Billie Skye on love arcs and leaving the moral high-ground
How to remember a first love when the image changes form, the more you look back on it.
Born into a musical family, young Billie Skye was playing instruments and singing around the same time she could walk. As a self-described highly sensitive person, her journal became her space to distinguish herself from the world, collecting butterflying pages of memories and feelings she would later turn into music.
With the release of her EP Amorous Mirage, Billie takes listeners into the invisible world of her heart, traversing the story of her first love and it’s turns. It’s through this she also investigates her identity for the listeners as a young woman determining her own moral compass and her sense of home.
How does it feel to be putting music out to the world after a little hiatus?
I’m feeling really happy about releasing my music. I was emotional, lonely, and really deep in my craft for so long that sharing it into the world feels like letting it all go and moving forward. As a creative I think that to get authenticity you have to really tune into it all, no matter how overwhelming it can feel, but it feels good to be stepping out of that headspace.
This EP was definitely a journey of love, self-discovery and heartbreak.
I think when we’re at our lowest or at our highest is when we break through. I started writing the first song to my EP when I first fell in love. Through that innocent love came a new pair of wings for myself and new self exploration. And as I traveled through life and came face to face with big milestones and emotions keeping a diary was a necessity. It was filled to the brim mainly with poetry of all types, and every single thought which is where my creativity process starts. Then I turn that journaling into storybook poetry and from there, into the music that you hear. Lyricism in its rawness is something that I love and is the driving force for my songwriting.
In terms of love: being loved, giving love- what’s your biggest learning? What’s your most recent success in that space?
I think right now I’ve been really focusing on self-love. I’ve been in a moment of growth, reaching out to hit the other side. This place that I’ve been in has been really hard. It’s equal parts understanding who I’m becoming and falling in love with her, whilst learning how to appropriately mourn the old me. I’m a sensitive human. For me there’s always a period before I completely transform, of loving all aspects of who I was so I can move forward. It takes a lot of courage to really accept the shadows of who you are.
This whole year, I’ve had the EP ready but it just hasn’t felt like the right time to put it out. My mind’s been so focused on who I am and who I want to be that the EP hasn’t had a chance to blossom. I have been so deep in the creative space of inner workings, I felt like I needed to wait to come out of that to release the music, otherwise I don’t think I would’ve been ready to move on.
Now I’m coming out the brighter end, which is why I finally decided to release the EP now. It feels like it’s paired with this new phase of me. It’s almost like saying goodbye to that chapter, like, that EP’s out in the world now and that was a beautiful moment in time, but now onto the next moment.
A lot of people really struggle to even identify when they’re on a growth path which can be really beautiful, being blissfully unaware of your unfoldings. But for you, it sounds like you have an acute awareness of when you are on the fringe between then and what’s coming. What’s something that lets you know that you’re growing?
I think my biggest moments of realisation are during the process of feeling emotions that I don’t usually feel. I had a bunch of new feelings attack me in the last six months. I’ve always been quite in my body, in my skin, and I’ve always had a strong set of morals. I’ve definitely even been called self-righteous in my approach before.
I had a prolonged period of feeling insecure about myself and feeling jealous of so many people. It also came with a sense of not clicking with my friends as much as I usually did. I found that I isolated myself a bit, to process these feelings that I hadn’t experienced before. And that’s how I knew I had to face something to be able to move forward. I’m always asking things of my feelings, like: Why am I feeling this? If I’ve never felt weird about my body ever, why am I doing that now? Why am I feeling jealousy in those situations when that’s not usually what triggers me?
That’s usually how I know I’m moving into a different paradigm, when I don’t feel comfy anymore. Then I know that it’s time to just let that layer go.
It’s equal parts understanding who I'm becoming and falling in love with her, whilst learning how to appropriately mourn the old me.
As a romantic, are there any particular beliefs that you’ve found along the way that you’re really glad to have met?
I’ve been very strong with my morals since I was young. They’re my driving force towards understanding myself and they help me set limits, boundaries and lines. As someone who loves a good line, I found myself in some of the craziest situations where there was no way I could possibly rely on those old morals.
I had to break free of that mould I had put on both others and myself. It served me for a moment in time before, but for what was in front of me, it wasn’t anymore.
