Ingrid Marie Jensen sits down with the interdisciplinary Dublin artist to discuss her musical ventures.

Saoirse Moncrieff is a bit of an enigma. The Irish artist, with her hypnotic azure eyes, impish smile and shaggy blonde pixie cut (think Jean Seberg, but with a warm, rich Dublin lilt and a chaotic sense of humor) now performs under the moniker of Baby Lemonade. Her self-written tracks are reminiscent of Nick Drake’s poignant, spare melodies, laced with Mazzy Star’s dreamy, cerebral sweetness.

Saoirse started a YouTube channel in her late teens and began uploading videos of herself holding witty, intense philosophical conversations regarding break-ups, depression, anxiety, and creative crises, often while painting or doing her make-up. (‘You don’t have to be mean to be a good artist,’ she reassured listeners in one video.) Behind the scenes, she was often writing songs. SoundCloud releases and two years of gigging around her home base of Dublin preceded her first official single release, ‘One More Glass of Wine’ on June 9^th. (Less than a month after its debut, it had garnered more than 50k streams on Spotify alone.) For most of her early tracks, she used her big sister Ellie’s phone to record her vocals because her own phone was broken. Getting the entire premise of the song captured in a single take became an absolute necessity. Learning to do so gave her work a sense of easy, practiced fluidity, and an elegance that only comes with the requisite 10,000 hours of pure application.

Despite now working in a studio, afforded the luxury of multiple takes, that sense of deep urgency hasn’t left her. She doesn’t enjoy time spent locked in the confines of the studio, instead deriving most of the pleasure she takes in her craft from the energy and spiritual return of live performances. Following the release of ‘One More Glass of Wine,’ in June, I sat down with her via Zoom to discuss her work ethic, the creative benefits of a break-up, and why God is her muse.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: You started your band at the beginning of the pandemic. Did that situation have any effect on you deciding to just go ahead and do it?

Baby Lemonade: I started because I went through a breakup. I just had this kind of complete everything in my life fell apart thing and then…for the first time in my life, I asked myself what I wanted to do. And then I explored every single medium of art ever and just completely indulged in all of it. I started writing music because I wanted a song for a specific feeling that I had about a breakup and then I was like, oh, I’m just going to write it myself. My ex—all of my exes have been musicians—my ex would write me songs and send me songs and be like, yeah, this is about you, and it was always really unsatisfying. I was like, it’s like the male gaze and so the song is about him, it’s not about me. I didn’t feel understood by it, so I was like oh, I’ll just write a song about myself. That’s what made me start writing music.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: Did finding your affinity and your talent for that kind of help you through those emotions and help you to move forward a little bit?

Baby Lemonade: Yeah, completely. I find a new medium of art and then I become obsessed with it and it’s all I can do, and I stay up all night doing it. I was obsessed with music. I was like every time I got home from work, I was so excited to just write and play guitar because it’s so fucking fun when it’s a new thing. I’ve tried multiple mediums of art, but I think that music is the most helpful for my emotions. If I go through a breakup now, I just literally go straight to my guitar and I’ll write music and I’ll cry all over my guitar and it’s just so great, you know what I mean?

Ingrid Marie Jensen: Yeah! But you still work in other forms, with other media, right? You still paint and design clothes?

Baby Lemonade: If people ask me what I do, I just say “I’m an artist.” I wouldn’t even classify myself as a musician. I so equally love everything that I do, and in different phases of my life, yeah, sometimes I feel like a fashion designer, sometimes I feel like a musician, you know what I mean? But I wouldn’t be like, “I’m a fashion designer,” or anything. I have come out of that a little bit, but I’m trying to get back into it because it makes me so happy to make clothes and stuff.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: I heard an interview with Laurie Anderson recently and she was saying that the most detrimental thing an artist can do is to do what basically I guess all journalists try and do which is label yourself.

Baby Lemonade: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: And Laurie Anderson was saying that she has always classed herself as a multimedia artist so that no one can tell her, “Oh, you’re a painter, so you can’t step outside the realm of painting…”

Baby Lemonade: Exactly. Because if we identify ourselves too much with one label then we won’t go anywhere else because we think, “Oh, well, that’s their thing, they’re the musician. I’m not the musician, I’m just a painter, you know?” We really box ourselves in so easily. So yeah, I try to run away from that as much as possible.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: What was the first original track you uploaded to SoundCloud?

