, so I would desperately try to stay and see the local bands in the evening, a lot of those memories blur. My first proper "concert" that wasn’t in some local bar or club was when I was sixteen, it was in the nosebleed seats of Ariana Grande’s Sweetener Tour. Very different energy. I love both.

What was the first record you ever bought?

I mean the first ever thing I remember buying on my iPod Touch was Now That’s What I Call Music 81, which was 2012 era pop music. If that counts. When I started listening to vinyl, I just used to take my dad’s old hip hop stuff, or my mum's 80s records.

What’s your favourite song right now?

My Lights Kiss Your Every Thought by Lucy Gooch. Feels like being weightless.

Favourite lyric of all time?

"I just know that something good is gonna happen, I don’t know when, but just saying it could even make it happen" from Cloudbusting by Kate Bush. I listen to it on every good day, every bad day.

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Cloudbusting by Kate Bush (again). It’s really that special to me”.

I am going to end with an interview from EUPHORIA. Making her debut in 2022, at a time when we were living with the COVID-19 pandemic and it was a strange time for something special, she is now on the brink of something special. PAREIDOLIA is the latest work from a truly remarkable artist. I would urge everyone to listen to her music, as she is set for greatness:

“You’ve announced your new EP – PAREIDOLIA – where three songs you have already released last year. How have you felt about the reception of those so far?

This is the first time I’ve been releasing music while there’s an active audience coming to shows, and it’s been a completely different experience. I’ve felt incredibly grateful. It has reminded me how lucky I am to have listeners who really pay attention to detail. I obsess over every part of the production and writing, and it feels like the people listening are doing the same. Releasing music that’s so intensely personal and feeling like it’s being taken care of has been really special. The reception to “I BELIEVE” surprised me in the best way. You sit with a song for so long that you forget what it sounds like objectively, so it’s been really beautiful.

The project has a unique title, PAREIDOLIA. What inspired this?

It’s the phenomenon of seeing faces or patterns in things that aren’t actually there. It was inspired by Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting,” when you look at clouds and think, ‘That looks like an elephant.’ A less poetic example is seeing a plug socket and thinking it looks like a smiley face.

You mentioned that “MACHINE GHOST” is your favourite song you’ve ever written and recorded. Why is that?

I love that song. It’s rare for me to make something and feel immediately proud of it. Usually, I think, ‘There’s something here,’ and then I obsess over it for six to twelve months. But with “MACHINE GHOST,” it was different. I wrote the opening line, “I didn’t want us to, I wanted us to make love,” when I was about seventeen. I’m about to turn twenty-three, and I held onto that line for years without being able to build a song around it. Then I was incredibly sad one day, experimenting with a vocoder, and the song came together in about an hour. I barely touched it after that. I didn’t obsess over it at all; it just was what it was. It’s one of those songs that makes you understand why people talk about music coming from somewhere beyond you, like you’re just a channel for it. It felt like it fell out of the sky, even though it had been lingering with me for five years.

“AMERICAN DREAM” is my personal favourite. It feels very autobiographical.

I love that it’s your favorite. I’m curious which version you were sent, because it’s the least fleshed-out one. I’ve actually been working on it nonstop for the past forty-eight hours. I’m excited about it, and I love that it resonates with you because I always suspected it might. Some people were concerned it was too autobiographical or too niche. I tend to write very specifically anyway, but usually there are broader themes people can latch onto. “American Dream” is more sprawling; it’s about how I grew up, working-class British culture, and this strange transitional period I’m in. I live at home with my parents, and then suddenly I’m leaving to tour America. I meet people in the music industry that I don’t always feel I belong with, and at the same time, I sometimes struggle to connect with friends I grew up with who are trying to find jobs and get by. It felt like a diary entry about guilt, ambition, and knowing that pursuing something bigger can come at the cost of personal relationships. It’s about shifting dynamics in my identity, my family, and my relationships as my career progresses. I worried for a while that it might be too early to talk about these things, but it felt honest and very specific to my life.

Have you been able to bond with other singers/your peers who have had a similar year? Other artists like Sienna Spiro have also gone from tiny gigs to a lot of recognition in such a short span of time.

I really love Sienna, she’s genuinely a wonderful person. Befriending people who are in similar positions has been incredibly helpful, especially in understanding what’s acceptable in the industry. You don’t know until you talk to others about their experiences. As emerging artists, especially women, we’re often pitted against each other, and it benefits everyone to focus on collaboration and community instead of competition. The friendships I’ve made this year have brought so much clarity and light to really confusing transitions in my life. It helps to talk to people who understand that even when you’re doing the “dream” thing, you’re not happy all the time and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

With everything happening so fast, are you able to recognize what is a milestone? I’ve read interviews from artists, where it wasn’t until much later on until they were able to realize having success early on was a big deal as opposed to it being expected.

I try to mark milestones, achievements, exciting days, moments where you get a great phone call or news from your manager. I’m very committed to keeping diaries and journals; I write every morning and every night, and I’ve done that for over five years. It helps me stay present, because that doesn’t come naturally to me. I move very fast and put a lot of pressure on myself. I’ve been working toward this since I was sixteen, so in many ways I’ve been waiting for these things to happen for a long time. I’m trying to slow down and enjoy this transitional phase, because this part, playing shows, and building momentum, is arguably the most exciting point. It’s the best part of the climb”.

Take some time to explore this phenomenal artist. Erin LeCount is going to be making music for many years to come. She has some incredible gigs coming up, including a huge show at London’s Roundhouse on 15th May. One of our most prestigious venues, that will be an incredible gig! Proof that there is this great demand for an artist that is in her own league. Anyone who does not know about Erin LeCount, make sure you…