Based in Nashville but Texas born, Harper O’Neill is one of country musics most exciting artists to watch in 2025. An artist’s artist, O’Neill blends a wide-range of genres within her music which delivers a striking and unique sound that reels the listener in and makes them want to stay.

Melodies to get lost in, words to live by and relate to, O’Neill tells her stories captivatingly in both her studio music and live shows. Having played in the UK in previous years supporting artists such as Ashley McBryde and Lainey Wilson, Harper returns in 2025 to perform at her very first C2C Festival. As many artists in previous years have been the festivals stand-out performer, we feel Harper O’Neill may steal that crown this year or at the least be one of few whom will share that title.

Recently, Harper O’Neill has released her single My Love, My Love which follows her last single Say My Name If You’re Lonely. My Love, My Love dives into a more country-blues esque song with 2 key changes, three verses and no chorus. These songs are the first of three which will complete an EP.

In 2023 O’Neill released her album Dark Bar Daisy which was met with much critical acclaim.

We caught up with Harper to discuss music, C2C and more!

Enjoy!

Hello, how are you? Are you all prepared and presumably excited for C2C Festival?

So excited, I don’t know if I will ever be prepared to travel but I will have fun doing my best haha

What can we expect from your shows? Are you coming over with a band or doing an acoustic set?

So for Berlin and Rotterdam I will be going solo but I will meet up with my guitar player for Glasgow and London.

What have musician friends told you about C2C?

I have had many friends go and they have said it’s a chaotic, fun weekend of great music. I have some friends going this year so I hope I have some time to pop around and catch their sets.

Oh lovely, who out of your friends is playing?

Kaitlin Butts, Kashus Culpepper, Maggie Antone will be there, just a couple of my songwriting good friend buddies that I hang around with in Nashville. It will be fun to see them.

Tell us about the last few times that you were here. You have supported Ashley McBryde and Lainey Wilson over here.

Yes, In January last year with Ashley McBryde was the first time and was actually my first full length tour that I had ever done!

Oh wow!

It was kind of a wild jump start into the touring world and into the UK. It was a beautiful two for one moment. I was back shortly after in March with Lainey. Both of those artists were so wonderfully kind to me and I learned a lot just watching their shows and hanging out with the band and the crowds were fantastic.

Both Ashley and Lainey, some of their first ever shows were here. They both played small venues and have blown up since. I like to think we the UK are responsible haha!

The growth over there (the UK) for artists is fantastic. I am excited to start building.

Well yes and we are excited to have you. We love our female singers over here so have never understood the battle for female country artists on country radio.

It’s something I don’t think I will ever understand. I think right now, especially in country music, there is a whole group of extremely talented female artists and so eventually it’s just going to be a numbers game on the radio. The majority of artists is female and they are not playing them on the radio, they just won’t make much sense over here so I am hoping we will win the numbers game.

Me too! The funny thing is and Blake Shelton springs to mind here, many of his number one songs that were heavily played on radio were written by women, Jesse Alexander for example.

Right, yes! Female songwriters have been crushing the industry since the start. It’s always fun to see them have a hit.

Now that you have toured with Lainey (Wilson) I have to ask, do you have a Lainey hat?

Lainey did give me a hat shortly after the tour. It’s honestly so nice that I don’t wear it out too often. When I do, I get many, many a compliment. She also sent me some of her old bell bottoms which are in my closet.

Oh my gosh, that is amazing!!!

Yeah haha!

So let’s quickly talk about your current single My Love, My Love. It’s such a great song! Please tell us a bit about it! I know there isn’t a chorus and it has a blues element to it. What made you decide to not stick to the common format of having a chorus?

Me, Jason (Nix) and Ed (Williams) who wrote that song – that write (writers session ) took us about 8 hours in which is about twice as long as my usual writes. We really wanted it to display that chaotic, obsessive feeling of love where there really is not a resolution in that feeling so for it to have a chorus didn’t really make much sense for us and so we just wanted the story to continue to elevate. After we had written each of the three verses, if you will, we were like how can we make this feel like it’s absolutely falling off the rails? How can we get from “I will always be around if you call me” to “I am going to rip my heart out if you leave”. Lyrically that is already telling quite a crazy story but then we implemented those key changes that kind of lift every time the new section starts because it feels like she is falling off the rails, it feels like she is going absolutely insane in the best way. So we really tried to nail that down.

This project that I am working on, I’ve got one more song coming out which will fold into an EP of just three songs, we just wanted to musically experiment, what if we didn’t follow the formula? What if there is no chorus? What if it had three keys? With ‘Say My Name If You’re Lonely’ which came out right before, we were like “what if we put a musical B section right in the middle of the song?” We do whatever we want and so I think it has really opened me up creatively in the studio which makes me really excited for recording the next full length later this year because there are no rules! You can do whatever you want?

This is it, and I love that, I LOVE that! Not all songs need a chorus, not all songs need a bridge. So you mentioned that you have a third song coming out for this project?

Yes, so I have a duet coming out, not on this project but in late March that I am very excited for. I can’t share too many details yet but I am very very excited for that one. This last song will come out right after that to close the EP, so I am thinking mid April.

Can we know anything about that track? (For the EP)

Yeah! That one is called ‘Manufactured Feelings’ and it kind of has that Bluesy thing I think you’ll quite enjoy (as we spoke about my new found love for Blues earlier). It’s a little bit of a laid back, kind of groovy song.

Exciting! You also said you are working on a full length album?

Yes! We will start that process in April – no rest for the wicked over here haha! We’re just going to keep that rolling.

What are your goals when working on a new album? Do you try and make it better than the last project or different in any particular way? ‘Dark Bar Daisy’ met such critical acclaim that I wondered if that puts the pressure on at all are you laid back about it and think “we’ll create, what we create”.

