Katie Gregson-MacLeod: Scottish Music’s Newest Voice

Illustrations by Grace McKenna

There is something quite petrifying when attempting to write about music. Revealing your music taste, after all, feels like a strangely intimate act. A favourite song cannot be compared to something as prosaic as a favourite colour, food, or season. A favourite song can transport you, in mere seconds, to the deepest, darkest corners of your brain that hold those wonderfully specific memories, some of which you may even have tried to forget. A first dance. A birthday. A break-up. We cherish their lyrics because they allow us to navigate feelings, happy or sad, that we cannot otherwise articulate or even comprehend. Knowing my current playlist is knowing me fully, at my most vulnerable and uninhibited. And yet, I have chosen to write a music column… What on earth was I thinking? 

How, firstly, do I succinctly introduce my music taste? I saw Taylor Swift’s record-breaking “The Eras Tour” twice, but I am an outspoken Kate Bush fan and exercise exclusively to The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim. I was on the frontlines of the recent Take That ticket sale, but I am entirely entranced by Wolf Alice. I have previously written reviews of the punk rock artists known as Pussy Riot, but my go-to karaoke artist will always and inevitably be Lily Allen. Clearly, then, there is no regularity to my playlists. Their tonal shifts are bizarre and undoubtedly jarring to anyone but me. Fundamentally though, their organised chaos reflects my fascination with human creativity. Your music taste will always be unique to you, as idiosyncratic as your walk or laugh. As such, there is no room for pretension in music, only personal preference. Dancing, crying, or even screaming are all legitimate responses to the artists who make us think and feel in new ways. Music isn’t simple. And writing about music isn’t either.

Katie Gregson-Macleod, Love Me Too Well, I'll Retire Early (2025)

Trading a foggy Edinburgh twilight for a slightly too warm La Belle Angele last Sunday, I settled on one artist who best introduces the personality behind this column, where I hope to showcase lesser-known musicians, dissect songwriting, and interrogate the power of music, personally or even politically. When I first heard “I need him like water, he thinks that I’m alright” from her 2022 single “complex”, I knew the 24-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod was the kind of artist I would adore. Introspective and gorgeously lyrical, Gregson-MacLeod’s 2025 EP Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early solidified my first impression. Here, she moves listeners with sensorial evocations of dusty tube carriages and stuffy pub dates that cleverly epitomise the experience of falling in love in London, her new home. Accompanied throughout by a traditional fiddle, she remains proud of her Gaelic roots as she forges a new identity for herself through her cross-cultural experiences. As a Londoner who moved to Edinburgh for university, the exact opposite trajectory of the Inverness-born artist, it is hard not to see glimpses of myself reflected in the record’s allusions to navigating change. I know my friends equally find solace in its candidness. Within it, Gregson-MacLeod inexplicably condenses the universal, sometimes even cosmic, feelings of love and belonging into just a handful of songs. As she continues to tour this EP, I urge you to have a listen, if not out of curiosity, out of loyalty to the University of Edinburgh graduate, who proves a degree in History can truly take you anywhere, including opening for Olivia Rodrigo at BST Hyde Park. To describe Katie, who nonchalantly sips a glass of white wine between songs, as ‘cool’ still somehow doesn’t quite do her justice.

For any long-term fans, this record, styled as a collection of love songs, marks a turning point in Gregson-MacLeod’s discography, which was characteristically melancholic. “Teenage Love”, released only a few months beforehand, is an impassioned (dare I say angry?) single in comparison. Here, she recalls a relationship breakdown with a nameless partner, presumably older (“it was teenage love, if only for one of us”). She captures the disorientating feeling of realising someone you love is indeed capable of hurting you, through callous remarks (“it messes my head, trying to marry your face with the things you said”) and, even worse, betrayal (“now you kiss my friends in the Gellions loft”). Gellions, importantly, is a live music venue in Inverness. Relocating her songs from Scotland to London, Gregson-Macleod implies a significant narrative transition with this EP, which she says is as much an ode to the city as it is to her new love and new self.

Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early begins with its title track. Gregson-MacLeod describes this two minute song as a “confession of sorts”, as she opens her heart to a slower, peaceful love. It is a gentle breeze of a song, reflecting Gregson-Macleod at her tenderest. Followed by “James”, a song about the baggage we inevitably bring into a new relationship, it alludes to the uncertainty Gregson-MacLeod has hinted at. She asks “but how will I know if it’s the real thing?” -  the eternal, dreaded question. The middle section through to the conclusion of the EP, however, is characterised by its stability and warmth. “Chess” and “I Just Think of It All The Time” offer insight into their growing relationship. In a stroke of genius, Gregson-Macleod writes mostly in the inside-jokes she and her partner share. These memories, genuinely personal and therefore surely unintelligible, nonetheless translate to listeners for they convey a very specific sense of intimacy which we can all relate to. London, meanwhile, functions as its own character in both of these songs, where she describes distinctive areas of Islington, summer days spent on Hampstead Heath, and sharing wired headphones on the Circle Line. “Mosh Pit” concludes the album, where Gregson-Macleod watches her partner be engulfed in a moving crowd. While this imagery could be interpreted as her anxiety to protect her relationship, the song is wholly peaceful. She contrasts the gig with the morning after, picturing clothes drying on the line and her partner making breakfast, suggesting a sense of completeness and a total lack of fear.

Belonging, for me, is the underlying theme of this record, whether that belongingness is created by a person or a place. Gregson-Macleod’s Scottishness is as integral to it as the setting of London. After all, it was recorded at Edwyn Collin’s studio in the Highlands. However, she captures well how our identity, though partly fixed, can also be malleable. Any young person navigating love or loss, or the horrendous reality of post-grad life and relocation, can particularly empathise with her lyrics. In its softness but exquisite precision, Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early and its thoughtful creator shine as one of the most compelling records and writers of 2025 so far.