Lunar June - an ode to the girl i once was (EP)
Electro-pop singer, songwriter and visual artist Lunar June (aka Olivia Judd) releases her highly-anticipated second EP ‘an ode to the girl i once was’, out everywhere on 22 February.
Having released her debut EP ‘jaded/faded’ last year - which received high praise from the likes of Wonderland, Kaltblut, Ministry of Sound and many more - Olivia returns with her new EP which reaches new heights of gleaming electro-pop realness. Olivia is in fact the writer, arranger, producer, and artist behind everything she’s touched to date, and she continues to create euphoric yet deeply personal electro-pop music. Think the high energy of Charli xcx and Lorde, and the lyrical introspectiveness of London Grammar and The XX.
The EP features the debut track ‘heart scream summer’ which explores the anxiety that overcomes her during the summer months. Speaking of the track, she says, “People talk about feeling sad in the Winter, but for some reason - even though I absolutely adore the weather - I often seem to feel sad in Summer, which feels a little backwards. I think maybe it’s because Summer lacks routine, people go away, things feel somewhat slower. I’ve often felt like I'm watching from the sidelines whilst everyone else is seemingly living their best lives and having a blast, doing fun things, and I feel disconnected. So ‘heart scream summer’ is kind of about that isolation and loneliness, and just feeling really lost and directionless.”
“bathrooms at parties’ was written about that awkward period of coming out of the pandemic - ”I had developed a lot of anxiety about going out and socialising and being in crowds of people again. ‘bathrooms at parties’ is about that, but paradoxically also craving the human experience of beautiful chaos, like dancing with strangers and getting a little too drunk and crying in bathrooms to your mates.”
EP centrepiece ‘l-o-v-e’ is Olivia’s self-proclaimed anti-love anthem. “I wrote it about the complicated and conflicting emotions of being angry with someone and feeling neglected in a relationship and frustrated with seemingly never-ending cycles, whilst also really missing them and still loving them deeply.”
The EP title track ‘an ode to the girl i once’ was is a song written to the darker side of herself; the girl that is perpetually anxious and scared. The EP closes with blue which is a song about feeling isolated in sadness, and battling with the darker parts of herself whilst also loving fiercely - but above all, struggling to love myself. “The ending choral lyrics tie into the first track of the EP, which represents a bit of the cycle I have constantly been in that the EP is about; the last track ends with the first track and it kind of loops back around.”
The overarching theme of the EP is self-discovery and personal growth, coming to terms with the darker parts of herself and trying to finally meet them rather than run away from them, trying to finally end the cycle. The big feelings of a 20-something trying to navigate the world and learn to love herself! She says, “With this EP, I want to encourage people to always put themselves first and sit with the parts of yourself that you find the most difficult and uncomfortable - those are the parts you need to listen to most.”