Celeste Swift Interview & Music video Premiere – ‘What if you had stayed?’

Celest Swift Interview & Music video Premiere – ‘What if you had stayed?’ : Celeste Swift has spent the past few years building a solo career around honest songwriting and lived experience. Her latest single and music video, ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ takes that approach into deeply personal territory, while opening a wider conversation about love, loss, memory and the futures we imagine.

Q & A with Celeste Swift

Q: You first started performing publicly in 2009, returned to music with Headline in 2023, and then stepped into your solo career through Swift & Co. in 2024. When you look at that journey now, what do you think has changed most about you as an artist?

A: I think the biggest thing that has changed is that I’ve stopped trying to figure out who I’m supposed to be as an artist, and I’ve become much more comfortable with simply being who I am. When I first started performing publicly in 2009, music was something I loved deeply, but I don’t think I fully understood myself yet. I loved being on stage and connecting with people, but there was still a part of me that was finding my confidence and my identity. Then life happened, as it does. I stepped away from performing for quite some time and during those years I lived, loved, lost, grew, made mistakes, experienced heartbreak, and learned a great deal about myself.

When I returned to the music scene, I came back as a very different woman from the one who had first stepped onto a stage in 2009. There was a different kind of confidence, but more importantly, there was a hunger for music that I hadn’t realised I had missed so much. Being back on stage reminded me of a part of myself that had been quiet for a long time. It felt like coming home to something I thought I had left behind.

Starting Swift & Co. in 2024 and pursuing my own music gave me the courage to take that a step further. I realised that I didn’t only want to sing songs, I wanted to tell stories. Stories that people could relate to. I wanted to create music that carried pieces of real life in it, even when those pieces were uncomfortable or deeply personal. That has probably been the greatest change in me as an artist. Earlier in my journey, I think I wanted to sound good and give people a great performance. I still care enormously about those things. Today I want people to feel something. I want someone to hear the lyrics and think, “I’ve felt that too, I just never knew how to say it.”

I also think I’ve stopped chasing perfection. I’m far more interested in honesty now. A perfectly sung note means very little to me if there is no emotion behind it. Sometimes the slight break in your voice or the breath you almost couldn’t take tells the story better than technical perfection ever could.

I’m still evolving, and I hope I always will be, but today I know why I make music. It isn’t simply to be heard. It is to make people feel seen, especially in the moments of life that are difficult to put into words. If one person hears one of my songs and feels a little less alone in their own story, then I think I’ve created something that matters.

Q: ‘Now That You’re Gone’, ‘Spookasem Woorde’ and now ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ all reveal different sides of you as a songwriter. What have these songs taught you about the kind of artist you want Celeste Swift to be?

A: I think these three songs have taught me that I never want to be an artist who is afraid to go where the emotion is uncomfortable. When I look at ‘Now That You’re Gone’, ‘Spookasem Woorde’ and ‘What If You Had Stayed?’, they are very different songs, but there is a piece of me in every one of them. They almost feel like three different chapters of the same person learning how to turn life into music.

‘Now That You’re Gone’ came from grief and losing my father to suicide. It taught me that there is incredible power in allowing people into the parts of your life that still hurt. Grief is such a strange thing because it is deeply personal, yet almost everyone will experience it. Writing that song showed me that when you are brave enough to be specific about your own pain, it can somehow become universal. Someone listening may not have lost their father, but they know what it feels like to miss someone they would give anything to speak to one more time. I also wanted this song to bring a message of hope for anyone suffering with depression.

‘Spookasem Woorde‘ revealed a completely different side of me. That song came from being stuck in a narcissistic relationship, empty promises and recognising the difference between words and actions. There is more strength and defiance in it. It taught me that vulnerability doesn’t always have to sound fragile. Sometimes vulnerability is finally admitting that something hurt you, recognising it for what it was, and choosing yourself afterwards.

