Good morning,
How was your weekend? Oh really? That sounds nice. Well, don’t be blue that it’s over because in today’s edition we’ve got a nice old chinwag with singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy to kickstart your week. If you’re one of the people who have helped Dermot’s listening figures on streaming platforms to reach five billion, you’ll be more than familiar with him and his music, and if you’re not, read on to find out more. He’s a lovely lad, very good at football too it turns out. We’ll see all you loyal subscribers on Wednesday for more New Cue action. If you’re not a subscriber, just click down there to join the club. It’s a great club, you’ll love it.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Dermot Kennedy
To say Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy had a good start to his recording career would be something of an understatement. Some of the statistics on the 30-year-old’s 2019 debut, Without Fear, are fairly jaw-dropping - 1.5 million copies sold, 5 billion streams and Ireland’s best-selling album of the millennium, ahead of U2, Adele, James Blunt and perennial Christmas favourite Michael Bublé.
He’s also pretty handy with a football as well which doesn’t seem fair. Kennedy abandoned a possible career as a professional to pursue music, but still managed to score a penalty and win man of the match at Soccer Aid a couple of years ago.
On Friday, Kennedy releases his second album, Sonder, which successfully swerves ‘difficult second album syndrome’ to deliver a set of soulful, hip hop and electronica-flecked songs. Chris spoke to Dermot over Zoom a couple of weeks ago about following up a mega-selling record, getting Roy Keane’s autograph and how you’re never more than six feet away from a Dermot Kennedy fan at any one time. If you want to help Dermot smash some of his own records you can pre-order Sonder HERE
Hello Dermot, how are you?
I’m good, man. How are you?
Mustn’t grumble. Are you sat in front of a laptop doing back-to-back interviews for most of the day?
I am, yeah. You’re my first today, though.
Oh, excellent. Make sure that if you come up with any good answers to my questions to not to give them up to any other journalists.
I won’t, don’t worry.
Is it quite a new feeling for you, coming into a second album release knowing that - to put it mildly – there’s a lot of people waiting to hear your songs this time around?
Definitely. The nature of all this is you have to seem really self-assured at every step, but truthfully, everything is happening to you for the first time. I get asked a lot if I felt a lot of pressure with this album, but I think ultimately it’s quite freeing because you can only just do your best and I have. It takes the pressure off just to think that and realise that I got to this point by making music that feels good to me so I’m just going to carry on doing that.
Was it quite daunting, though, when it came to sitting down and writing these new songs to think, ‘OK, several million people might listen to this one…’ Did you have to try and put yourself back into the headspace you had when no one knew who you were?
Exactly. It’s always about trying to get back to that headspace. The way I used to write songs before I had a career, because there was no expectation on anything, it was a very beautiful thing. It was entirely organic. I was just writing songs purely for myself and to make myself feel better. So it’s about trying to get back there. I guess you have to be conscious of the fact that you have an audience now and I’m in a position where I get to play songs to lots of people, so how a song is going to translate live is very important to me. I’m always thinking about that.
Obviously, most people start a career wanting to be successful, but did you ever foresee it would take off in quite the way it did?
I always had confidence because, for me, I’m coming up to the 15th year of knowing I wanted to be a musician. So, I’m reluctant to say it’s something I’m surprised by. But also, it is definitely surreal and bizarre when I hear about billions of streams and stuff like that. That’s not something I thought I could do. The dream for me when I was younger was playing shows to really, really massive crowds. That’s what the dream it looked like for me. I just want to be the best I can.
Your debut is the best-selling album of the millennium so far in Ireland. So you’ve got 978 years to hang onto that one. That’s something to aim for.
Yeah, stuff like that is insane.
It must feel like quite an abstract thing to hear stuff like that, that you’ve sold 1.5 million copies of your album and there’s been 5 billion streams of your songs. Statistically, you know how they say you’re never more than six feet away from a rat, you must walk down the street wherever you are and think, ‘I’m not more than six feet away from someone who’s heard one of my songs…’
I know. But also, I’m at this lovely stage now where in every city I’m in I like to take long walks around the place and I’ve cultivated a base of supporters who if we bumped into each other, we can actually just have a chat. It’s not necessarily this sort of celebrity encounter, we just have a conversation about music and emotions and how music makes them feel and I talk about how it makes me feel. It’s a very nice interaction every time it happened.
