By Lucas Allburn
Published 19/05/2025

Singer, songwriter, actor and multi-instrumentalist Harriet Forgan recently launched her debut EP with a performance at Crazy Coqs in London. Before that, we caught up with her for a chat to see how she got to where she is, and how the future is shaping up.

Even as a young teenager, it was clear Harriet Forgan was destined for the bass guitar. From the second she caught a glimpse of Amy LaVere as a young teenager going to a gig with a friend, she was hooked.

“I was about fourteen at the time, and me and my best friend went to see this gig in a church in Leeds, and I was like ‘I want to be that cool, I want to have a massive double bass and sing!’” Having seen her live at Crazy Coqs launching her debut EP, I can confirm that her and her bass guitar do indeed look very cool.

For however much childhood plays a role on her new EP, she tells me it’s as much about adulthood. “It’s all about growing up, and I always think you should write about what you know. I wrote it from the perspective of a 20-something female, so I hoped that would resonate with a lot of people,” she tells me. Resonate, it does, and it’s a resonance that translates live too. Her EP launch show was a dignified, but relaxed affair, complete with many guest appearances from family members.

She opened her set playing the new EP front to back, but the highlight of the evening was her stirring second-act alongside Anna Soden. The duo performed their musical Mad For Our Daughters, a generation-spanning study of womanhood across eras. It’s as heart-wrenching as it sounds.

Her EP Numbers is named as such for a reason, and it’s not just because there are a lot of numbers in the song titles, although it is also that. “When I’m bored, I just have numbers in my head. I’m just counting,” she tells me a week before her EP launch show at Crazy Coqs.

“I remember a science teacher had this game where you had to stand up after exactly a minute had passed, but you weren’t allowed to count, and I was the only one who stood up on exactly a minute!”

It’s clear that numbers are not the only thing in Forgan’s head – she’s also got stories aplenty. Where she goes from here is anyone’s guess, but she tells me she is in no rush to put out her next project. “I’m not sure what the story is next time, but it usually just comes to me very randomly in drips and drabs and then I’m like ‘of course that’s what I was meant to write!’ But you’ve got to wait for it to come to you I guess.”