Then came ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ and I think this song took me somewhere even more vulnerable. Pregnancy loss is incredibly personal, and it is also something so many women and families experience quietly. There are thoughts and questions that can stay with you long after the physical experience is over. The what-ifs don’t necessarily disappear just because time has passed. What started as writing this song for my own personal healing after going through a miscarriage turned into a song that could hopefully help other people who are dealing with the same grief and questions. There were moments where I wondered whether I was sharing too much, but then I realised that the very reason it felt frightening to say these things was probably the reason they needed to be said.

I don’t want to build a catalogue of songs that simply sound good. I want to build a body of work that means something. These songs have also taught me that I don’t need to stay inside one emotional box. I can be heartbroken in one song, strong in another, vulnerable in the next and hopefully joyful in others still to come. Those things don’t contradict each other, they are what it means to be human.

Ultimately, I want to be an artist people trust with real emotion. I want listeners to know that when I release something, there is a reason behind it and a story within it. I never want vulnerability to become a marketing tool or sadness to become a formula. If my music can give words to something someone has been carrying silently, or make them feel understood for three or four minutes, then that is the kind of artist I want to be. I think these three songs have taught me that my voice isn’t only the sound that comes out when I sing. My voice is also what I choose to say with the opportunity I’ve been given to sing, and I’m becoming increasingly conscious of making that count.

Q: When did you realise that ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ needed to become a song rather than remain something you carried privately?

A: I don’t think there was one dramatic moment where I suddenly decided, I need to write a song about this. It was much quieter than that.

For a long time, my pregnancy loss was something I carried very privately. Life moves forward and from the outside it can look as though you have moved forward with it, but there are certain experiences that never completely leave you. They simply find a different place to live inside you. What stayed with me most were the questions.

Not necessarily the big questions about why it happened, but the small, deeply human what-ifs. What if you had stayed? Who would you have been? What would life look like now? Would you have had my eyes? What would your laugh have sounded like? There is a strange kind of grief in missing someone you never had the opportunity to fully know, while at the same time feeling that you knew them in a way nobody else ever could.

Those thoughts would surface unexpectedly, and I realised that, although time had passed, there was still a story inside me that I had never really given a voice to. I think the moment it truly became a song was when I stopped asking myself whether I was comfortable sharing something so personal and started thinking about the person who might one day hear it. Pregnancy and infant loss can be incredibly lonely because so much of the grief happens privately. People often don’t know what to say and sometimes the person experiencing the loss doesn’t know how to explain what they are feeling either. There can also be an expectation that because the pregnancy was early or because other people never met that baby, the grief should somehow be smaller, but grief doesn’t measure a life by how long it existed.

Q: The title is such a simple question, but it opens an entire imagined life. When did those words become the title, and did finding the title change the way you wrote the rest of the song?

A: The words ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ were there quite early in the writing process because they captured the one thought that seemed to sit underneath everything else I wanted to say. It is such a simple question, but for me it carries an entire lifetime inside it.

When you experience pregnancy loss, you don’t only grieve what happened in that moment. There can also be a grief for everything that was supposed to come afterwards. The moment you know there is a little life growing inside you, even for a short time, your mind has this incredible ability to race ahead. You start imagining. You start wondering. Without even realising it, you begin creating a future, and then suddenly that future exists only in your imagination.

Once I had the title, it absolutely influenced the way I wrote the rest of the song because I realised I didn’t want the song to provide answers. I wanted it to live inside the questions. That was important to me. There is often such a strong instinct to make grief understandable, to find the lesson, the reason or eventually the closure, but there are experiences in life where you simply don’t get those answers. Pregnancy loss was one of those experiences for me. There are questions I will never be able to answer, and I wanted the song to be honest enough to leave them unanswered.

As I continued writing, I kept coming back to that question almost as a compass: What if you had stayed? Every lyric had to feel like it belonged somewhere inside that thought. It allowed me to explore the imagined milestones, the tiny details, the love that was already there and the strange reality of missing somebody while also wondering who they would have become. For me, ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ is not only the title of the song. It is the sentence that holds everything the song is trying to say.

