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‘Will I just disappear?’ Laura Marling on the ecstasy of motherhood – and why she might quit music

After six Top 10 hits, the singer-songwriter might ‘wind down’ her career at 34 – but not before a stunning new album that celebrates the psychedelic high of parenting

The closing track features the couplet: “I want you to know that I gave it up willingly / Nothing real was lost in the bringing of you to me.” On opener Child of Mine – a lush hymn to the cosmic joys and terrors of the mother-child bond – she vows she is “not gonna miss” a single moment of her daughter’s life. Having moved from Hampshire to London as a teenager – where she quickly fell in with the mid-00s nu-folk scene, providing backing vocals for Noah and the Whale and collaborating with then-boyfriend Marcus Mumford – she subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to channel “this insatiable sense of freedom; I just wanted to be driving my own car across America with no one else there.” Later, regressive hypnotherapy unearthed a supposed “core memory” of Marling as a baby left crying outside in a buggy, until a babysitter appeared and “dismissed my distress”. Ed Sheeran is a songwriting bot – as good as an algorithm at producing what’s popular Generally, however, she has little time for the accusations of plagiarism that plague contemporary pop, citing Elvis Costello’s approval of Olivia Rodrigo’s Pump It Up sound-alike Brutal (he wrote: “It’s how rock’n’roll works.

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