So, here we are with your 2nd album, It’s Not You, It’s Me. (Any clue to the songs there, I wonder?) They always call it the ‘difficult second album’. Was it?
Er, it was quite difficult but not too difficult. I suppose the most difficult thing about the first album was that I didn’t really expect anyone to listen to it, whereas this time people are going to listen to it and want to have an opinion about it. That was the only thing I found difficult about it, not the actual writing of songs.
The album has been produced by Greg Kurstin, who has worked with the likes of All Saints, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Inara George etc. How did you hook up with him?
I was working in a studio in north London and he was working on a wonderful band that you might have heard of called All Saints who used to be on my record label. They were in the studio next door to me and so I kind of got introduced to him through them. We hit it off and we just decided to work on some stuff. We did three songs on my last record together and I decided I wanted to make this record with one person so that it felt like it was one body of work the whole way through and that it didn’t feel like it was me working with lots of sort of different pop producers and thrown together.
So how did you work out a system? He normally lives in the USA, of course...
I went over there a couple of times for short amounts of time. We’d swap it because Greg’s got a wife and I think it was a bit mean to ask him to come over here for long periods of time. I wanted to take it slowly because I think, with the way that I write songs it’s so much in the moment, about what I’m thinking about at that particular time. I can’t really keep coming up with stuff just like one after another, so I have to kind of do a week, or a week and a half and then have three or four weeks off, then go back in and try it again once I’ve experienced some more life. He came over to England for the first session that we did and we hired out this tiny little cottage in Moreton-In-Marsh and we just sat there for a week and a half and banged out five or six of the songs which I think are all on the record. It was quite weird the way me and Greg worked, the first couple of days we listened to other people’s stuff and tried to get inspired. We listened to lots of Keane (laughter) who I love and some Coldplay stuff, then we listened to lots of happy hardcore dance music, ragga, and jungle, stuff that I used to be influenced by when I was a teenager and the dance music that I really, really like. We tried to mix the two basically and have that sort of ethereal, big-sounding chord progressions, and then, mixed it with the more modern beats.
OK, so the two of you are in the studio. Who does what?
We both do it all together really. There’s not really a routine, it just happens how it happens. Sometimes he’ll just be playing the piano and I’ll just be sitting there scribbling on my notepad, not really writing words, but more doodling and he’ll suddenly play some chords that I like and I’ll go, ‘Oh, that was really nice.’ Then he’ll kind of make that into a verse and I’ll put some words to go over it. He’ll come up with some more chords that go for a chorus and we just kind of build things. Sometimes we’ll get a verse and we won’t get a chorus, we’ll leave it and come back to it in a couple of months and it will work and sometimes, I’m quite impatient and if I feel something isn’t working straight away I don’t want to carry on with it. Sometimes I’ll really tear my hair out and go, ‘Oh, I can’t think of anything today. I’m really driving myself insane,’ and that is when Greg will go, ‘Why don’t we have a go at some of the stuff that we gave up on last time?’ Usually because I’m familiar with that track I’ll be able to come up with something, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
One of the most noticeable things about this CD is that, although the subjects are often quite dark and serious, the musical treatment is often quite bouncy and jolly. Greg’s musical ideas presumably make you laugh sometimes?
Yeah, really a lot. That’s why I work with Greg because he makes me laugh so much, he’s such a funny character to work with and at the end of it we are really, really good friends, but he’s mad. He’s constantly playing really weird things and we’re always kind of thinking. I think one day we might even write a musical because we love just writing silly things, and things with a lot of character. I think he definitely finds my lyrics, you know, if I’ve got like a sort of one-liner, he’ll laugh at that if it’s really kind of staring at you, but I don’t think he listens to the lyrics of the song from start to finish at the beginning. When he’s in the studio he’s thinking about his part and I’m thinking about my part. I think he saves his reflections for later.
So, as part of the process of writing songs, you make notes of things that you observe and things that happen to you. Those notebooks are really important. Ever lost one?
Yeah! I never keep any of my books. I don’t throw them away, I just misplace them. They’re not like the things that I hold on to, that’s what, you know, I’m trying to say. I’ll write if I’m in a studio and sometimes I won’t even take a book, I won’t even take a pen. I’ll write it on the back of a receipt if I don’t have anything to write on.
The Fear is about pursuit of fame and celebrity today. Is this from your point of view or somebody on the outside?
It was never written about me, although, in retrospect, listening to it I could see how people could put the two together and assume that it was, but actually it was just written for the young. It makes me sad just to think of young kids reading Heat magazine and being on gossip websites and thinking that that’s what they should be aspiring to be like. It’s not even saying, ‘Take it from me,’ but I know from being on this side that it isn’t all as fun as it looks. We all hide it a million times. People don’t want to hear it, but that’s the case and it makes me sad to think that’s what our society is becoming. Listen, I’m not going to sit here and complain about my life because I feel really happy for the things that I do have. There aren’t many twenty-three year-olds, especially in today’s financial climate, that have got their own house and can pay off the mortgage and, you know, get sent nice clothes all the time and I do have that, but that doesn’t mean that I have to enjoy ten middle-aged men standing outside my house with cameras all day, I don’t like them following me in their cars when I’m on my own, I don’t like people writing about my personality when they don’t know me. I find, I think, if people stuck to facts, I wouldn’t get so upset, but, I think, when people make judgement on my character from sources that don’t actually exist, that’s what upsets me because I feel like the general public are getting some idea of who I am and actually it’s not true at all. No, I hold back on that now really. I don’t blog so much. I don’t give so much of myself away, and now it’s got to the point where I don’t even let myself be photographed with a drink, even if it’s water in my hand just because I don’t like giving people ammunition anymore. It’s just too upsetting for me, not only me but for my widowed grandfather who has nothing better to do than sit in his house reading The Sun and The Mirror who comes across all these horrible stories about his grand-daughter and doesn’t know any better than to believe them. That’s what upsets me, it’s those people that get affected. Everyone feels that they have access to you as a human being. I get annoyed with people that start filming you when you’re just walking down the street. I just start feeling like, ‘Oh, I don’t even have a right to walk down the street any more.’ The only thing I can sort of compare it to would be being in a zoo and people sort of pointing and looking.
Track 7. Never Gonna Happen, is another serious look at a relationship. As a writer, you sit around watching people, often at 5 in the morning, when they’re not at their best. Is there a point where you think, ‘I could be doing something much better, like going to bed’?
Yes, there is indeed. Yeah, what am I doing up? You lot are idiots. I’m going to bed. I can’t bear watching the sun come up I’ve never been one, right, even when in my Ibiza days when I was raving, just nothing makes me feel more sick than knowing the sun’s coming up and it’s going to get warm, ugh! (Laughter) I’m always trying to do it as if, trying to put it into a way where it’s like, ‘Hey, this is how I’m seeing things. Do you see it like this as well?’ It’s kind of like trying to find a common ground between me and the listener, really.
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