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Example on being happy and changing his destructive ways
To Kill A Mockingbird / David Mitchell / Benedict Cumberbatch / Yotam Ottolenghi
26 | November 13, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
This week’s entertainment highlights
the critical list THE HEADLINER: MUSIC
Elliot Gleave went from being a rapping, scrapping bad boy to chart success. Now on his sixth album the soon-to-be dad is utterly and blissfully happy. ELLA WALKER finds out exactly what love’s done to him.
Example: “I used to be quite destructive, but now I see that destructive part of me was my brain just wanting to create”
Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk For breaking entertainment news for the city, visit cambridge-news. co.uk/whatson
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XAMPLE kinda threw everyone with his new album, and it wasn’t just the tongue twister of a name: Live Life Living. It’s different to his previous records in that it carries barely a smidgeon of rap – the genre he made his name in, spitting ropes of witty lines while being championed by The Streets’ Mike Skinner – and it’s packed with dance tracks that swill with dayglo and 90s rave. It’s also wholeheartedly happy, and while Example – real name Elliot Gleave – has always produced records that are playful, sweatily energetic and sonically upbeat, they’ve never been all that happy. Very few dare to write songs that smack of contentedness; it
just doesn’t sell. “This new one is quite different in that most of the songs are about being happy and in love,” Gleave admits. “And it feels like people haven’t reacted as well to that as my sad emotional thoughts.” To a certain extent he’s right; the record only charted at number 8 and this tour he’s playing theatres – including, lucky for us, Cambridge Corn Exchange – rather than the arenas he got used to performing at in recent years. But the Fulham born 32-year-old is a pragmatic guy. “I was at a real peak in my career,” he says, recalling that stretch between 2010 and 2012 when he was collaborating with Calvin
‘This new one is quite different in that most of the songs are about being happy and in love. And it feels like people haven’t reacted as well to that as my sad emotional thoughts.’
Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | November 13, 2014 | 27
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO AT THE MOMENT? “I’ve mainly been listening to the new Jamie T album. He’s amazing; he’s such a good songwriter and has an incredible voice.”
‘I had a meeting recently and they [the record company] felt there were too many cooks on the last album if you know what I mean . . .’ Harris and had singles like Kickstarts, Changed The Way You Kissed Me and Stay Awake “on the radio non-stop”. “This year, One More Day was a hit, but it wasn’t like I’ve had three or four songs hammered on radio stations throughout the whole year, so it feels a bit of a slight career downward curve, but I think that’s only natural. It’s impossible to stay at the top for 10 years; you have to be prepared for coming up and down.” To be fair, the blazing, bassy One More Day still has more than two million hits on YouTube, so it’s not like the singer is musically destitute just yet. The singles have been widely seen as quite safe options (they all sound essentially the same), compared to Gleave’s previous stuff though, which for someone who in 2007 released a love song written to MDMA called Me & Mandy (“I’ve found a new love we’re meeting later / Getting dropped off by a mate of a mate and / Her name’s Mandy, comes in handy / She nicer than you cause she never ever spiteful / Utterly delightful”), is an undeniably strange progression, however happy his home life. “I’m really proud of the album. I think musically and melodically it’s the best I’ve ever done,” he says tepidly. “Arguably there’s not enough aggression or edge on there sometimes, and I think maybe there’s not enough emotion, not enough rapping for other people. These are things to consider when I’m making my next album, but I don’t really think about these things. You just go in the
studio and make whatever feels right at the time.” Was it his decision, to play it safe? “Not really,” Gleave replies frankly, with a mischievous lilt. “I think a year ago what I wanted to release and what the label wanted to release were completely different. But as it’s turned out, in the last month lots of people have been sacked at my record label [Mercury, an imprint of Universal]. “I had a meeting recently and they felt there were ‘too many cooks’ on the last album if you know what I mean . . .” It’s surprising that he ever left that sort of corporate meddling happen though. This is a guy who grafted away doing tiny gigs rapping for drunk kids in student unions (I should know, I was one of them; he was full of grit and fight and fun), making crowds laugh as much as leap about to droll remixes of Britney Spears (Toxic Breath) and answerback tracks to Lily Allen (Vile). “Before the fifth album I’d always done everything by myself,” he agrees. “And then on my fifth album, it was my first with a major label and I had six or seven people throwing in their two pence. “It’s right for some acts,” he concedes. “But it’s not right for me.” Can we expect a return to more rapping in the future then? “I’ll see what feels right on the day in the studio. Whatever I want to talk about, whatever I’ve been listening to recently, where my head’s at, it’s never a preconceived well planned
28 | November 13, 2014 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
THE HEADLINER: MUSIC
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out thing. It’s like if you’re painting a picture, you throw a load of paint at the wall and see what sticks.” His music has changed – he once famously said (after three albums and 15 Top 40 songs, mind) that he’d had his first muchneeded singing lesson, and now singing is almost all he does – but Gleave the man has developed even more. Instead of the raging, cheating, scrappy, often drugged up, rapper he emerged as back in 2004, he’s now husband to Australian model Erin McNaught and a soon-to-be first-time dad. He’s blissed out, hence the chirpy buzz of Live Life Living, and why a day off, like when I call, means he’ll “maybe have some chicken, maybe go to the cinema”, instead of stocking up on booze, girls and fights like he used to. “Our tour bus now is 10 guys on a tour bus, where it used to be 10 guys and how many girls we could get on the bus,” he laughs. “A lot has changed.”
“I was a lot more reckless back then, which can be good sometimes making music, but I’m a lot more sensible now, a lot more honest, with myself and also my family and my wife. And I keep myself fit and healthy, more than I did maybe five years ago.” Healthwise, it’s good he’s living cleaner, because in terms of gigs this is his busiest year yet. By the end of December he’ll have played 110 gigs, and, when we speak, is gearing up for the third night of this current 28-date stint. Does he ever get exhausted? “Yeah, like now, after two gigs! Ha.” The tiredness of touring will no doubt pale in comparison to the tiredness of parenthood. “No I don’t think I’ll be strict,” he muses, considering how he’ll shrug into fatherhood. “I’ll be relaxed, a lot more relaxed than my parents. I think a lot of things changed between my generation from their generation. I think you have to be open minded and let your kids just take their own path.
‘No I don’t think I’ll be a strict dad. I’ll be relaxed. I think a lot of things changed between my generation and my parents’. I think you have to be open minded and let your kids just take their own path.’
“I know that I was completely mental as a kid! [Gleave was diagnosed with Asperger’s and OCD as a child] I was quite rude at times, I was bad at school – I was clever, I took my maths exam early because I had a photographic memory, I was a great problem solver – but I don’t think at school I did well enough. “I used to go off and be quite destructive, which I worried about at the time, but now I see that destructive part of me was my brain just wanting to create and I didn’t have the tools available to me at school to do that.” Post school he studied film directing at the University of London before working as an editor at MTV Networks, always garage MCing on the side, and still has hopes of directing horror films one day. He also has plans to move to Australia at some point in the not too distant future to be closer to his wife’s family. So this tour, he says “might even be my last ever trip to Cambridge”. Better not miss it.