Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod delves into her subtle and stunning new EP, “Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early”. 

Since a breakout moment in 2022 with “complex”, Katie Gregson-MacLeod has shown herself as one of the most sincere and intimate songwriters currently plying their trade. The Scottish talent is Ivor Novello nominated and has been backed by heavy-hitters like Phoebe Bridges and Olivia Rodrigo. Now, she makes the definitive artistic statement in her career to date with new EP “Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early”. 

The body of music fills the spaces between love’s sun-kissed hope and its sense of longing, feeling simultaneously nostalgic and in the moment. Gregson-MacLeod’s voice is breathtaking, tender, quietly compulsive, the type of tone to wrap you in cotton wool and guide you towards a crux of deep-seated feeling. It’s stunning work, all-in-all. 

Dropping by to chat, Gregson-MacLeod goes track-by-track through “Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early” in a Wonderland exclusive.

Listen to the EP…

Katie’s thoughts on the EP as a whole: 

EP 

“Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early” is a collection of love songs. Amongst a whirlwind period in my life – getting signed to a major label, leaving my studies and my barista job, moving to London – I was lucky enough to fall into a relationship that slowed it all down for me. This EP is a collection of love letters to that person, to London, to that time period, in which I was able to escape from the rollercoaster of pursuing a career as an artist and hinge on the steadiness we built for ourselves in our little pocket of London. As the title suggests, I thought a lot about whether finding peace in my life beyond music would really be compatible with the ambition and chaotic lifestyle that comes with the career. 

The making of this EP mirrored the themes of the songs in many ways. When I was dropped by my major label last March, it felt like the perfect opportunity to escape to the Highlands, and make a project that felt like a return to the root of my music. I wanted to strip it all back to the feeling that ignited my love for music in the first place. The five songs were recorded over a few days in a studio run by Edwyn Collins and his wife Grace Maxwell in Helmsdale, on the north coast of Scotland.

I enlisted the help of my friend Josh Scarbrow to produce the project with me. A big part of our ethos for this record was to honour the organic, live performances in the room and to allow for spontaneity in the studio. We were lucky to have players on board – Laura Wilkie and Juliette Lemoine on strings and Chris Dickie on the drums – who understood the feeling of these songs so well, and were able to join us in our pursuit of capturing them in their most honest form. 

I chose to take the title from the opening track, because I think it encapsulates best the friction I felt last year between the quietness and contentment of my relationship, and the noisy, unstable lifestyle that I chose for myself in becoming an artist. It’s a project that celebrates smallness, as that was how I could best understand love and music at the time.

Read the track-by-track…

“Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early”

This song was a confession of sorts; of the insecurity I confronted being in a healthy, happy relationship for the first time; the guilt of wanting to choose peace over ambition. It felt like the most honest way to open the record: I am as much speaking to the listener and my old label as I am to my partner. The verse that gives the song and the EP its title speaks to the realisation both in my career and my relationship that contentment may require letting someone down, not living up to some great abstract aspiration that may have fuelled me before. 

“James”

“James” is a song about trust. Feeling so at home with someone so early, but retaining the residual suspicion of former relationships. Joesef and I wrote this with Josh Scarbrow, who eventually would produce the project. The song was written very quickly, and for a while I thought I would change the central line ‘But how will I know if it’s the real thing?’. However, after living with it for a year before recording, I realised that that question was the song itself. It was the first time I’d thought about what I wanted in a relationship, instead of worrying only if I was what they wanted. The catharsis for me emotionally wasn’t reached until recording, where the amazing Laura Wilkie improvised an outro on the fiddle that brings the feeling home.

“Chess”

“Chess” was written with Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Steve Robson and Jamie Squire in Steve’s studio in Barnes. We’d gone round the houses throughout the day on a different song I think, and then when Jamie started playing some big emotional chords on the piano, ‘Chess’ flowed out of me. In hindsight, it’s funny that such a tiny, insular song was created like that. The end result wasn’t so big and emotional at all, but rather just a journey through snapshots of my relationship.

A lot of this EP is built upon little scenes, rather than the unravelling of emotional content. It’s the cliche songwriter-fear of getting into a relationship that feels peaceful and content, because it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to the grand statements and emotional admissions that heartache does. However, songs like this that let me just talk about playing chess at the pub and getting the bus around North London made it all make more sense to me. We’re having a really nice time and that’s all I wanted to say really.

I Just Think Of It All The Time

I wrote this song with Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Steve Robson and Jamie Squire in Barnes in summer 2023. The song was really just me trying to speak directly to my partner. It’s full of inside jokes, and nods to moments we shared early in our relationship. It was one of those rare moments where being a songwriter helped me communicate things in real time that he needed to hear, and so even if no one else ever heard it, it would still have served its purpose.

“Mosh Pit”

I began writing “Mosh Pit” after a Tiger Cub gig in Islington. I watched my partner at the time get lost amongst this moshing crowd. Standing back and watching him come to life in that moment prompted the first verse to be written the next morning.

This song – and the EP more widely – is really a tapestry of vignettes, rather than the unravelling of much emotional content. We didn’t try for a chorus, or a line that would tie it all together, but rather just allowed for the lyrics to travel through these moments, hazy and mundane. That was how I best understood our love story. 

I could write albums just taking a stab at articulating the feeling of being in this relationship in some great emotional terms, but really all I need to understand it for myself is picturing ‘my dress on your washing line’.