Paige is a 22 year old South Auckland singer songwriter who released her debut EP at the end of July. She’s also recently launched a podcast – Paige’s Space – that explores love, sexuality and mental health and how to navigate growing. Yadana Saw speaks to Paige about how she’s finding talking rather than singing
In her podcast ‘Paige’s Space,’ Paige covers topics from mental health to songwriting and music with guests that have open and honest conversations that promote awareness for mental health and self growth through music. “I feel like I learn a lot from conversations with other people so maybe if I made a podcast other people would get something from it as well.”
It’s certainly taking the precocious South Auckland pop singer songwriter out of her comfort zone. Especially when she hears her speaking voice.
“I don’t like it. I can’t listen to myself talk. And I laugh like a hyena. I can’t bear to hear myself.
Though she admits she also detested hearing her singing voice when she was starting out as a 12 year old posting videos on YouTube of herself playing guitar and singing.
Always Growing charts a time of difficulty for Paige. “It was a time of self doubt and self shame. I was very embarrassed and not proud of who I was.” She explains that bad mental health and relationship problems informed her songwriting.
“All the stuff I am singing about really are things that I’ve done that I am not proud of and just not very happy with myself.” Channeling this into her music has allowed for the continuous theme of self growth, that runs through her music and podcast.
Her debut EP was produced by Josh Fountain and Djesan Suskov (Benee, Leisure) who Paige found to be “so graceful” and easy to open up to.
“They know that [songwriting] is just a self-expression. It’s just making art.” Paige explains about her songwriting and experience with the producers of her EP. “I think a lot of songwriting is exaggerating emotions. It’s over dramatising things to bring out more emotion, really leaning into it as much as you can.”
Paige explains ‘Yellow’ is one of her “harsh” songs that go into the dark place she was in at the time.
“There was nothing to look forward to,” she says of this period of her life, “my music wasn’t doing well, no one knew who I was, I wasn’t playing live. So nothing was exciting.” Paige explained that playing live is something that she always looks forward to and how it helps her change her own attitude. “The one things that really motivated me through everything was I’d think about things I’d look forward to like music could get better if I really tried.”
“When I sing ‘I’ve got to stay to see my dreams’ in Yellow, everything bad wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t go for the good things.”
Paige sums up why she's still striving, “I want to make my life worth it.”
