In an exclusive interview, emerging musician Hetta Falzon opens up about her unique, independent journey into the music industry, sharing hard truths about the highs and lows of using social media to build her career.

After one of her original songs gained virality on social media, the multitalented, singer-songwriter Hetta Falzon is currently in the process of creating her debut EP, featuring four original songs that she has written and produced over the past few years. 

Hetta shared that once her song “Sobering” began gaining attention, her fans have been eagerly anticipating her debut EP. She said: “My EP will be the first thing I’m ever officially releasing so I want it to be quality over quantity and really be specifically me. I have so many songs that are quiet on the edge of what I want my sound to be so I am only releasing four songs that are completely me to see if people like it.”

The artist explained that she doesn’t yet have a title for her album but she wants to refrain from using existing song lyrics, she continued: “I want the name to represent the fact it holds all honest feelings.”

Hetta isn’t like other artists who were ‘born’ with a passion for music. Reflecting nostalgically, she revealed that her initial reluctance to practice classical music paired with her childhood sass is what ultimately sparked the start of her musical journey. She shared: “I was forced into classical music at a young age but I never found an instrument that I liked because I never liked being told what to play. I then went to a school around the age of 10 where we had to sit in a room everyday for an hour and just practice, but I would just sit there and write songs so that’s how I started getting into writing my own songs.”

After finding her passion for songwriting, the 20-year-old from Wells, Somerset, moved to Manchester to study music. Since studying at the Royal Northern College of Music, she has been making progress on her EP and creating YouTube videos featuring her original songs which have attracted thousands of views. 

Hetta is very much an ordinary girl with extraordinary talent. Her creativity and ingenuity really stood out as she shared the behind-the-scenes process of producing and recording her original songs. She said: “I started posting on my YouTube account because I had no music out and really wanted to share something people could listen to. I used a big studio room at my university and it’s actually my best friend who isn’t a videographer who is filming the whole thing. I also worked with some of my other friends who are sound engineers and musicians – it really was a DIY project, everyone was doing me favours but it was so so fun and I really loved how it turned out.”

As an emerging artist, Hetta explained how she is still in the process of discovering exactly what she wants her unique ‘sound’ to be but currently described her style as ‘jazz-influenced pop’. However, her soulful, emotionally reflective music and lyrics juxtapose the young artist’s bubbly, energetic, and outgoing personality. 

Hetta explained that for her to truly connect with her music, it must move her emotionally: “I love feeling really really in touch with my emotions so every single thing that I write has to move me. The chords have to make me feel something on their own and the melody on its own.”

“I only really enjoy playing music that makes me feel really emotional which is why all of my songs are really sad. I don’t really like singing covers. I would always rather sing one of my own songs and I always prefer my newer songs because they resonate with me more because the emotions are more fresh. One of my favourite parts of the process is playing live because that’s when you can sort of see other people resonating with your music too.”

With the music industry constantly changing and social media becoming a powerful tool for artists to share their work, Falzon revealed she was initially hesitant to embrace it. However, she opened up about her experience after eventually turning to social media: “I was so against TikTok because I didn’t think it would help me build a sustainable career and I really didn’t want to become a TikTok artist but I was in a meeting with some managers who told me they wouldn’t want to work with me if I had that mentality.”

She expressed how her original decision not to use TikTok was an artistic choice: “But now I am absolutely loving TikTok and I am so glad that I’ve been using it because it has opened so many doors for me already and I’ve only just really started. It has shown my music to so many people and so many of my favourite artists and I’ve just found this very niche community and now I can’t image where else I would have been able to find that and I absolutely love it and that’s because I’m so happy with how much stuff has gone because when I was first posting my music wasn’t reaching many people and I just thought well what is the point but as soon as it started to pick up I just thought wow why isn’t everyone doing this.”

Hetta has been active on TikTok for six months but shared a clip of her original song “Sobering” for the first time just three months ago. She quickly realised that consistently posting 30 second videos of her music has made a noticeable difference to her following. She said: “The consistency helps so much with the algorithm. I post around 5pm everyday and that’s my routine at the moment. It’s crazy to watch my following because everytime I think my followers have peaked they’ll just peak again and it’s just so cool.”

The artist recalled how utterly amazed she felt when one of her videos surpassed one million views: “I posted a piece of “Sobering” over an iconic Love Actually scene and over one million people saw it, which is insanely cool. I actually posted a different Love Actually video two days before that and it didn’t reach anything close to one million views so I just really can’t predict it, I really can’t.”

Hetta only has one goal as an artist, she is deeply committed to creating music that connects with her audience, so she was incredibly overwhelmed by the response “Sobering” has received since sharing it on TikTok. She said: “So many people who are connecting with my songs are just connecting with the first 2 and half lines of it and now they’re so invested. When I first posted it, it was because I literally had no ideas and I had only just written the first three lines and I just needed to post something new on TikTok, I had written the whole song melody and harmony wise but I hadn’t written any of the lyrics apart from the first 4 lines.”

She continued: “Out of all of the tunes I had ready to go, the one that I had barely started was the one that’s done well.”

Social media, particularly TikTok, has undoubtedly been a valuable tool for Hetta and other emerging artists. Hetta shared one of the key benefits of using TikTok based on her own experience: “Social media is amazing for smaller artists because it really does give you a platform which you could only really get before if they were given in through a record label. It also means like people anywhere can find you and you can be seen on your own which is great.”

However, Hetta thought it was equally as important to share the truth around how gaining a following or experiencing moments of virality can also have its downsides, and can lead to a sense of mistrust. She said: “It’s hard to know now if people believe in the music or whether they are just clinging onto any sort of virality in the industry. There are a lot of people who are getting signed and then dropped when their numbers aren’t doing well and there are a lot of people in the industry who only look at data and that’s how they choose who to sign which is terrifying.”

While Hetta has fully embraced the power of social media to advance her music career and fuel her rising success, the 20-year-old artist stays grounded, remaining focused on her ultimate goal: “I’ve always said I don’t care about how successful I am and I just want to be respected in the music world and stay true to myself as an artist.”