Kate Marie Nash (born 6 July 1987) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and actress. Her singles "Foundations" (2007) and "Do-Wah-Doo" (2010) charted at numbers 2 and 15 on the UK singles chart and her albums Made of Bricks (2007) and My Best Friend Is You (2010) charted at numbers 1 and 8 on the UK Albums Chart.
An attempt at diversifying her sound from indie pop prompted her record label to drop her and she released three subsequent EPs and her third and fourth albums, Girl Talk (2013) and Yesterday Was Forever (2018), on her own label. A fifth album, 9 Sad Symphonies, was released on Kill Rock Stars in 2024. Nash co-wrote "Poison", a hit for Rita Ora, and featured on works by Lethal Bizzle, Kano, Fidlar, Watsky, Holychild, Baby Dave, and Soft Play.
Aside from music, Nash played Rhonda "Britannica" Richardson in the Netflix comedy-drama series GLOW (2017–2019) and has appeared in the films Greetings from Tim Buckley (2012), Powder Room (2013), Syrup (2013), Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans (2019), and Coffee Wars (2023).
Early life
Kate Marie Nash was born on 6 July 1987 in North Harrow in London and grew up in the town's Irish community. She was the second of three daughters to a hospice nurse mother from Dublin, Ireland, and a systems analyst father from Dartford, England. She began playing the piano aged eight and writing music in her free time aged 15. She attended St John Fisher Catholic Primary School in Pinner, and enrolled on a theatre course at the BRIT School. She studied there until summer 2005, after which she took a gap year and applied unsuccessfully to several drama colleges.
In early 2006, on the day she received a rejection letter from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, she fell down her home's staircase and had to spend several weeks recuperating, during which time her parents bought her an electric guitar and an amplifier and she uploaded several songs she recorded to MySpace. That April, she performed her debut gig at Trinity Bar in Harrow, for which she was paid £30; realising she could be paid for performing live, she quit her job at retailer River Island.
Career Lily Allen subsequently featured Nash's MySpace page in her "Top 8"; by January 2007, Nash had taken part in writing sessions featuring Paul Epworth, Valgeir Sigurðsson, and Allen collaborator Future Cut. She released her debut single, a double-A-side single comprising the industrial track "Caroline's a Victim" and the acoustic track "Birds", the following month on Moshi Moshi Records; she signed to the Polydor offshoot Fiction Records the month after that. Nash's second single, June 2007's "Foundations", spent five weeks at No. 2 on the UK singles chart behind Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Timbaland's "The Way I Are", once missing out on No. 1 by 16 copies. The success of the single prompted the label to bring forward the release of her debut album by five weeks.
Upon release in August 2007, Made of Bricks charted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, having sold 56,000 copies in its first week. Made of Bricks was eventually certified Platinum in November 2007 by the British Phonographic Industry, and also charted at number 36 on the US Billboard 200 chart in January 2008. Among the album's tracks were "Birds", "Foundations", "Mouthwash", "Pumpkin Soup", and "Merry Happy", the last three of which were also released as singles; "Mouthwash" and "Pumpkin Soup" made the UK singles chart. Nash also won the Q Award for Breakthrough Artist in October 2007, the Best British Female Solo Artist award at the 2008 Brit Awards and the NME Award for Best Solo Artist in February 2008.
In July and August 2007, Nash featured on Lethal Bizzle's "Look What You Done" from his album Back to Bizznizz and Kano's "Me & My Microphone" from his album London Town. The year after, following relentless touring and a lack of nutrition on tour, Nash developed alcoholism and candidiasis and suffered a breakdown in Germany, prompting her to take a year out, during which she developed obsessive–compulsive disorder. She cut out wheat and dairy on the advice of a specialist and then meat before moving into a rented flat in Bethnal Green she later bought with her boyfriend Ryan Jarman, who she met in 2007. She also spent time working at a refuge for survivors of domestic violence and self-harm. Jarman later introduced her to Bernard Butler, who she began recording her second album with August 2009. She subsequently began playing bass guitar in The Receeders, a punk band formed with two men who were supporting her solo content.
In February 2010, Nash released "I Just Love You More" as a free download from her official website. She released a music video for "Do-Wah-Doo" in March 2010, with the song receiving a physical release the month after; the track made No. 15 on the UK singles chart. Both "I Just Love You More" and "Do-Wah-Doo" appeared on her second studio album My Best Friend Is You, which made the UK Albums Chart at No. 8 in April but left the chart quickly; the album also contained "Kiss That Grrrl" and "Later On", which were subsequently released as singles. To promote the record, Nash embarked on a series of smallscale gigs, which lacked Nash's hits and caused walkouts; subsequent gigs were received more positively and featured Supercute! as an opening act.
