9 minute read
League of Her Own
One dream job would be enough for most people, but 27-year-old CHELCEE GRIMES has scored success as a rising music star and a pro footballer. Welcome to her life of two halves
“I’m a Jekyll and Hyde – there are two sides of me, but both are important,” explains the softly spoken Liverpudlian as the lighting and backdrops from her Red Bulletin photoshoot are dismantled. Sitting on a sofa in the corner of a sunny canalside studio in east London, the chatty, easygoing 27-year-old wears a bright orange top, off-white jeans and New Balance trainers. Around her neck hangs a silver chain sporting her name: Chelcee.
Chelcee Grimes is a songwriter in demand. In addition to composing hits for the likes of Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue, Kesha and Tom Walker, she has worked in LA with Calvin Harris and producer RedOne (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj). She launched her own singing career in 2018 with the upbeat R&B-laced pop tracks Just Like That and I Need a Night Out, and she has a debut album scheduled for release next year. But that’s only the half of it: Chelcee is also a professional footballer.
Playing up front for Fulham FC Women, Chelcee scored three goals in this season’s FA Cup, and she brings together her two big passions as the presenter of Chelcee Away, her online show for BBC Sport. Chelcee will also be part of the BBC team covering the Women’s World Cup in France this June and July; and in between all this, she still finds time to contribute to the popular football fan site COPA90. “I’m very busy at the minute,” she understates. “It’s gone a bit mental, but I’m excited.”
Chelcee has barely paused for breath over the past few years. Yesterday, she visited Anfield to meet Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp for a forthcoming branding venture; being a lifelong fan of the club, this was a dream come true. After our interview, she’ll head to a studio in London’s Shoreditch to finish the vocals for her upcoming single, Girls, which she hopes will be the unofficial anthem of the Women’s World Cup. Tomorrow, she’ll take part in a songwriting session in Ealing with producer and fellow hit machine Naughty Boy (“I met him last week and we started working together”), and at the end of the week she’ll attend the FIFA eWorld Cup video-game championships. “I’m living my dream,” beams Chelcee, a keen gamer.
Excelling at two high-profile careers is turning Chelcee into something of a celebrity, as well as an ambassador for women’s football. She handles the attention well, not least because of her easy-going nature and her genuine love for what she does, and Chelcee is always ready to share her experiences with young fans who see her as a role model. But she has also been through enough to know how fickle these industries can be.
Once upon a time, Chelcee quit football. She was 17 and on the precipice of turning professional, but there wasn’t enough money in the women’s game to support a viable career. This tricky decision was assuaged by the lucrative offer of a major record deal. “Someone was dangling a cheque in front of me, and football hadn’t paid in eight years, so what could I do?” she says. “I obviously chose music and dropped out of football.” If that sounds like a no-brainer, a better appreciation of Grimes’ deep commitment to the game is needed.
Having grown up in Aigburth, Liverpool, the city’s legendary football club has always been a massive part of her life: “If your family are Liverpool supporters, it’s in your blood.” Her father chose her name. “Chelsea weren’t a big team back then, so it wasn’t like they were going to call me Tottenham or something,” she smiles. “My mum was like, ‘OK, we like the name, but we’ll have to spell it differently,’ so that’s how it’s spelt in my passport. When people don’t believe me, I have to get it out to show them.”
With no siblings, Chelcee realised that if she wanted to get on with her male cousins and hang out with the boys on her street, she’d have to learn to play football. “It was that or stay in and do homework. At first I wasn’t very good, but I quickly improved – I’d be the first one they chose for the team.” After her grandad spotted an ad in the local paper, Chelcee’s mum enrolled her at the Ian Rush Soccer School; she was the only girl to attend. Her skills were soon recognised by Liverpool Ladies (now Liverpool FC Women), who trained at the same ground. “I was asked to come to their trials. I didn’t even own a pair of football boots, but I turned up and got through. I played for Liverpool Under-10s, then signed up for another five years.”
Her passion for making music, however, didn’t bloom until her mid-teens. A huge pop fan, Chelcee grew up listening to J-Lo, Beyoncé, Pink and Kanye. Her mum would play dance music at home, while her stepdad listened to Sting and Simon & Garfunkel. Having chosen music as one of her GSCE options – mainly because she thought it would be easy – Chelcee was encouraged by a teacher who noticed her aptitude for songwriting. At 16, she won a six-month recording arrangement through a competition on local radio station Juice FM. The studio belonged to Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, which meant Chelcee went to all the team’s games and learnt her way around a studio with the help of Babel’s engineer. She was hooked.
At the same time, Chelcee began gigging. “I’d play every openmic night in Liverpool,” she recalls. “More people would turn up and a buzz developed. Kids would have my lyrics as tattoos – I can’t even remember the songs. I think one was called The Truth, and someone had that written on themselves. I’d say, ‘Don’t get it done, your mother will kill you.’ But when people started to do that, I could tell a movement was happening.”
This led to the agonising choice between football and music that culminated in Chelcee signing a contract with record label RCA. “They wanted to make me into an English Alicia Keys,” she reveals. Not long after Chelcee signed up, however, her contact at the label was sacked, and two years later she was unceremoniously dropped. Deflated and running out of money, Chelcee moved to London to pursue her songwriting dream, recording in bedrooms, basements, wherever she could.
