Every time I recommend a song by Billie Marten to someone, they always seem pleasantly surprised by my offering. It’s as if the lack of notoriety to a name automatically suggests they are not worth your time. That could not be further from the truth.
Isabella Tweddle, or as she’s better known, Billie Marten, is a Yorkshire-born singer-songwriter, who, despite being just 23, has had a fair share of recognition. She was nominated for the BBC Sound of the Year 2016 award, and her song ‘Blue Sea, Red Sea’ was featured as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record two years later. Yet – in what I believe to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the music industry – she has failed to chart and her success remains muted.
Despite belonging to a major record label (she is signed to Chess Club Records, a division of Sony Music and RCA Records), Billie Marten is still widely “unknown”. I came across her song ‘She Dances’ after it was suggested to me by Spotify after finishing a playlist I listen to while I read. The playlist being made up of mostly ambient and softer tracks, ‘She Dances’ was a brilliant atmospheric addition that I was hooked to immediately. There was an edge to her voice, something so wistful that I had not heard before in other artists. I had to hear more.
Marten explores the intimate sounds of indie pop with melodic guitar and a warm voice. Her lyrics frequently discuss complicated relationships, tendencies of self-destruction and sometimes hint at disdain to the political landscape of a 21st century world. Her debut album, Writings of Blues and Yellows, features gentle orchestral arrangements against Marten’s soft and angelic voice. Sonically, the album has a folk twang – as heard on tracks like ‘Lionhearted’ – that would not sound out of place in the English countryside.
‘Toulouse’, ‘She Dances’ and ‘Cartoon People’ are standout tracks of her sophomore album, Feeding Seahorses by Hand, the cover art of which depicts Marten in the bathtub coated in warm light. This album is largely an acoustic adventure, reminiscent of a quiet winter’s evening. Marten’s voice is more mature on this one, and her lyricism has hit a sharpness that her older peers would struggle to refine.
Following on from Writings of Blues and Yellows and Feeding Seahorses By Hand was Flora Fauna. The 2021 album was Marten’s third full-length outing and a more experimental sound. Deeper bass sounds were accompanied with forceful drumming and this resulted in a more upbeat sound than Marten‘s previous works. After two runs of mellow and slower concepts, Flora Fauna marked both a departure, and yet still a continuity, of Marten’s signature sound. Tracks of the album remained so intrinsically Marten, yet were also hugely versatile and demonstrated how inventive Marten is.
This year will mark a fourth album release with Drop Cherries in April of this year. One can only hope that this is Marten’s long-deserved breakthrough into widespread recognition. While she has been marked out by critics as having a distinct talent, the Yorkshire songstress has so far remained exclusive to a niche audience. The album is being supported by a tour across the UK and finally in the US and Canada in the summer, with Marten calling it “the tour of my little life”. Although these small and intimate venues reflect the style of Marten’s music, she deserves to be heard by a bigger audience, especially four albums into her career.
Marten deserves both the widespread acclaim of critics and the adoration of the public. There is an appeal to her music that reaches both the lost-20-somethings of the world and the older generation looking for some gentle songs to fill their evenings. As far as “unknown” artists go, she’s a hidden gem.
