Dan Smith of Bastille: From Introvert to Millions of Records Sold & Festival Headliner | Guy Raz

shy introverted self-conscious I've always kind of like struggled with that and I have to get like almost blackout drunk just to get up on stage to do these things I did I guess I I've never

had a hugely high opinion of myself so I always thought already two UK number one albums under their belt the lead singer a weird thing that we had at the beginning was our

shows were selling out and people coming to see us and you know it felt like something was happening but the media particularly in the UK just was like not interested in us was that painful it was interesting I remember there was a point playing reading Festival I remember just

playing the first chord and starting to sing the opening line and the entire attempt singing it back on us wow and me just thinking oh wow okay this is insane February of 2013 Pompeii is released as a single didn't we say this is it this

is our hit song this is gonna be a global hit someone we worked with claims that he sort of was brought to tears the first time he heard the song I was like dude I was there you definitely would it's almost like you you don't think

that what you do is good um a massive cynic and pessimist so I think I I think so it's great to have you Dan welcome

thanks for having me it's in good to see you eventually you know one of the we'll talk about this later but one of the most I think amazing things about you is that you've had so many Global hit songs

and yet um and I should mention this people who are listening and watching um we I got to hang out with you when you came to the Bay Area and uh and went to

the show and I've seen you perform many times and what's amazing is you have these massive Global hits you you performed in front of tens of thousands of people and yet you still managed to

live a relatively normal life like you can still walk I mean you literally took a jog around the venue that you were performing at the day you were here in the Bay Area and there were people lined up to go in and you were just running

past them yeah I know well that's I'm a very quick runner what can I say yeah no I I think we've we've sort of um

made it a thing from the beginning to try and just uh you know have music that does its own thing and then also but as people be kind of separate from that as

much as possible and and enjoy being creative and making weird strange videos and and artworks for albums that we you know that we love but that isn't all about our appearance or our faces or

anything like that so um yeah I actually have a very long convoluted anecdote about um that involves a volcano and and not being recognized

um I think you were this is when you're in South America it was yeah I was excited size in Guatemala and basically just just for context so when we first when we first

had some success in the UK um I was sort of growing up like wasn't really anticipating that I'd be in a band and I guess the idea of suddenly being in a

quite a mainstream band in in our home country was pretty surprising to us and to everybody involved um and and my sort of very self-loathing self-critical

um I don't know personality also made made me and actually all of us think like it's incredible and such a privilege to have songs that people want to listen to but we have no interest in being famous

as people so we did kind of everything in our power at the beginning to to retreat as as as as far as we could from that so sort of turning down most TV opportunities and interviews and things like that

um which I guess probably seems quite grumpy of us and um I I but I think you know we were lucky at the time people were just coming to our music and it was just it was doing

really well and and I wasn't based at all on our personalities or us as people uh which is you know a huge privilege but um yeah so we sort of just retreated as much as possible I remember really

minimizing my personality in interviews yeah um I didn't want to be someone that anyone would come to for a quote or you know or say anything sort of controversial so I kind of dumbed and

bored myself down as much as possible which which weirdly seemed to work you know um cut into this anecdote so I so I went backpacking with a couple of friends

which has been something that I've tried to do you know as much as possible every year take a few weeks off and go and go backpacking because obviously Gator tour

is incredible and we're so lucky you know to get to travel but it's it's a cliche for a reason there's only so much you can see when the schedule is so packed so it was like thinking how great

it would be to get out and see the world as much as possible and go to countries that we you know we don't get to tour in so I found myself with a couple of friends in Guatemala did this this sort of I'd say Trek because it makes it

sound more epic up um up a very very long a basic upper volcano and I should mentioned you were staying at a youth hostel right yep yep not like a famous usually eat pasta or the backpack yeah

he was like Dan Smith here's my idea I'm at a youth hostel okay yeah totally here's my passport please please can I have it back because I need this to get home and it's got my US Visa in it so I need it to work in America

um so so we got this we got this this volcano and it's like the the idea is you sort of it's seven or eight hours up you stay in like just normal tents that are on these little Ledges on the side

of the mountain and you have some dinner when you get to the top you go to bed at about eight because you have to then get up at three in the morning to to climb the rest of it get to the summit and watch the sunrise or whatever but we got

