The Quiet Magic Behind the Stage

Music has always been threaded through my life in ways many people around me probably don’t realise. It isn’t just background noise or entertainment to me; it’s part of how I understand emotion and storytelling. Even now, when I’m writing my books, music plays a role both inside the story and inside my creative process. Certain songs can unlock a scene, shape the emotional rhythm of a chapter, or pull me into the headspace of a character in a way nothing else quite can.

Music was part of my family too. Several of my relatives were musicians, so those venues and rehearsals weren’t unusual places for me to be. I would watch my uncle and my aunt perform at all kinds of events, and we often went along to support them. Sometimes it was small local venues, sometimes larger gatherings, and sometimes it was simply wherever musicians happened to be playing that night.

Their bandmates and friends were musicians too, so it felt like I was always surrounded by people who lived in that world. Supporting them meant standing in the audience, watching them perform, but also seeing everything that happened before and after the show.

For me it never felt like something special or glamorous. It was simply family life. I spent time around musicians who would show me how to play random instruments long before I was big enough to even reach around most of them. I remember being carried around venues, given sweets, or having my hair braided by tattooed rock singers and half-dressed soloists preparing for their sets.

At the time it all felt completely normal – just the world I happened to grow up in.

I remember watching lighting rigs being tested, cables being run across stages, technicians adjusting sound levels while musicians casually ran through songs. Venues always felt different before the audience arrived. There was a quiet anticipation in the air, like something was about to happen but hadn’t quite started yet.

Later, when I found myself part of that industry, I realised those same moments were still my favourite. Not the shows themselves, but the hours before them. Sound checks in empty venues where everyone was relaxed, dressed like they had just fallen out of bed, running through songs without the pressure or the energy of a full performance.

Those huge empty spaces always felt strangely peaceful to me. The stage lights glowing softly, voices echoing across rows of empty seats, the room feeling almost like scenery waiting for its actors to arrive. There was something calm about it – like standing inside a story before it begins.

I loved the spaces around the show too. Side stage. Backstage corridors. Green rooms half-filled with cables, costumes, and half-drunk cups of coffee. Places that were part of the machinery of the show but not quite the show itself yet.

Those in-between places were always where I felt most at home.

As a child I didn’t realise how unusual those experiences were. I just knew I loved being there.

Maybe that’s why stepping onto a stage myself later in life didn’t feel frightening. It felt familiar.

When I was younger I ended up performing in a pop girl band. That world was far more structured and disciplined than people often imagine. We had choreographers, rehearsals, and endless hours in studios learning routines and tightening performances. Songs were repeated again and again until every step and every movement became automatic.

For a time, that band became my entire life. We were successful enough to experience the strange edges of popularity – the attention, the expectations, the feeling of being recognised. It was exciting and overwhelming in equal measure.

But somewhere along the way I also began to see the other side of that particular corner of the music industry. The pressure, the management, the politics that slowly creep into something that once felt simple and joyful. I started to realise how different it felt from the musicians I had grown up around – the rock artists who had seemed so relaxed and happy just to play.

The sparkle of the stage was still there, but the world around it had changed.

Looking back now, that’s probably why I found myself moving into an indie rock band not long after leaving the girl group. Breaking my contract and stepping away from that world wasn’t easy, but I think deep down I knew I was searching for something different.

I was looking for the feeling I had known growing up around musicians – that sense of family, of shared purpose, of people coming together simply because they loved the music. I missed the studios where songs were explored rather than perfected for an image, the stages where energy mattered more than choreography, and the relaxed spaces where musicians simply played because they wanted to.

The pop industry had given me incredible experiences, but it didn’t quite give me that feeling in the same way. Moving into a rock band felt like returning to something more familiar, something closer to the world I had grown up in.

It felt less like performing a role, and more like belonging to the music again.

There’s a strange rhythm to rehearsal life. Music half-formed, choreography being shaped, people laughing between runs before suddenly snapping back into focus when the track starts again. It’s exhausting and chaotic and strangely addictive.

And even now, more than twenty years later, I realise how deeply that rhythm is still wired into me. My brain and body seem to remember it instinctively. When music starts, something switches on. The movements, the energy, the feeling of stepping fully into a song – it all comes back far more easily than I expect.

Maybe that’s why I still find myself dancing like I’m performing when music plays, or why I instinctively treat songs like rehearsals even now. Three full runs, then a cool down. The same patterns, the same energy.

Some parts of that life never really leave you.

I think what I miss most isn’t the spotlight or the attention. It’s the process. The rehearsals. The studios. The feeling of building something with music and movement before anyone else ever sees it.

If I’m honest with myself, there is a part of me that still misses that world.

Not necessarily the spotlight or the pressure that comes with performing, but the environment itself. The studios, the empty venues before a show, the backstage corridors and green rooms where the machinery of a performance quietly comes together.

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had stayed in that world in a different way. Perhaps I could have moved into management, helping artists build their shows and navigate the industry. Part of me even wonders what might have happened if my younger, reckless self had tried forming an all-female rock band instead.

Those are the small “what if” thoughts that drift through my mind now and then.

If I could wave a wand today, I think I’d happily spend my days working somewhere inside that industry – organising, overseeing, helping shape the shows from behind the scenes. Being part of those spaces again would be enough.

Because for me, the magic was never only about standing in the spotlight. It was about being part of the world that creates it.

And when I look back now, I realise how incredibly lucky I was to have experienced that world for a whole chapter of my life. For a good part of my teens and twenties, I was able to stand on the inside of it – not just watching from the audience, but seeing it from the other side.

I saw the studios, the rehearsals, the choreography sessions, the photo shoots and media days. I experienced the strange reality of hearing our songs played across huge venues while standing there anonymously in the crowd, listening as thousands of voices sang them back. I remember the surreal moments of fans chasing us down the street or recognising us in the most unexpected places.

Those moments were exciting, strange, and sometimes overwhelming – but they were also part of a world many people only ever glimpse from the outside.

Those are things many people dream of when they enter the music industry, and the truth is that even many talented musicians never get to experience them.

I was fortunate enough to live that life not once, but twice.

And for that, I will always feel grateful.

Not envy exactly. Not regret either. More like recognition.

It’s the feeling of being part of the machine that makes a show happen.

And in truth, that world never really left me.

Music still threads quietly through my life in ways people probably don’t always see. It’s there in my writing, shaping scenes and emotions even when readers might not realise it. My books are littered with the influence of music, and one day my unpublished novel VOID – When Rain Falls will probably show that more clearly than anything else. So watch this space for that book – a story that reflects so much of what that world once meant to me through the eyes of a rock band and a makeup artist (yes, the second job I had after leaving the limelight).

The connection never quite disappears either. The same uncle whose band stages and sound checks shaped so many of my childhood memories still tours with his band today. Earlier this month he called me, casually asking if I wanted him to sort out tickets for their next show – the same easy way musicians always talk about gigs. In April, I’ll be standing in the audience again, watching the very same person who first introduced me to that world all those years ago. He’s still just as close to me, still my favourite uncle, and we even share the same birthday. Maybe it’s written in our stars that music would always live somewhere in our hearts.

Later in the year, I’ll be travelling to Manchester to see Evanescence, a band I’ve followed since I was young, and then to Korea in the summer, where I hope to see some of my favourites there too. Some connections to music never fade; they simply evolve with time.

Maybe that’s the real truth of it.

The stage lights may not be mine anymore, even if I sometimes forget that when I step onto a dancefloor. But the music never stopped being part of who I am.