CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE ISSUE 2: PLATFORM

COLOUR ME WEDNESDAY
says, indicated by the soft-spoken
nature of their responses to the
band’s songs and lyrics. “Online,
I wouldn’t say it’s not like there’s
hype hype hype with loads of interactions,
but when you do find
them, it’s like finding someone’s
diary entry.” Self-searching on
Tumblr, for instance, means they’re
met with a slew of under-the-radar
blogs detailing how they’ve found
a theme to relate to in Colour Me
Wednesday’s lyrics. ‘These lyrics
are me!’ “They listen to it in a very
personal-to-their identity way,” she
continues. “They pay real attention
to the lyrics, and don’t reject our
messages.”
The music itself helps listeners
relate their own experiences in a
broader sense, especially with the
band’s knack for making contradictory
atmospheres between serious
topics and catchy melodies. “It’s
good because you can write a song
that’s essentially quite sad-sounding
in terms of the lyrics, but then
have it in a major key, makes it
sound a bit more hopeful,” Laura
says. “Listening to sad songs is nice
as well, and cathartic, but listening
to some lyrics about maybe something
similar to what happened to
you as an experience or an identity
thing, and then it being in a pop,
uplifting sound could bring you out
of - I dunno,” Harriet continues. “I
just feel like it could help people,
maybe mentally. I feel like it helped
me, anyway.”
There is no doubt that Colour Me
Wednesday have touched a great
many people across the globe, their
reach extending across continents
in an attempt to lift up those who
perhaps do not realise they have a
voice against marginalisation, in
any form. They’re facing erasure as
a band in an area of withering arts,
and in the face of the largely male,
cishet music world, but they’re doing
everything in their power to
change that. “It’ll go down in a little
niche bit of history. It’ll be like,
oh, yeah, in Uxbridge there were
these bands!” Harriet says. “Footnote.
We reference stuff like that
in our stuff, like “Heather’s Left
For Dead” about women in musical
history as tiny little niche. Man,
man, man, man, man, and then the
footnotes at the bottom: everyone
else.” Moving in these great strides
towards greater change will hopefully
mean change for the better –
Uxbridge and Colour Me Wednesday
will be going down in history
through this group’s efforts, and not
only as a footnote.