Q: One of the most affecting ideas in the song is missing someone you never had the opportunity to know. How do you write honestly about a relationship that existed largely through imagination, hope and the future you had pictured?

A: I think the honest starting point is admitting what I don’t know. I don’t know who that child would have become. I can wonder about their personality or which parts of us I might have seen in them, but I can’t turn those thoughts into memories. That uncertainty is part of the loss.

What I do know is that there was love and hope. When you learn that a child might be coming into your life, you can begin making room for them long before there is anything for the rest of the world to see. You start to imagine a place for them in your family and in your everyday life. That relationship may be difficult to describe, but it is meaningful to the person living it.

In writing the song, I tried to stay with that truth. I didn’t want to invent a complete person on the page. I wanted to speak to the child I hoped to know and to acknowledge the thoughts that remained after losing that chance. That’s also why the question in the title matters so much. It lets me express love without claiming certainty. I think many people who have experienced pregnancy loss know that feeling. Grieving someone whose future you could imagine so vividly, while knowing you will never discover who they would actually have been.

Q: There are very ordinary images in the lyrics, such as wondering about a child’s laugh, birthdays and what they might have been like. Why were those small, everyday possibilities important to the story?

A: Because those are often the things you find yourself thinking about. “The future” is a huge phrase. When I think about what was lost, my mind doesn’t stay with that phrase. It goes to something much smaller and more human, like the sound of a laugh I will never hear. Those thoughts can appear unexpectedly. You might see a child reach a certain age or hear a parent describe a little habit their child has, and suddenly you wonder what your own experience might have been.

It isn’t always a special occasion that brings grief close. Sometimes it is an ordinary moment that no one around you realises means anything. I wanted those details in the song because they show how love can attach itself to everyday life. You’re imagining the big milestones of course, but also the small things like conversations, expressions, the personality you would slowly have come to know. Writing about those possibilities also made me feel vulnerable. They are such personal thoughts, and I wondered whether they would seem too simple to someone else. In the end, their simplicity was exactly why I wanted to include them. They sound like the questions a person really asks when they miss the chance to know someone.

Q: You have said that you wrote the song from “the place where the questions still live”. Do you think songwriting sometimes works best when it does not try to provide an answer?

A: I do, especially when the experience itself has no clear answer. It can be very tempting when you write about something painful to guide the listener towards a moment of peace or understanding. There are songs where that feels true. For this one, it wouldn’t have been honest for me to say I had reached a place where I no longer wondered.

That doesn’t mean I live every day inside those questions. I have a full life and there is happiness in it, but sometimes a thought returns and I’ve learned that I don’t need to argue myself out of feeling it. The fact that I still wonder doesn’t mean I haven’t continued living.

Writing the song allowed me to give those thoughts a place to go. I could say them clearly, without having to follow them with a lesson or an explanation. That brought its own kind of relief. I think music can do that for listeners too. When I hear a song that describes something I recognise, I don’t always need it to tell me how the story ends. Sometimes I’m grateful that someone was willing to stay with the feeling long enough to describe it accurately. That is what I hoped to do here.

Q: This is an intensely personal song, but your hope is that someone else might hear it and think, “Someone understands.” How do you balance telling your own story with leaving enough space for listeners to find their own meaning in it?

A: I try to begin with what is true for me rather than guessing what will be relatable. If I remove all the personal details, the song loses the thing that makes it honest. At the same time, I know that no two people experience loss in the same way, even when the circumstances sound similar.

That’s why I’ve tried to leave room for a listener’s own feelings. Someone who has experienced pregnancy loss may recognise one of the questions in the song but have a very different relationship with their grief. Someone else may hear it and think of a different person or a future that changed. I don’t want to tell either of them that they are hearing it incorrectly.

