I made this to make you smile

I made this to make you smile.

I made this to provide 4 minutes of escape from stress and worry about life, the universe and everything.

I made this to remind myself not to take everything so seriously all the time.

My new song “Space, Man” isn’t a silly song. Nor was my last song “Emotional Tourist”. And nor was my Obey Robots song “Porcupine”.

I don’t write silly songs, but I do choose to have fun when I present things to you. I want to give you something different, memorable and meaningful.

I really did make this to make you smile.

I had a wobble on Monday, halfway through editing this new video. If only I looked cool, or could dance, or had a team of professionals sorting out interesting outfits and dramatic lighting, or [insert any number of random, out-of-reach expensive items here]…if only I could just do more to send my songs out into the world.

What do I mean by more, exactly?

Every time I make something new there’s the possibility of infinite reward when I share it online. Hundreds of views could turn into thousands, or tens of thousands. If I pick the right thumbnail, or learn exactly how the algorithms work on every platform, or say exactly the right thing at the right moment, the music I care so much about sharing could leap forth from my laptop and become a beloved fixture in the lives of music fans around the world.

The possibilities are tremendously exciting, potentially life-changing. Less grind, less hustle. Money in the bank. A slightly easier life?

I try to stay positive, without setting myself up for too much of a fall. If/when I don’t get 100K views in 5 minutes (!), I have to be okay with that. I have to be able to keep going.

I’ve done this for long enough to know that simply getting to keep doing it is the real goal.

And it’s certainly not just about finding new people to listen. My “big” mailing list has around 9000 subscribers, and my Substack list has around 200, and sometimes it feels just as difficult to successfully invite these people to click “play”.

That’s ok. It’s humbling. You have your own, way more important, stuff going on.

Just know that, even when I doubt myself, I will keep trying. Even when I receive nasty comments and unpleasant emails (and oh, I do), I will keep sharing music, sharing videos and sharing my words.

Every time I make a collection of songs I put everything on the line to create the best experiences I can for music fans.

You are never obliged, but you are always invited.

My new video cost around £200 to make: studio hire, two costumes, props and lunch. I did my own hair and makeup, set up my own shots and didn’t try to look cool or try to dance. The only other human involved was my lovely husband Tim, who helped with the moving shots and tightened the legs of my inflatable costume to stop everything from going floppy.

Talk about infinite reward: I got to spend a Tuesday being silly with my favourite person making something to make you smile.

I hope you enjoy “Space, Man”.

Love,
Laura xxx

PS get “Space, Man” + two more songs immediately when you order my new album “House Of Stories”, out 25th April 2025. Only available direct from me, DIY 4EVA x

Thank you for visiting!

Tap to get your FREE 12-track album + 31-page PDF zine of stories, photographs and artwork here.

My new Penfriend album “House Of Stories” is available to order NOW on super limited vinyl, CDs and KiT hybrid digital albums, with accompanying tees, hoodies and books. Get two songs in your inbox immediately, with another every month til the release date in April (before anyone else).

Join The Correspondent’s Club on Patreon to receive quarterly bundles of art and members-only music plus extra perks + immediate access to my entire digital archive (digital and analogue memberships available)

Listen to my first Penfriend album “Exotic Monsters” and browse my back catalogue here.

If you make things too – or want to know more about the creative process – I’m sharing thoughtful weekly essays here on my experiments in art, music and life on Substack (and I won’t be at all offended if you prefer to read my stuff there rather than on this absolutely gorgeous website).

Chat with me on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

See you soon xo

PS yes, my songs are available everywhere else you listen to music online.
Just search for Penfriend, She Makes War and Obey Robots.

You could even subscribe here to send a message to the algorithm overlords that Penfriend rocks!

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How childhood letter-writing led to a life in music

by Laura Kidd Creativity Essays Letterbox Process

When I was a little girl, one of my favourite possessions was a shoebox that I filled up with bits of paper, envelopes and leaflets gathered from wherever I could find them. I called it my Post Office, and every now and then I’d take the box from under the bed and pour my treasure out on the floor.

