Her steady trajectory is set to move up a notch as she prepares for a European tour that includes an imminent Irish date. She has hundreds of thousands of streams on social media, while her fragile early single Exless made Spotify\u2019s New Music Friday playlist<\/a>, bringing her to the attention of its millions of followers.<\/p>\n She has clocked up hits, too, most recently Summerfoot, a jangly alt-folk tune about a romantic crush on a platonic friend. But she is not yet a household name, and, at her level, life can be challenging. She still works part-time when she needs to and, come the end of the month, has to worry about how to cover her rent and pay for food.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a subject she touches on in her song Eat the Rich, a flinty ballad from 2020 in which she draws a contrast between her experiences and the luxury life of the \u201cnepo baby\u201d class of artists who have so much handed to them. (\u201cOh, Mummy and Daddy got you a lambo,\u201d she drawls. \u201cBut you wanted a G-Wagon. That is so sad for you.\u201d) <\/p>\n \u201cI am going on tour, and I\u2019m very excited about that,\u201d she says. \u201cBut because I\u2019m going on tour, I went to the shop down the road, and they\u2019re not hiring me because I\u2019m gone for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dilemma faced by many artists from ordinary backgrounds: how much are you prepared to suffer in the hope of your career going stellar?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to not go on tour \u2013 I feel I\u2019m on the precipice [of becoming more popular]. I have to sacrifice financially, go on a tour and break even on that tour in the hope that, on the next one, maybe I make a little bit of money.<\/p>\n If she came from a wealthy family none of this would be a problem. \u201cWhen your parents are paying for your rent and your parents are paying for your food, you\u2019re already in a much easier position than those of us who are scraping by to do what we love. There\u2019s no hate to that. [But] with Eat the Rich I was very frustrated. We\u2019re doing the same thing, but we are in completely different playing fields.\u201d<\/p>\n The feeling of being an average person in a world of privilege is not new. Stephenson grew up in the wealthy Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, which is 84 per cent white and has an average household income of more than $220,000 (about \u20ac190,000). But her family is lower middle class, and as a child she was acutely aware of existing as a have-not in a universe of haves.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very difficult growing up and everyone shows up on their 16th birthday with a brand-new car. You\u2019re walking to school because it\u2019s the cheaper part of town that happens to be next to the school. Not any more. Now the property value has gone up. And so we don\u2019t live there any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Suburbia was a drag \u2013 but also a huge motivation to do something with her future. It was so boring it was almost inspiring, she says, laughing. <\/p>\n \u201cA thing about growing up in the suburbs that I\u2019ve grown to really appreciate is that you\u2019re so bored that you have no choice but to make meaningful relationships with people. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we were parked at Target or going for a really long drive for fun, you have no choice but actually to learn how to be conversationally intimate with people,\u201d she says. \u201cThat just exponentially helps you as a person as you go through life.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t an especially difficult childhood, but there were moments of frustration. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was a little bit of anger where your friend is, like, \u2018Why aren\u2019t you coming to [the Chicago music festival] Lollapalooza? I\u2019m going to Lollapalooza!\u2019 And you\u2019re, like, \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t really feel like it. I don\u2019t really want to.\u2019 But really it\u2019s because I don\u2019t have any money, and my parents aren\u2019t going to buy me tickets.\u201d<\/p>\n She poured her feelings about Lake Forest into one of her starkest tracks, Miraculous Myrrh-Streaming Icon of the Mother of God, which she wrote after moving home during the pandemic. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Dolly Parton was a rare example of a celebrity who used their fame to lift others upOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The title refers to the case of an Orthodox Christian icon in Canada that was said to have started to stream fragrant oil in the early 1980s \u2013 a North American equivalent of Ireland\u2019s moving-statue epidemic. In the song Stephenson uses the image of a weeping icon as a metaphor for the tears she cried after going back to Chicago and discovering that home really wasn\u2019t home any more.<\/p>\n \u201cI left my hometown. Now I am back in my hometown. Covid is happening. I don\u2019t fit in my bed any more. And my family is arguing with each other nonstop. My mom doesn\u2019t tuck me in any more. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you are back in your hometown after thinking you were finally going to leave and go be this big person, your own person … and then you have no choice but to come home, you have to grapple with the fact that you are simply in a place that you were, but you\u2019re not who you were.\u201d<\/p>\n Her latest album, This Is What You Get, opens with two of her most pointed songs, Pretty and Dress Me Up. They\u2019re about self-image and the pressure on female artists to scrub up for the spotlight where male artists are free to be their true, dishevelled selves (see Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahan and, actually, every just-out-of-bed male songwriter in history).<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve gotten a lot better at my self-image and how I present myself, and how I see myself to the internet and the world. But Pretty was kind of like this … the pop star aura is something I had to come to terms with. I wanted it to be easier, to be prettier, and to be able to walk in front of people and have them listen.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a feeling she returned to on Dress Me Up, a track that interrogates the pressure to perform a version of herself. <\/p>\n \u201cDress Me Up was in response to that \u2013 fake it till you make it a little bit. Throwing out your expectations of yourself and the person that you want to be to try to be the thing that you think it would be nice to be,\u201d she says. \u201cWhich is ultimately, as the rest of the album plays out, not going to do you any good.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephenson wrote those songs at a time when she was in the habit of sharing a lot of her life with her fans. She has since had to rethink how much of herself she wants to put into the world. <\/p>\n TikTok has been a huge help with spreading awareness with her music, but it has a tendency to blur the divide between artist and audience. She has had to learn to be mindful of her interactions with her followers and to remind herself that, although people might appreciate her songs, they are still strangers, and there are limits to what she owes them.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was younger I was a lot more interactive,\u201d she says. \u201cIn the past few years I\u2019ve learned that there\u2019s a healthy boundary to set.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephenson sees herself as a normal person \u201cwho isn\u2019t a pop star\u201d. But because she doesn\u2019t give off a starry aura, people can assume too much. <\/p>\n \u201cI do love when people come up to me respectfully and are, like, \u2018Hey, I love your music. Have a great day.\u2019 But I have noticed that when you\u2019re not the intimidating pop-star aura and you\u2019re writing music that they\u2019ve experienced … You can seem to strangers as somebody that they know. I have gotten a lot better at having boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n Her parents, for their part, have finally made peace with the fact that she won\u2019t be resuming her studies for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were under the belief that I was going to go back,\u201d she says. \u201cHowever, looking at the years that I would have continued to be in college, they were the most growth that I\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were very formative for the career I\u2019m still building, and I would have been in a different place had I continued, got the degree, and then jumped into it at 23. I\u2019m 25 now, and I\u2019ve had those years of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n She has also developed a better sense of what it is audiences like about her songs. \u201cI like to call it diary music,\u201d she says of her music\u2019s universal appeal. \u201cIt\u2019s in my diary, and you might like it if it\u2019s also in your diary.\u201d<\/p>\n Kate Stephenson plays Upstairs at Whelan\u2019s<\/a>, in Dublin, on Wednesday, September 2nd<\/p>\n![\"Chicago,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/E2DEPRYVMQ6EWI7PAEEAJ2KI2U.jpg\")
Chicago, Illinois. Photograph: Scott Olson\/Getty Images <\/p>\n