Eyelar
Eyelar
23:10 bis 23:40 Uhr
Eyelar is a master of emotion. In her songwriting with the likes of Demi Lovato, Bastille, Little Mix, Charli XCX and Camilla Cabello, she has shown how to catch a dark or nagging feeling in her hand and mould it into a restorative pop hit. Meanwhile, Eyelar’s velvety voice has taken the reigns of everything from UK rapper Yxng Bane’s 2018 acoustic cut “Breakfast” to German producer Purple Disco Machine’s 2021 disco hit “Dopamine” (a song she wrote in her mum’s kitchen, but quickly surpassed 70M+ streams on Spotify and charted across Europe). The last few years have brought one milestone after another, including a feature on Fred Again’s upcoming album Actual Life 3. But it’s her latest single, “Till You Hate Me”, that signals Eyelar’s true arrival.
“It came together super quickly,” she says. “With this song, I could see it all – the shows, the videos, the whole thing. It’s like a new world came to life.”
Written during a period of obsession with grunge, which saw her devour as many Nirvana interviews, Hole melodies and Kurt Cobain biographies as possible, “Till You Hate Me” is a crunchy guitar banger with a soaring pop chorus. “Maybe I should stitch my mouth / I’ve always been a little too loud...” she frets in the build up. Tapping into a spirit of rebellion that has been harnessed by pop-rock stars from Alanis Morrissette to Olivia Rodrigo, the single was written at the start of a new relationship that marked the first time Eyelar was willing to fully open up to another person. “I've always been skeptical of love, so I was freaking out because I thought, ‘this guy really likes me and we're probably gonna get together – but the odds are against us because most relationships fail’,” she explains. “I was scared that once you get to know each other, really and truly, you end up hating each other.”
“Till You Hate Me” is as much about the fear of being let down as it is Eyelar’s own emotional history. She grew up in a small village in the Netherlands, born there a month after her parents emigrated from Iran. Her father was a gambling addict and there was a lot of financial turbulence that gave her the instinct to always be on the run. When she moved to London, where she signed with 2-Tone Entertainment and spent several years refining her craft as a vocalist in the electronic community and beginning to write her own songs, she took that mentality with her.
“I was determined to be successful, because I never wanted to be in that situation again,” Eyelar explains. She was doing sessions Monday to Sunday, living off soup and making £40 stretch a full week. “I was in survival mode, and anything that could jeopardise that had to stay away. I'm a very loving person so I’ve never had any issues making friends, but when it came to romance it would always be very short lived. I never let anyone get too close because I was scared to get too comfortable.”
That ambition has been with her from a young age, though her rural hometown wasn’t necessarily geared towards encouraging creative ambition or exploration. There weren’t loads of record shops to go and look for new or weird things, and most of the country’s music scenes were confined to cities like Amsterdam and Tilburg. “All I really heard was what was on MTV and whatever my older brother was listening to,” she says. At the same time, there were regular opportunities for Eyelar to indulge her burgeoning talents as a performer. Both of her parents are good singers and the family had lots of friends, so dinner parties were a regular fixture. “With Iranian dinner parties there’s dinner and then there’s partying,” Eyelar laughs. “There’s a lot of dancing, so every weekend became my moment to take my friends upstairs and come up with a show. Then we’d go down and do it for everyone.”
Until she would graduate from high school and travel to and from Amsterdam, where she seriously started writing songs – EDM, mostly – it was a case of biding her time. In fact, during one recent visit home, she found a high school planner from the age of 13 or 14. On one page, she’d written: “When I'm 25, I'm gonna be speaking only English. And I'm gonna be making music every single day.” Just over a decade later, that’s exactly where Eyelar finds herself. “At the time I had no idea, I just wrote it down. I was like wow, I really manifested that!”
More alternative than anything she’s released before, “Till You Hate Me” also brings Eyelar full circle on her love for bands like Paramore. She’s dipped into that world before – her 2019 collaboration with Kid Brunswick, "Fxck You Cause You Were the One," introduced her grunge-inspired pop approach, which she developed on her follow-up solo single "Voices." After singing on Disciples' hit "All Mine," Eyelar reunited with Kid Brunswick for the anthemic, emo-pop single "Good 2 You”. Now, she’s leaning into those sounds more and more. Her upcoming tracks are a mix of pure pop punk ragers (“Grudge”), 90s alternative (“Newest Kid In School”) and murky synth-pop (“Think Like A Man”).