I’m hazy on the details, but I remember loving to “play Post Office”, which I imagine meant sorting the assorted paper into different piles and then putting them back in the box. Oh, how the interests of our youth can creep up on us as adults, writes the woman who spent a happy evening last week reorganising her boxes of scrap paper, stickers and magazine pages by category.

Nerd alert.

Later, somehow, I ended up writing letters to children I’d never met, who lived far away – Svetlana in Belarus and Alastair in Derbyshire. It was utterly magical to send my closely-written pages to people I would never talk to in person, carefully copying the unfamiliar Russian words onto Svet’s envelopes well enough for her to receive my missives. I only ever know my letters had arrived when she replied.

It was to Alastair I first proudly declared my aim to be a songwriter when I grew up – having never written a single song, and knowing nothing whatsoever about how to do so. Letter-writing predated those heady days when I started to discover my favourite bands by some years, but both activities were a youthful statement of independent thought at an age where actions were largely dictated by adults.

As I grew older I gathered more people to write to. My family moved every three years, so there were always friends left behind, and in my early teens I wrote to kids I met on school trips, boys at other schools, even friends at the same school as me. We challenged each other to fill up more and more pages and somehow still had enough left to say to talk on the phone for hours in the evening. The freedom I found to express myself in letters is one of my fondest memories of childhood.

On my journey into adulthood, switching to email and blogging and Twitter (2007-style) felt intuitive, but my love for words written by hand on paper never left me.

As I released music on CD, vinyl and cassette from 2009 onwards, I got to “play Post Office” more and more regularly, and my role as the maker and sender of things became clear.

Writing songs and dispatching them into the world, in whatever format, is a natural progression from the innate desire I had to connect with others from a young age.

And that, dear reader, is why I’m called Penfriend.

Now and then, then and now

I was moved by Lucy Pepper‘s latest beautiful piece about her experiences of early blogging (not just because apparently it was inspired by one of my Notes but because her writing is awesome and I love it). I feel nostalgic for my early days of writing on the internet not because my output was so fantastic (I’ve checked), but because it all felt so free then.

“The internet” was a destination. I raced home from work to “go on it”, and happily replaced my previous TV-watching with clicking around, finding out about the world and other people, mainly through reading personal blogs. It was quite unusual to be someone regularly “surfing the internet superhighway”, online ordering was wildly exciting because you had to trust it was real (and high street shopping sucked), and finding places to stay in European cities was, weirdly, easier because there wasn’t infinite choice.

When short-form text-based social media came along in the form of Twitter, I let it steal my writing energy. I still wrote regular, friendly emails to my growing mailing list (which is why I have a job doing this today, honestly), but any public writing was sporadic at best. And this from a person who breathlessly read Writing magazine when she was 13 years old, dreaming of her certain future as a novelist.

I shake my fist at the social media oligarchs in the sky, but mostly at myself. Silly.

I’m not interested in wanging on about the platform I’m sharing stuff on – that’s too meta¹ for me, but suffice it to say I’m delighted to be stretching my writing-in-public muscles again, and excited to be here amongst friends.

Some of them I’ve been in touch with since 2012 and before (hi again Lucy Pepper, Katie Lee, Alex Milway) or way earlier (Sizemore, Documentally), but mostly in short-form ways.

I’m a long-form person. I make albums, not single songs. I am having a wonderful time delving into the long-form thoughts of brilliant minds, and I only wish there hadn’t been that break in the middle where I felt like I was surfing that superhighway alone.

Writing is the best, I love it, and I’m going to keep doing it. Reading is a close second.

From one solo home-working nerd to many others, I thank you for reading.

Love,
Laura xxx

Photo by Carol Jeng.

I refer you to Lucy’s footnote on this matter.
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On single release day, these two words have to go

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Music News Process

Day 8 of my daily index card collage challenge. "Gobblin' Time" - get it? Original monster by Zozoville.

