With the release of her new single ‘High’ we catch up with Kate Stewart about her journey in music so far and why it’s important to always stick to your guns

Music is very much subjective however, being gifted with the raw ability to make magical sounds with your voice in my opinion, is an incredible art form. It’s a pure talent that is simply undeniable. Successful music artists come in many forms, most can get away with just mumbling a bunch of made up words on beat these days. With the right production and a catchy hook to create the sonics of a hit song, anybody could become a popular music artist over night but here’s the thing, popularity doesn’t mean you are actually a good singer or that you can even sing at all. In fact great singers are few and far between so when you come across a truly incredible voice, you don’t just hear them you feel them in your soul.

Singer-songwriter Kate Stewart has one of those voices; her vocal abilities are out of this world. Melodic and pitch perfect tones effortlessly flow out of her mouth, it’s as if you can see flowers blooming as she sings. Honestly, that’s how incredible Kate is and she has the receipts to prove it too. She’s no stranger to the music industry, at just 24 years of age Kate has already lived what most would consider ‘the dream,’ signing to Warner Music, becoming a pop artist and being moulded into a British version of Ariana Grande, it’s the perfect career right? Well after getting to know Kate, it became more and more apparent, that just wasn’t her path. Formally known in the industry as KStewart, it’s likely to be a name you’ve heard before but it’s plain and simply Kate Stewart now. No gimmicks, no alter egos, just Kate and her outstanding voice.

We met with Kate not long after the release of her then recent single ‘Get Mine,’ back in the summer. Written with three of her closest friends MNEK, Ryan Ashley and Shift K3Y, “that’s my team,” Kate tells me. “They’re my favourite people to work with, I would do a whole album with them if I could.” It’s a pop-infused song with a very cheeky concept, “some people don’t get the lyrics until they listen back to it a couple of times, the lyrics are just so funny,” laughs Kate. ‘Get Mine’ was the follow up single to Kate’s debut EP ‘In The Beginning’ which she released in November 2018. The 8-track project kicks off with its title track, a jazz inspired and soulfully stripped intro song, with Kate explaining the need to take things back to the beginning and start over. The entire EP is a beautifully delivered collection of great R&B songs, bringing real emotion and love back into modern day music.

Getting to know Kate was honestly a very fascinating experience, probably due to the fact that she’s unapologetically her true self at all times. She arrived at our photo studio completely on her own but full of life, confidence and just in need of one thing, a McDonalds Breakfast to get her going. So she immediately put’s in an order on her phone and that was that. Honestly, I was impressed by her independence and she was an absolute pleasure to work with throughout the day. She’s effortless in front of the camera, very talkative and an absolute bag of laughs. She’s extremely easy going and quite simply just fun and young but let’s not get it twisted, she’s definitely a real one and she can most definitely hold her own. Our team made her feel comfortable and she was up for anything we suggested creatively, “the styling was sick,” says Kate as we kick off our chat for this interview. “I’m very picky with styling and I’m very picky with make-up so both of them were perfect, exactly how I like.”

Growing up in Maide Vale, West London, amongst a very musical family, it’s no surprise Kate ended up as a singer herself. Her Scottish father is an impressionist and comedian, her mother a retired dancer but Kate tells me she also carries a lovely voice too and Kate’s older brother David Stewart, is a singer, songwriter, music producer and 1/3 of London based DJ/production trio Mad Teeth, who we interviewed earlier in the year. “Everyone just sings in my family,” explains Kate. “I used to lock myself in my room because I was too nervous for anyone to hear me sing. I would shut the living room door, shut the kitchen door, shut my door and I would put the music really loudly to drown my voice out because I just didn’t want anyone to hear me.”

