Kate Nash: 40-year-old men hanging out with me, happy to make a profit, without worrying about my health »| The music

Theeaten in 2017, an article in Buzzfeed titled: "33 singers who exist only in the spirit of British Millennials". At number 9, Kate Nash, the sensation of MySpace 2000, had a huge success with Foundations and won the best British woman to the British. The article explained: "She was the pretty girl dressed in a vintage dress that we all wanted to be back in 2007. Presumably, she is wearing today baggy sweaters and DMs, but who knows?" ? "

The article touched a nerve with Nash. Shortly before she was published, she was suffering slaps in her throat in Death Valley, California. Exceeded by her label, in conflict with her manager, she remained bankrupt, broken, moaning at the "wankers" of the music industry. "It's a matter of life and death for me because making music keeps me alive – and being in the music industry almost killed me," she said.

This moment is featured in the documentary Underestimate the Girl, which aired on the BBC3 iPlayer channel at the end of June and garnered a wave of support from Nash. "What I really liked was seeing my fans very moved," she says. "The musicians would say to me," Oh my God, I was crying, I came across the same thing. "I think a lot of musicians are in the same situation."

I meet Nash at his favorite vegan cafe in Hackney, East London. She wears her red hair in tufts as she did in the days of MySpace – but her falling jogging pants, her jacket top and her toned physique suggest a new look of steel. This is partly due to her training program for Glow, the comedy wrestling Netflix that has helped her in her recent career to become an actress. But it also reflects someone who has learned his lessons the hard way.

Nash points out that documentary has never been so brutal. Director Amy Goldstein approached after a performance at Coachella in 2014, while Nash was spending her money on touring punk songs from her self-published Girl Talk album. The intention was to make an optimistic and vaguely stimulating story about a fearful English musician settling in Los Angeles and making his comeback. It became a sort of millennial version of documentary Bros, with Nash having to make even more humiliating compromises to make his music. But "shit really hit the fan" when she discovered that all the money she had managed to collect had been spent, which resulted in a total breakdown of her relationship with her new director, Gary Marella. "I guess I just decided to continue filming because I had the impression that it was a very important story to tell," she said. Although it is a personal story, it has a wider resonance, illustrating the collapse of the music industry.

At age 32, Nash signed an agreement with Polydor at the age of 17, after Lily Allen's success on MySpace. She recorded her first songs in her bedroom in Harrow, North London, after having a broken foot in her work at Nando's and her fresh-faced eclecticism earned her a young and fan base. devoted. When I ask her who she was influenced, she goes freely among Celine Dion, the Spice Girls, Nirvana, Misteeq, the Beatles and the British garage, before landing on the Buzzbad. "This is the group I started working on and helped me write songs. I was like: A-ha! You can just talk about working on River Island or whatever. "

She believes that MySpace is a brief window in the history of music where teenagers really take control. "It was children who put music on their pages, others listening to songs, people from labels who communicated with people like me. MySpace was so punk. That's probably why it was closed – it was like in the industry, it can not happen because we do not have control.

But her success was terribly disoriented and she signed her recording contract with extreme anxiety. "My mother was like," Look, if you do not want to do that, we can just take the subway, go home and go to Pizza Express and forget about it. "And she thought so sincerely, but then my boss at the time said," Well done. "And my mother was like," Excuse me, I do not play my own child!

But everyone was playing it. Polydor worked tirelessly: she toured for two years and ended up having panic attacks. Meanwhile, the tabloids were experimenting with their own new business model; Nash stories with a button (or similar) made regular appearances in the sidebars of shame. Nash is amazed at not having received pastoral care. "Artists often have mental health issues. And their way of life is unstable because of all the comments of travelers and the media about their lives. Now, I'm like, "How did all these 40-year-old men hang out with me and were they happy to take advantage of me without being worried about my health?"

After his second album collapsed, Nash began to channel his rage into his music. In 2012, she uploaded a new thrashy title entitled Under-Estimate The Girl and was duly removed by her label. The title of NME was: "Kate Nash committed suicide – and it seems incredible." She maintains that it was the best thing she ever did. But it 's one thing to find her voice and another to make money with her, as she discovered when moving to LA.

This is where the documentary takes up the story – and sometimes it gets a bit squeaky, especially when Nash starts to hit. There is an atrocious scene in an advertising agency, where Marella persuades Nash to give a concert at lunch time in hopes of earning money to influence. "It's the kind of thing I did all the time," she laughs. "If you are on an independent label, you are not getting enough money. And if you are of age, you do not get enough support. Marella also awarded her a publishing contract, but she hated being part of a pop production line. "These places are so weird. Someone finds a word like "volcano," then everyone shouts tons of metaphors about love, which looks like lava and other things. "

After her failure in Death Valley, she went back to her parents' home, but she still had a tax bill to pay on her publishing contract and additional legal fees. In the end, she had to sell the apartment that she had bought with the money that she had earned early in her career. "I remember being at my mother's house and lying on my sister's bed for some reason. I was frozen and I could not even cry anymore. When I had to sell my apartment, I was like, "I'm an idiot, I make terrible decisions, I'm attracted to bad people. I can not do that because I'm too naive and I'm too open, I trust people too much. But I can not harden myself, I do not even know how to do that. "

The film could easily have ended with Nash's return to Nando. But eventually, she found a resolution. "You have to leave:" Why do I want to do that? It's me who tortures me, it's really painful, I'm on the edge, why do I have to continue? But it's not a choice, it's who I am.

The stars have somehow aligned themselves: a successful campaign on Kickstarter has connected her to her fans; a surprise reminder of Netflix has opened new horizons. But she has always faced two years of financial upheaval and legal machinations. Marella offered to settle three-quarters of her claim amicably, but she decided to take the risk of going to court and eventually won her case. Marella is still in the music business and recently took Timbaland as a customer.

Nash's experience in Glow has not only taught him some useful fighting techniques; it also showed him that the creative industries can be professional and unionized. "As many problems as in Hollywood, I feel much more protected, because if there is a serious problem, I have a person to talk to. Where is it in the music industry? We need it. Because our lifestyles are badociated with the party, it does not have to be professional. But you are like, "Where are the HR?"

She feels particularly protective towards young beginner musicians. "I always say," Here's my number, call me. " I have many artists with whom I am in touch and whom I always watch. I do not think of anyone watching her, although she found a kind note from Annie Lennox as she cleaned her room the other day. She also remained friends with Sam Duckworth, aka Get Cape. Wear a cape. Fly, who, like her, now publishes music directly to her fans. "You have to find your own way now," she says.

Things seem to be looking for Nash. She is in a relationship with an old school friend, a hairdresser, who is about to move to LA with her. "This is the first boyfriend I had as a very good person," she says with a laugh. "It has become a bit of a Notting Hill romcom by accident." She is also part of the movie Horrible Histories, released this summer. And the anniversary tour of her first album, Made of Bricks, in 2017, reminded her why she got into music. She was initially surprised to see teenagers in the audience. But a fan explained that he had listened to her at the age of eight and that she had found this strangely touching.

"They are so honest with me because I am honest with them," she says. "My opening has brought these special and fragile people, people who have problems and are shy enough. I like it so much. That's why I'm not hardened. "

Kate Nash: Underestimate the girl is available to watch on the BBC iPlayer