Irish popstar Orla Gartland returns with ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’
PRAISE FOR Orla Gartland
“Conquering the internet might have been enough for a less ambitious artist, but for Gartland it was just the start”
“It was impossible not to immediately fall in love with Orla Gartland’s music”
“There's a refreshing frankness to the way she describes dating an emotionally-repressed man, becoming obsessed with a friend of a friend and finding solace in the sobering reality that her problems aren't unique”
“What sets Gartland apart is her honest songwriting and her contagious energy on a live stage”
“A varied and emotionally direct collection of alt-pop that mirrors the ups and downs of her journey, alluding to personal events without dissecting them to the point where they lose their wider resonance”
“Her writing captures the hard-won perspective of a life sandwiched between the online extremes of hatred and hero worship with an ironic awareness that she – like all of us – nonetheless still falls for all the snares of self-comparison”
“A headlong dive into twentysomething life”
“Joyously defiant”
‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’ is out now, buy/stream it here.
Orla Gartland returns with new single ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’, her first single since the release of her 2021 top 10 debut album Woman On The Internet. LISTEN HERE.
Premiered by Jack Saunders on Future Sounds on BBC Radio 1, ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’ is a cynical yet soppy love song that showcases a more upbeat, electric side to Orla’s musicality, and lives in the complexity of feelings towards the person you love. Of ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever’ she shares, “This song is about being in love and split down the middle by it – on one side excited and energised, the other side cynical and withheld. I really love the erratic guitars and the urgency of the drums in this track – hearing the intro literally gets my heart rate up.
I wrote Kiss Ur Face Forever with Tom Stafford (my co-producer on my first smash-hit album Woman on the Internet) and my best friend Lauren Aquilina. Lauren and I live together and have been friends for 10+ years since we were both tiny baby popstars. We had never written together up until this point – I’m such a fan of Lauren’s songwriting that I’d always been too nervous to ask – but it finally happened and unsurprisingly it was so fun and felt almost effortless to write with someone who knows me so well.”
Orla Gartland’s debut album Woman On The Internet came as the culmination of years of honing her songwriting and production skills, saw comparisons to the likes of Stevie Nicks, St. Vincent, Regina Spektor and HAIM, and was praised by the likes of The Observer (“This beautifully crafted debut spans pop-punk to indie rock, with knife-sharp lyrics all the way” – 4*), NME (“a hard-won celebration of perseverance and artistic freedom”) and many more. Woman On The Internet charted in the top 10 of the UK Official Charts, at #3 in the Irish Album Charts, and was nominated for the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Irish Album of the Year 2021.
Last year Gartland’s 2019 song ‘Why Am I Like This?’ soundtracked a pivotal scene in the hit queer coming-of-age Netflix series Heartstopper, which saw the song take on a huge new life amongst fans new and old, reaching #1 sound on TikTok in the UK. Gartland is currently also in new band FIZZ alongside longtime friends dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown: a project with fun and friendship at its heart, FIZZ’s debut album The Secret To Life is due for release on 15th September via Decca Records. She also recently featured on singles with the likes of Half-Alive and Cavetown.
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