You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Fen Lily is a singer and songwriter from Dorset, England.
She released her first album in 2018, but I didn't find her music until 2023,
when she put out her third album, Big Picture.
The album that she released in between those two was one that got a little lost in the lockdown when all her touring plans around it got canceled.
And all of that plays into the story that she tells in this episode about making her song Lights Light Up.
I spoke to Fen in front of a live audience at WBUR City Space in Boston.
Coming up,
you'll hear how Lights Light Up evolved across different versions of demos and then later in the studio with Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook.
My name's Fen Lily.
I released a 2020 record called Breach and I was meant to go on a Waxahachie tour and another tour with Lucy Dacus and then COVID hit and I found myself at home for a year and didn't write a single thing in that year.
I was in Bristol with my boyfriend at the time in a one bedroom house and One of the rooms that was meant to be the bedroom was just crumbling wall made of what looked like cheese and what smelled like mold.
So it was really cool and fun and healthy.
And that was the headspace I was in.
I wasn't listening to any music
because I was so sad that I couldn't tour my record that had taken three years to make.
So I was in a hole of just listening to...
Crime, kidnapping, murder stuff.