Next Wednesday 15^th January I’m releasing my first new song in two years.^⁠⁠¹

“Emotional Tourist” is the first single I’m sharing publicly² from my seventh solo album “House Of Stories”.

I’m probably supposed to be “excited to announce…” or “delighted to introduce…” but, 15 years after the first time I was excited to announce a single³,^⁠ I’m hoping to stretch my vocabulary.

It’s not that I’m not excited, or indeed delighted. I’m both, and more. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the words I write on the matter are essential to encouraging, persuading and intriguing you towards tapping “play” and giving my song a chance.

I also know that writing “I’m excited to announce that my new song is out now” is a waste of everyone’s time.

I’m…Who is this person?
Excited…I’ve read that word a thousand times already today – next!
Announce…Where are we, a train station?
My…Sorry, why are you in my feed again? I don’t know you.
New song…Every song I haven’t heard yet is new, what difference does the release date make to me?
Out now…Ohhh, is this an advert? Ugh, I hate being advertised to, no thanks.

A large chunk of my time as a full-time solo artist and self-facilitating media node^⁠⁴ is spent creating excitement around things I made a while ago.

I embrace this.

Andy J. Pizza, of the wonderful, changed-my-life podcast Creative Pep Talk, recently shared a series of episodes around the second Hero’s Journey. He called it the “Journey Of The True Fan”⁵,^⁠ and it’s very helpful.

If the first Hero’s Journey sees the hero – yes, you – bravely leaving your metaphorical home to adventure out into the world, battling through adversity to find the elixir, the second is where you bring the elixir home to share with your people, the ones who need it just as much as you do.

What’s the elixir? It’s what you make – what you want to make. What you’re called to make. What you haven’t made yet…but you’re going to make. When you make that thing, wouldn’t you like to share it with people? And wouldn’t that feel more comfortable and less intimidating/gross/cringey if you believed that what you made would help them in some way?

It’s true, you know. Art heals. Songs create spaces for people to feel their feelings. Music is a collaboration between the people making the sounds, and the people listening.

If my song comes out next Wednesday and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Not really.

My song isn’t worthless if no-one listens to it. It can be enough that I pulled it out from deep within my psyche and put the time, energy and focus in to make it into something that could be played to another human. That’s fine.

But it’s ok to want people to listen / watch / read too. And I do. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. And it’s (currently) my full-time job (thanks to generous music fans who choose to pay for something they could listen to for free).

I crave connection with other humans. Many of us do.

So, there would be very little point to me going to all the fuss of writing and recording my songs, having them professionally mixed and mastered and commissioning an artist to illustrate the album cover if I wasn’t prepared to spend time and energy on communicating my excitement and delight at my single being OUT NOW.

If you make art that you want people to experience, respond to and potentially heal from, this second Hero’s Journey is essential, and in my experience it’s not best spent:

Complaining on the internet about how we’re being forced to become “content creators”. Snore. No-one is forcing you to do anything. No-one is expecting you to make music / paint / write / make videos / anything. They don’t know you exist.

Why not spend that energy sharing your work in an interesting way? Every single time I see this post from an artist I wish they’d just shared a little story about their art instead.
Publicly railing against the powers that be while doing nothing in real life to create lasting change and/or finding interesting ways to share your art despite the raw deal we genuinely do get.
Announcing that you’re “excited” and “delighted” that your new song/book/video is OUT NOW!!!

Damn. So…what should I do instead? My single is out in less than a week! Fuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!

Ok. Calm down. It’s just songs.⁶

While I’m truly aiming to avoid the words “excited” and “delighted” this time round, it is important to be keyed up, galvanised or otherwise invigorated about our work. If we don’t feel it, the people we’re hoping to invite to appreciate it certainly won’t.

