FEATURE: Spotlight: Girl in the Year Above

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Girl in the Year Above

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THERE are a few interviews…

I want to get to when it comes to Girl in the Year Above. This is an amazing band fronted by Jennifer Ball. Even though they have only released a few singles so far, you can tell that they are going to be a massive international name very soon. If you want to catch the band live, then you can find their dates here. I have only just discovered the music of Girl in the Year Above. I am going to get to an interview where Jennifer Ball speaks about recording Massive Attack’s Teardrop. This Rolling Stone UK interview touches on that too:

“It’s been the most monumental year of my life,” says Girl in the Year Above singer Jennifer Ball. The hairdresser’s excitement, tinged with slight disbelief, is palpable. In the past 12 months, the Cornish/Irish quintet have gone from strength to strength, with a busy live schedule including a tour with The Kooks, and a standout cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ on the soundtrack of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The cover garnered high praise from Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja himself, who called it the most “sublime” version he’d ever heard. Not bad for someone who originally put music to one side “because I needed money,” laughs Ball, who decided instead to pick up the scissors.

This romanticism shouldn’t be mistaken for surface-level explorations of just breakups and love, though. “I do write a bit about love, but not as much as maybe the next person,” says Ball. “I’d rather cover a multitude of different topics. A lot of that is just storytelling and things that have happened that are other human experiences, because there’s so many more than that, right?”

The band’s debut single ‘Mama, My Heart is Achin’’, released in March, is a powerful lament on the loss of Ball’s mother. Though it began life as something of a bitter response to people complaining about their own mothers or minor inconveniences in life, in true Girl in the Year Above fashion, the song’s characteristics changed with every live show and with every member, softening Ball’s view on grief.

“I’ve really had this whole turnaround in the last two years,” she says. “If I want her to be, she’s sat right there, which is so much more special than if someone is on Earth still.” Her newfound positivity is reflected in the record version of the song, making it less of a “big downer”. It’s a track which has already opened up space for con-nection and shared experience at the band’s live shows, as she explains. “I get loads of messages about people that have struggled with grief and how much it helped, or people that have lost their mum and how they connect with it, which is really special.”

Despite the band’s seemingly overnight success, the singer never expected this to happen. “I think it’s something I secretly wanted, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself,” she says. “Who doesn’t want to be a rock star?” With a busy year ahead and attracting over half a million listeners on two tracks in just a few months, 2026 is the year to live out that dream”.

If you are new to the band, then I would advise you to connect with them on social media. Their cover of Teardrop is extraordinary. However, I also really love their singles. Wet Paint is their latest. You wonder whether Girl in the Year Above will release an E.P. soon. At the moment, they are focusing on tour dates and looking ahead to that. I am going to move to an interview from Karma Magazine, as Jennifer Ball discusses recording Teardrop for the Peaky Blinders soundtrack:

“While Ball admits she wasn’t quite prepared for the sheer scale of the production, the band approached the opportunity with a clear sense of identity. Their cover of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” reshapes the original, weaving in their distinct Celtic storytelling style to create something newly intimate and haunting. When asked about the influences she brought to the track, Ball doesn’t hesitate. “My whole life is grief… and Teardrop has a lot of grief within it.”

It’s this emotional alignment that makes the cover feel so natural. The original song, known to be associated with the death of Jeff Buckley, is steeped in themes of loss, fragility, and longing. For Ball, those themes are a lived experience. She describes the track as “classic, timeless… it’s something everybody knows,” but her interpretation leans into its emotional weight, softening the trip hop edges of the original and grounding it in something more traditional and human.

That grounding comes from heritage. Ball, who is Cornish and Irish, draws heavily on Celtic musical traditions, something that defines the band’s sound.
“We incorporated the trills that my voice does naturally… that’s definitely a bit Celtic,” she explains. The arrangement reflects this instinct.

