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Nell Mescal is on the brink of something huge. In just a few short years, the Irish singer-songwriter has leapt from regularly going viral with her covers on TikTok to releasing a string of singles, including “Missing You” and “Graduating.” And now, five days after her 21st birthday, her debut EP, Can I Miss it for a Minute?, has arrived.
“I always say, ‘Tomorrow could change my life if I release a song,’” Mescal muses. Fresh-faced, she meets me for tea at The Londoner hotel off Leicester Square. “Anything could happen. Whether it’s now or in 20 years, this song is about to have a life that I can’t control. And that’s so exciting.” Needless to say, she has come a long way from nervously debuting her original music online four years ago. “I feel like from 2020 to now, I’m a totally different person,” she says.
Mescal caught the singing bug as soon as she could download Taylor Swift’s Fearless and the soundtrack to Annie on her iPod nano. She loved musical theater and choir and dreamed of becoming her version of Hannah Montana, though she had little idea how to get there from small-town Maynooth in County Kildare, Ireland.
Mescal made her first big adult decision when, with the support of her parents, she left school early to move to London and focus on her music. “I was struggling with the idea of who I was around the people I went to school with, and who I actually was,” she says. “And when I turned 14, I stopped feeling like I belonged in the circles I was in. So it was kind of nice to break free from that and be like, ‘Oh, I’m actually my own person.’”
London is only about an hour’s flight from Ireland, but her first summer away from home, it felt like a “long hour.” Mescal struggled with homesickness and imposter syndrome before making her first new friends, yet she thinks her parents “felt the distance the most—like, Oh my God, our baby. What are we gonna do?” Now, she considers London a second home, especially with her older brother Donnacha as a flatmate.
In one sense, Mescal’s new EP reflects back on that period of transition: her songs are wrought with the trials and triumphs of coming of age, lingering especially on the hurt of a friendship breakup. “I was writing with my friend yesterday, and he said, ‘Sometimes we write stuff, and we don’t even realize those are our feelings about it,’” she shares. “Then all of a sudden it’s written, and we’re confronted with the fact that we said that, so we mean it.”
Mescal’s enchanting sound and storytelling style were shaped by all manner of musical influences, among them Ethel Cain, Lucy Dacus, and Florence Welch, and—only a few years into her career—she can already boast opening gigs, or “pinch-me moments,” as she endearingly refers to them, for Florence and The Machine, Haim, Birdy, and Dermot Kennedy. Yet to this day, Mescal still sends all her demos to her brothers before anyone else. “Knowing that they like my music is really comforting,” she says.
By the way, it has been a total joy for Mescal to see her eldest brother Paul’s star rising ahead of her own. (A few weeks before our tea, she and I had met for the first time at Chiltern Firehouse after the BAFTAs, where Paul was nominated for his supporting turn in All of Us Strangers.) “We grew up with parents who are a policewoman and a teacher—we’ve come from a background that is so different from how we live now,” she says. “It’s been a cool journey to be on and see [Paul] on. I can’t wait for people to only know me for me, but if they know me because of Paul, that’s okay, too. If I wasn’t related to Paul, I would still be a fan of his work because I think every project he has done is amazing.”
And, anyway, it pays to be the baby in the family. “I am the favorite, and it’s just unfortunate for everyone else,” she cracks. “I’m both my parents’ phone background screens and my dad s WhatsApp profile picture. As my brothers have gotten older, they’ve started treating me like that as well.”
Things are changing fast for Mescal—but she’s taking careful stock of every moment. “I met Florence Welch when I supported her show, and I have a photo of us from that day on my vision board,” she says. “As much as it’s so great to focus on the future and all the things you want, you can’t get there without remembering what you’ve already accomplished.”
