Premiere: Megan O’Neill traces love, lust and loss with debut album, ‘Ghost of You’
O’Neill delivers a stunning body of work on love, lust and loss.
Country music has a long, complicated relationship with the bottle. Merle Haggard wrestled with his demons on “The Bottle Let Me Down,” a quiet, scrappy dirge about the past coming back to haunt him, even in such a boozy state. Hank Williams cried into his beer, as he so freely blubbers with “Tear in my Beer.” But much later David Lee Murphy revels in the sweet elixir, coated with cobwebs and time’s gentle hand, on “Dust on the Bottle.” Just last year, Sunny Sweeney turned to the “Bottle by My Bed” as a way to cope with not being able to become a mother. The theme often falls into one of two categories: gleeful, Friday night delight or heart-shattering balladry.
Irish singer-songwriter Megan O’Neill, a crafty markswoman now based in London, opts for the latter with a devastatingly gorgeous song called “Bottle,” written with James Walsh (from Starsailor), trickling through a round of percussion in the background. “I wish this wine was water / And I wouldn’t feel so grim,” she unfolds her heart in bold shades, 
pacing her voice in slow-burn fashion. As the wine continues pumping through her veins, searing right down to the bone, she trembles, declaring, “The bottle won’t let me go.” It’s a remarkable and essential performance from her debut album, the sterling, 12-track upheaval called Ghost of You, which sees O’Neill finding her footing as one of the next generation’s most promising, offering astute conversations about getting older (“Any Younger”), processing pain (“Don’t Say It’s Over”), pounding lust (“Let’s Make One Up”) and navigating a crumbling and toxic music industry (“Don’t Come Easy”). “I feel like life takes you on so many different paths and sometimes pulls you in a few different directions at once,” she tells B-Sides & Badlands about the album, premiering today, and how a few years’ worth of journaling equipped her to undertake her first long player.
O’Neill’s heart throbs like most others, and through writing with such brutal honesty (“All is fair in love and war,” she howls on the titular cut, which not only plays as a tale of heartbreak but a lesson in letting go of her former self), she exposes life’s most vulnerable truths. With producer Zak Lloyd (Leona Lewis) at the helm, the album is firmly planted in Americana music, styled with strokes of modern piano-pop, blues and gentle caresses of folk ⎯⎯ all tied together with teary-eyed storytelling. “Why I Need You” is the crown jewel of the record, owed predominantly to O’Neill’s blistered, evocative and wholly gut-punching vocal performance. “All the struggles we’ve pushed through, that’s why I need you,” she broods over just piano, punctuating the emotion gushing from her soul. The song is extraordinary, on a rolling boil as she depicts a relationship that forever changed her very being. “Now this house has become a home,” she smiles, both a heavy and lilting observation.
“I think as a songwriter you just have to be honest and write what you feel and what you believe. If you try to write songs that you don’t and can’t relate to, that comes across,” she says, of choosing what stories she wanted to share for her first go. “We’re all human beings, so what I might go through in life is similar to what millions of other people are going through. If I can encompass that into a song, then listeners can relate to it. It’s all about making the listener feel something.”
Ghost of You (out tomorrow) draws upon the work of Ryan Adams, Brandi Carlile and Fleetwood Mac and is earnestly stained with the past’s transitory nature, witnessing O’Neill deconstructing what came before in an attempt to reassess, learn and finally flourish. “If you’re half-way in, I’m half-way out,” she sings on “Without,” a classically-’90s structured jingle on one lover’s foolish fickleness. “Treadin’ Water” pulsates with a bluesy undercurrent, decorated with distinct, digestible modernisms. “Lost a Love” bookends the record with a right hook of vocal power, shuffling between hushed tones and stormy, grey-weathered jabs. It’s a blissful, pensive and often downright moving debut, which positions the singer-songwriter for a major breakout.
Listen below:
It’s been three years since your debut EP, Coming Home. Do you feel you really needed that time to live and gather experiences ⎯⎯ to have something worth saying now?
I think when I released ‘Coming Home’ I was very young, very green and really just feeling my way around the industry. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved making that record and everything that was happening at that time. Milestone Management and [producer] Philip Magee did such an incredible job on that record and bringing the best out of me. After [that EP], I recorded another record with my band Megan & the Common Threads in 2016, which was released [last winter]. An album felt like the natural next step, and I had written a lot of songs over those three years that I wanted to record. As we get older, of course, we have more life experiences and more to say. I hope I’ll be constantly learning as the years progress.
What experiences are you reflecting on with this record? Do you feel that’s a necessary thing for us humans to do in order to grow in this lifetime?
I think holding on and letting go are both important to do in order to grow and progress in life. With this record, I reflected on a lot of things: past relationships, how far I’ve come since I started out as a musician and songwriter, old places I’ve lived and mistakes I’ve made. I reflected on these things because they’re a part of me and have made me who I am, but I don’t hold any grudges or resentment to anything in my past. I think that’s the beauty of songwriting ⎯⎯ sometimes you can write a song and then pack up that emotion and experience and throw it away!
What have been the most important moments of your life, and how did they led you to this moment?
There have been plenty of important moments, but I think it’s more so been the decisions I’ve made that have led me to this album and where I am right now. All the big and small decisions combined: to move to Nashville, then move to London, to work with certain people, to keep pushing on even when I felt this industry was toxic. All those decisions have led me here.
What have been your darkest moments and lessons learned over the years?
I don’t think I’ve had too many dark moments, but I’ve definitely had struggles with living away from home and life within the music industry. It’s a constant battle being a musician, and most people on the outside really don’t realise the workload involved. The main lessons I’ve learned are that I just need to trust my own gut, follow my instincts and work hard.
“Any Younger” is a striking performance dealing with getting older. What sparked you to write this?
I wrote it with The Dunwells last year. This song is so dear to me. It’s scary to get older every year and still not have the things you thought you’d have by that age. It’s so easy to let that fear or emotion bring you down and make you feel like a failure sometimes ⎯⎯ specially in the music industry, when there is pressure to have achieved success at a young age. This song is basically addressing this fear and affirming the fact that we have to go for it, whatever our dreams and desires are, to take a chance on them, no matter what age we are. Life is short.
What are you shedding exactly on “Ghost of You”?
I wrote “Ghost of You” with Zak about love and loss…and also about shedding layers. In a way, this song for me was a love song to the music industry. I’ve had to shed so many layers over the years – people, places I’ve lived, etc., but I still live with the ghost of them all. Similar to what we said earlier about reflecting and either holding on or letting go. When it came to choosing the album title, this seemed like the natural choice as this album has stemmed and grown from the shedding of these layers.
WOW…….