The opening is stripped back to a cappella, allowing the song to breathe before it builds. “It was a nice moment to emphasise how emotional the song is. It’s something you’d hear someone sing in an Irish pub.” That image speaks to something deeper than stylistic choice. Storytelling, in its most traditional sense, sits at the centre of Ball’s approach to music: “To storytell and sit around in a circle, to listen to another person… is so important. That’s why I like the pub, you get to talk and listen.”

This idea of shared space, of listening as much as speaking, becomes central to how she understands music’s role. Songs are a shared exchange. They hold grief, but they also offer a way of processing it collectively. In that sense, music becomes a form of community building. It’s a theme that aligns closely with Peaky Blinders itself. Set against the backdrop of political unrest, trauma, and working class struggle in early 20th century Britain, the story resonates beyond its time period. The anxieties that shape its characters feel familiar, even now. There’s a continuity to grief, to hardship, that cuts across generations.

For Ball, this is where art becomes powerful. Naming grief, giving it shape through sound is an active movement. It creates space for acknowledgement, for reflection, and sometimes even for change. Whether it’s in a cinema, through a song, or across a table in a crowded pub, those experiences can create a sense of connection that feels increasingly rare.

“We need to make sure we’re listening to each other,” she says, returning to the idea of attention and presence. Her songwriting process reflects that mindset. Inspiration comes from observation, from small, often fleeting moments. She says, “I love seeing someone on the street and writing a song about them… or seeing a piece of art… or hearing a story from someone else.” Even here, the emphasis remains outward, rooted in noticing, absorbing, and translating the world into something others can recognise themselves in. That same instinct carries through everything, even in the lighter moments”.

I am going to finish off with DORK and their recent interview. Even after a few releases, Girl in the Year Above are getting a lot of buzz and love. I do think that the group are going to be playing huge dates soon enough. As they release more singles, there will be that demand. Even in these early days, you can really tell that Girl in the Year Above are going to be playing and releasing music for many years. Jennifer Ball is this incredible lead:

“I‘m not being in a band and not getting absolutely massive,” says Jennifer Ball with a knowing grin. At this early point in their career, Girl In The Year Above have only released two original songs and contributed their cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ to the ‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man’ soundtrack, but they’ve already sold out one UK tour (with their next not far behind) and absolutely dominated festival season.

“I never expected it to happen this fast,” Jennifer tells Dork, shortly after packing out the second of two shows at The Great Escape. “But I’m not going to lie, I’m having a great time.” And while her current ambitions for Girl In The Year Above are to “play fucking massive shows”, the project started very differently.

Growing up, Jennifer was always fascinated by music, so she went to college to study it while writing her own acoustic tracks. She eventually hung up her guitar and started working as a hairdresser because she needed the money. “I just thought I was bad and I didn’t feel connected to what I was writing.” But while walking to the salon every day, she’d come up with scrappy song ideas and record them on her phone. That’s where grief-stricken ‘Mama, My Heart Is Achin’ and nostalgia folk of ‘Ode To The Glory Days’ first came from.

Around the same time, she connected with a group of musical mates down the local pub who would go on to join Girl In The Year Above – guitarists Nathan Coen, Shane Kennedy and his brother David, Mystery Jets’ drummer Kapil Trivedi and keys player Jeanie White. It wasn’t long before they were hanging out until the early hours of the morning, writing songs together. And everyone else they showed the music to was just as excited.

As well as a free-flowing approach to genre, Girl In The Year Above write about anything and everything. “I don’t just want songs about love and break-ups,” says Jennifer. Earlier this week, she and Jeanie made one track about sex work and another about a window cleaner. “I’m really attracted to the idea of writing songs about experiences that a lot of people have, but they don’t talk about, such as grief, sexuality, and being cancelled. I just want to cover as much ground as possible because storytelling is one of the most valuable things we have as humans”.

I am going to wrap up. The sensational Girl in the Year Above are a group that you need to follow. Even if Jennifer Ball fronts the interviews and much of the focus is on her, they are a fully-formed and fleshed band that have this tremendous sound. I don’t think that there is anyone else like them in music at the moment. Go and follow Girl in the Year Above and see them live if you can. It is only a matter of time before the group are conquering the world. The music that they have released so far shows…