Rebecca Ferguson: 'It’s almost as if people prefer the illusion'

“Historically the tour structure doesn’t work for me as a mum,” she continues. “It’s the most amazing job in the world, but it does take you away from your family.”

Where in the early stages of her career, she would have taken her children on tour buses – and even once, a mobile home – now she feels it is time for a change.

“For years I was doing that, and the kids absolutely loved it, but I’m at a different phase in my life where I want to be able to perform but in a way that suits me and my family,” she says. For that reason, she adds, “it makes more sense to do one-off shows” than endure the rigours of touring.

She insists: “It will not be the end of me performing. You’ll still see Rebecca live at maybe the Royal Albert Hall, which we’re looking at in two years’ time – those type of shows will come up, but it’s just a different way of performing.”

The current shows come on the back of Ferguson’s fifth album, Heaven Part II, a sister record to her debut long-player which came out in 2011. Thirteen years on, she says she feels “like a completely different person” to the then 24-year-old who was under the wing of Simon Cowell’s Syco Music.

“I was very young when I made the first album, Heaven. I also hadn’t been through the music industry yet, that was a whole new thing, and I just didn’t have a clue. I think I always felt like I knew what the music industry was but actually unless you’ve ever been through it, you really don’t know what it is. That makes you mature pretty quick, you have to grow up (in order) to survive because it’s such a tough industry. I went from being quite a shy, introverted young woman and that young woman had to learn pretty quick you’ll be eaten alive if you do not toughen up. It definitely changed me.”

That first album, she says, had been her “creating an album from a completely pure and authentic place” as co-writer of all of the songs. The three subsequent albums, Freedom, Lady Sings The Blues and Superwoman, that she put out between 2012 and 2015, were more problematic.

“It was almost like the albums that came after (Heaven), there was a level of control over my career,” she says. “When I created the album Freedom that was all about me trying to break free from the situation I was in (with her then management), so me calling this album Heaven Part II was basically me saying to the fans this is the album that you should’ve had had all of that not been happening, so let’s start again, let’s re-set, this is Heaven Part II because I’m in that place of pure authenticity.”

As she now sees it, the run of albums that she made for major labels were heavily “industry influenced”. “I was writing music that I shouldn’t have been writing,” she says. “I know that sounds a strange thing to say because you go through things in life and everything happens for a reason, but I shouldn’t have been writing at the age of 23 an album about feeling depressed and about feeling shackled to companies and management teams.

“So me calling this Heaven Part II is me saying yes, I’m glad you loved all those albums and they were authentically who I was at that time, but this is what a happy artist sounds like who isn’t going through that pain.”

If the presence of a couple of dance tracks on the latest album suggests a singer who’s finding her groove at last, the recordings that she’s made in the last few months are even more joyful. “A couple of months ago, I just made music every other week. I just make music for fun now, so that’s what I'm going to be doing going forward, and you will see new music getting uploaded on Spotify and some of it will take people by surprise but everything I do now is fun. I just want to create music that is purely based on being artistic because for so long it felt like a business transaction. Now it’s all like, no, let’s throw that all away. What does music sound like when it’s being created purely for the joy of making music – and that’s the place I want to get to.”

Ferguson chuckles when the subject of the song Found My Voice is brought up. Widely interpreted as a riposte to those within the industry who she’s publically accused of misogyny – first in a series of posts on Twitter in 2021 and then earlier this year in evidence to the parliamentary women and equalities committee – one of its key lyric insists “I won’t be silent”.

“I think that song is about me becoming a woman, finding my voice, speaking up – and yeah, that song is definitely a nod to all of that, really,” she says today. “That song in particular did cause a bit of waves, especially off the ‘Simon says’ (lyric), but I look back on whole experience and think it was just a mad time and there was a lot of unneccessary fear at my end as well, now I reflect as an older woman. For so long I was so frightened of so many people in the industry and I look back now and I think it was all just one big illusion, and I just wish I’d known that then.

“But I’m just glad that I’ve got through it. So many people don’t get through it, so many people end up in a really bad place and I’m so glad that I was strong and I managed to navigate it and come out on top as well.”

