Lily Caddick, a student at Court Fields School in Wellington, has performed and released her debut single, titled: Happy. The song is available to be listened to across most platforms, including Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube.
The 16 year old GCSE student wrote the lyrics, melody, and chords to her song, before recording it at the 13 Sounds Studio in Western-Super-Mare.
Lily said: "I often come up to my room and I have a little keyboard in the corner and I’ll make up some songs and sing them to myself, just for me. For my birthday I got a slot at the 13 Sound Studios, I took one of those songs that I had spent quite a bit of time on, I went to the studio – sent in the track beforehand so they could produce a proper track ready for me to sing over - and then I went in and recorded the vocals. We spent the rest of the day making sure everything sounded right so it could be as polished as it could be."
Lily has been passionate about performing arts from an early age, and is hoping to attend the Big Act academy of theatre arts in Bristol once she finishes school.
Lily said: "I have always had an interest in singing, I always used to dance around the kitchen and dance to karaoke since I was quite tiny. But I started taking classes and singing and performing about 5 years ago. Since then I’ve wanted to take it a lot more seriously and go somewhere with it.
I’m really hoping to pursue a career in singing and performing so I’d love to be able to release more and more music so it’s well known so that it’s something I have lots of people listening to."
The release of the song has prompted 'lots of positive reactions'. Lily said: "I’ve had a lot of positive reactions thankfully. I’ve had loads of friends who have messaged me on social media saying they’re really proud of what I’ve done and the message I’ve put out there is really lovely to hear because its nice to relate to someone feeling that way.
Friends and family have come up to me and said 'it's really good when are you going to release it, where can I listen to it?' I’m really lucky to have a lot of supportive people who are sharing promotional stuff and I’ve been really blessed to have such lovely feedback."
Prior to recording Happy, Lily has performed at a number of open mic nights across local Wellington pubs, and competed in singing festivals, including the Taunton Festival of the Arts.
On the inspiration for the song Lily said: "A lot of the time, especially as a teenager, exams are coming up and everything, there’s always going to be times where things are going to get very stressful, things are going to come up and you’re going to have these emotions where you’re not feeling your best or feeling as happy as you could be.
You feel as though when you go outside, when you go to school, when you go to work, or when you go out and do something publicly, socially, there’s always that requirement to put on a brave face and act as if everything’s fine and your happy when in reality maybe that’s not the case and I thought that was a nice way for me to release some emotion through music "
Asked about her future plans Lily said: "I’m working on a project currently which is very exciting there should be more coming from that soon but I’m unfortunately not allowed to say a lot more about that yet until everything has been confirmed. But there is something coming up that I’m very excited about."