to the top one of my friends that I was with growing up she was she sort of at the bottom was like look I'm not fit enough for this screw you all I'm gonna put in some headphones and listen to some podcasts so she was out in terms of eight hours of walking up a hill she was

out of the conversation and my other friend was quite far back so I was just chatting a lot to all the other people and uh and you know it's your Classic Backpacker people from all over the world

um and and I was you know Small Talk Central just having to make conversation with actually everyone which was really fun and interesting you know as it always is but I hate talking about my job and I'm kind of I I just don't

really like that it yeah because it is obviously interesting to people I I don't like how it then just dominates everything so I'll always sort of be quite weirdly evasive when it comes to those questions but cut to the end so

we're at the top we get there it's eight o'clock everyone's going to bed and um this guy this there's a there's a guy from Israel who's on honeymoon with his wife his new wife and there's a guy from

the Netherlands and uh and they both came up to him were like Dan do you want to go the the the local guy who's you know who's the guy who's taking us up the mountain he has offered to take us

on an extra hour and a half Trek down the valley up to sort of to the mouth of the volcano so we can see the lava kind of coming out the volcano yeah do you want to come like now's the only time

and I was like oh bed bed or lava bed or lava chose lava yeah anyway I'm horribly ill-equipped for for backpacking so I was in like I was in like trainers and

some tracksuit bottoms I had to borrow head torches and and a rain a waterproof of other people we we sort of Trek in the in the in the dark kind of down this Valley up the other side we eventually get to the top and I'm like so excited

about seeing lava not that I've ever really thought about before in my life we get there and uh this huge Miss descends so we're basically stuck on the top of this volcano the four of us and it sounds like the beginning of a bad

joke but eventually you know because we're stuck there and we're like oh let's just wait we've made it this far took us an hour and a half let's wait yeah eventually you know we're all interviewing each other about our lives and and the guy's like so you've said

that you play music and you've said that you get to travel the world but I just don't understand how that works um like you know are you in like a wedding band or what and I was like a reluctancy like we had like a you know

we had like a few songs of that I've kind of done all right um and he's like this is the Dutch guy he's like like try me like what's one of them called I was like there's a song called Pompeii and he was like shut up

it's like it's like you're the guy that made that song We're literally on a volcano you're the volcano gong so you're the volcano guy and we hold a volcano and then the the guy the the Israeli guy

um was like we had that song at our wedding last week what the hell um and then so he started playing it out of his phone and then the the Guatemalan guy who didn't speak any English he then started singing along to the song this is so weird but they also kind of didn't

believe that it had anything to do with me and then listening to that and happier to like a bunch of other songs so it's just quite a weird moment where I was sitting there my cover was blown and then obviously all the questions

which come from a really nice place but you know I'm just uh as you can tell not very good at talking about it so uh all the questions come come flooding yeah and I'm up they're like no this is my worst nightmare I'm stuck up here with three people who desperately want to

know everything about what it's like to be in a band and it's hard because you are I think by Nature an introvert which we'll talk about and I I relate to that as somebody who has been in audio my

whole career because when I'm on an airplane or or I meet people at an event I I really hate the question what do you do because especially when I'm you know in in a city in the US because

oftentimes they'll know how I built this right or they'll know some questions and then then it's all about me and I don't want it to be about me you were saying before I think because we talked about this you were saying

um sometimes people recognize your voice like when you're you know ordering or something like that yeah that must be so surreal because obviously I you know as as a as a podcast listener um it's such a personal thing you know

you can you could be listening you just went to sleep you could yeah you're right in someone's brain yeah so it must be um it must be a kind of strange thing when people feel like they put with you I imagine probably know you quite well

and and especially with what you do because what you make connects with people on such a in such a visceral way I want to ask you about growing up um I know you I know you grew up you were born on Bastille Day which actually

helps to explain why the band you completed is called Bastille um tell me a little bit about about your parents because I know that your mom like she was a singer a little bit of a singer

when she was younger what did your parents do when you grew up what was their profession yeah so um my mum and dad were both born in in Durban in South