Ferguson admits that she had little inkling of what the music industry was really like when she signed up to be a contestant on The X Factor in 2010. “I knew music was a tough old business – Prince spoke about these things, George Michael talked about it, Nina Simone famously, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, so many people you could go on and on – but when you enter it it is so terrifying and there is no way anyone on Earth could be equipped for the things that happen to you because it’s so far for everyday reality.

“I found it really hard when I was going through the experiences to speak to anyone. Because it’s so bizarre the things that happened, it’s very hard to find people that can relate or understand what goes on within the music industry.”

She says Britney Spears’ successful battle to free herself from an involuntarily conservatorship was a “pivotal moment for all of us creatives”, adding: “When people knew that this poor woman was being injected against her will, when she was being locked in her house against her will, and all these terrible things that happened to her, it made everyone go, ‘Oh my God, this is awful’, but what she was experiencing is the reality for so many artists and it’s too awful to even comprehend. I think for so long the public and the general music consumer were either blind to it or didn’t want to know about it.

“It felt like the Britney moment was a huge moment for me because it validated the experience I had had and so many other artists had experienced. But I will say I do still think that the general audience is not ready to know the truth. It’s almost as if people prefer the illusion, they prefer the veil, they prefer things to sound pretty, they don’t want to know that pop stars are being drugged.”

In her evidence to MPs, Ferguson made a point that the industry should have a duty of care towards artists. She feels her campaigning on the issue over the past three years has made “some difference”, but there is evidently some way to go.

“The fact there’s going to be a regulatory body is going to be a good thing, I do think that needs to be legislated. That was one of the things that was recommended by the women and equalities select committee. But there is a lot of people that are kicking back against change because a lot of people have a lot to hide, and this is an industry that has been allowed to behave in a way that is so bad and is so against the norm.”

Ferguson has also questioned the use of non-disclosure agreements to cover up misdeeds within the music industry. Today, she says: “I think that the way that people get away with it within the industry it is money, it is power, it is blackballing – not allowing people to have a career. Non-disclosure agreements are used as bullying tactics to silence victims and usually in my experience they set up a false claim against the victim, the victim then has to pay solicitors to defend the false claim, they then offer a non-disclosure agreement and say, ‘We can make this all go away. If you sign NDA you don’t have to go to court against us. All this can be a distant dream and we’ll let you have a career.’ That is what happens, I know that for a fact, I’ve seen it with other women, and it’s a terrible abuse of our justice system as well.”

She reveals that many musicians had written to her after she spoke out in public about how she was treated. “You’d be surprised at how famous these people are,” she says. “There was very famous women who contacted me and told me what had happened to them. Some of them had ended up on mental health wards, they had complete physical and nervous breakdowns because of the abuse from managers and record company executives and it had caused them to have the most horrendous time.

“It’s always been like a hidden thing, a thing that people don’t talk about but you know it’s happening. For whatever reason it’s just been allowed to go on for decades. I’m just so glad that a light was shone on it and that it’s all starting to come to the surface.”

In the wake of the birth of her fourth child, Ferguson says she is taking a step back from campaigning for the time being. But few would bet against her taking up the cudgels again in future.

“I had quite an intense two years of being pregnant and postpartum and I thought, ‘Do you know what, Rebecca, give yourself a break. You took on a giant industry whilst pregnant and postpartum, you now need just a little bit of you time.’ I will go back to it, but for now I feel like I need a little time for me.

“I’m still part of The Ivors Academy, I’m one of the directors there. I also work with ECSA (the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance), it’s like their equivalent in Europe. So I do work, I sit on different meetings and speak about what we need to do to help the industry. But I’m not as active as I was in terms of campaigning. That is going to happen (again), but I think for now as a mum, just give myself a little minute.”

Now an independent artist, Ferguson has written a number of songs for other singers in recent years, but she believes she will still make records of her own.

“I’m also working on a concept that can monetise AI within music,” she says. “So there’s lots of things I’m working on, but music is the core of who I am, so I definitely want to continue creating music, uploading music, but just in a much more relaxed and fun way.”

Rebecca Ferguson plays at York Barbican on May 24.