It’s almost a bit like market research. To know how your music is affecting other people, does that help or hinder you as a songwriter?
I think it helps. I could write things all day long that are super cryptic about my own life and it could be extremely personal, but I don’t want to write in a way that just isolates the listener. It’s always a balance where I want my lyrics to set me apart and I want to be different from other artists, but also I want to write in such a way that I can let people in and let them share their story with me.
Was it a challenge when it came to writing this record to have songs that are still relatable? Not to be writing songs about being sat in a hotel room or crying over a big pile of money. Did you have to think, ‘Right, my life’s changed beyond all recognition. How am I going to approach writing songs and finding subject matters to write about?’
Obviously, it’s the cliché thing of having your whole life to make your first album and then the second one is all tour buses and hotel rooms. But I think it’s important for me to know that the ideas I took songs from for the first album don’t necessarily just run out. Leonard Cohen was writing songs about heartache and love up until a few years ago. I don’t think that well is dry for me. But also, to be honest, my life hasn’t changed. It’s changed in the sense that people actually care about my music now, but my personal life hasn’t changed. I play shows to more people, but my friends are the same. I still live where I grew up. It’s all stayed the same and I’m determined to keep it like that.
Did you go on a little solo road trip around America before you made this album?Yeah, that was to plug myself back in. Early last year I was in a situation where I had reached a point in my career where all the recording studios were very nice and where I was staying was really nice. Like you said earlier, you’re trying to find a certain amount of relatability. I just felt as if things were a bit too nice. I got to this point by playing countless shitty gigs and being in bad studios, nothing was handed to me, so I wanted it to feel a bit difficult again. So, I got in a car by myself in LA and I drove to Chicago for two weeks. Just by myself far away from any kind of career thoughts. I was alone with my thoughts. It’s a great way to explore the country. It was a good time.
How else to you like to switch off an unwind? Do you still play football?
I try. It’s a very important part of my life, but I don’t get to play as much. The difference between my love for music and my love for football is when I play music, and when I’m playing a show, my head is never empty, it’s always swirling around in a million different things. Whereas when I play football, my head is entirely empty. Like, there is literally nothing going on. I don’t really get that feeling these days so I crave it.
You did Soccer Aid last year didn’t you?
Yeah, I’ve done it two years in a row. It’s brilliant. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s funny because you think as you progress in music as your career grows, you have these surreal moments where you meet your heroes and stuff. And then in Soccer Aid over the course of four days you have more surreal moments than anything. You find yourself sitting in a bar with Roberto Carlos. It’s crazy.
Did you get your autograph book out?
No, I never did. The only time I’ve ever gotten an autograph was Roy Keane when I was about eight years old. It was in a hotel in Dublin that the team were staying at and I happened to be there so I mustered up the courage to ask him.
I mean, with Roy Keane that must have taken some mustering…
I know! He didn’t have the beard at that time, though. He was lovely.
You started out busking. Do you now hear buskers doing your songs?
All the time. And people have sent me videos of people playing my songs on the street and stuff. That stuff means the world to me, because you can go through your journey playing all these amazing shows and doing all these crazy things, but it’s those kind of smaller moments where it really hits home that you’ve achieved something, when I see essentially just a younger version of me, covering my music. It’s a crazy thing and it makes me feel very proud.
Do they ever clock you watching them? That would really put you off your stride as a busker, to see the person whose song you’re covering watching you…
No. And also if they wanted me to sing with them I would feel like I would be forced to join in. But no.
What were your big crowd pleasers when you used to do it?
That’s one of the things I tussled with the most. If I played the songs I’d written no one stopped. That’s quite a demoralizing thing so I had these handful of covers that I knew would get me a crowd. At the time, All Of Me by John Legend was a massive song. Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran too. But then I had a decision to make, because I started getting a following on social media, but it was all based off covers and I didn’t want to go down that road.
I’m sure if you did your songs now you’d make a few quid. Thanks for talking to us Dermot, enjoy the rest of your day. Have you got any plans once your interviews are over?
Nothing major. I’ve got a show tomorrow so I’m gonna rest.
OK. Enjoy!
CC