Photo Credit: Britt Lucas
Meet Sunday Collins, an artist whose life and sound, is equal parts carefully crafted poetry and beautiful chaos. Self-described as "50% introspective, poetic and put together" and "the other 50% is a hot mess, chaotic and not together at all," she brings a uniquely honest, raw perspective to modern pop.
At its core, her music prioritises "introspection and lyricism first," using approachable writing tied together with catchy ear worm melodies. "Even if the subject is deep and dark, I still want you to be able to hum it around the house," she explains.
Sonically, her work sits in a folk-pop space, appealing directly to fans of Maisie Peters, Gracie Abrams, and Taylor Swift, while upcoming tracks tease "more Holly Humberstone vibes with an indie sound."
Songwriting for her is also a deeply visual experience driven by synesthesia. "I translate what I hear into what I see," she notes, "and most songs that I write have a large visual impact for me," forming the foundation for the visual worlds she builds around her music.
Music has been her calling from the very beginning. "My mum loves to tell this story, when I was born, the doctor was called to the birthing room because I was making strange wheezing noises and he just said 'it’s fine she’s just going to be a singer one day,'" she recalls. True to that prediction, she "made singing everyone’s business" as soon as she could, performing everywhere from lemonade stands to school halls.
Though a "consuming relationship" temporarily put her music on the back burner, its end became the ultimate catalyst for her career. "When that ended the only thing I knew that would help me process this was music," she shares. Armed with a breakup song and "$3000 to my name," she took it to a producer just to have "one song that’s my own." After he posted it to his Instagram, someone at EMI discovered her.
Her debut single ‘Visit’, out now, marks the culmination of an eighteen-month journey to define her sound. Written a year and a half ago, the track represented "that moment where I felt like I found my sound" after producer shopping for so long. Finding collaborators like Tom Jordan from Seaforth at a songwriting camp, along with Lue New Terry and Aubrey Mitchell, created a "safe space" where "it gets so much easier to sing more and more vulnerable topics."
With "very little filter/boundary issues," she doesn't hold back in her writing. ‘Visit’ dives headfirst into the dynamics of a toxic relationship that inspired much of her music exploring "the way nostalgia softens the edges of things that hurt us." As someone who loves to "wear the rose coloured glasses" and fantasise about how things could be different, she admits, "That song specifically is about knowing that subconsciously that going back to this place won’t be the same but I blindly hope that it will be."
Looking ahead, she is drawing fresh inspiration from artists like Remi Wolf, whose creative direction and raw songwriting inspires her to "give 110% more", and Maisie Peters' album Fluorescence, which she considers a "no-skip album". She yearns to create a body of work like Maisie’s that makes listeners say, "omg I feel that."
While ‘Visit’ introduces her upbeat side, her upcoming slate of releases promises deeper storytelling and unfiltered honesty. "There are definitely songs I’ve been ITCHING to release, trigger an ex or two, but I’m excited to tell my side of the story, no matter the consequences," she hints, adding with a hint that her future releases are "SCATHING to say the least."
Make sure you follow Sunday Collins to be the first to know about new releases and add ‘Visit’ to your playlists now!
