6 minute read
COVER STORY: BEN BARNES
Royal Male
Advertisement
From 'Stardust' and 'The Chronicles Of Narnia' to 'The Punisher' and 'Shadow & Bone', British actor Ben Barnes has been a constant on screens big and small for nearly two decades. But Barnes has always made music and with recent EP 'Songs For You' he shows another, quite soulful and jazzy side to his creativity.
Words: Lieke Gaudes Images: Jay Gilbert
You might know him for portraying the role of your childhood crush as Prince Caspian in ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, or as your current crush as The Darkling in Netflix’s ongoing ‘Shadow & Bone’ series, but Ben Barnes’ talent doesn’t just stop at acting. Recently, Ben has decided to add the title ‘musician’ to his résumé by releasing his debut EP ‘Songs For You’ and LDN got to sit down and talk to him about it.
How does it feel to finally have released music of your own?
I feel much more relaxed and peaceful than I thought I would. I thought it would be more of a fervorous feeling, like a sort of anxiousness about how it would be received. Whether people would respond to it musically or thematically, if it means something to people and whether they would be able to connect with it. It’s the first thing I’ve done that’s intimate and personal and even in my interviews over the years, the questions have tended to be about the projects I’m involved with and characters that I’m playing. Whereas in this instance, they’re a bit more about me, my life, my ideologies and my approaches to things and I think that especially after COVID, people just want to talk about who they are and where they fit in in the world. And that’s what the songs are about.
Do you have a favourite song on ‘Songs For You’?
Well, the musicians that played on the album responded to ‘Rise Up’ a lot, and then the label that I used to release the music, they were big ‘11:11’ fans and they thought that was the most accessible song and the most pop of the songs, which is why agreed we’d put that one out first, but they’re all… they’re like my little babies now. They’re all special to me in different ways. They all went through phases of not quite working until we added something or took something away or sped it up or slowed it down. And it’s you know, now they’re all in a place where I can feel proud of them.
Going back to the whole process of making the EP, how do you go about writing a song?
I’m a bit of a logophile. I love words. That’s what I’ve done. My whole life I´ve been looking at scripts and choosing words carefully and knowing which words are important. I keep notebooks of little phrases that people say, or things I read. A lot of the songs quote poems or have
references to films in them. There are lot of easter eggs that I don’t think have all been found yet. I am definitely sewing in things that I love because I think that we’re all just a collection of our own experiences and memories and things that we found along the way. And then the music is a bit more painstaking because I’m not a very educated person in terms of music. But I’ll sit at that piano for hours and move my fingers around until it sounds like the feeling that I got when I wrote the words.
What are the things that inspire you when it comes to writing music?
There are some words here and there from a poem that I love, or a John Lennon quotation, or things my dad used to say to me. You know, little things that I’ve had in relationships, intimate things that you share and then you realise everyone else has the same things, stuff like that. I think it’s those little details that make people feel the honesty of it.
How do you deal with writer’s block?
I stop [laughs]. Because I don’t have to do it. The pressure of having to write another album in the next three months would be unbearable, but I don’t, so I can just do it when I want to do it. If I got actor’s block, that would be a problem. But for this, it needs to feel honest and it needs to feel like it’s coming from a place where it wants to come out of.
A lot of things you do music-wise, you do on your own. Is having full control of your creative process more freeing or stressful to you?
It’s very stressful and difficult, but it was very important to me to do something that was completely mine because when you’re acting, you’re carving a little slice of yourself and trying to spread it into the character to make the character feel honest. But for 20 years, I’ve been pretending to be other people, even in musicals when I’m trying to sound like other people when I’m singing, and it was just important for me to have my voice and my moment of doing something completely for me.
Do you have any specific transferable skills that are both useful in your acting and in writing music?
I wanted to kind of bridge the gap by making the videos and working with people I’d already worked with. I wanted music videos that felt like little stories, as I felt like that’s what I know. And that’s what I’m good at. I didn’t want people to think I was completely coming out of the left field with it. Although I think I’ve played enough musicians in films, that it’s not completely blindsiding. But yes, I think the storytelling aspect has been very important because I think people can access music sometimes more readily if there are visual things to accompany them.
Did it make you more nervous to release your music or something you have worked on as an actor?
I’ve just sort of reached a point in my life where I don’t really get anxious about the reception of something. You would only be anxious if you’re fearful of something bad, and I just have let go of that fear. I used to be so worried about everything all the time and now I just sort of reached a point in my life where I just don’t want to be that anymore. So I’m not.
Have you ever struggled with imposter syndrome in your job?
I think we all have, and that won’t necessarily go away but it gets easier once you realise that it’s coming from inside of you, rather than from anything outside. People are not whispering about you at the water cooler going “oh they’re terrible”. They’re probably saying how brilliant you are, but you’re just not hearing it.
Is there any advice you’ve been given that you’d like to pass on to any other emerging artists?
The advice that John Lennon gives, that my dad then passed on to me, that I then put in a song which is: “If it is not okay, it is not the end”.
What’s next for you?
I’ve just finished shooting a Guillermo del Toro horror anthology series called ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, so that was a very exciting, new different thing for me, because I usually don’t like horror. But I just really liked the script and the people putting it together and I had a really fun time on it. And then next is a season two of ‘Shadow & Bone’, and then we’ll see what else with the music… but it’s going to be an exciting time.