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Just like her father, Kate had developed a natural flair to copy and impersonate other people, “I started listening to Christina (Aguilera), she was my first one that I picked up on and then after that I just started to be obsessed with voices,” details Kate. “I was copying Christina, copying Whitney (Houston) and copying Jessie (J). I was listening to them and just copying their ad libs, obviously when I got older I found my own voice but had all of the elements from them.” By impersonating and perfecting the voices of her favourite singers, Kate became her very own vocal coach from a very young age, training herself to sound just like some of the greatest singers of all time. Christina Aguilera’s fourth studio album ‘Stripped’ played a big part in this for Kate, it was this very record which is also her favourite of all time, that enabled Kate to develop the abilities to sing the way she can today.

There’s a certain edge to Kate that you probably wouldn’t expect from a born and bred West Londoner, Kate believes this is down to her secondary school. Having attended ArtsEd, a performing arts school based in Chiswick, from the age of 11 she was exposed to an array of people from many different places. “My primary school was very much the opposite in Belsize Park,” shares Kate. “Posh kids, rich parents.” I wondered how Kate dealt with the change of worlds, as it’s almost one extreme to another but for Kate, her battles were more so focused on the demotion of being the oldest in school, to the youngest. “I used to pretend to my mum that I was ill for pretty much the whole of year seven,” admits Kate. “I really hated it. Going from year six where you’re the oldest and you’re like the boss of the school, to going into year seven, being the youngest and no one knows who you are, it’s just difficult. I need to be in control of everything, to be the boss of everything and when you’re in year seven and you’re a ‘yout,’ you’re not the boss of anything. You’re barely the boss of yourself.” Over time Kate eased into her new school and made great friendships, she even took a liking to all the teachers. “I loved it,” she states. “I couldn’t believe I got to do singing and ballet everyday.”

At 16, Kate re-auditioned to stay on at ArtsEd’s for sixth form/college to study musical theatre. “I thought I wanted to do musical theatre because I loved being on stage but singing was always my favourite,” explains Kate. “I knew I just wanted to be on stage, mainly theatres. I just love being in theatres.” However, the thought of theatre life was very different to the reality and for Kate, it was a very different world to what she knew. Kate was no longer surrounded by the friends she spent the last five years with, she was now amongst a new bunch of theatrically obsessed and overly exuberant individuals. “Theatre was their life, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kate tells me. “They were nothing like me, I was out of place.” For Kate, this was very much a suffocating experience, she felt a complete disconnect to the people she was now around. They were constantly in character, performing literally all the time, “it was really their passion,” shares Kate. “It really can’t be mine because this is just not it!” Kate tells me about her teacher, a guy named Phill Sutton who she describes as a very “horrible man.” On one occasion Kate was singing and he stopped her by saying, “wait, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Why are you singing it like that?” “That’s the way that I sing,” responds Kate. “No, no, no, no, no. Try again, sing it straighter,” requests her teacher. “I don’t want to sing it straighter, that’s not how I would sing it,” responds Kate and then he said, “when you’re in a choir darling, you have to sing straight.” “I am never gonna be put in a choir, you will not put me in the back of any fucking choir,” defends Kate in response. “I need to be in the front riffing.” It was at that very moment, the penny dropped for Kate, “it didn’t feel right. It didn’t sit right with me, that whole course so I left a year early.”

A daunting time ahead for Kate, as she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do next. In her mind, the only option she had was to start working in a shop. All of her friends were going to be busy with college and she was likely to become very bored and lonely. Luckily for Kate, her music teacher suggested that she goes to a music college to study music, singing and writing. Kate didn’t even know such a thing was an option and so was introduced to Tech College, in Acton. “That was the start of me being like OK, singing because that’s where you just did music,” details Kate. “There was music, songwriting, performing, writing music, reading music and that felt so much more me. I didn’t feel uncomfortable in any of the lessons, I knew what I was doing.” Kate finally felt at home, she was doing exactly what she was meant to be doing and so everything was naturally falling into place. “Everything I do, I have to be the best at it,” admits Kate. “I was the best at Tech, I felt so comfortable and confident doing that. I wasn’t the best at ArtsEd, dancing wise, I was not the best by any means, not one bit. I just need to be the best and I’m the best at singing.” I ask Kate to describe how she feels, when she’s singing, “I’ve got a real issue with being out of control, in any situation,“ she admits to me. “When I’m singing, I just feel completely in control, I can take the song wherever I want it to go.”