The comparatively pared-down “Care Like You” is the song that best reflects Eyelar’s personality. Basking in a neon glow, she sweetly describes a series of cruel actions over a pulsing synth line. “That song is so me in the way that it’s cheeky but actually super dark,” she says. “If I go too dark on a song then I don’t even want to sing it because I don’t want to be in that energy, but if I feel like that then I’ll try to find a way to take that darkness and add something else to it – another mood or feeling, or something funny – just to balance it out.”
From Nirvana and Arctic Monkeys to Charli XCX and the 1975 to Tupac and Juice WRLD, her influences are wide-ranging but all have one thing in common: evocative lyricism, and an ability to pull the listener into their world. In the same vein, a lot of Eyelar’s songs hark back to her experiences growing up in Holland, which were often marked by an outsider feeling or inability to fit in. She was often laughed at for coming into school with panther-print purses or enormous fake fur boots, and people would bully her for her name. “I’m just a girl in a hoodie / And I wanna be somebody / I just want me to like me…” she yearns on “Newest Kid In School”.
“I never really felt like I belonged,” she says. “I was trying really hard to be Dutch. I even changed my name to Amy when I was 10, but it didn’t catch on. Then, when I went to Iran, I didn’t fit in either, because everyone saw me as a Dutch person. I used to go to Iran every year and think: what am I? Am I Dutch, or am I Iranian?”
Now, Eyelar feels more at ease. Her Iranian traditions and Dutch tendencies have lost some of their tension, and she’s able to embrace all sides of herself in the gritty guitar-pop music that feels most authentic to her. “It’s taken me a really long time to be confident in the music I’m making and take ownership of a sound and identity,” she says. Now, the real fun can begin. She’s currently adapting her live shows to bring them into a more rock and roll space, and integrating her new guitar, Dusty – a pink Stratocaster she saw hanging in a shop window on Denmark Street. “I wasn’t even looking to buy a guitar that day, but when I held it, I was like… I don't know how much this guitar cost but I need to have it,” she grins. “This is the guitar now. I’m going to play it for the rest of my life.”
In the meantime, she’s excited to have “Till You Hate Me” out in the world. “It’s the first single that I feel is 100% me, and as long as there’s a strong emotional reaction, I’ll be happy,” she says. I'd rather people hate it than have it on in the background while they’re doing the dishes. Play it loudly and love it or play it loudly and hate it – but play it loud!
“It came together super quickly,” she says. “With this song, I could see it all – the shows, the videos, the whole thing. It’s like a new world came to life.”
Written during a period of obsession with grunge, which saw her devour as many Nirvana interviews, Hole melodies and Kurt Cobain biographies as possible, “Till You Hate Me” is a crunchy guitar banger with a soaring pop chorus. “Maybe I should stitch my mouth / I’ve always been a little too loud...” she frets in the build up. Tapping into a spirit of rebellion that has been harnessed by pop-rock stars from Alanis Morrissette to Olivia Rodrigo, the single was written at the start of a new relationship that marked the first time Eyelar was willing to fully open up to another person. “I've always been skeptical of love, so I was freaking out because I thought, ‘this guy really likes me and we're probably gonna get together – but the odds are against us because most relationships fail’,” she explains. “I was scared that once you get to know each other, really and truly, you end up hating each other.”
“Till You Hate Me” is as much about the fear of being let down as it is Eyelar’s own emotional history. She grew up in a small village in the Netherlands, born there a month after her parents emigrated from Iran. Her father was a gambling addict and there was a lot of financial turbulence that gave her the instinct to always be on the run. When she moved to London, where she signed with 2-Tone Entertainment and spent several years refining her craft as a vocalist in the electronic community and beginning to write her own songs, she took that mentality with her.
“I was determined to be successful, because I never wanted to be in that situation again,” Eyelar explains. She was doing sessions Monday to Sunday, living off soup and making £40 stretch a full week. “I was in survival mode, and anything that could jeopardise that had to stay away. I'm a very loving person so I’ve never had any issues making friends, but when it came to romance it would always be very short lived. I never let anyone get too close because I was scared to get too comfortable.”
