- Culture
- 14 Apr 21
Gartland started writing songs when she was just 14 years old, but was unable to convince any of the local pubs and venues to let her perform. Instead, Orla honed her craft online before heading out on tour the day she finished school.
Emerging Irish singer-songwriter-producer Orla Gartland has dropped her brand new single, 'Zombie!'.
The captivating, up-tempo song explores how it feels to be with a partner who buries their feelings and eventually lets them bubble over.
'Zombie!' was co-written and co-produced by Pete Robertson, who has worked with the likes of Beabadoobee.
“'Zombie!' is about repressing emotions until one day they burst out of you all at once. Specifically it's about a very common, very male kind of repression I witnessed in a boy I loved once - I could see that he felt things but there was a barrier stopping him from expressing them," Orla says of the track's origins.
"I hated that for him, it made me so angry at the societal pressures that led him to that place. For me living "like a zombie" became a metaphor for this way of living; someone so seemingly unemotional on the surface they barely seem alive," Orla continues. "I scream my head off in the outro of the song and that scream is meant to feel like a huge release, like the moment you let it all out.”
Earlier this year, Gartland shared her acclaimed single ‘More Like You’, which has since been streamed over two million times. The single followed on from ‘Pretending’ as a taste of her eagerly-anticipated, as-yet-untitled forthcoming debut album, due for release this year.
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The new tracks arrive after Gartland’s first two acclaimed EPs, 2019’s Why Am I Like This? and the follow up Freckle Season, which was released in February last year.
Between them, Gartland’s songs have amassed over 55 million streams and more than 750,000 monthly Spotify listeners, and seen her compared to artists such as Stevie Nicks, St. Vincent, Regina Spektor and HAIM.
The artist recently opened up the latest edition of the Hot Press Lockdown Sessions' Y&E Series, delivering a riveting performance full of personality and infectious hooks and melodies.
Listen to 'Zombie!' below: