SIXTEEN-year-old Mitzi Irish, a Year 11 pupil at Shebbear College, has had a very exciting week as she released her debut single, ‘Trivial’, on Saturday (March 27).

Mitzi, who describes her music as “somewhere between acoustic and pop”, wrote Trivial over Zoom during lockdown with London-based producer and writer Andy Gilbert, who she has been working with over the last six months, along with her manager, Haydn Williams.

“Writing Trivial was a really strange but wonderful experience,” said Mitzi. “It was the second song on which Andy and I worked and we completed it really quickly. I had a voice memo on my phone of the hook, which I’d written months prior, and I sent it over to him along with a playlist of songs I wanted the production to sound like.

“When we went on Zoom a few days later to write the rest, he’d already constructed essentially the entire instrumental.

“We finished the song that afternoon, and then I recorded all my vocals from home and sent them up to London.”

Talented Mitzi, who plays the guitar and piano as well as singing and song-writing, has been passionate about music for as long as she can remember. She wrote her first song at just nine years-old and performed at her first public gig when she was 13. However, she says it wasn’t a talent she had as a young child: “My family maintain that I was (and this is a direct quote) ‘frankly appalling’ until the age of about seven,” she laughs — so there’s still hope for any budding young singers who may not have developed their voices yet.

Mitzi is currently studying for her GCSEs at Shebbear and successfully manages to juggle her school work and music. She explained: “I just play when I feel like it. It’s important to find a balance, so I don’t do song-writing sessions in term-time. If I have loads of homework or a really important test the next day, I’ll make sure I study first and then pick up the guitar. Music is a brilliant way to procrastinate though…”

Head at Shebbear College, Caroline Kirby, said: “I am absolutely delighted for Mitzi as I know she has put a lot of hard work, passion and dedication into this and it’s paid off.

“To have released a single at the age of 16 is just fantastic and she should be very proud of her accomplishment — she certainly has a very bright future ahead of her. I streamed Trivial as soon as it was out on Saturday and it’s brilliant, very catchy and upbeat — I am definitely a fan.”

When asked about how she felt about releasing her debut single, Mitzi added: “I’m absolutely elated to have a single out — I’ve wanted to put music on streaming services for years and I finally have! The process has been so interesting — it takes much longer than you would think to release a single, and I’m so grateful to Haydn (my manager) for organising all of this. There’s so much that goes into music releases that I’d never even considered. The whole experience has been great and whilst the song is still so small, I think it’s ridiculously cool that you can successfully ask Alexa to play Trivial by Mitzi Irish!”

The single is available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and iTunes.