As a child growing up in the North of Ireland, Janet Devlin was exposed to a plethora of music. “There was always music in our family,” she tells Post-Burnout. “Before me, my great-grandfather, from the stories I’ve heard, had the same little lilt in his voice that I do. Apparently, it just runs in families, so that’s where I got that from.

“My brother, actually, who is the second oldest… It’s funny, in our house, because somebody in an interview went, ‘Oh, the best country singer in the country,’ and I was like, ‘I’m not even the best country singer in my house!’ I’ve got a brother who’s got a big, deep, Garth Brooks-y style voice, you know? But I’ve been singing, according to my mum, before I could speak. Just mouthing along to the songs and not the words and things. [Laughs]

“I think by about six or so, I was in a céile band, learning the whistle, and then, by eight years old, I was doing the fiddle as well. I was always singing, but I didn’t really have any self-belief, really, but I just did it. And, according to my nan, as well, I was writing songs from about five, where she’d pick me up from school or whatever, and she’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s a nice wee song! Who sings that?’  and I was like, ‘Oh, I wrote it in my head today,’ you know? It’s always been there.

“I think a changing moment, musically, definitely, was my dad absolutely loved the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? and we watched it a bunch. [Laughs] I don’t know why I’ve seen that movie so many times but I have! It ended up that we burnt the CD, and we had a big, big jukebox, and I think we ended up having to burn that soundtrack at least five or six times. Whether it was the jukebox or us playing it so much, I don’t know, but that was the intro into bluegrass.

“[…] I had my babysitters – like, my really cool, older cousins – and one of them was obsessed with dance music, so I grew up listening to Moby, and Modjo, and just everything dance. Fatboy Slim was massive. All of that influence. And then my other cousin really liked rock music, so I grew up listening to Foo Fighters, Chili Peppers, Nirvana. One of my brothers loved rap music, so that was a big thing.”

But, for Janet, there was one genre in particular that appealed to her.  “I don’t know if it’s fully known, but country music is the biggest genre in Ireland,” she says.” It’s in everybody’s homes, and it was the genre that everybody in our house could agree on.

“So, country music was just there, it always has been there. I’m from a very rural county – like, we’re known as ‘Farmers County,’ which is County Tyrone – which, obviously,  naturally, you gravitate to country music because where else are you going to get songs about combine harvesters and International Harvesters, you know? And where I’m from, as well, farmers still meet their wives at dances, and instead of the aul Irish jigs and reels, it’s country music, now. So, it’s just very bred into you.”

Despite her aforementioned self-esteem issues, Janet kept performing and eventually enrolled for the eighth series of The X Factor singing competition, which was broadcast to millions across the UK and Ireland. A successful candidate, Janet would finish fifth in the competition and go on an arena tour of the UK and Ireland as part of The X Factor Live Tour in 2012.

In the years since the show, Janet has been very open about her struggles with mental health and addiction and even hosted a lauded BBC documentary discussing these issues. Yet, she eschews any notion of The X Factor being a part of her issues and, instead, feels that it was beneficial for her.

“People think my issues started after the show and during the show,” she explains. “I was already kind of cuckoo for Coco Puffs. I had mental health issues that I didn’t actually know the diagnosis for, and didn’t know the diagnosis for until three years ago. I didn’t know I had Bipolar II, I didn’t know that I had borderline personality, and I didn’t know that I had ADHD, all of which mess with your moods like a mothertrucker.

“I was a troubled teen. I don’t even think it was from being picked on or anything like that; I just always didn’t possess the ability to like myself, pretty much, and I think that’s why I did love music, as well. Not only just naturally loving music; it felt to me, beyond horse-riding, it was the only thing that people were like, ‘You’re really good at this thing!’ And it was like, ‘Oh, maybe I am good at something!’ [Laughs]

“The show was what it was, but I was troubled and I always kind of had been. Opposite and contrary to what people believe, the show was really good for me because it allowed me to see that I could have a job in music, that I could sing – which was my reason for going on the show; just to see if I could sing [Laughs] – and it gave me a goal to work towards in my darkest times, because my darkest times had started before, and then they kind of came in halfway through the show again, just the ol’ mental illness stuff, but it was like I had something to work towards, you know?

“I had a show to work towards for every Saturday and Sunday, and it kept me going, and then gave me the ability to go pursue music and kind of carry this audience with me. I did a gig the other night, and there’s literally people there who’ve known me since I was sixteen and have followed me since I was sixteen.”

In some ways, being a contestant on a highly-viewed programme assured Janet of who she was. She explains, “I remember being sixteen and being on the show, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Janet, there’s literally no point in trying to be anyone else because then you’re going to have to live in that lie…,’ for me, at the time it was like, ‘For the next nine months, you’re going to have to be a character,’ and I even said to myself, ‘You’re not a good enough actress, babe, to be someone else,’ you know?

“With all the things I’ve been through and all the learning, growing, sobering up, and all of this kind of stuff, there’s no point, either, because people can see through façades in somebody, and I’ve shown the ugly, awful parts of the person that I’ve been in my past with addiction and all this stuff, and I’ve been super honest about it, and I think, in a way, that is a blessing to having a reality show upbringing, is that it’s like, ‘Oh, you want me to be honest? Chill. I’m used to that. On camera for millions? That’s also fine. I don’t care.’

“But I’ve kind of used that to just really put all of myself out there. And I think, being an internet kid, I found a lot of my solace online. Like, I’d get bullied as a kid, and it was like, ‘Oh, no. It’ll be fine. I’ll get home, I’ll open up the computer, and I’ll be fine.’

