INTERVIEW


We are obviously thrilled to be welcoming you back to Norwich, and to be hearing you perform tracks from Stay Lucky, your latest album release. However, there are many earlier songs that fans will also want to hear again. How do you decide what makes it into the list for each show? I try to think of songs that I may not have played much over the years, and throw a‘rarity’ in during a show, and I also canvass fans on social media to see what they would like to hear. I do tend to lean towards whatever my latest album is if I haven’t toured it much before, but realise that now that I’m six albums and many EPs in there is a lot of material to cover! It’s knowing that there are some songs I can’t not play, and then hopefully picking a lesswell known one that someone in the audience has been hoping to hear. Stay Lucky is clearly a very personal album, with songs about devotion, love and even death. How much of life do you believe is the result of luck or fate, and how much is achieved through hard work and strong relationships? Tat’s quite the question! I think it’s a 50/50 split really - we get dealt a certain hand at birth in terms of geography, family, health etc and the rest is up to us. I reckon Monopoly is a fairly good metaphor for life - I suppose you’re kind of hoping to end up in Park


8 / APR-MAY 2018 / OUTLINEONLINE.CO.UK


Lane, but if not, Regent Street will do and trying not to go directly to jail without passing Go... You have always seemed unwilling to be pigeon-holed by your song- writing. How much of that has been a conscious decision, and how much is simply a reflection of how you have developed as an artist, and as a person, over the course of six albums? It wasn’t a conscious decision at all really - I’ve just always had a tendency to follow my muse wherever it went. Sometimes it would becommercially successful, sometimes it wouldn’t - I’ve just written whatever I wanted to at the time. It’s creatively quite lazy, in some ways. You have written songs for, among others, Kylie Minogue. Have you ever been tempted to switch away from performing and touring, and concentrate instead on full-time song-writing, as did Norwich’s Cathy Dennis? No. I never intended to write songs for other people - it came about because Kylie’s A&R man heard a song of mine I had written but not yet released and convinced me to give it to her. It was a fun experience, that led to working with more artists in a co-writing capacity but I simply didn’t enjoy the process enough to do it full time and it’s not something I plan on


doing again. Kate Bush has been cited by you as an iconic influence, but from the new generation of singer songwriters which names currently excite you? I’m a big fan of James Blake -especially his second album, ‘Overgrown’. Um. I don’t actually listen to other singer songwriters much when I come to think of it. People always imagine that if you are one, that’s what you listen to, but of the new generation of artists I’m more interested in people who don’t necessarily fit the singer songwriter term. Laura Mvula is another newish artist I really love, and also Michael Kiwanuka if we’re specifically thinking about people who write and perform their own material in a traditional sense. You have had albums released by the likes of Polydor and Geffen, as well as on your own label, Idaho. What advice would you give to any new artists being courted by a major label? Try to negotiate a decent retention or reversal clause. Te long game is owning your rights because streaming - when it works - is a potentially endless flow of dosh so hang on to your rights in some shape or form if you can. Tere is one deal I can think of recently where the artist in question was streaming so well, and getting so much buzz that no major


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