Orla Gartland today announces her biggest UK and European tour to date, following the release of her acclaimed second studio album Everybody Needs A Hero. The tour kicks off in Copenhagen on 10 March and takes in 17 shows, including her biggest London headline show to date at the O2 Forum Kentish Town on 3 April, before finishing with a huge hometown show at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin. 

Everybody Needs A Hero is available now via Orla’s own label New Friends. The record contains 12 new tracks, including the previously released ‘Little Chaos,’ ‘The Hit,’ ‘Mine,’ ‘Kiss Ur Face Forever,’ and ‘Late To The Party feat. Declan McKenna’ - currently riding high on the BBC Radio 1 playlist - as well as anthemic new single ‘Backseat Driver,’ co-written with close friend and songwriter Lauren Aquilina.

The Dublin-born, London-based artist and producer is bold, brash and increasingly self-assured on Everybody Needs A Hero. Fixated on the idea of a ‘hero’ as someone to look up to or someone to rescue us from ourselves, we meet Orla as her most confident self in this record and time in her life. Her angular alternative sound expands through a series of collaborations and is indebted to her own fastidious sense of independence; she is sonically and lyrically louder than ever before. 

Everybody Needs A Hero tracks the journey of self-discovery you go through as you establish who you are within the confines of a long-term relationship. Often a struggle, and one that may remain internalised, Gartland voices all these intimate intricacies and more detailing the inescapable collective and individual compromises. 

“This record details the multitude of feelings you can have about a person all at once. One feeling doesn’t cancel another out but instead they co-exist.”

Underpinned by brutal honesty, there’s a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour to her storytelling on the record, sometimes acting as a defence mechanism for when things start to get a little too real. Poignant, sometimes pointed lyrics are what fans love and expect from Gartland and they are abundant here, “I think this music juts out at the edges more than what I’ve done before,” she notes, it commits the to bit – an exaggerated version of herself. 

Taking a considered, hands-on approach, Gartland made a concerted effort to be across every aspect of building the world of Everybody Needs A Hero. Co-producing the album, making intentional choices throughout the mixing and mastering processes and working collaboratively on the project’s creative direction, Gartland signs off every decision. While creative independence is nothing new, in 2024 it’s a choice; a power she notes may have been relinquished had she opted to release the album via a traditional record label rather than her own independent imprint New Friends. 

The album came to life between her London studio and the creative sanctuary of Middle Farm Studios in Devon. With Gartland on a constant quest to push herself as a writer and producer, she captained the ship during the writing and recording processes, with strong direction right through to the mixing and mastering. She worked with longtime collaborators Tom Stafford and Peter Miles in co-producing the album, inspired by each producers’ digital and analog approaches.

14.10.2024