Sharing a personal song can feel strange. Once it is released, you no longer know what memories people are bringing to it. I’ve had to become comfortable with that. My responsibility is to tell my story with care. The listener has the freedom to find whatever meets them in it. If someone hears the song and feels understood, I would be deeply grateful. I don’t need their experience to match mine in every detail for that connection to be real.

Q: The timing of the release places the song close to Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day on 15 October. Does that wider moment matter to you? Or is the song simply something you needed to release when you were ready?

A: The wider moment matters to me. Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day gives people an opportunity to acknowledge children. Those experiences that may receive very little recognition in everyday conversation. For someone who has kept their grief private, knowing that there is a space to speak about it can mean a great deal.

I also know that people have complicated feelings about awareness days. Some may welcome the chance to talk, and others may find it too painful. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel they owe the world a public story about their loss. They are allowed to mark the day in whatever way feels right to them, including quietly.

Releasing the song close to that time feels meaningful. It can contribute to a conversation I care about, but I hope the song continues to find people beyond October. Grief does not keep a calendar. A person might hear it when their loss is new, or years later when a memory catches them by surprise. My hope is simply that the song is there when someone wants to listen. There is no right time to feel ready for a song like this. Not for the person sharing it or the person hearing it.

Q: The music video gives the song another dimension. What did you want the visual story to communicate that the lyrics could not, and was there anything you felt was important not to make too literal?

A: I wanted the video to show how isolating those questions can feel, even when you’re surrounded by the ordinary movement of life. After a loss you can be in a familiar place going about your day and suddenly find yourself somewhere else in your thoughts. People around you may have no idea that you’re wondering who your child might have been or what your life together could have looked like.

That’s why I wanted the video to capture moments of isolation in different settings. For me, the questions don’t belong to one place or one moment. They can return when I’m alone, but they can also come to me when life is carrying on around me. Visually, I wanted people to feel that distance between what is happening on the outside and what I’m experiencing inside. The lyrics can tell you what I’m asking, and the video can show what it feels like to be living with those thoughts.

I was also conscious that pregnancy loss looks different for everyone. We didn’t want to make the video too literal or suggest that there is one way this grief should appear. I wanted to leave room for viewers to bring their own memories to the images.

My hope is that someone who knows that feeling of being alone with their questions will recognise it in the video, and for someone who hasn’t experienced it, perhaps the video will help them understand how a person can seem present in their everyday life while carrying something they rarely speak about.

Q: You recorded the song with Mark Beling, continuing a creative relationship that began with ‘Now That You’re Gone’. What has changed between you as collaborators since that first recording?

A: There is a level of trust that comes from having already made something personal together. ‘Now That You’re Gone’ was about my father. Mark saw quite early in our working relationship how much it matters to me that a song’s emotion comes through honestly. I also learned that I could talk to him about the story behind the music. That he would take it seriously.

By the time we worked on ‘What If You Had Stayed?’, I felt more confident explaining what I wanted from the recording. I’m still open to ideas and to being surprised. I’ve grown more comfortable saying, “This feels like me” or “This doesn’t quite express what I’m trying to say.” That makes the collaboration stronger.

Mark is a phenomenal producer because he listens carefully. He understood that this song needed support and sensitivity and he helped me bring it to life without losing the reason I wrote it. I’m grateful for the musical skill he brings, but also for the fact that I could be honest with him about what the song means to me. Working together again has also reminded me that trust in a studio is built through conversation. It gives you the freedom to try things, to speak up, and to keep looking until the recording feels true.

Q: You have said that Mark understood that the production needed to support the story rather than overwhelm it. Was there anything you deliberately held back from doing in the studio because the song needed space to breathe?

A: I was aware of the temptation to make every emotional line sound bigger. When you are recording a song about loss, you can feel as though you must prove how much it means. Through the arrangement or through the way you sing it. But the words were already saying something difficult. I didn’t want to push the listener towards a feeling that the story could convey on its own. For me, giving the song space meant paying attention to what was happening around each line. Could you hear the words clearly? Did a musical choice help you stay with the thought, or did it draw your attention away from it? Mark understood those questions and the direction I wanted to take.

