The twin sisters known as Ward Thomas were the first British country act to ever hit No 1 in the UK album charts two years ago – part of a homegrown revival of sounds traditionally more popular in America – and both have enjoyed their growing fame.
But on the eve of the release of their latest album, Restless Minds, Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas are facing up to the dark side of music industry pressure. In 2019 they plan to step away from what they see as the constant, malevolent influence of social media.
“From New Year’s Day we are cutting right down on posting personal stuff, and we hope our fans will too,” says Catherine this weekend, likening her phone addiction to a drink or smoking habit. “We are starting with a ‘No-scroll Sunday’, as a digital detox, simply for our mental health. We’ve realised that in the time we often wasted scrolling, I could have picked up my guitar or Lizzy could have written a lyric. But we just can’t put the phones down.”
Full of youth and vitality, the 24-year-old sisters’ public profile projects the virtues of the simple life. And the natural image is authentic. Yet privately both women are dogged by anxiety prompted by social media – a feeling they suspect they share with many fans. “It can’t be a coincidence that anxiety levels among girls and suicide levels among boys are so high when you see so many people projecting this perfect life online. It makes us lazy socially too and stops us living in the moment,” says Lizzy.
When their second album, Cartwheels, reached the top slot in 2016, Ward Thomas, who grew up on a farm in Hampshire, joined the ranks of up-and-coming British country stars, such as the Shires, from Hertfordshire; Wildwood Kin, a family folk trio from Exeter; London group the Wandering Hearts and Belfast-born Catherine McGrath. It is a rise in country and folk-influenced pop that is partly due to the appetite of millennials, those who reached adulthood in 2000, with almost a third turning to country music in the past five years, according to a study conducted last year by the Country Music Association.
The twins share a small country cottage and describe themselves as “outdoorsy”, with a love of dogs and horses. “We are definitely in connection with the natural world: it is how we got into it this music,” says Catherine. She recently bought herself a horse called Nora, who is “good for my mental health”.
“I tend to like ‘instant’ everything,” she explained. “But with animals you have to be patient.”
And for both sisters “crawling back home” after a tour is crucial, adds Lizzy, who says she runs or takes long walks to calm down. “London is such a fast-paced city and we have made a fast-paced career choice,” she says. “We travel all the time, so we go home to the country to refuel.”
Now the sisters are urging others to retrain their behaviour to restore the balance of their lives: “I use my phone as an alarm clock in my bedroom, so it never leaves me, although I should put it downstairs and get an alarm clock,” says Lizzy.
Catherine has a new rule not to pick up her phone when she first wakes. “I used to roll over and start scrolling on Instagram. Now I have set a reminder that it is time to meditate for a few minutes. We should not turn to the phone when we feel low, like others turn to the bottle,” she says.
For Lizzy the new album, and especially the single Lie Like Me (with the opening lyric “We’re dressed to the nines/We stress that we are fine”) is a response to the pressures of growing up today. “We are trying to work it out. Let’s hope that, like smoking, people will realise so much social media is bad for your health.”
Catherine predicts she will find it harder than Lizzy to wean herself off Instagram and news alerts. “I enjoy all the information out there, but it affects me. I need to pause for my own mental stability. It is only a small window into someone’s life, but we are all chasing a quick fix from something that can never, ever fix us.”
Some professional presence online is essential for a band, but it is a compromise Lizzy is uneasy about: “We might promote the album with a picture of us both smiling, although we have had an argument. We can be horrible to each other!”
Both sisters aim to “spread more real stuff” online. “That is a New Year’s resolution too. We will tell people if we are not having a good day and use pictures of us with no make-up. At the moment our account looks as if we have the best life ever. But it is scary to project that. No one has a glam squad following them around all the time and we are not cool at all. The word makes us recoil.”
So the songs on Restless Minds, which will be released on 1 February, are about “learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings, rather than finding distractions”, the sisters say. They have also launched a podcast on the taboos around social anxiety.
“More than ever we want to sing about what we feel, instead of thinking we need to write a radio hit,” says Lizzy.
