New sounds
Caity Baser is our star of 2024. Here she talks to Absolutely Sussex about her Still Learning era and life in Brighton
Last year was a big one for Brighton’s Caity Baser. In March, she released Feels This Good with leading artists Sigala, Mae Muller and Stefflon Don. The same month, her track Pretty Boys reached number 26 on the Official Singles Chart. Not long afterwards, in May, she released Dance Around It, this time with celebrated musician Joel Corry.
However, 2024 looks set to be a similarly exciting year for the singer-songwriter, who was discovered via TikTok in August 2020. Her new mixtape, Still Learning, will be released in March, with its 14 tracks (all of which she has co-written) constituting her largest release of material thus far. A 13-date tour of the same name will begin the same month, encompassing venues including the Eventim Apollo. It will be the 21-year-old’s biggest tour to date.
“It’s going to be a complete level up to what it was last year,” she says. “I always put everything into a performance, but this time I’m really going to send it and just go crazy and blow people’s minds. I want to be the person whereby if you’re afraid to say it, I will say it for you, and then you can come to my show and you can scream it at me and we’ll get through it together.”
The pace at which Caity has risen to success has been nothing short of phenomenal. When she played her first festival, at Reading in 2022, she sung to a crowd of 3,000 people. At the same event in 2023, the audience for her performance numbered 20,000.
“I think that solidified the progress that I’d made in a year,” she reflects. “I went from the BBC Music Introducing Stage to the Radio 1 Dance Stage for one, which is crazy, but to then fill out the whole dance tent and have all these people screaming every single word to every single song was nuts. I think about it quite a lot.”
And, of course, there have been the collabs. Asked to name the person who’s been her favourite to collaborate with so far, Caity quickly names Joel. “Everyone that I’ve worked with has been amazing, but I feel like I’ve worked the most with Joel,” she says. “I did loads of promo with him – he took me to Ibiza a few times and we went out partying together. He’s a proper mate now.”
Caity grew up in Southampton, an experience she describes as “sh*t”. “I got asked in an interview: ‘What’s your favourite thing about Southampton?’, and I said: ‘The train station so I can leave,’” she says. As for school, the singer confesses that she hated it.
“I’ve always been quite loud, but in school I didn’t have much confidence and I sort of was just like everybody else – I just wanted to fit in with people,” she says. “I would do anything and say anything to be with the cool kids. I always knew who I wanted to be, but I didn’t have the confidence to be it.”
Despite this, Caity says that she was aware she was going to be a singer. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding really up myself, but I wanted to do more,” she reflects. “I didn’t just want to stay in my hometown and get a job and work. I knew I wanted to be a singer, and I was going to do that one way or another.”
Interestingly, the period in which Caity was discovered coincided with her move to Brighton and Hove. “I moved here in the August/September of 2020,” she explains. “I turned 18 in lockdown and it was not fun, and all my friends were at university with their mates. I was like: ‘I just want to go and be an 18-year-old for a minute.’
“My dad lives in Brighton as well,” she adds, “so I would go and be with my mates in their uni flat – get drunk, play cards, have fun – and then I’d go and see my dad. When my friends moved out of their uni flat, I moved in with him.
“My favourite thing to do is go for a bike ride or just go and look at the sea, and I could do both of those things in Brighton. The chalk cliffs are right by where I live, and whenever I have any sort of problem – good or bad, whatever I’m feeling – I go and I look at the sea and the cliffs and the sky. I love the outdoors.”
The origins of Caity’s Still Learning mixtape are linked to her EP Thanks for Nothing, See You Never, which was released in February last year. “After I released my EP, I was busy every single day doing festivals and stuff, and then it got to September and it was like: ‘Right. What’s the message? What’s the concept? What are we doing?’” she says. “I was like: ‘I actually have no idea.’ It was the first time that I’ve never had any sort of direction. I remember just sitting there thinking: ‘I have all of these songs, but I don’t really know what they mean.’ Then I was like: ‘I don’t have the answers and I have no idea what I’m doing – I’m still learning.’
“I feel like a lot of people might assume that I have it all figured out and that I know what I’m doing, but genuinely, I have no f***ing clue what I’m doing still,” she admits. “I think a lot of people are afraid to admit that they don’t have all the answers and they don’t know what direction they’re going in. The mixtape is about the mistakes I’ve made, things I could have done better and things that have hurt me, but in the end, I’ve learnt from all of it. It’s about sending it and being cool with not knowing what you’re doing and being cool with making mistakes, because that’s how you grow.”
And with the Still Learning tour due to begin soon after the release of the mixtape, it’s clear that those who enjoy Caity’s music have a lot to look forward to this year. Excitingly, however, there’s more good news. “After the tour, I will be hopefully working on an album,” the singer-songwriter notes. With this debut potentially on the cards in the near future, there’s no doubt that Caity Baser is one to watch.
Caity Baser’s Still Learning mixtape is available to stream and download from 12 March 12, with vinyl and a limited number of CD copies also available to buy. The Still Learning tour begins on 26 March. For more information, visit caitybaser.com
