"Fantasise With Me" by Cat Mead

It's always a joy to introduce a new artist to the community formed by those I've written about & today it's the turn of Cat Mead to whom I was introduced by Ellie Gowers and who supported her on the final date of her most recent national tour& in that context made her first appearance in the magazine.

Today with the release of her new single "Fantasise With Me", we get the further chance to consider her recorded work.

The first point I should like to make is in regard to its composition: when I spoke with her in December, it was clear that she intended to capture many of her original songs that I heard her play in the studio. However this one doesn't seem to have even been written at the time and she went straight into recording it: presumably bumping it right up the queue which says something about her own regard for it as well as the proliferation of new ideas in her mind.

It also speaks to the notion of immediacy: it's great when songs have such freshness as to from inspiration to release in such short order.

It's a bit playful too (which appeals to me) given that the title suggests something rather different to the actual lyrical content: in fact the prevailing emotion she was experiencing at the time it came to her was sadness & I defy anyone to have guessed that accurately from just seeing its name.

One big (and growing) problem for songwriters operating in 2026 is that not only have most themes already been touched on by previous writers but in many cases the associated vocabularies have been reduced to cliches through over use.

To be honest, this results in my occasionally sighing over material I hear & the phenomenon ends up acting as a filter: what I end up writing about for you has to pass my personal cliché test. The rest I consign to a depository of homogenous & derivative content. Which then thankfully passes quickly from my memory.

Here, Cat passes the test with flying colours. Rather than delving into tired tropes, she finds her own path through a conundrum ("about longing for a feeling or a person") by considering & rejecting fantasy solutions and that helps generate fresh articulations. It also helps her voice a rejection of time wasters while she is at it.

Sad she may have been when inspiration started, but I think the song must have operated cathartically for her given the evidence of her words.

In terms of the music, I was intrigued as to what Cat would go for in terms of arrangement given that I'd only seen her play solo with her guitar. To my delight, she has kept things real by continuing with the formula which attracted me in the first place, but very subtly accentuated from time to time to emphasise dynamics: the song is pretty intense & so needs peaks from time to time. Otherwise, Cat has interposed no veil between herself & us.

So if the song itself turns out not to be quite the invitation it's name teased, then it does welcome us nonetheless into the world of Cat Mead & that's most welcome.