Flo Morrissey

Morrissey grew up just off the Portobello Road in London, the second-oldest of nine children. If it was an unusual upbringing it was nonetheless one that has given her both the grounding and the confidence to plough her own particular furrow. “None of us were rebellious,” she says. “And we’ve all been very rooted to home. I get on a lot better with older people, I’m close with my parents, and I would rather spend time with my family than go to a party.” It was Morrissey’s father who introduced her to artists such as Devendra Banhart and Antony and the Johnsons, and her older brother who led her to Jeff and Tim Buckley. “And I always knew Bob Dylan,” she says “When I was maybe eight years old I did a talent show and sang Maggie’s Farm, in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.” What she admires most in music — and hopes might be found in her own songs, is for there to be “something childlike in the best way possible, something almost vulnerable about the music, for there not to be a barrier.“ Morrissey left school at 17, abandoning A Levels in Music and French to pursue her songwriting career. “It was a big decision,” she admits. “But I’d always been set on not going to university because I knew that music was what I wanted to do. And even though it’s scary to go out into the real world and do it, it seemed more right to me to just try.” Her parents, she insists, were entirely supportive. “They wouldn’t have been if I was just sitting in my room all day waiting for things to happen,” she says. “But because I’d been making music since I was 14 and putting it online, and the power of the internet had helped pave my way to meeting my manager and meeting my label, they supported the decision.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of artist