IN CONVERSATION WITH TALIA MAR: A POP BEAT FOR THE CHAOS

Words by Kasia Krawczyk

Talia Mar has always had a talent for turning the messier parts of life into something you can sing along to. On her latest run of releases, that instinct has become impossible to miss. “A Bitch Always Knows,” “Lady” and now “Psycho On A Couch” all come from distinctly personal places, but none of them is interested in wallowing. Among those singles, Talia has now released her long-awaited EP “Not Worth The Wait” that beautifully sums up her hiatus from music.  As a result, Talia takes uncomfortable memories, emotional turbulence and the occasional questionable life decision and gives them a pop beat.

“Psycho On A Couch” was inspired by a therapist Talia saw years ago — a relationship that, looking back, left her feeling that the therapist neither particularly liked her nor had her best interests at heart. It could have become a song about hurt, frustration or disappointment. Instead, Talia found the absurdity in it.

“I wrote ‘Psycho On A Couch’ years after the ‘incident’, if we can call it that,” she explains. The distance helped. “We wanted to turn it into a funny anecdotal song, rather than the sad situation that it probably was.”

That ability to find comedy in uncomfortable places is more than a songwriting trick for Talia. It is seemingly one of the ways she moves through life.

“I’m a humour girly through and through,” she says. “There is nothing in my life that I will not joke about, no matter how painful it is. The more painful, the better the joke in my books.”

The song itself came together almost as casually as the memory resurfaced. During a session with her producer Dom, Talia found herself talking about the former therapist and explaining what had happened between them. At some point, the conversation stopped being simply a story about the past and became the beginning of a song.

“It’s a bit of a weird situation, but something that a lot of people could probably relate to,” she says. “It kinda just snowballed from there.”

There is something revealing about the way Talia approaches material like this. She doesn’t necessarily need the experience to be pleasant for it to become useful. If anything, the stranger and more painful the memory, the more interesting it can become once enough time has passed to laugh at it.

And there has been plenty to process recently.

The three songs released in relatively quick succession — “A Bitch Always Knows,” “Lady”, and “Psycho On A Couch” — unintentionally form a snapshot of where Talia is at right now. Taken together, they suggest someone who has spent the past year and a half navigating considerable turbulence and is turning that instability into music.

“They probably somewhat point to slight mental instability,” she says, laughing. “Which, if I’m honest, is probably fairly accurate.”

The past 18 months have been turbulent, she admits, and the songs reflect that reality. But even when the subject matter gets dark, Talia refuses to let it become entirely miserable.

“It’s not all sunshine and rainbows,” she says. “But it can be sunshine and rainbows with a pop beat.”

That philosophy has its limits, though. There are some songs that are simply too personal to release.

The question of whether she ever writes something and later thinks, maybe the entire world doesn’t need to know this, gets an immediate answer.

“Yes, 100%.”

Some songs, she says, “will never see the light of day” for exactly that reason.

It is a boundary that becomes particularly interesting when Talia takes those intensely personal songs on the road.

This is her first solo tour, and the response has already been significant, with sold-out shows in Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol. On paper, it sounds like the kind of moment an artist might dream about for years. In reality, the first night came with a very different emotion.

“Honestly, my first thought was ‘oh my God, why did I do an acoustic tour?’”

The idea had sounded perfect when she planned it. Small rooms. Intimate shows. A stripped-back setting where the audience could experience the music in a more personal way.

Then she actually had to stand on stage and do it.

“I think I was so excited to be in small rooms and I wanted to do something intimate and personal, but I forgot how stripped back and scary it can be,” she says. “So, I was panicking and stood there like ‘what have I done?’”

Ultimately, the fear didn’t last.

“It turned out fine and I loved every second of it.”

That combination of excitement and anxiety is something Talia recognises in the experience of having her own tour. She has performed to huge audiences before, but there is a different kind of vulnerability when the show is yours from beginning to end.

“Definitely, a bit of both,” she says when asked whether it feels more exciting or terrifying.

“I think there are so many things to consider when it’s your own tour, but equally, you get so much more back from the fans, which is such an incredible experience.”

The relationship with those fans has been developing for years.

Long before the solo tour, Talia built an audience online through YouTube, gaming and music. For many people watching from the other side of the screen, they’ve been there for different versions of her life and career. But that kind of long-term visibility can create a strange illusion of closeness — the feeling that watching someone for years means you know them.

“Definitely,” Talia says.

She knows the term: parasocial. And she is conscious of how complicated that relationship can become.

“There’s definitely aspects of it that can become quite scary and unnerving.”

But there is another side to it, too. The same online world that can blur boundaries can create genuine communities and friendships. Some fans have been at the front row of every one of her shows. Some speak to her directly in DMs.

“There are some people who have been front row, at every single one of my shows, and I talk to them in DMs,” she says. “It’s one of the best parts of my day, seeing their name in my messages, because I know that we share common interests & love for the same things.”

For an artist who has been online for so long, the evolution is impossible to ignore.

Talia has been making music since 2016, meaning the woman who released “Stolen” is now separated from her by years of experience, relationships, adulthood and an entirely different life.

Looking back isn’t necessarily comfortable.

“Honestly, looking back makes me feel a bit sick with nostalgia,” she says. “I hate that feeling.”

Recently, she watched the “Stolen” music video again — something she hadn’t done in years. The reaction was immediate.

“The shivers it sent down my spine, I can’t even explain.”

The person in that video feels almost like another version of herself. Since then, Talia has grown up. She is now a wife and a mum. She has friendships with people she didn’t even know when “Stolen” was released. Her life has changed, and naturally, so has the music.

“I think I’ve changed a lot; I’ve grown up,” she says. “As a person I think I’ve completely changed, and so has my music.”

That makes her current position an interesting one. She has music coming out, a tour underway and plenty of other projects competing for her attention. But when asked what she’s most excited about when nobody else is telling her what she should be focusing on, the answer isn’t another release or another show.

It’s stopping.

“Honestly, I’m excited to take a break.”

It sounds almost contradictory coming from someone in the middle of such a busy period, but Talia sees the pause as necessary rather than indulgent. If music is going to remain part of her life for years to come, she doesn’t want to squeeze creativity out of herself simply because she feels she has to keep producing.

“If music is something that I’m going to do forever, I need to take the time out to find the love & inspiration again, and to live my life, so that I can write about it again one day.”

For now, that might be the most honest picture of where Talia Mar is: somewhere between the chaos that fuels her songs and the quiet she needs to make the next ones.

She has spent years documenting different versions of herself through music, from “Stolen” to “Psycho On A Couch.” The songs have changed because she has changed. The stories have become stranger, funnier and, in some ways, more revealing.

And perhaps the best way to understand Talia is not through the polished version of her life, but through the willingness to laugh at the parts that didn’t go according to plan.

So, after everything — the music, the internet, the touring, the growing up and the questionable therapists — there is only one question left.

Are you Star or Freak?

Talia doesn’t hesitate.

“Judging by what the people at school said, I’m going to go with freak, through & through.”

Photo by Sophie Buckley