I know “House Of Stories” is my best album yet⁷,^⁠ but instead of excitement / delightment I’m going for a quiet confidence, an open-hearted generosity of spirit and a desire to use my words to go deeper into what my 11 new songs are about, how I felt when I wrote them and how I feel about them now.

The time for musing and pondering is upon me. More soon.

Here’s what I do know: I make sad songs to make you feel better. I share music humbly to create honest, positive and potentially healing experiences for you. And I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities that exist to share our work through myriad digital spaces, reaching out across the ether to make connections with other humans (that’s you – hi!)

I just think we can find deeper and more resonant ways to share our stories – preferably without quite so much shouting.

Another thing I’ve picked up from my 20 years of writing on the internet is to leave the reader with one simple Call To Action.

Unfortunately, in this essay I decided to do a Stewart Lee^⁠⁸ / Katie Lee^⁠⁹ and include many humorous footnotes, thereby fucking up any real chance I may have earned of you taking the required next action to listen to my new song.

Dagnabbit.

Thankfully, because I am indeed a self-facilitating media node, I’ve arranged for you to be able to pre-order my new album today on limited edition vinyl colours, signed CD and hybrid analogue/digital format KiT.

You’ll receive next week’s single “Emotional Tourist” + the title track “House Of Stories” in your inbox immediately, with a new song every month up to the release date in April 2025.

Hooray!

Thanks for reading. I’m excited and delighted you’re here.

Love,
Laura xxx

Aside from “Our Last Christmas”, which came out in early December. That one had a short shelf life, for obvious reasons…but I’m really glad I made this video for it in a Berlin Christmas market. It wasn’t at all weird wandering around filming myself and whispering the lyrics at double speed. I just have a weird job – and I love it!
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Members of my Correspondent’s Club received it on New Year’s Eve, and people who have already pre-ordered my album received it shortly afterwards. Only the best for the best.
↩︎
My first single “Let This Be” was released under the name She Makes War in April 2010. This self-directed music videostars Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton and now Hollywood fame. Yes, 15 years ago my then-boyfriend’s little brother was keen for any experience on set, and he was always lovely to hang out with. Thanks, Regé! I’m SO proud of you.
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If you know, you know.
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Behold Andy’s “Journey Of The True Fan” series – parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. He’s here on Substack being awesome, too.
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Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka pop goddess Self Esteem said “it’s just songs” in this episode of my podcast “Attention Engineer” in February 2021 – just before she casually became (aka worked her arse off to become) a bona fide pop star. Well done, RLT! I’d love to do an “after they were famous” followup episode…
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And I still really like the other seven, so that’s saying something…
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This book changed my life. No exaggeration. If you perform in any way – read it asap.
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Her Substack newsletter is BRILLIANT and she just published a crime novel – go Katie!
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Indecision: an elaborate and time-consuming way of achieving absolutely nothing

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Mindfulness

15 months after setting up my Substack and deciding to get back to my writing roots, I’m still twisting myself into knots about what to write about what and where to put it.

What an elaborate and time-consuming way of achieving absolutely nothing.

The latest obstacle I’m putting in my own way is this idea of having to have three things finished before publishing anything. I watched a video about this recently, and it made total sense at the time.

It’s a great idea – if you’re a few pieces ahead you can detach from the immediate impact on “the world” of what you just published. Numbers schmumbers. You can concentrate on the next thing you’re working on, and focus on building a library of writing, or videos, or whatever you’re sharing.

I love this. I agree wholeheartedly that the work is the thing to concentrate on. Lead indicators (what you put in) over lag indicators (results) every time (spot the “12 Week year” fan!).

But at the moment – recently recovered from a nasty bout of burnout coupled with a Christmas-consuming cold, depleted from recording my latest album of sad songs and, to be honest, a little daunted about releasing it in April – finishing one new thing and publishing it feels like an insurmountable task, let alone waiting til I’ve finished three.

