Daniel Merriweather interview

His debut album having already gone platinum worldwide in 2009 before it was even released in the U.S., Daniel Merriweather gets to do it all over again now that Love & War has finally landed in the States. Now a New Yorker himself, the native Australian who “grew up in a forest” is setting out on an American media blitz is support of what just might be the most old-school soul record so far this century – and he fills us in on the details…

Yeah, I did Conan, Jimmy Kimmel, I’ve done a couple. But Dave Letterman is takes the cake. When I was growing up in Australia I didn’t really have any late night TV, at least not on my four channels that I had at home, from America, except for Dave Letterman. So I grew up watching Dave Letterman since I was a kid. Even though if I was to judge these guys with everything being equal, maybe he wouldn’t necessarily be my favorite TV host, but because I’ve known who he was since I was ten, that’s like Michael Jackson to me. So I was so starstruck and nervous when I met him. It was kind of funny.

So you’ve been doing some stuff in the U.S., but Love & War is just coming out in the U.S. now. It’s been in out the UK for a long time.

Yeah, it’s been out in the UK for the last eight months. I’ve just been having so much fun traveling around and playing shows, I mean it’s just been incredible. What more could you ask for? My album just went platinum, and I’m so over the moon about it. So for me to be able to come to America finally, and be able to put my album out here, it’s like dream come true, you know?

Is it strange, though, to have spent last year proving yourself in in the UK and succeeding, and then coming here and in some ways kind of starting over?

I guess if you were looking at it like, you know, as if we were pastry chefs and it was like, why have I already learnt how to make pastry, but you guys are trying to teach me how to make pastry again? But we’re not pastry chefs. All I’m really doing is having fun. Whether or not people buy my album or not, whether or not there’s any level of monetary success, that’s not what I do this for, you know what I mean? It’s a childhood dream of mine, regardless of the ins and outs of it.

I listen to this album and I keep thinking “This guy must have listened to this or that artist as a kid” but I don’t want to make any assumptions, so what were you listening to growing up that you think helped shape your sound that you have now?

I grew up in a forest, and I never hung out with the cool kids and I was a bit of a loner, and I listened to kind of everything that I came across. I remember vividly listening to Faith No More, Mike Patton is one of my favorite singers. But then straight after that I’d put on Steve Wonder, Talking Book. Later on, when I was about fifteen, sixteen, D’Angelo was a massive influence on me. There’s just so many different artists that came within earshot that influenced me. I guess when I was recording my album I was listening to a whole lot of Otis Redding, and that’s really why, in a way, he’s probably one of the biggest influences on me now as a singer because there’s sort of an honesty, there’s a rawness to his voice that I don’t think anyone else really ever did. Stevie Wonder was a technician as much as he was a soul singer, but once you break into the nineties you’ve got Boyz II Men, they were my first CD that I ever bought when I was a kid. But that’s technician work. You listen to someone like Otis Redding or Howlin Wolf, and they really don’t give a fuck. It’s like I’m gonna sing and I’m gonna try to convey a thought and a feeling and if you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. So I think that’s kind of where I draw a lot of my inspiration.

Your hit single Red contains the line “You took something perfect and painted it red.” What does it mean to paint something red?

Painting something red is, you know when you buy a really nice table and it’s built well, and someone chopped down a tree to build the table, someone might have got splinters in their fingers from building the table, and then you went and bought this table and you brought it home so you could sit cups of coffee and stuff on it. Painting something red is like losing that beauty. Like if you took the table home, it’s beautiful man, it’s made out of wood, it’s amazing, why paint it red? And I think that was a metaphor for it. Red is the color of love, red’s the color of blood as well.

A lot of times you hear the phrase “painting the town red” which has a whole different meaning.

At one point I made a very bad mistake, I was just joking, and I’ll say it again now and I’m sure you’ll print it and take me out of context, but I said that the song was inspired by the menstrual cycle. I should have realized that that was a very grave mistake. I received a whole lot of letters about how awful that is to say.

Do you get a lot of that? Are you already getting pulled out of context on things? Are you already getting hit by the tabloids? I know the UK has vicious tabloids over there.

To be honest society itself is taking everything out out of context. There’s no such thing as the war on terror, you can’t have a a war against an idea. The war on terror is propaganda, you know? And the propaganda itself is the terror, not the thing that was in question. It’s like saying “I really hate bullies. You know how much I hate bullies? I’m gonna go out and whenever I see a bully, I’m gonna shove them.” It’s like come on, mate.

But I think taking things out of context is the media’s job, because it keeps life light and entertaining.

I know you’re traveling and touring all over the place, but what’s mostly your home now, New York? London?

New York’s definitely home. It’s an amazing city. From the moment I set foot in New York, I kind of knew that I wanted to be here. I think that it’s a beautiful place, But Melbourne, I’ve traveled the world, I’ve been to a whole bunch of different places, Melbourne’s in my top three cities in the world, and that’s taking a lot of cities into consideration. It’s an incredible place that taught me how to sing, taught me how to play, everything. Melbourne’s my inspiration, really.

You just turned twenty-eight, you’re getting close to thirty, does that put you in a different mindset now, knowing that you thirties are just around the corner?

Yeah, totally. I was saying the other day, shit, I better start working on that legacy, you know? Whether it’s making another generation, having kids, or doing something memorable. These kinds of things always fuck with your head. As soon as I work out my quarter-life crisis, it’s funny because you watch guys go through mid-life crises and they’re trying to buy a Porsche. And when you’re in a quarter-life crisis, all you want to do is buy a dirt bike, just this overwhelming need to want to go and buy a dirt bike. So that’s all I’m really thinking about at twenty-eight.

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