‘I’m sweating my tits off! Don’t wear knitwear on stage’. Sound advice. Arguably the best dressed (or most overdressed) act at Years End Festival, Mollie Coddled owned her unique display of intimate indie pop clad in a stylish knit hood. The honesty of her music and effervescent live performance creates a whole new world. Everyone’s friends at a Mollie Coddled show. So much so that she recognised someone in the crowd halfway through her set.

Flanked by her band, Liv and Luke, in the smoking area of the Deaf Institute (with accompanying Mancunian weather), we caught up with the Leeds born performer as she reflected on 2023.

This has been a big year for you, playing Leeds Festival, supporting Ellie Dixon on her tour, what’s been your highlight?

To be fair, the tour with Ellie Dixon was really cool, when we played in London, that was the biggest venue we’ve ever played. It was almost a thousand people which was pretty cool because I’m just from a farm you know what I mean.

How did that tour come about?

So, a little bit of backstory, me and Ellie are internet friends through posting Easy Life covers and we messaged each other like what the fuck we keep covering the same songs, so we became friends and she had me on her tour which was really sweet of her. It was the most welcoming experience to be on tour with her because she’s so lovely.

What have you got planned for 2024?

New music – lots of it. I’ve been working on it for a long time so I’m very excited to finally put it out and hopefully another tour towards the end of the year and some more headline shows.

You’re a very DIY artist and self-produce your music – walk us through your creative process.

It mainly consists of crying. I guess writing songs is like journaling, and getting out your emotions and all your trauma out on paper so you don’t have to think about it. It’s like ranting to someone and sending a message except you don’t send it to someone, you play it to loads of people on a stage instead which is probably worse but here we are.

You’re very open about being neurodivergent, what is it like being neurodivergent in the music industry?

I feel like a lot more people than you’d realise are neurodivergent in music but the don’t talk about it or don’t realise it, they just think they’re creative. Most of the musicians I know are also really weird, we’re all really weird not going to lie [laughter]. It’s hard sometimes because getting on a stage is really anxiety inducing but it makes it well worth it at the end of the gig when people come up to you and tell you they enjoyed it or related to the songs. It affirms you that you’re doing the right thing by playing to people because sometimes you don’t want to talk about these kinds of things to someone in person but when people say they relate to it, that makes it all worth it. It’s easier to say it to no one and then say it to everyone rather than one specific person too.

Your personal life and professional life must mix a lot, do you find you have to separate them?

It’s really hard not to think about music all the time, especially having autism, when people ask me what my hobbies are, I say music because it might be my job but it’s still what I do in all my spare time. It’s all I think about so it’s difficult sometimes to turn your brain off from it but it’s my life.

What do you think can be done to remove the barriers that women face in the music industry?

Even though there is progression, there’s still a lot of negative energy toward women and people of marginalised genders in the music industry from the patriarchy. Even male sound engineers or male bands that might be on the same bill as you don’t always give the support or the kind interaction that they could give you. Sometimes you get underestimated and that’s a very widely shared experienced between women and non-binary people in the music industry. There’s a lot more support for getting women and non-binary people on lineups now which is nice, but it is the bare minimum. A lot more can be done within the industry so people change the way they interact with women and non-binary and trans people to be more welcoming because it’s scary when you’re in that marginalised community because you don’t know how people will treat you.

Grassroots events like Year’s End Festival and DIY artists such as Mollie Coddled demonstrate the kind of ethos needed in the music industry. With such a colourful array of creatives operating globally, I highly recommend any music lover interacts with such events and artists.

Mollie Coddled’s music is available to stream everywhere with upcoming live shows TBC

Instagram: @mollieiscoddled