“It was a bit of a thrill.” That’s how folk singer Olivia Chaney describes the moment she realized a song that reflected her personal life had ended up in the film Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Margot Robbie.
About an hour into the film, Robbie's character appears in a wedding dress, walking alone on the moor, accompanied by a female English voice – pure, stripped of orchestration – singing the 19th-century ballad Dark Eyed Sailor.
The lyrics are about a woman wandering alone and a man who leaves for “seven years” before returning. The vocals are Chaney’s, accompanied only by the drone of a harmonium.
Long before Fennell found the song online, Chaney was preparing to sing it for a live session in 2013 on Mark Radcliffe's BBC Radio 2 show.
At the time, she herself was involved in a Brontë-style “love triangle”: at the beginning of a relationship with the man who is now her husband and the father of her two children, while circumstances almost led them both to other marriages. “To see this song used for Cathy’s feelings, feeling connected to the wrong man, was really scary,” she says.
Fennell told Chaney that she was choosing between three of her songs and settled on Dark Eyed Sailor because she “connected emotionally” to it. The use of vocals without an orchestra, Chaney says, highlights the song’s bare, fragile feel.
The return of this ballad coincided with a new phase in Chaney's career, which after several albums of original material – including Circus of Desire (2024) – is returning to folk. She is also launching a new folk-rock project, News From Nowhere, with well-known British musicians and a clear tendency to cross the boundaries between genres and eras.
Chaney found her way to folk music in her 20s, after a broad classical and jazz background. A chance meeting at the Southbank Centre in London with a street musician – Matthew Ord – led her to traditional songs and, eventually, to Dark Eyed Sailor. It was Ord who taught her the song and who one day brought home a harmonium, an instrument that is now inseparable from her performance.
Since then, Chaney has become one of the most respected voices in British folk, collaborating with iconic figures and being part of internationally acclaimed projects. In parallel, she continues to explore the connections between folk music, classical music and contemporary culture – an approach that is also reflected in the soundtrack of Wuthering Heights, where she also features the voice of Charli xcx.
For years, Chaney's version of Dark Eyed Sailor existed only in live recordings on YouTube. It was only recently that she released a recorded version, which she says "finally found its place" when it was heard at the film's premiere in Leicester Square. "When the song started and my voice was heard all alone, I squeezed my husband's hand so tightly that I remembered the moment of birth," she says.
The song also returns at the end of the film, when Heathcliff returns to Cathy and in the final minutes full of longing. “It’s a song I love very much,” says Chaney. “It always comes back and haunts you.” /GazetaExpress/
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