Scottie singer Daisy Gill
When I was first introduced to Daisy Gill’s powerhouse voice, we were both teenagers attending an end-of-year school mass. She was in year seven and performed a rendition of Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls that left everyone speechless. Since then, she’s come a long way.
Now in her early twenties, Daisy has gone from performing in school halls to the Royal Albert Hall – and she doesn’t plan to stop there. After falling into acting “by accident”, the singer-songwriter is eyeing a potential career on the silver screen. Her first feature-length film, Perfectly Frank, is currently doing the rounds in the festivals and has bagged her an agent.
“I wasn’t gonna go to the audition on the day because I was gonna go busking,” admits Daisy. “On the day it threw it down with rain so I went along and got the part.”
The film, which has musical elements, tells the story of a young lad with agoraphobia falling head over heels for Daisy’s character; a scally-Anne with a Scouse brow working in a Post Office.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” she laughs when asked about her acting skills. “I sat there watching it with me mum and said, ‘I’m not shit at acting, am I?’ And she was like, ‘yeah, you’re alright, girl.’”
Daisy is a true Scottie Roader – unabashed, community-driven and politically charged. I meet her just a few days after performing at a Labour event, where Jeremy Corbyn was also in attendance.
“I think it’s important to get involved with politics, coming from a working-class background. With the Tory government everything is so under-funded and, having worked in a youth club, I’ve seen that first hand."
“I’m a big leftie,” she reveals. “I think it’s important to get involved with politics, coming from a working-class background. With the Tory government everything is so under-funded and, having worked in a youth club, I’ve seen that first hand.
“I’m a big advocate for youth. I think it’s important they’re looked after. It’s a shame not enough money is going into the education system and the youth system. It’s the old saying, ‘children are our future’, isn’t it?”
Daisy is also a champion for LGBT+ rights, having grown up surrounded by people in the community. She was inspired by her godfather, who jokingly called himself her godmother, after he lost his life to an AIDS-related illness.
She has written songs about LGBTQ+ issues in the past and has performed twice at Liverpool Pride. During this year’s event, in July, she sang alongside headliners Little Boots and Saara Alto.
“It’s important for me to spread that message of acceptance, that it’s ok to be who you are,” she says. “I wrote Take Your Time about the LGBTQ+ community on coming out and mental health awareness because I think we need to talk about that stuff, it doesn’t get spoken about enough.
“No one talks about it – it’s always about drugs, sex and going out and getting pissed. There’s nothing wrong with that but I feel like music really connects people so if I’m writing songs about something that matters, and one person listens to that and relates to it, then in some small way I’ve made a difference. That’s what’s important to me.”
Daisy’s love affair with music began on her fifth birthday when she was gifted a keyboard by her Auntie Margo, who would often go out of her way to get Daisy the noisiest toys. From then on she attended school choirs and it was only after being inspired by Hannah Montana, a teenager who lives a double life as a pop star, that Daisy knew she wanted to be a musician.
“I start with writing my chord sequences on piano, sometimes guitar, then melodies will come to my head and I write them down,” she explains about her songwriting process. “A good song takes me 20 to 30 minutes to write, or sometimes it can take a week. There’s no proper way.”
Having had two releases this year, with plans for a small venue tour around the UK in the near future, the musician clearly has a lot to look forward to. And to top things off, Daisy plans a transition from her folk style to more of a pop sound. However, with a potential acting career on the table, nothing is set in stone.
“I’m in limbo,” she says. “I’ve just got my agent and I’m working with management to primarily do well in music, because that’s the thing I’ve always done. I want to see how far I can go with it. The way the internet is I could just blow up. Stormzy was unknown for years and then had a song that went viral on the internet. And now he’s Stormzy.”
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