The prize for winning The X Factor was a publishing deal with Simon Cowell’s now-defunct Sony Music subsidiary Syco Music. But after the show, Janet felt that it was the independent route that best suited her. “After I left the show, I got offered a few big deals. I remember being told about one of them in particular, and it was like, ‘This is great money,’ and it was great money, but, as a kid, you don’t have a concept of money, anyway,” she says.

“But, too, I always had a weird possession over protecting my identity, and, for me, when I looked at the deal, it was pretty much, ‘You’re going to get an album essentially written for you and given to you, and you just sing it, and it goes out, A.S.A.P., to bank on the market that’s there,’ and I was like, ‘Well, that’s not fair. I want to make an album of my own songs because all people know me for is singing other people’s music, and, sure, if I go to write and record an album and it sucks butt, I shouldn’t be in the bloody industry, anyway; I should just be doing covers.

“And, at the time, I remember being like, ‘I’ll happily go on a cruise ship and sing cover songs from dusk ‘till dawn.’ I’ve never had pride about it, in that way, but I was like, ‘I want to live and die by my own sword a little bit, and I want to write my own album,’ and that meant that the three or whatever deals that came in, I was like, ‘Nah. It’s stupid for me to do that.’

Nowadays, independent artists have to wear many hats while traversing the digital landscape, but Janet’s interests and hobbies as a kid naturally acclimatised her to this. “I was making videos on YouTube well before monetisation,” she says. “Like, I started on YouTube, even before TV, and even before we made videos.  Like, my account has been there since 2006! [Laughs] I’m ancient on the internet!

“I used to upload videos of me riding on my horse and competing on my horse and all that kind of stuff. I’ve been chronically online, I’d say, since I was about ten years old. Like, since the dawn of RuneScape. Awful! I was a teenager who used to bloody spend time on 4Chan. I’m glad that time ended!”

The internet offered Janet a similar escape as music. “I think, for me, I’ve always loved internet,” she explains. “I’ve enjoyed watching and digesting and making. Whenever I got off the show, whenever I started just making music again, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to sing a version of “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran. Like, I should do that,’ and my team being like, ‘Oh, record that. We’ll put it up.’

“Then that started the dawn of the covers on my YouTube channel, where I’d just take songs and, a lot of the time, just make ‘em creepy. I had a really fun time with that. It’s either a creepy version of something or, like, a first dance version of something. And I was vlogging way back in 2013 and stuff.
“I just always liked that, and then whenever TikTok came about – I think it was about 2018 or 2019 – I started in 2019, and lockdown happened. And I remember in 2019, I was probably trying to plug singles and songs, and none of it was doing anything. And lockdown happened, and I started posting the videos that I was sending to my mates. That’s when I went viral on there. Not for music. Never for music. [Laughs]”

As an independent artist, Janet rode the notoriety of The X Factor wave and enjoyed a very successful career, making contemplative and dark pop music that incorporated elements from vast palettes. But there was a genre she always wished to try out. “It’s over ten years ago now where it was like, ‘Oh, I might be able to do this as a job, now.’ Post-TV and all this stuff. ‘I’m making songs, now. I’m making music, now,’” she says.

“I was like, ‘You know what? Before I’m 30, I want to do country.’ It was supposed to be, like, 25. I was like, ’25, I’m going country.’  But then, my last album took longer than it should have, and then lockdown postponed the album, and then, sure, there was no talk, obviously, about going to Nashville at that point. But I did release my first country song in 2021, and I’ve been talking about going country for years.”

And, today, Janet’s dreams are fully realised with the release of her latest record, the unashamedly country Emotional Rodeo. “I managed to get all the demons out on the last record, the Confessional record, and I talked about all of that heavy stuff, and the fact of that coming out and just being what it was meant that this album, it is the truest version of me,” Janet says.

“It’s the truest version of me because I am very silly, I am very jokey and silly, and there are quite a few not serious, silly songs on this record, and it feels great because it means then that I’m not showing just the darkness because I’m sure people are very familiar [Laughs] with the darkness, and the ballads and the heaviness, and they love that but, also, it’s been nice to show that other side, which is the fun-loving side and the side that…

“I wouldn’t have been able to write the songs for this album had I not dug it up for that Confessional record, and it’s a really nice place to be, now, I think, just from sticking it out and not changing because I don’t think it would work, either. [Laughs] “

With the album now out, Janet has one final message: “I’m an independent artist, and that means budgets are tight, and we blew most of the budget on making this album. So, if you go and you listen to it and think, ‘I really like this thing,’ I would very much appreciate it if you could buy it. If you have the means to. Only if you have the means to.

“If you have the spear shrapnel to get the album, I’d really appreciate it because every purchase is a big deal because even one song is equivalent to 150 streams. That’s 150 listens, and that’s a hard thing to do. But I extend that to not just myself; to any of the independent artists that you enjoy because, unfortunately, if we stop purchasing…And I’ve seen it because I’ve seen loads of my friends whose music I love, they’ve the music industry because they can’t do it anymore.  So, it’s one of those where if you’ve listened to it once or twice on Spotify or something, you’re like, ‘I like this!’, please consider purchasing it. I’d appreciate it.”

Janet Devlin’s latest album, Emotional Rodeo, is out today. You can purchase the record, follow her social media accounts, and see her live dates through her website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full, where we go into further depth about everything discussed, as well as details on individual tracks on the records, Janet’s relationship with TikTok, advice to new artists, her opinions on the music industry, and much more. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.