indie pop

Orla Gartland

1 festival played →

Irish songwriter who built an audience online long before the debut album arrived — sharp, guitar-forward indie pop with an unguarded streak.

Orla Gartland was born in 1995 and grew up in Drumcondra, near Croke Park in Dublin. She played violin, fiddle and traditional Irish music from around age five before her parents got her guitar lessons at twelve.

She launched a YouTube channel called MusicMaaad in 2009, posting covers before original songs, and busked around Dublin, where she befriended the duo Hudson Taylor. That following let her open for Ryan O'Shaughnessy and Nina Nesbitt in 2012, the same year she released her debut single, "Devil on My Shoulder."

A run of EPs followed the online following well before her first album: Laughing at My Own Jokes in 2012, Roots in 2013, Lonely People in 2015, Why Am I Like This? in 2019 and Freckle Season in 2020. She deferred a place at BIMM to move to London in 2015, having already known many UK-based musicians through YouTube.

The songs themselves are guitar-led indie pop, largely self-produced, with candid lyrics about anxiety, friendship and self-doubt delivered in a conversational Irish accent.

Debut album Woman on the Internet reached No. 3 in Ireland, No. 1 on the UK Indie Chart and No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart on its 2021 release, with Everybody Needs a Hero following in 2024. She is also a member of FIZZ, alongside Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, and her earlier song "Why Am I Like This?" reached new listeners after featuring in Netflix's Heartstopper.

Read more

indie pop