That ambition has been with her from a young age, though her rural hometown wasn’t necessarily geared towards encouraging creative ambition or exploration. There weren’t loads of record shops to go and look for new or weird things, and most of the country’s music scenes were confined to cities like Amsterdam and Tilburg. “All I really heard was what was on MTV and whatever my older brother was listening to,” she says. At the same time, there were regular opportunities for Eyelar to indulge her burgeoning talents as a performer. Both of her parents are good singers and the family had lots of friends, so dinner parties were a regular fixture. “With Iranian dinner parties there’s dinner and then there’s partying,” Eyelar laughs. “There’s a lot of dancing, so every weekend became my moment to take my friends upstairs and come up with a show. Then we’d go down and do it for everyone.”
Until she would graduate from high school and travel to and from Amsterdam, where she seriously started writing songs – EDM, mostly – it was a case of biding her time. In fact, during one recent visit home, she found a high school planner from the age of 13 or 14. On one page, she’d written: “When I'm 25, I'm gonna be speaking only English. And I'm gonna be making music every single day.” Just over a decade later, that’s exactly where Eyelar finds herself. “At the time I had no idea, I just wrote it down. I was like wow, I really manifested that!”
More alternative than anything she’s released before, “Till You Hate Me” also brings Eyelar full circle on her love for bands like Paramore. She’s dipped into that world before – her 2019 collaboration with Kid Brunswick, "Fxck You Cause You Were the One," introduced her grunge-inspired pop approach, which she developed on her follow-up solo single "Voices." After singing on Disciples' hit "All Mine," Eyelar reunited with Kid Brunswick for the anthemic, emo-pop single "Good 2 You”. Now, she’s leaning into those sounds more and more. Her upcoming tracks are a mix of pure pop punk ragers (“Grudge”), 90s alternative (“Newest Kid In School”) and murky synth-pop (“Think Like A Man”).
The comparatively pared-down “Care Like You” is the song that best reflects Eyelar’s personality. Basking in a neon glow, she sweetly describes a series of cruel actions over a pulsing synth line. “That song is so me in the way that it’s cheeky but actually super dark,” she says. “If I go too dark on a song then I don’t even want to sing it because I don’t want to be in that energy, but if I feel like that then I’ll try to find a way to take that darkness and add something else to it – another mood or feeling, or something funny – just to balance it out.”
From Nirvana and Arctic Monkeys to Charli XCX and the 1975 to Tupac and Juice WRLD, her influences are wide-ranging but all have one thing in common: evocative lyricism, and an ability to pull the listener into their world. In the same vein, a lot of Eyelar’s songs hark back to her experiences growing up in Holland, which were often marked by an outsider feeling or inability to fit in. She was often laughed at for coming into school with panther-print purses or enormous fake fur boots, and people would bully her for her name. “I’m just a girl in a hoodie / And I wanna be somebody / I just want me to like me…” she yearns on “Newest Kid In School”.
“I never really felt like I belonged,” she says. “I was trying really hard to be Dutch. I even changed my name to Amy when I was 10, but it didn’t catch on. Then, when I went to Iran, I didn’t fit in either, because everyone saw me as a Dutch person. I used to go to Iran every year and think: what am I? Am I Dutch, or am I Iranian?”
Now, Eyelar feels more at ease. Her Iranian traditions and Dutch tendencies have lost some of their tension, and she’s able to embrace all sides of herself in the gritty guitar-pop music that feels most authentic to her. “It’s taken me a really long time to be confident in the music I’m making and take ownership of a sound and identity,” she says. Now, the real fun can begin. She’s currently adapting her live shows to bring them into a more rock and roll space, and integrating her new guitar, Dusty – a pink Stratocaster she saw hanging in a shop window on Denmark Street. “I wasn’t even looking to buy a guitar that day, but when I held it, I was like… I don't know how much this guitar cost but I need to have it,” she grins. “This is the guitar now. I’m going to play it for the rest of my life.”
In the meantime, she’s excited to have “Till You Hate Me” out in the world. “It’s the first single that I feel is 100% me, and as long as there’s a strong emotional reaction, I’ll be happy,” she says. I'd rather people hate it than have it on in the background while they’re doing the dishes. Play it loudly and love it or play it loudly and hate it – but play it loud!