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It was after Music College, Kate ended up meeting her then manager, who was part of the management company working with electronic duo, Bondax. This opened up an opportunity, which saw Kate go on tour with the duo for the next two years. Simultaneously, Kate was working on her own music and developing her sound working with Karma Kid, a music producer who is now signed to Black Butter Records. The pair worked on an EP, making a fusion of R&B and electronic inspired tracks, it was exactly what Kate wanted to do, she made her direction very clear to all those involved from the start. A huge turning point came about for Kate when she featured on a song by Oliver Heldens, which she worked on with MNEK and Becky Hill. The dance song entitled ‘Last All Night (Koala)’ became a huge hit, charting at number 1 in the UK Dance official charts and number 5 in the UK Singles chart. “All the A&Rs starting popping up and obviously when you are 18, that’s all you want,” explains Kate. “You just wanna be signed to a major label, it’s like the aim.” She ended up meeting an A&R at Warner Music who she absolutely loved and he claimed to understand her vision, so she signed her deal with Warner. “Total and utter lie, he didn’t understand the vision because as soon as I signed, the vision got completely switched on its head,” details Kate. “Obviously everyone says I sound like Ariana Grande so they just leached onto that and just made it all pink, make-up, curls, pop and fluff. You know me now, you’ve met me, that’s just not it. I’m a bit of a chavy, rude girl at heart, a rude girl with attitude, I’m not a fluffy princess, I’ve never been that. I wear tracksuits with my hood up most days, I’m just not that.” Kate is far from ‘chavy’ but I completely understood what she was getting at and it’s another sad case of genuine artists, being expected to mould into something that they are simply not. It happened to American singer-songwriter Pink, although her debut album ‘Can’t Take Me Home’ was a huge success, she was embodying a character and a culture that wasn’t her and she wasn’t comfortable with that. Success is great but is it worth our own integrity? For Kate, her integrity meant much more, “I basically said to them I’m feeling very uncomfortable with these choices, I don’t like what’s going on,” shares Kate. She was brutally honest with the label, she hated everything; the artwork, the visuals, the way she looked in all the pictures, everything. It just wasn’t her and when things don’t work, they really just don’t work. “The music is not coming out right, every session I go into I’m feeling uncomfortable, I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what you want from me,” this was Kate’s cry to the label. “Every time I play you a song that I love, you turn it off after two seconds, we are not on the same wavelength.” It was really difficult to comprehend all the details Kate was sharing with me. To know that a teenage girl went through all of this upheaval, in a moment that should have been the most incredible time of her life, it’s just heartbreaking and it went on for two years.

Throughout the shoot and my chat with Kate, it was clear from the start that she is not an individual to be messing around with. She’s a very direct and strong woman, who’s been clear on what she does and doesn’t want to do since a very young age. So it was no further surprise when Kate told me she decided to walk from the deal. “I had a meeting with them and said I need out, this is just depressing,” she shared and continued to relay her words to Warner. “It’s not going to plan, you guys don’t even care, you’ve never even let me do a music video. No one even knows what I look like.” For two years Kate wasn’t allowed to put out any music. She had basically been shelved however, the label insisted to have one last attempt before calling it quits. They wanted Kate to do one more song, a song that was written for her but Kate knew, this wasn’t the song and radio will not like it. The label being the label, were adamant to run with the song but Kate was right, radio were not in support of the track and it didn’t get played. Kate shot a video for the track but she hated it and that was that, she was then released from her deal. She tells me it was on a very amicable basis and she was able to keep all her masters. I was so glad for her but also very concerned and so asked her how she felt, to be stuck in a situation where she completely lacked control, “depressive,” she tells me. Although she explained that she’s battled with periods of depression before and she wouldn’t say she became depressed at this time. “I felt very anxious and just very lost,” describes Kate. “I felt like I was shit at making music. Every session I’m going into, the song is crap but that’s because I wasn’t making music that I felt comfortable making. I was going in with producers that didn’t get it, so I was just very lost and very uncomfortable.”