Absolutely! That’s definitely a fine line that I have been walking. I think that artists over the course of forever have always talked about the Sophomore slope. After you put out your first body of work, it can be really difficult to figure out where to go next – Do I recreate that sound? Do I dive further into that character? That Dark Bar Daisy person ? Or do I make something that reflects my taste at the time? Do I say I have been listening to a lot of Sierra Ferrell? How do you navigate that process? The record came out in 2023, I have been doing a lot of touring since then and I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out how to navigate that and I think I’ve arrived at “I’m just going to record whatever comes out”

Good! As you know, your music is a mix of genres anyway which more than allows you to have a bit of creative freedom without anyone getting particularly mad that you have shifted your sound slightly! No- one is going to say “You’re not country anymore, you’re not Blues anymore” I feel that if you decide to suddenly rap on one of your songs, you can totally do that without it being a shock haha!

Absolutely, and I think with this EP that I am doing, I think that I just wanted to establish that I am not going to follow any rules, I’m going to do whatever I want to do – I’m going to put key changes in there, no chorus and I don’t want people to ever know what to expect!

Do you take your time over the track listing? Are the bookends particularly important to you? Do you think about how much of an impact that first track is going to have in order to make people want to hear the album in its entirety? And then close in such a way to hear the album all over again?

Yes we did spend a lot of time over the track listing (of Dark Bar Daisy). Much like a live set, it needs to tell a story. I love seeing music and listening to albums and I think if we want people to listen to albums from top to bottom, there has to be some curation that goes into that experience because if it means more to listen to it that way, then people might listen to it that way. I think quite a bit about that in my live shows as well. How can I suddenly get your attention from the beginning and make you perk your ear and go “oh! What is this?”. Then hopefully by the end, I have broken your heart enough to where you start the record back over. It definitely is a bit of a mind game. I think there’s no right or wrong way to do it, it’s however it feels good.

Did you know right away what tracks to open and close with on ‘Dark Bar Daisy’?

I knew the bookends right away! The middle is where it got kind of hazy but I think if they make it that far down the record then they are probably going to listen to the whole thing.

With all your songs yet to be released, is there a song that you are particularly excited for people to hear?

Absolutely! I wrote a song, it will be on the full length record and it’s called ‘Come and Find Me’. I think it’s my favourite song I have ever written so I am very excited to get that one out into the world.

Well I can’t wait to hear it!

Can we ask who you will be working with on the album that you are working on?

Yes, I have been working a lot with Ed Williams. He helped me co-produce these last couple of tracks. He has been in the industry for a long time. He has worked as a songwriter, as a producer, he has worked as an A&R person for Sony for years. Our musical taste just overlapped really well. We just have a great time creating together. He doesn’t operate by the rule book either so it’s nice to kind of collaborate in that way.

With the songs already out – are there any songs that after full production you thought “wow! I didn’t know that song could sound like that?”

Definitely ‘Say My Name If You’re Lonely’. That was a totally different song. When I wrote it, it sounded like a pop song which melodically I feel that it still does. We just wanted to rip it apart and stitch it back together in the weirdest way possible and we ended up finding some real musical jems that I am very proud of in that song.

Do you ever listen to the original demo just to hear the difference?

I did once. It was kind of a jump scare haha! It was like looking in the mirror and not seeing yourself. It was very odd but that’s what I love about art, the sketch to the final. It can go on its own artistic journey and it’s really fun to watch those things come to life.

The instrumentation on ‘Dark Bar Daisy’ is incredible! Which musicians did you work with and will you continue to have that instrumental detail in your next project?

We haven’t gone into the studio for the next album yet but there are a couple of players that I admire what they bring to the table so much that I imagine I will use similar musicians from the last two recordings that I have released. There’s some studio guys out in Nashville, drummer Fred Eltringham, guitar player Rob Nelly, Bass player Lex Price, Ed was on the keys, I play a little acoustic guitar and hopefully we will find a way to get some horns back because I think they can really elevate that bluesy sound.

Yes because you play French horn don’t you?

I did play French horn back in the day yes.

Do you still play it?

Gosh I haven’t tried in years but I bet I could play as many notes as it will allow to play haha.

Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote and is it out in the world for people to hear?

Oh gosh! I remember the first song I wrote but I couldn’t tell you the name or how it goes but I remember writing it and playing it at Texas here in a local Café at a songwriting night or something. I remember it was about a boyfriend at the time and all my friends where so shocked that I had written sort of the truth of the situation and put it in a song and went up there and played my song. I don’t know how it would hold up in my measurements today but I do remember feeling very brave and very proud of expressing myself at such a young age.

Aww that’s very sweet. Who do you play new music to to get their absolute honest opinion?

My manager has wonderful taste, then my publisher. I have a great group of friends and family who have excellent taste and are brutally honest. For better or for worse I will play them a song and they can go “meh, it didn’t do anything for me” or sometimes they will find songs that I didn’t even think twice about and then those songs get to see the light of day because they see something in them that I never saw.

Oh that’s interesting! What about songs that they haven’t been keen on, particularly your manager and publisher and you have fought to put it out?

There are a few of those as well yeah! Those ones I always feel that end up really paving the artistic way for somebody. I can think of like Kacey Musgraves as a good example. She put out ‘Follow Your Arrow’ and everybody told her not to. I think sometimes the ones artists fight for end up being the most influential.

I agree and I am pretty sure, if memory serves, not many liked ‘Love Story’ when Taylor Swift wrote that but it ended up really catapulting her career.

I believe it and that was a massive song for her.

NEW SINGLE “MY LOVE, MY LOVE” OUT NOW

Listen to “Say My Name if You’re Lonely” single

Listen to DARK BAR DAISY album

Make sure you check out Harper O’Neill at this years C2C Festival.