Georgia Gets By

SHORT BIO

Split Lip, the new EP by Georgia Gets By (Georgia Nott), eloquently traverses the unsettling terrain that comes with navigating both subtle and pronounced change. After a decade of fronting well-known electronic pop project BROODS, Split Lip comes after Nott's solo debut Fish Bird Baby Boy, which was the songwriter's foray into more stripped back, guitar-focused music that oscillates between straightforward indie leanings and moodier, textual acoustics. Outlets like Vogue, Line of Best Fit, Paste, Gorilla vs Bear and DIY Magazine have praised her "strikingly intimate, delicate yet powerful" music, and while Fish Bird Baby Boy felt like a gradual unveiling, the new EP encapsulates what it's like to love bigger than ever before. Playing shows in six cities across three different countries in early 2024, her past success touring with BROODS has lent her a clear confidence on stage as Georgia Gets By.

Written fairly quickly, Split Lip was born out of the dissolution of her first queer relationship. Every song is deeply personal, so much so that Nott went back and forth on whether to release them, before realizing that being able to express that vulnerability was the most important thing. "When people don't hold back in their art it's really beautiful to me," Nott explains. Although Split Lip is a metaphor for many kinds of separations, throughout any fervent intensity, there's also a sense of playful abandon that is never far behind. Mainly working with long-term friends and collaborators on the EP, it's easy to sense the love and care that comes with creating alongside a carefully considered inner circle. "It's impossible to make the kind of art that I make on my own," she says, and it's this commitment to forging the deepest connections possible that makes Nott's songs feel high stakes.

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FULL BIO

Split Lip, the new EP by Georgia Gets By (Georgia Nott), eloquently traverses the unsettling terrain that comes with navigating both subtle and pronounced change. After a decade of fronting well-known electronic pop project BROODS, Nott's solo debut Fish Bird Baby Boy was the songwriter's foray into more stripped back, guitar-focused music that oscillates between straightforward, indie leanings and moodier, textual acoustics. Outlets like Vogue, Line of Best Fit, Paste, Gorilla vs Bear and DIY Magazine have praised her "strikingly intimate, delicate yet powerful" music, and while Fish Bird Baby Boy felt like a gradual unveiling, the new EP sees Nott lean further into her own agency and intuition to create songs full of uncompromising emotion. Playing shows in six cities across three different countries in early 2024, her past success touring with BROODS has lent her a clear confidence on stage as Georgia Gets By.

According to Nott, Split Lip came together much faster than Fish Bird Baby Boy, and was a direct response to a tumultuous time in Nott's life, after moving back to New Zealand and going through the dissolution of her first queer relationship. Every song is deeply personal, so much so that Nott went back and forth on whether to release them, before realizing that being able to express that vulnerability was the most important thing. "When people don't hold back in their art it's really beautiful to me," Nott explains. Being able to access these emotions has always been a gift of Nott's. With the new EP she digs deeper with a renewed sense of discovery, drawing from the past while at the same time mapping out a future that's grounding in its comfort with imperfection.

Take lead single "Madeline," whose soulful yearning builds to a flooding of outsized emotion, expressing the inescapable feeling when you meet someone who completely changes your life. "This person brought out somebody that was already there," Nott says, of her newfound confidence in her own sense of self that persists past being attached to anyone else. It's this self-assuredness that's allowed her to make the music she wanted to make, as well as setting boundaries and holding her own against the push and pull that comes with being in a relationship with anyone. The juxtaposition of these highs and lows play out in "Not This Time" ("something always gets the best of me / loving you is just a recipe / for disaster)." Generally, Nott writes lyrics first and then gradually builds out a sound from beneath them. Her strength lies in storytelling, guiding the listener through her own revelations, from the quiet honesty of "Some Kind of Angel" ("I'm gonna hurt someone") to the dreamy downtempo musing of "Not This Time." It's a candid testimony: relationships are never perfect, but there's beauty in their unraveling. Nott confesses to watching Hitchcock thrillers while writing the EP, and leaning into that type of "over the top emotion." But throughout any fervent intensity, there's also a sense of playful abandon that is never far behind.

Nott wrote the languid, disorienting title track "Split Lip" as the last song of the EP, a process she described as "the words taking on the whole energy of the record." "It's impossible to make the kind of art that I make on my own," she says. Most songs were written in her creative second home of Los Angeles with long-term friend and collaborator John Velasquez. It's important she only works closely with those she has built a relationship and rapport with, and the love and care that comes with creating within a carefully considered inner circle seeps through the songs.

It's this commitment to forging the deepest connections possible that makes Nott's songs feel high stakes. "I always fear when I write a song that it's the last song I'm gonna write," she admits. Her music is often both a visceral reaction to a feeling and a form of release. It's one of the reasons touring the EPs live for the first time recently has been so important to her. "Playing the songs live has often felt like coming home." For Nott, the concept of home is something that's ever-changing. Having spent her adult life between Los Angeles and New York City before returning to New Zealand last year, she's now about to embark on another type of homecoming, back to LA. Split Lip is a metaphor for many kinds of separations, and the EP is filled with Nott's own personal landmarks that instill meaning in a place and time. There's a certain duality that comes with movement, either physically or through a breakup: anytime something is "taking you away from someone – a lot of you will be left behind," she reminds. Split Lip takes these pieces and assembles them into something greater than the sum of its parts.