2011–2014: Change of musical direction In April 2011, she set up Have 10p Records, an extension of an earlier performing arts trust fund she had set up which had funded works by Sarah Solemani and Brigitte Aphrodite; Aphrodite and her single "I Dream Myself Awake" became the label's first signee and release. Nash released a cover of "Last Christmas" with Jarman in December 2011, though broke up with him shortly after. By August 2011, Nash had signed to Greetings from Tim Buckley, a film about Tim and Jeff Buckley, which premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. She wrote her third album between August 2011 and February 2012 in her Bethnal Green studio and recorded it in Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles in March. She recorded the album and several music videos at her expense as Fiction Records had told her they would reimburse her after her contract was renegotiated.
Nash contributed a cover of Cub's "My Chinchilla", then a regular in her setlists, to the March 2012 Nardwuar and The Evaporators' album Busy Doing Nothing!. By June 2012, Nash was best known for gentle indie pop music. That month, Nash embarked on a 12-date Faster Pussycat Run Run Tour across the UK and released the song "Under-Estimate the Girl" for free on her website, which she had written, recorded, and made a video for in under 24 hours. The punk rock track received mostly negative feedback and compelled Fiction Records to drop her in August 2012. That summer, she had recorded a small role for Syrup with Aram Rappaport, who subsequently directed the music videos shot for her third album; the film was released the following year. By October 2012, she had covered Fidlar's "Cocaine"; that month, she featured on their track "Awwwkwaarrrddd" and appeared as Buffy in a production of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, with Feeling" at Hackney Picturehouse.
She announced and released on Have 10p Records the EP Death Proof in November 2012, a stopgap between her second and third albums. The EP comprised five tracks including a slower take on The Kinks's "All Day and All of the Night" and the title track, which had been written about a heart condition Nash had suffered as a teenager. The EP was promoted with videos for "Fri-End?" and the title track and funded by PledgeMusic, a service artists used to sell goods and services. Emily Barker of NME wrote in July 2013 that Nash offered on PledgeMusic "a recording of your favourite children's book/short and/or ghost story (£350), a pampering mani/pedicure date (£400), or a 'Kate + cake + acoustic live songs combo' (£2,000)", among other things.
Nash released the Christmas song "Faith" in December 2012, by which time she had filmed for the film Powder Room, which was released in December 2013. In February 2013, she released her own single "3AM" and featured on Watsky's "Hey, Asshole". By that March, she had written Willow Smith's "I Am Me" and had produced the bulk of an album for Supercute!. That month, they released "Love Love Leave Love" from the album and she released her third full-length studio album, Girl Talk. Released through Have 10p Records, it incorporated elements of punk rock and featured the tracks "Death Proof", "3AM", "Fri-End", and "OMyGod!", the last of which was subsequently remixed for single release.
For Record Store Day 2013, she released "Free My Pussy" on heart-shaped vinyl, backed with "Free Pussy Riot Now!". She subsequently released a video for the former. By December, she had released the Christmas EP Have Faith with Kate Nash This Christmas, which featured "Faith" and a track by The Tuts. That April, she and many others featured on "Go Forth, Feminist Warriors", a track released as the theme for the teen blog Rookie. In July 2014, she appeared in the advert The Distortion of Sound, which discussed declining sound quality caused by streaming, and uploaded to SoundCloud the track "She Rules", which was accompanied by a video she recorded on her iPhone.
2014–2020: GLOW and Underestimate the Girl
Nash moved to Los Angeles in January 2014. After suffering from loneliness as a result of not having a label and finding that touring was expensive without a backer, she sought a new label, but took offense at the way she was treated in meetings. Later that year, she signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music and co-wrote a number of songs as part of writing rooms including "Poison" with Julia Michaels, but found the experience demoralising. "Poison" was later a hit for Rita Ora. In March 2015, she played Bridget Bishop in the HBO pilot Devil You Know, which had been written by Jenji Kohan about the Salem witch trials but left unaired. That year, after finding that her manager had misappropriated her money to pay for his wedding and left her almost bankrupt, she moved back to her parents's house in London and sold her belongings for survival. She later settled with her manager out of court.
Later that year, Nash returned to LA after Kohan offered her a part in a subsequent series, which would become Rhonda "Brittanica" Richardson of GLOW, a Netflix series based on the 1980s TV series GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Richardson was based on the latter series's Godiva, a British character played by Dawn Maestas. The cast were taught how to wrestle by Chavo Guerrero Jr. specifically for the series and Nash stopped drinking alcohol as part of the fitness regimen. She has stated that the show was the first project she worked on that had a human resources department and has credited her nude scenes with increasing her body confidence. First broadcast in June 2017 and recommissioned for three further series, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down production midway through the second episode of series 4 and filming did not resume before the show's cancellation in October 2020.