Brighton’s Rising Star: Catching Up with 2023 Youth Music Award Winner EVA

Brighton’s Rising Star: Catching Up with 2023 Youth Music Award Winner EVA

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From interning at Sony Music in New York to hosting radio segments for the legendary Glastonbury Festival, Eva has been making waves in the music world. Now, she’s taking things a step further with the launch of her own radio show, StationBabe. It’s been a whirlwind journey, and she’s just getting started! 

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Last time we spoke, the singer shared her experiences about university life, performing at Glastonbury, and how she crafted her music and videos with the help of her NextGen funding. Eva also opened up about the excitement of winning three awards at the Youth Music Awards. With this year’s awards approaching, it feels only fitting to catch up with her once again.

The singer joins the Zoom call from a spot outside a restaurant, sheltered from the grey, rainy London weather. Fresh from a university lecture, Eva greets me warmly, and we dive into a friendly catch-up before getting into everything she’s been up to. Casually, she brings up the Youth Music Awards, reflecting on how winning three awards last year gave her the affirmation she needed. She explains that, after pouring so much hard work into her music, the recognition made it easier to step back and truly appreciate where she is right now.

I asked the singer how University life is going? From being a student myself I can relate to her position, being in third year is tough and takes a lot of hard work. Eva agreed, reflecting back to last year saying, “I was trying to do too much at once. I'm in my third week now of my final year at King's. I've been really enjoying it, I think because I've realised this is it now, third year, I need to focus and hone in.” 

Before digging in too deep about dissertations and her studies, I want to rewind back to the start of the year where she jetted off to New York. Having applied to go there as part of the university’s study abroad programme. “You can go to Seoul, you can go to loads of different places, South Carolina, some people went to Berlin, and I just thought, okay, I'll apply. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Obviously it's such a fantastic opportunity to be able to study in a different country, especially somewhere like America, where visas are getting more and more difficult to obtain. They also sort out your health insurance, school fees, you don't have to pay any fees. They give you a bursary on top of your student loan, so it's just a really fantastic place to go for four months.” Continuing about her experience Eva explains how her studies went in the states, “I did Liberal Arts, so I had to pick four different classes. I did one called Newsroom Video Production, which is a Journalistic class, and then two in Literature, and then another one that's related to Nonprofits and stuff like that. It was really good studying there.” 

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The importance of travel for fun and for developing as a human to deepen your understanding of the world, is a special thing to do. On top of that, Eva happened to be in the right place at the right time to apply for a Sony Internship. “I got really, really lucky, I found out about the internship from a friend of mine. He sent me a story of someone else's story, saying, looking for an intern, must be a student living in New York, and must be into dance music, and have some creative background in producing visuals. It said it ran from February to April and I was there from January to May, so I was like, this is literally perfect. What happened is that Sony and all their subsidiary labels, get told you're going to have an intern and it normally gets advertised on the Sony website. However, the record label that I was working for, Ultra Records, only found out last minute that they were going to have an intern. So they just had to advertise it word of mouth. It's literally the power of social media, someone saw it, then they sent it to me. I applied and it turned out that they didn't have many applicants, because it was so hard to find someone that fit that specific criteria. I got really, really lucky. That was also just such a great experience.”

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Eva goes on to explain the ins and outs of what she was doing at the internship and how that helped her get some new skills under her belt. “The internship was really, really good because it was teaching me a lot of skills that I would need for myself as an artist. I was doing video editing, graphic design, making single covers, visuals, interviews and coming up with campaigns. I had to come up with something for Earth Day, so I thought we'd make a playlist of all the songs that are Earth-related. Then I made a cover, it was like a Spotify playlist. The internship was really flexible, I wasn't doing any kind of admin stuff. I was just doing loads of editing, which was so helpful for me. Now I've come back from that experience feeling like I can edit my own videos, I can use photoshop much better.”

