Hope Tala FAULT Magazine Cover and Interview

London-based singer-songwriter Hope Tala is finally back! It’s been 18 months since her last release, but the wait is over as she unveils her powerful new single “I Can’t Even Cry.”

We caught up with Hope to dive deep into the emotional inspiration behind the song, the challenges she faced during the writing process, and of course, her FAULTs.

Your new single “I  Can’t Even Cry” is out now. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the song?

‘I Can’t Even Cry’ was inspired by a really difficult period during which, for the first time in my life, I often felt truly unable to cope. I was experiencing this numbness a lot of the time, a detachment from my feelings. As someone who is usually quite in touch with their feelings (I’m a water sign) it was quite foreign, so I took what I was experiencing and distilled it into this song. The notion of hope is also really important, no pun intended. To me that’s really what the song is about: looking forwards.

Was there a change in songwriting process on this compared to previous releases?

There were various circumstantial challenges around the time this song was written that impacted on the writing process but when I actually sat down to write what became ‘I Can’t Even Cry’ it felt like the easiest thing in the world. That easy feeling, which was quite common for me when I first started writing music, has become increasingly rare. But this song came to me in that magical way; it all poured out and there was a real synthesis of how I felt and the product of my expression. There’s nothing more you can ask for really, as a writer. The biggest change, process wise, was that this is the first song I’ve made with someone I’ve been friends with first. Often I become friends with producers I work with during the writing process but I made ‘I Can’t Even Cry’ with Anoop D’Souza who was a friend of mine before we ever sat down to make music together. That’s a large part of the reason why this song is so vulnerable and close to my heart.

You’ve racked up millions of streams and gained major listener support – do you feel pressured to top the accolades of previous releases?

For a long time I felt a lot of pressure in every area of my life, particularly in what I was trying to achieve professionally and academically. The benefit of facing some adversity in the music industry over the last few years has been that there’s no longer much space in my mind or spirit for anything other than wanting, with everything in me, for the music to come out into the world. That is truly enough; knowing that some people will hear this song, trusting that it will find at least one person who will connect with it in a meaningful way. I’ve really strengthened my ability to affirm and validate myself over the past few years, which helps a lot.

What do you hope listeners take away from the track?

Saying that I just hope some listeners connect with it seems like a very simple answer, but it’s the truest one. I hope it makes someone somewhere feel like they can be a bit more vulnerable, a bit more hopeful maybe.

Does this hint at a larger body of music to come? 

Yes. Yippee! Yes.

This is your first single release in a year and a half, do you find it challenging to not get pulled into the quick turnaround nature of the music industry?

That really hasn’t been my choice. If I’d had it my way I wouldn’t have left it this long at all. That being said, I don’t think that artists should feel pressure to churn music out constantly – that pressure is bad for so many reasons, most importantly the mental health of artists, but also the quality of the art itself. It’s just another symptom of this relentless, dehumanising hyper-capitalist system we live under. Make for profit make for profit make for profit.

What would you say is the largest creative hurdle you’re facing at the moment? 

I feel more creatively liberated than I have in a long time because music is finally coming out – more space is being made in my head for whatever I want to make next. In the same breath, there are always hurdles. Every time I write a song I love I worry that it’ll be the last time. You have to constantly encourage yourself, push yourself on.

What is your FAULT?

We could literally be here all day with this. I spend all of my money buying books, for example, and have literally no space left for them. There are worse things to spend your money on, but I’ve really got hundreds and hundreds. I need to just go to the fucking library instead of buying more. Also I am horribly competitive and I struggle with living in the moment. I’ve been extremely forgetful recently. I’m very pedantic, a hand-me-down from my dad, even though I’m constantly getting things wrong myself. I’m clumsy, often spilling things, tripping, falling over when I run. None of that even scratches the surface, really.