She looks back on that time with frankness: “At 18 I hadn’t really lived, I’d just played football. I had a bit of a gap for a year, wrote four songs, got a record deal really early. I don’t think I deserved it, if I’m honest.” Instead, she threw herself into new challenges. “It made me travel, learn about myself, and I gave writing a go. Then someone called and said, ‘We think you’re a good songwriter, we’ll give you a publishing deal.’ It’s not what I really wanted – I still wanted to be on stage – but I did it.”
She found herself at a songwriting session in Copenhagen with veteran Danish producer Cutfather. Feeling homesick, Chelcee wrote the lyrics “I feel like I’m a million miles away”, which evolved into Kylie Minogue’s 2014 song Million Miles. Then she began working with Steve Mac, one of the most successful producers in modern pop, responsible for huge hits by the likes of Ed Sheeran (Shape Of You), Clean Bandit (Symphony) and Pink (What About Us). “If you have better players around you, you automatically grow and thrive,” she says, drawing a connection between songwriting and football. “I don’t get intimidated. If I put my mind to something, I usually go on to do it.”
Chelcee is in no doubt where this self-belief comes from: “It’s because I’m a Scouser. There’s something in the Liverpool water where we think we can do anything we put our mind to. It’s in the heart of our football team, too. I remember the 2005 Champions League final [the now-legendary match against AC Milan in Istanbul] where we were 3-0 down. To come back and fight and win it in 45 minutes – that embodies everything I believe as a person. It was the first time I saw that magic can happen if you fight for it.”
Looking back, Chelcee believes the whole journey has been a valuable lesson: “I’ve only been [working in music] professionally for four years, but I’ve developed massively from when I was writing songs at 17 in my bedroom with no one saying, ‘Do this or change that.’” After signing to the management agency that represents Dua Lipa, Lana Del Ray and Ellie Goulding, Chelcee’s talent for composing a killer melody and a catchy hook emerged. “It’s a running industry joke how fast I am at writing,” she says. “Yesterday, I went outside the studio and saw a sign that read, ‘Please don’t play ball games,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a dope title,’ so we wrote a song called Please. There’s no yellow brick road to making a hit record. You’ve just got to feel it as you go.”
When you write a song a day, as Chelcee strives to, some are bound to resonate. One she wrote about her father, titled 11:11, was covered in 2016 by South Korean artist Taeyeon and became a huge hit, racking up more than 52 million YouTube views. “Sometimes you don’t remember writing songs, but that’s a special one,” she says. “[The song’s co-writer] Christian Vinten said, ‘What have you never written about?’ and I said, ‘It’s really weird but I’ve never written about my dad.’ He passed away when I was a kid, and I feel like I’ve never wanted to open that box. My mum would say, ‘When it gets to 11:11, make a wish,’ so I used to wish for my dad to come and speak to me. When I hear the opening chord, it takes me right back to writing it.”
Much as Chelcee enjoyed her songwriting success, she never lost the longing to perform, and last year her perseverance paid off when she finally released her own music. “It’s been six years of slog,” she says. “And it hasn’t been given to me. If it had, I’d be like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’ But I’ve literally fought my way to be where I am, so I feel like I deserve it.”
Another pursuit Chelcee missed was playing football. When watching the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she realised a number of girls she used to play with were now wearing an England shirt. “I thought, ‘I need to get back into it.’ So I googled a few teams and got trials with Wimbledon, Spurs and West Ham. They all offered me a contract – it was crazy.” Chelcee is now settled at Fulham – she also lives nearby – though the relegation of the men’s team from the Premier League and its knock-on effect on revenue has created uncertainty for the women.
Much has changed in women’s football over the past five years, and Chelcee believes the sport is healthier and wealthier than ever. In March this year, Barclays announced a £10 million three-year sponsorship of the FA’s Women’s Super League – the biggest investment by a brand in UK women’s sports. In Spain that same month, more than 60,000 fans watched a match between Atlético Madrid and Barcelona in the Primera División Femenina – a world record attendance for a club game in women’s football – and in Italy around 39,000 people saw Juventus Women beat Fiorentina.
“My little sister is nine now and she plays football,” says Chelcee. “When I was playing, I was the only girl, but she’s one of six in the team. That growth from a grassroots level is all you need. And to turn on the TV now and see [former England and Arsenal Women right-back] Alex Scott as a BBC pundit… that would never have happened when I was a kid. It’s awesome.”
In terms of investment and profile, the women’s game in the UK still lags behind that of the European continent and the US, but 2019 promises to be its biggest year yet. Chelcee believes that change is gradually coming, but a lot of the problem is down to the perception and presentation of the sport.
“It’s like having the best song in the world but the video is shot on an old Nokia phone: it won’t look good,” she says. “No part of the women’s game is as well-publicised or up-to-date as the men’s. You’ve got to give it equal leeway. Hopefully, with this injection of money, everything will become a lot more professional.” She hopes her reporting of the Women’s World Cup in France for the BBC and COPA90 will inspire yet more girls to get involved. “I’ll show it’s not women’s football, it’s just football,” she says.
The multitalented Liverpudlian is, in her own way, redefining what it means to be a woman in 2019. “I’m showing you don’t have to be just one thing now. I go in the studio and write songs with some of the biggest acts in the world. I’m playing for Fulham, making my own album. I’m standing up for that, 100 per cent.”
Chelcee Grimes, in her life as in her career, is far more than the sum of the parts.
Chelcee’s latest single, Girls, is out now on TaP Records; chelceegrimes.com
Words PIERS MARTIN
Photography STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH