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Coming back from New York to a sold out gig and presenting at Glastonbury Festival on Worthy FM. Eva spills all the details from working behind the scenes at the Festival to landing a sellout gig with Jodie Bryan. Bryan is well known for putting on events for emerging artists. Eva adds saying “Her events sell out every time so for her to ask,  I felt pretty special, So I came home to do a sold-out show which was really nice. All my friends came, it was just such a great show” Eva beams happily at the memory, before going to talk about Glastonbury. “It was definitely full-on, the FM broadcasts were from the Monday before the festival starts to the following Monday. I hadn't done radio before.” Luckily Eva had two lovely co-hosts to lean on for support and guidance with the radio show. “I was co-hosting with two guys, both of them a bit more experienced than me, which was really good because it meant that I was able to just kind of be like what's this? What's going on? How do I turn the mic up?” Looking back at the different tasks she was doing at the radio station, the artist comments on what it's like to be interviewing when she is normally the interviewee.“I interviewed Joe Wicks, so random but so fun. He's got such an aura. I don't usually feel star-struck towards people, but I did his fitness routine thing in lockdown, and then after talking, there was a line of like hundreds of people queuing up to have a picture with him. He was so friendly, so nice and just really chatty. Most people are like this, you probably found this? I'd never been the interviewer before, but it's so nice they're just excited to tell you what they're doing and to actually have someone inquire. It was such a great experience. Doing radio is so fun, choosing the show, choosing the songs, getting people in, doing all the little soundscapes.” 

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After asking the singer about any performances over the summer, she explained, “I've been in lots of sessions and stuff but in terms of gigs I think I've definitely just been enjoying my summer. I'm definitely someone that will take on so much, do so much and just constantly try and be everywhere at once.” This is proven from the musicians’ busy track record. Instead of gigging the singer has been back in the studio, “making loads and loads of music like so much. I recently worked with an artist called Mossby John, who is big in the dance world. It's very sort of like Skinner-ish vibes, spoken word and like British rap.” Eva went on to share her new found hobby, which I imagine comes to no surprise for someone who loves music and has worked on radio, it's about time Eva started DJing. “People would always say to me like you should do it and I'd just be like, oh I don't know, but when you actually start If you're an artist or a producer or whatever, a musician, I think DJing can be so underrated developmental because of how much music you're being exposed to.”

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“I think I've just been consuming and creating, definitely creating a lot and just being more conscious of what I'm listening to.” For Eva to take a step back from performing and spend more time enjoying creating and listening to music. It has opened the artist's eyes to a plethora of new music at her fingertips.“What’s so good about Spotify is that you go to the radio and then you're like, oh, there's just a whole world of music out there. You can get lost in it so easily.” The artist also explained how tempting it is to fall into the trap of listening to the same music over and over again. “I'd probably listen to the same five songs for the rest of my life. Like, 90s R&B, but I'm forcing myself to branch out into all these different genres. Looking at different styles of music and just expanding my intake, I think it has really helped me be conscious of what I really want to make.”

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It was really interesting to hear that response from the musician, how DJing has helped her be an active listener and think about music more critically. I added how it makes you look at music differently once you start DJing. Eva agreed and added that, “you see music almost as a currency.”

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Eva has now got the taste for the airwaves and has been inspired to run her own show called StationBabe on KCL Radio. “Like Babe Station. It's a feminist show about the London underground, and so it's quite tongue-in-cheek.” Eva explains how it came to fruition after enjoying presenting on local Brighton radio station Platform B and at Glastonbury this year, realising; “I actually really like curating a sonic experience. It's like a bit of journalism and a bit of DJing, just a bit of everything.”

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The singer explained the fun premise of the show, “there'll be a cryptic message relating to one of the Tube stops. So, for example, if I would say, I'm one of many daughters, that's seven sisters, and So every show, I'll say, okay, text in what you think the station is and then once I reveal it, I'll give a feminist or just female-adjacent piece of information about the station or the area.” This quirky concept sounds fun for the listener and come on who doesn't like a fun factoid? Eva also opened up how student radio is a good place to start, everyone is at the same level and there's no judgement. “It’s most people’s first time doing radio. No one thinks they're better. I think it'll be a low commitment project alongside my studies. it would just be an hour a week and then I've also got an hour slot for DJing. I'm just trying to make everything easier by kind of combining it all into one, like everything's at uni. I can do the DJing, the radio show, my lectures and my studies all in the same place.” Having everything in the same place sounds like a good strategy. I'm excited to see what new sounds Eva brings us and to dive into decoding the latest cryptic clues on StationBabe! 

Check out EVA's music and radio show live every Tuesday 6-7PM on KCL radio. 

www.youtube.com/@VIDADELADIVA

www.instagram.com/stationbabe/

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