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There is always light at the end of the tunnel and although this was a tough experience for Kate, she did come out the other end with some thorough life lessons, “I’ve learnt to always stick to your guns, no matter who or what man, woman whoever; don’t listen to them,” she expresses intently. “Listen to your gut because you’re the only person who’s going to tell you what’s right. Yea just stick to your guns and trust your gut instinct. Don’t listen to anyone except your self and the people that you trust. If you don’t fully trust someone, don’t listen to them because they’re gonna just stir you wrong.” She speaks words of wisdom and hopefully it’s guidance that can be transferred to other young people. “As a young artist, as a new artist don’t sign to a fucking major label,” Kate urges. “I can’t stress it enough, just do it on your own until they need you.” Well if you ask me, this is good advice.

Kate is still very young, although she does feel as though she’s surpassed well over 10 years of life experience since turning 18. She knows however, that she’s still got so much more to learn as well. Following on from her departure from Warner Music back in February 2017, Kate has independently gone about her career and she’s loving it. Last year she released her EP and a music video for her track ‘Bad Enough.’

This year, Kate released another two singles ‘Get Mine’ and ‘High’ featuring Jevon, which she released last week Friday 6 December and it is a big tune! I’ve literally had it on repeat throughout the entire weekend, it’s a great R&B song. Kate is honestly so enjoyable to listen to. You really feel the emotion in her tone, making every lyric she sings completely believable. The production on ‘High’ is very simple, the melody is derived purely by Kate’s vocal, so she takes the song on a completely unexpected journey. The song itself touches on the topic of toxic masculinity and loved ones masking their problems with substance abuse, rather than being open and honest about their feelings. It’s very relevant and I’m sure many will be able to relate.

So what’s next, I ask Kate, “I really wanna try and build a tour with someone, that’s my aim for next year,” Kate tells me. I ask her why she wants to build a tour with someone else and not on her own and she explains, that most of her fans are American and she doesn’t want to do anything half hearted. “I wanna do a big tour and get a whole bunch of new fans and then at the end of the year do my own tour,” she explains and it does make sense. Earlier this year, Kate appeared on an episode of Terrell Grice’s SONG ASSOCIATION on YouTube, where she had to perform songs associated with words suggested by Terrell. Her vocal abilities completely blew Terrell’s mind with him stating that he “stans a soulful white girl” and it seems his predominantly Black American and gay audience do too, as Kate amassed around 15,000 new Instagram followers after the release of the episode. “They just love the voice so I’m happy,” expresses Kate. “That’s all I want people to ever care about. If someone said oh her music is shit but she can really sing, I’ll be like thank you so much,” she admits whilst laughing. “That’s OK, as long as you think I can sing, that’s fine.”

There is no denying Kate will continue to recruit new fans, as soon as they hear her voice. This has always been her desire, “I just wanted people to say WOW she can really sing,” shares Kate. “Just to hear my voice, that was my only concern.” Another desire Kate has is acting, “I really wanna act,” she tells me. “I just feel like that might come with or after singing, once I’ve mastered that. I love acting and I love doing impressions and making people laugh. Something like Little Britain, dressed up as characters. I love it. Catherine Tate, she was my idol when I was growing up, honestly. I just love doing characters and impersonating people.”

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In ending I ask Kate to share a message for new fans and I truly loved what she had to say, “in life, I think you just have to trust your gut, stay strong and do what feels right for you and in music, don’t be scared to make real music.”

‘High’ by Kate Stewart featuring Jevon is out now and available to stream on Spotify.

CREDITS

Photographer - Mike G Smith (Smith Town Studios)

Stylist - Jeff Maranon

Stylist Assistant - Nkemdilim Ezenekwe

MUA - Tahiyah Ali

Hair Stylist - Regina Meesen

Special thanks to Smith Town Studios