It also meant allowing quieter moments to remain quiet. A person asking, “What if you had stayed?” isn’t necessarily shouting. Sometimes the question is most painful when it is barely spoken. I wanted the production to feel supportive. Like there was enough room for the listener to think between the lines. Holding something back can be difficult when you care deeply about a song. In this case, restraint helped protect its intimacy.

Q: You said that the vocal needed to remain vulnerable because this was not a story you wanted to sing “from a distance.” Is that kind of emotional honesty? Something you actively pursue in the studio? Or did this song demand something different from you?

A: I always want to believe what I’m singing. Even when I’m performing a song someone else wrote. I need to find a way into the story. With this song, that connection was already there. That brought a different challenge. I knew exactly what the words meant to me, so there were moments when singing them felt very exposed.

In a studio, it can be tempting to focus entirely on whether you sang a line cleanly. That matters! But for this recording I also had to ask whether it sounded like I was speaking from inside the experience. If I became too concerned with sounding composed, I could lose something essential in the delivery. I didn’t set out to make the vocal sound fragile. I wanted to give each line the feeling it naturally carried.

Some thoughts are direct, whilst others are much harder to let out. I wanted those differences to be audible. Recording it required me to trust that I didn’t need to demonstrate emotion at every second. If I stayed close to the words and what they meant to me, the listener would be able to hear it.

Q: ‘Spookasem Woorde’ allowed you to tell your story in Afrikaans. ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ returns to English. Does the language you write in change the way you access emotion or tell a story?

A: It changes the sound and shape of a thought for me. Afrikaans can express something with a particular closeness and texture that I love.

‘Spookasem Woorde’ felt right in Afrikaans partly because of the contrast in those words themselves. They sound soft and sweet while the song looks more closely at what happens when promises have no substance behind them.

‘What If You Had Stayed?’ arrived as a very direct question in English. I could hear it in that language. I didn’t want to force it into a different shape. The plainness of the words felt important. It sounds like something a person might genuinely ask themselves in a quiet moment.

I don’t think one language gives me access to deeper emotion than the other. Each lets me notice different rhythms, sounds and possibilities. Sometimes a phrase feels natural in Afrikaans. Other times the thought is clearest to me in English. What matters most is that the language feels lived in when I sing it. I want to sound like myself. Whether I’m writing in Afrikaans or English. I want the listener to feel that the words belong to the song, not that I chose a language for a particular effect.

Q: You spent so much time with a song that carries this much emotional weight. What helps you put the songwriter aside and simply be Celeste again?

A: Spending time with the people I love helps me return to the ordinary rhythm of my life. After sitting with a song like ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ for so long, I need the ordinary moments that make up my life now. Time with my family, a braai with friends. Everyone talking over one another and laughing about something that has nothing to do with music. I can relax and simply enjoy being there.

I also love spending time at the gun range. It asks for my full attention. I must focus on what I’m doing in that moment and I find that grounding. When I’ve spent hours in my head, writing, recording or thinking about how people might receive the song, it helps me feel present again.

The people closest to me don’t expect me to have a polished way of talking about the song all the time. I can share how I’m feeling if I want to or I can have a completely normal day with them. I appreciate that more than I can say. Putting the songwriter aside doesn’t mean putting the experience aside. There are days when one of the questions in the song still comes back to me. Then I am reminded that my life holds love, friendship, laughter and new memories too. Being with my people helps me make room for all of it. They simply let me be Celeste for a while.

Celeste Swift’s ‘What If You Had Stayed?’ is available for streaming from Friday, 2 October, accompanied by the official music video. The single was produced and mixed by Mark Beling of Mean Mr Mustard, with mastering by Darryl De Lange.

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