Baby Lemonade: It was a song called ‘Warm Rum Breath.’ It’s on private now, but I might put it back up. Basically, it was the first song I ever wrote in my life. I wrote it about my ex-boyfriend, and it’s really simple, and cute, really a sweet song, even though it’s kind of sad as well. I was really nervous about putting it on SoundCloud and then I listened to it over and over again because I was obsessed with it. It’s so fun writing music because you get to listen to your own music and it’s kind of like you’re obsessed with yourself; it’s kind of narcissistic but it’s nice. I didn’t share it on my story or anything. And then when I put ‘Summer Song’ up, that was the first song that I shared on my story because I was proud of it.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: How were you recording yourself at that time? Were you working in a studio?

Baby Lemonade: Basically, I would just record it on voice memos. My phone, the sound didn’t work, and the fucking mike didn’t work, so I would have to use my sister’s phone. You can probably tell from the music on my SoundCloud, there’s literally like mistakes all the time or I’m burping or like I’m coughing or something like that because I literally had to do it in like two takes. I’m lazy anyway so I don’t like to do multiple takes, but I literally had to do it really quickly because I’d be like, ‘Can I borrow your phone Ellie?’ and then I’d have to record it on her phone and upload it straight away.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: That adds an extra dimension to it, too, because when you have one chance at something, you can pour more heart into it than if you have like, 16 hours to do the next track.

Baby Lemonade: Exactly! My least favorite part of making music is the recording part. I just hate it. I find it really tedious, and with my art and music I’m really like, it needs to feel right. I’m really like that. So, I’m not really interested in the technical side of it, I just love the intuitive feeling of making music. When I’m recording, I feel like if I do loads of takes, I’m ruining the soul of the music.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: I’m curious about the name you record under. Did you choose to call yourself Baby Lemonade because of the Syd Barrett song?

Baby Lemonade: Yeah, I did! I love Syd Barrett because he’s always seemed like kind of an outsider and was never fully welcomed into the music industry and obviously, he kind of got kicked out of Pink Floyd. ‘Baby Lemonade’ is completely about Pink Floyd. One of the lines is something about getting rid of all the clowns and Baby Lemonade is kind of like the cool group that no one else is invited into and I never felt like a part of the cool group so then I was like, bitch, I’m Baby Lemonade! I changed the meaning to it.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: What were your first gigs like when you initially started playing?

Baby Lemonade: Thank God I have followers! On YouTube I post a lot of my music, and a lot of people would comment and say, ‘I want to see you live!’ So, a lot of people came. I think it’s the most special thing in the world. The people who watch my YouTube videos, I’m like, in love with them, and they’re in love with me. We have a para social relationship but it’s really romantic, and I just feel like they’re my people. I feel like the safest space is held for me there. It’s really nice when I get to meet those people and we get to connect with each other. It’s a really nice spiritual experience.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: Is the spiritual experience connected to live performances one of the main reasons you decided to do music?

Baby Lemonade: Yeah. At the start I was very resistant…I felt that performance was the ego of art, but then I learned that performance is art in itself. It’s like a new version of the art each time; the song is different every time you sing it, which is what I think is so nice. You share something unique and special every night.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: What’s your writing process like?

Baby Lemonade: I will be anywhere, and I’ll think of a lyric or line that I like, and I’ll write it in my Notes. And then when it comes to writing a song, it really depends. Most of the time, I pray and have an intention, and I’ll write a song. The last time I wrote a song, I prayed to God because I was stuck, and I was like, please help me write a song. I couldn’t. And then I left the room (I was in my studio) and I came back in, and I saw this moth, on the window, and I hate moths, but I was in love with the moth for some reason, because it was so beautiful, and I was like, oh! I really want to sing to the moth and then I wrote this absolutely beautiful song all about the moth. It was really special, because God came in the form of a moth. It was very cool.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: Is God your chief muse?

Baby Lemonade: Exactly. God is my only muse.

Ingrid Marie Jensen: That’s the perfect slogan for when you bring out merch.

Baby Lemonade: Yes! That’s so good.