When you cross your own idea of right and wrong, doing things you said you would never do, it helps you learn to let it all go a bit. It was almost like I was a bit tunnel visioned in my ways, and I had to expand the things that I cared about to be so much broader than what they were. Instead of living by a negatively absolute belief like “You can’t be mean”, I changed it to something positively inviting like “I want to invite all different types of kindness in”. It was about shaping my words and opening my morals to be more encompassing. And also so that they were understanding of how people can be people, with more room to mess up.
How do you approach self-forgiveness? Do you have any rituals you use when it’s time to forgive yourself?
This one’s new one for me actually. Self forgiveness is so hard. I think the best thing I can do for myself is write. When I write, whether it’s music or poetry or even just in my diary, and then try to understand as if I was looking at someone else’s words, I can find forgiveness by putting myself in other people’s shoes. It’s hard because they’re my words, but it helps to reflect and ask myself- would I really judge someone else so critically?
It’s also helpful to look around and see that if no one else is angry about this situation, why am I so mad at myself about it. I actually used to repress anger. I just never liked it very much. But I’m slowly learning that sometimes anger isn’t actually that bad, and sometimes it can take a bit of anger to get something moving.
Anger can feel like an unsafe emotion, especially when you’ve experienced it as a tool of destruction. It is really cool to rebrand anger and give it a new home inside of you. In terms of the name of your EP, Amorous Mirage, where did that come from?
The name Amorous Mirage was actually my best friend’s idea. We were brainstorming ideas and we had ‘Forbidden Feelings’ as well. It wasn’t like I jumped at any of the names straight-away. I actually did a poll with my whole family trying to figure out which name felt more right between the two. By the end of it, the concept of forbidden feelings didn’t make sense with the direction of the EP being an acceptance of feeling. I wanted raw expression to be prioritized, not banished.
And so Amorous Mirage was really the one that made the most sense in terms of the relationship that tangled its way through this EP. It seemed to encapsulate the sexual desire and wanting of intimacy to the right level to pair with mirage, which was the smoke and mirrors part of reality.
The name is resistance to the thought that a relationship could just be lust. It was a realisation that by just seeing the relationship just through that frame, it was a disservice to how much was really inside of it.
In terms of the story, how were the tracks ordered on the EP? Is it chronological?
The track list was definitely a huge part of the production. My first song LoverBoy was written in my hometown when I first fell in love, capturing the experience of existing in such beautiful feelings for the first time. The second half of lover boy was written as I finished that relationship, so it’s very much like this yummy introduction.
Then the second song lust without love was written at a really low point when I felt deep disconnection, in heartbreak and sadness. I moved to a city, felt really lonely and I felt really out of my comfort zone. Nothing really made too much sense then.
kiss me was like my redemption song. It was about me climbing back up the ladder after being in the depths. It feels like an anthem of expansion and the song that reminds me of coming home to myself again.
take me home, which is the last track in the album, was written a couple days before I moved back home from the city. It’s about that excitement of coming back home to be with the people I love, and reflecting on the chapter I was closing, of not being enthused by my life.
You said earlier you really appreciate a ‘good ending’. What do you mean by that?
I think that as a human when you tap into yourself, you can really understand that people are in the right place at the right time. I’d been so lost for so long. I was crying all the time. I was counting down the days until certain things happened, and I was painfully aware of time.
When I say good ending, I mean I was in a place in my life by the end of the EP that I really wanted to be in. Of course there’s always ups and downs, and a lot of time they even make a lot of sense, even though they’re challenging. But nothing was making sense between those two middle songs, I was just so confused. So for me, a good ending is where I finally felt like I was on a path that made sense.
Which song on the EP are you enjoying listening to the most at the moment?
I think definitely kiss me at the moment speaks the loudest to me. I’ve been having a little bit of a rough moment within myself and I’ve found it therapeutic understanding my younger self a bit more through that song.
Also lover boy because there’s something so beautiful about listening to myself fall in love for the first time. It is something that will always have a home in my heart.
Leave a note for future Billie.
I want to never stop believing in myself. I think sometimes I go through moments of feeling like I’m not good enough, or maybe this isn’t real or maybe this isn’t meant to happen. But I really would like to tell myself that even if what you wanted doesn’t appear in your hands, you need to believe that you’re going to get to where you need to be. Never lose the excitement for life. Just know that music and writing comes from a deep place of love. It doesn’t come from a place of wanting to be someone or something.
Can we expect to see you performing at any point?
I love to perform, so hopefully I’ll get to perform my EP live at some point. For me it’s just about finding the right moments in time.
