A Voice To Remember: Talking with Molly Hocking

Molly Hocking, winner of ‘The Voice’ 2019, has dazzled the music industry with a touching and reflective new single. ‘After the Night Before’ combines piano accompaniment with emotive vocals, producing a melancholy yet transcendent reflection of love’s fragility.

In an interview with Molly, she described how her experiences have helped to build her as a singer. Before The Voice, she appeared on The X Factor, making it through “quite a few rounds”. She describes feeling “let down massively by them” after losing out at the boot camp stage which “knocked her confidence for six” and meant she “didn’t sing for about a year”.

However, she tried again, auditioning for The Voice and finding success as 3 chairs turned for the then 17-year-old singer. From there on team, her chosen coach, Olly Murs, helped her grow from a ‘sweet little singer’, nervous about powerhouse songs, to a confident artist, able to sing massive hits like ‘Human’ and ‘ I’ll Never Love Again’ with heart-warming power and range.

She says that “when you believe in yourself, you can make things happen”, and you become who you want to be:

“If you love doing something that much keep doing it… if you’re that determined you will make it happen… you don’t get lucky in any industry… the harder you work the luckier you get.”

‘After the Night Before’

After her success with ‘The Voice’, she co-wrote ‘After the Night Before’, a song of heartbreak inspired by a break up in her life. This song was so passionately written that she originally struggled to “get through the song for about 4 months after because every time [she] tried to sing it [she] broke down”. Despite the strong emotions it evokes in her, Molly maintains that the song was also intended to also be “relatable to people who haven’t gone through a break-up, that have just experienced a bad time”.

After a year of hardship for many, the song appears well-timed and eloquent. Embroidered with tones of Eva Cassidy, her music quenches the need for an emotional outlet through music, bridging her experiences with that of her listeners.

‘After the Night Before’ is Molly’s first experience with writing music. Despite just starting out, she describes how she “developed a love for writing really quickly” and is passionate to continue her creativity. However, like music-lovers, she also faced issues as a result of COVID-19. This was because her single was due to be released in April, in time for the next season of The Voice, but thanks to the pandemic, she could not promote it. Despite these struggles, she stated that she feels “ready to just carry on with the career”, and to start “experimenting” and reaching across to more audiences.

Molly has ambitious plans for the future and she hopes to be releasing new songs approximately “every six weeks, to let people know that [she’s] still here”. She also plans to be on tour with Olly [Murs]… next year’ and “cannot wait to get on stage and sing in front of an actual audience again and have a bit of fun”. She hopes next year will be full of new opportunities and that she may be able to “plan in some dates” for the future.

I would highly recommend listening out for this artist now and in the future; I’m certain there are further hits to come.

To hear more from this talented young singer, check out Molly’s blind audition for The Voice below or listen to her ‘secret demos on SoundCloud.