I’ve been writing on the internet for a full 20 years now, but starting from scratch on Substack – and on my deliciously secret new YouTube channel – is incredibly freeing. I feel like I’m lifting the lid off a box I made for myself that grew tighter as the years went on.

I’ve been through this before, deciding to end a music project I’d been working on for 15+ years to start fresh in 2020. This time it’s not an ending, but an expansion. A sideways, onwards and upwards move.

A simple shift in thinking about how and where I share what I make has got me excited about making things again.

And it turns out I don’t want to wait til I have three finished things before I start sharing.

Here I am.

This is the start of something. My attempt to do my best as an imperfect human to create a sustainable practice of writing essays and making videos, while continuing to make music I’m proud of.

I’m absolutely sick of waiting for the right moment to do things. I’m tired of annoying myself with my lack of ability to complete things, throw them out there and move on.

The release of any creative work is a release of tension which creates forward motion. As long as the time is set aside to continue to build the practise of making the next thing, I’ll gradually get three pieces ahead and enjoy this glorious detachment. Or I won’t, and it’ll be a scramble, and that’s also fine.

A joyful, messy creative scramble is a fine life to live, and I’m grateful to live it. Staying quiet, writing thousands of words and keeping them locked inside my laptop is no fun at all.

I’ve been releasing music for 15 years without any set schedule of consistency, and everything has worked out just fine. My eighth album is due out in April, and as I figure out the words to describe it, I’ll share those here as well.

I’m all for creating systems, putting the work in and showing up on a regular basis, but I’d rather do it haphazardly than not at all.

Having said that, I’ll (try to) see you here next Thursday for more.

Have a wonderful week.

Laura x

PS the image up top is a photo of an index card I decorated yesterday – another way I’m unblocking my creativity in 2025. More on this experiment soon.

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Four years of Penfriend!!!

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Music News

Four years ago TODAY I launched my Penfriend solo project after 10 years of releasing music under another name.

People told me it would ruin my career, that starting a new music project at the age of 39 was a doomed endeavour, that no-one would be able to find me online any more. But I knew I had to make a change – and with that change, my creativity blossomed again.

I have no regrets.

Sometimes I wonder whether fans of my previous project She Makes War think I fell off the edge of the planet, but then I remember they probably know how to use a search engine.

Things would have been very different if I hadn’t cultivated a mailing list, so here’s your semi-regular invitation to receive a FREE 12-track album and 31-page zine when you sign up.

You’re ace. Thank you!

Love,
Laura xxx

PS tonight I’m celebrating sea-themed songs from six solo albums in a FREE online gig called “She Sings Sea Songs”. Sailor hats optional, lispy tonguetwisters definite.

Music starts at 8pm, hang out in the chatbox from 7.45pm.

PPS the song that ended up being the transition between She Makes War and Penfriend is “Seashaken”. Grab the SMW demo recording here and watch the brand new Penfriend music video here, shot on the North Friesan island of Sylt in early March.

PPPS I wrote about my reasons for changing artist name here.

PPPPS – just kidding. Maybe sea you tonight? Xxx

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Too late? How to find an audience in your 50s (and 40s, and 30s…)

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Process

At my December livestream, I was asked the following question by @hitchhiker7508 : “is 55 too old to hope to build a fanbase for original music?” – here’s my answer…

This video is sponsored by The Correspondent’s Club – browse membership perks here and join the journey!

Subscribe to this channel for more adventures in sound and songwriting

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New Year, new live album gift for YOU

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Music News

I have a New Year’s gift for you: a hopeful 6-song live experience with bonus track and accompanying friendly gig chat.

—> Get your copy of “Mending The Year” here – pay what you want from £0 to whatever you like!

** Limited release! This album is only available for the next 10 days – go go go! **

Get the music!

Last Friday I collected my most hopeful songs together to play for you, and I haven’t felt so relaxed on stage in some time.

It was fun to rework some older songs, two tracks that have rarely if ever been performed live: “Disarm” (from my 2012 album “Little Battles”) and “5000 Miles” (from 2016’s “Direction Of Travel”).

