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The road less travelled

I first spoke to Scottish national treasure Horse McDonald back in 2022. This was ahead of the release of her single, Leaving, aka her “fuck you anthem”. Now, two years later, we’re reuniting via Zoom in the run up to her eighth studio album, The Road Less Travelled. Wearing her signature thick-rimmed, black glasses and sporting her white quiff of hair, she’s as charming, passionate and inspiring as I remembered.

“Leaving is a real banger. It’s very angry. So the next song, The Road Less Travelled, is a lot more thoughtful. It’s the idea that you’re in a place armed with all you need. I’m at a place now where I’ve been through it all and nothing’s gonna faze me,” Horse asserts.

This is Horse’s first studio album since the release of Home 11 years ago. “It’s a gathering up of quite a lot of things since 2013 and 2014. There’s a lot of emotion in this album. There’s some angry stuff, some very angry stuff,” she says. “And there’s some incredibly uplifting things.”

“There’s a track called Superpower. I co-wrote that with a woman I was working on a project with, Mary Erskine. She said, ‘Let’s write something for and about women, and empowering women.’ The word superpower is thrown around quite haphazardly these days, but it really is about, what’s your superpower?” Horse reflects. “I gathered children and asked them what their superpowers were and their voices come right up at the end of the track. It’s really lovely to hear because when I’m no longer here, and the people who’ve been making the album with me are no longer here, those voices will be there. I hope they achieve their superpowers.”

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DIVA Magazine
Jun-Jul 24
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