I was recently asked to premiere a new song by Me for Queen (aka Mary Erskine). Dotted at the top of the press release for her new single titled Jessica (out on August 19th) was a list of artists that her voice and style might compare to. Upon hearing the song for the first time, all comparisons were left in her shadow. The combination of rich poetic lines and one of most beautiful, emotive voices I’ve heard in a long time make Me for Queen stand out in any crowd. Talking about Me for Queen, Mary says it’s “a sort of sketchpad for whatever’s happening in my head. I just try to write songs that talk to people.” Such songwriting as this is all too rare; her sketches observe life from angles you’d maybe never considered before, beautiful imagery bringing them to life as you can hear with Jessica:
She shared the following with us on the song Jessica:
“I attended a songwriting workshop last summer. It was a hugely inspiring few days, and I was thinking a lot about the value and role of Art and the Artist, as well as what and who we choose to celebrate and/commemorate in our society, over the years, and what gets lost along the way.
“I had the idea to write a song as a monument to a person I know. It took another six months to come together. For some reason I couldn’t get it to work on the piano. Then when I came to finishing the words, I was living in an apartment without any access to a piano, so in the end I just had to find a way to make it work on the guitar! Necessity is the mother of invention …”
Her last single, Slow Train, from her EP “Who I Am and What I’m For” (released in February) was included in Tom Robinson’s personal top 5 Fresh Faves on BBC6’s Fresh on the Net and was also single of the week on the Janice Forsyth BBC Scotland Culture show.
This August will see Mary head out on tour for the 4th time in one year. Having supported Lewis & Leigh and Bryde on their respective UK tours, she is looking forward to her first headline tour, which will also include some co-headline dates with Emily Maguire.