We talked about the inspiration behind my “mend the year” lyric in “Paper Thin”, my “shiny things” for 2024 and more besides. What a lovely night!

Thanks for being there live, if you were, and either way you’re very welcome to take this live album as a gift, or contribute if you’d like: https://penfriendrocks.bandcamp.com /album/mending-the-year-online-gig-december-2023

Happy New Year to all of us! Whatever you’re going through, I’m sending you my love and hopeful wishes for a great year ahead.

Warm wishes and thanks for being here!
Laura xxx

PS “5000 Miles” appears on my third She Makes War album “Direction Of Travel” and this version of the song was performed live on 29th December 2023.

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Feel the weight of the world, feel the weight of the universe

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Process

This is the last video in this little series, and this is your last chance to grab two FREE / pay what you can live albums before they disappear in a puff of glitter tomorrow night.

I wrote this song about feeling on the outside of things, confused by how light years apart people can think and act when given the same information.

“Far away, looking back from this constellation
Castaway, adrift on my own space station”

The world is at turns huge and strange, violent and terrifying, wonderful and unimaginably awe inspiring. The fact that I can beam my music from my space station to yours blows me away – thank you for being here.

This recording of “Dispensable Body” is part of my new live album “In The Many Moons”

And the song also appears on my other new live album “Encore”!

Pay what you want, from £0 to infinity, for either or both. Thank you.

BIG LOVE TO YOU
Laura xxx

“Dispensable Body” appears on my debut Penfriend album “Exotic Monsters”

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Clouds collide…

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Process

When I listen closely to the lyrics I wrote more than a decade ago, my heart aches for that younger woman.

“Others love, I stay rooted to the ground
Losing, never found
Olympian, show me how to feel again
Save me, my Apollo”

In “Olympian” (from my debut album “Disarm”) I was experimenting with using myths and legends to tell a story, but what came out was my own melancholy and frustration at my situation. The idea that someone could come along and save me was very appealing in those darker days, but of course, in the end, that person was me.

PAY WHAT YOU WANT / CAN for this recording of “Olympian” as part of my new live album “In The Many Moons”.

It also appears on my other new live album “Encore”!

Type zero to infinity in the box at checkout, you’re very welcome to have this music as a gift from me to you.

Thank you!

Love,

Laura xxx

“Olympian” appears on my debut She Makes War album “Disarm”.

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I’d like to delete myself…

by Laura Kidd Creativity Letterbox Process

Delete: the song that started out as a joke about using a loop pedal, and turned into a high point of almost every live set I performed from mid 2011- my last in-person show in late 2019.

I always enjoyed surprising people in the audience by appearing next to them wielding a megaphone, singing “don’t stop the clocks, don’t mention the time, eyes front and we’ll all be fine”. Hands up if you ever witnessed this in person!

I’d like to delete myself
Don’t like to repeat myself, no

Pay what you want for the live album here and pick up your copy of “Encore” too (I recorded the whole thing again the next day just in case…)

“Delete” appears on my second She Makes War album “Little Battles” *and* my 2019 reworkings collection “And Peace” and this version of the song was recorded live during my first online gig of 2023!

“Delete” was performed live on vocals, Boss RC30 loop pedal and Trash Talk telephone mic, recorded through the Boss Gigcaster 8.

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Category: Creativity

I made this to make you smile

NEXT

How childhood letter-writing led to a life in music

Now and then, then and now

NEXT

On single release day, these two words have to go

NEXT

Indecision: an elaborate and time-consuming way of achieving absolutely nothing

NEXT

Four years of Penfriend!!!

NEXT

Too late? How to find an audience in your 50s (and 40s, and 30s…)

NEXT

New Year, new live album gift for YOU

NEXT

Feel the weight of the world, feel the weight of the universe

NEXT

Clouds collide…

NEXT

I’d like to delete myself…

NEXT