Gina Larner is entering a new chapter on her own terms

When Gina Larner sat down with CountryMusic.co.uk at The Long Road, she was sitting on a secret. Festival audiences had been given an early taste of what was coming, but the Brighton singer-songwriter was still days away from publicly announcing the music that will carry her into her next chapter.

Now that secret is out. Can’t Get No Sleep arrives on 25 September as the “first instalment” of Larner’s upcoming project. At The Long Road, she told us more: the single begins a run of releases leading towards a new EP, currently planned for May 2027, with hopes of a tour to accompany it.

It feels like an appropriate moment to catch up. When we first interviewed Larner in 2024, debut album Something Good had established an artist drawing freely from country, Americana, pop and rock. Two years later, she isn’t abandoning that identity so much as becoming more confident about just how far she can stretch it.

“I am doing it a lot more on my own now,” she says. “I’m pretty much fully independent. I have a booking agent as well, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Taking the reins means the band, songwriting and most of the decisions surrounding her career increasingly sit with Larner herself. It has also revealed quite how much work independence involves.

“When you take the reins, I think you just realise how much there is to do,” she laughs.

From a gig to a show

One of the clearest changes since 2024 is happening on stage. Larner is playing more full-band shows and says confidence, songwriting and stagecraft have developed together, partly because every bigger opportunity forces her to raise her game.

“You get a slightly bigger gig and then you’re like, ‘Oh my God, now I actually need to be able to do it,’” she says.

She has learnt by watching the established performers she has shared bills with too, cheerfully admitting to seeing things she likes and “nicking” them.

Yet one ambition hasn’t changed. Two years ago, Larner told us she wanted audiences to feel they had experienced a show, not just a gig.

“That’s so cool that I said that because I still think that,” she says.

Now she is putting more thought into how songs flow into each other, creating moments for the band and audience to interact and becoming more comfortable telling the stories behind her writing.

Perhaps the best measure of whether any of that is working, however, is considerably simpler: people are starting to know the words.

At The Long Road, Larner’s guitarist came off stage surprised that people at the front had been singing along.

“I was like, ‘That’s the coolest thing ever.’ It’s something you go home and tell your mum about.”

“People actually knowing songs… that’s the coolest thing ever. It’s something you go home and tell your mum about.”

Finding freedom beyond the debut

If Something Good captured Gina Larner at a particular moment, its aftermath gave her an opportunity to discover what didn’t have to stay the same.

“I just threw a lot of shit at the wall and saw what stuck, to be honest,” she says.

Starting her recording career with an album meant releasing a substantial body of work when relatively few people knew her. Looking back, she describes the implied pressure as effectively having to declare: “This is exactly who you are as an artist.”

Rather than immediately repeating the formula, Larner experimented.

Call In moved towards dance music, while she also spent time songwriting with Phil Hartnoll of Orbital. Another experiment saw a version of a track transformed with dubstep drums, opening her ears to how far a song could move while retaining its foundations.

That willingness to explore will continue into the new material.

“There’s a disco one, there’s a bit more country, there’s a bit more indie pop,” she says of what lies ahead.

For an artist who has always drawn from several genres, this isn’t a sudden rejection of country. Instead, experience appears to have made Larner less concerned about where the boundaries are.

Playing to audiences who didn’t necessarily arrive expecting country music has helped. She points to Beautiful Days, a festival with a heavier musical audience, where her country-rock-pop sound found an enthusiastic reception.

“I don’t care what people say. Everybody can like country.”

Back to being a recording artist

That genre freedom makes Can’t Get No Sleep an intriguing starting point for what comes next.

The single’s 25 September release ends what Larner describes as the longest period she has gone without releasing music as an artist. The reason for that silence is straightforward: something bigger has been taking shape behind the scenes.

“There is definitely a project coming for 2027,” she told us, before revealing the EP plans. “Lots of singles in between.”

After a period dominated by festivals, support slots and the development of her live show, her attention is turning firmly back towards recording.

“Definitely working on recording and releasing things and working more on being a recording artist,” she says. “It’s been the longest period of time where I as an artist haven’t released anything because we’ve kind of been working on something bigger behind the scenes.”

The live experience isn’t being left behind. Larner still chooses a full band over solo acoustic without hesitation — “The girls make me feel so cool” — and says she enjoys festival stages precisely because they offer the chance to win over people who have wandered in without knowing who she is.

It all points towards an artist increasingly comfortable allowing different parts of her identity to coexist: country and pop, guitars and electronic production, the live performer and the recording artist, all while taking greater control of the career around her.

For now, Can’t Get No Sleep is the first glimpse of where that freedom is taking her. More singles will follow before the new EP arrives in 2027, but Larner no longer seems particularly concerned with making everything fit neatly into one musical box.

Perhaps the better measure is the one she gave us herself: people are starting to know the songs. After several years learning how to build a show and win over unfamiliar audiences, Gina Larner’s next chapter is about giving them more songs to sing back.