Rising star Poppy Baskcomb on working with Oliver Heldens and music industry

British singer songwriter Poppy Basckomb is a well known name with over 10 years of experience in the music industry. She worked with big artists such as Tiesto, Anyma & Meduza, and scored hits with tracks such as ‘Drifting’ and ‘Miss You’. Recently she combined her talent with Oliver Heldens and wrote ‘Heart Cry’, which has been released on Oliver’s imprint Heldeep Records. To celebrate this release, she took the time to talk about her writing process, what her inspiration was writing the song and shares tips for beginning singer/songwriters that are ready to take a step up in their career.  

What are the first steps you take when writing a new track? 

When writing I generally like to just set up a mic, play the track, press record and see what happens. I find this helps me to stop overthinking and just sing whatever feels right. Usually when I do this in sessions with other people we find that the song melodies are most of the time in the first scratch vocal we did. Then it's just finding a concept and taking the story from there.

How do you balance experimenting with new sounds while staying true to your signature style?

Do I have a signature sound? I guess from an outside perspective I probably do. I don't know, I would say I typically lean into more weirder and darker lyrics. I also go for more emotional melodies as well. I would say it's an easy balance, I love all sorts of different genres so I find it refreshing to play around with them and draw inspiration from. I think it also broadens and improves your writing style, for example when you look at a dance beat and then think “but what would a Brandy style melody sound like over that?” It can create an interesting track.

What was your biggest inspiration creating ‘Heart Cry’?

I knew when I heard the track it immediately made me think of big emotional vibes. I think I saw an emotional post on Tiktok or Pinterest where someone was talking about their heart crying for somebody else (LOL). And then I just built out my own story from there.

What’s something surprising you learned about each other?

I had no idea how young Oliver was when he gained his success for ‘Gecko (Overdrive)’. 18 years old is MAD.

If you had to describe ‘Heart Cry’ with 3 emojis, which one would it be? 

👂🏼❤️‍🩹😭

Did ‘Heart Cry’ go through many versions before the final one came out?

Honestly, no. Hahaha. We had the track in a couple of hours. We like to be efficient.

You’ve also worked with major artists like Tiësto and Meduza. What makes the collaboration with Oliver different compared to working with these artists?

I mean they’re all different people. Every song and experience is different and unique to one another. All amazing to work with and an honour to have featured on tracks with them all.

Which of your tracks would you like to improve if you could go back in time? (and why?)

Hahahaha. Oh my there are loads. But I won’t disclose any of them… I’m not tryna be blocked!

According to you, what’s the most important thing to stay relevant in the music scene of today?

I genuinely believe if you keep trying to keep up on the treadmill of “staying relevant” then you will drive yourself insane and despair of music. Just do what you love, write what feels right at the time, stay true to yourself and your art and stop worrying about chasing the trend of the moment. When it stops being authentic to you it becomes unauthentic to the people listening.

Do you have any tips for starting producers/song writers?

Keep going. It took me 7 years of writing, singing, sessions, networking and hustling to even get my foot in the door. And took me 10 years in total to be in the position I am now. There is no short cut and there are no overnight successes.

Keep practising. Write, write and write. And naturally over time your writing will get better and better. If you can’t play chords either learn them or download apps like TONALY that can help you make progressions. Write to YouTube beats that are uploaded on there.

Don’t be a d!ck. The industry is smaller than you think and word spreads. Just be a nice person and people will hype you up :)