Africa and um you know their generation you know living through apartheid but obviously you know as students and people with any kind of ethical moral compass you know

absolutely despise the regime and you know so they were kind of protesting and a lot of their you know they were they were student law students basically so yeah a lot of a lot of their friends were kind of quite heavily involved

um and uh they yeah anyway so they went to law school uh there but my mom was a focusinger and she kind of paid her way

through University by by playing folk gigs and it was a kind of all covers like Janice dropping covers and and like and I guess traditional folk stuff so she had this like beautiful voice and

and this amazing sort of guitar School actually they met my dad was like it sounds like a bad film my dad was like the sports captain and my mom was there's this like folk singer and he was helping organize this University concert

and they met backstage wow and that's out there that's how they sort of that's how they they kind of became a couple or whatever they ended up in London yeah so they and I think a lot of people from their generation you know kind of left

the country and so mum and dad have got this huge network of friends kind of all over the world you know in the US and in Norway and all over Europe and um Australia of people from you know

from that from their youth who or just left Africa but Mom and Dad wound up in London and um kind of retrained and you know end up working in the city

and and had you know their sort of law quiz before they had me and my sister um but so we had that we had these sort of really really hard-working parents who worked in the city you know who we'd see

morning and night kind of in their suits or getting out of their suits but then also my mum would get out this guitar all the time and just be playing and there was so much music in the house that they're both obsessed with music so

you know a lot of the stuff they used to listen to so Crosby Stills Nash and Young and like Paul Simon Simon and Garfunkel oh yeah um yeah I don't know classical music as well but like it's just a huge kind of

cross-section um of like Beach Boys and like anything and everything oh yeah beach boy I mean Leonard Cohen and yeah so it was a real it was a remix and actually when I first

started making music um I was just a very sort of shy introverted self-conscious I guess 14 year old and I didn't really think I had anything to say and I definitely didn't have anything to say so I my first

attempts at writing songs were some poems that a friend of mine that lived up the road that she'd written so it's kind of angsty angsty teenage teenage girl lyrics that I was writing songs to and then weirdly also my dad

found this book of poetry from when he was traveling um around America that he'd written so there was a song that I did called Telegraph Road which was about this this

like homeless woman who was surrounded by her her dogs on Telegraph Road who he'd seen and written this pen about and I kind of turned it into a song so that was one of my first Tunes did you did you naturally

gravitate towards I mean I have kids and and they take piano lessons and one is more kind of naturally attuned to it and one is less so did you did you naturally

gravitate towards towards instruments well so I played I played piano and I played violin um the violin was a absolute horror show

for me and anyone anyone in the vicinity um this you know the strangle strangle cat cliche Rings true if you're not good enough yeah um but yeah I sort of I I was kind of interested in music and I

think my whole relationship with with music has always been around writing songs so um I've always been drawn to I had I have quite a weird voice and I've always been drawn to

um singer-songwriters with slightly less usual less conventional voices who kind of write Story songs um you know I think of like they come in

but also people like Regina Spektor yeah Anthony in the Johnsons you know out and joining my mom and dad used to listen to a lot and I was really interested in the in the the stories of of the songs that

that they wrote um but but yeah I was I was never amazing at music but I was never amazing sort of virtuosic at kind of instruments because I get distracted by

writing and that's been my biggest problem with getting good at anything is if it was if it helped for the purposes of the song I'd I'd get it in but I I

just get really distracted by trying to trying to write all the time so when you were when you were a teenager I mean you weren't people wouldn't wouldn't sort of say oh that's that's Dan Smith he's a he's an amazing pianist you were more

like in your bedroom kind of playing around with with a keyboard and writing songs quietly and not really talking about it oh man it was mortifying to me the idea that anyone would find out uh

and it's so interesting you know being someone that loves music and hearing other people's stories and hearing about them kind of their extroverted Tendencies getting up on stage all the time at school or at college or you know banging down the

doors of record labels and then like you have to hear my music I was the opposite I was like nobody has to hear this nobody should ever have to hear this um so it's it's kind of wild and still for like a lot of my friends from school

and from uni it was so bizarrely unexpected that I would be in a band I wanted to be a journalist writing about films like I was a massive film film nerd

um so the IDE the idea that I'd you know be out performing on the stage is is I think still kind of wild to a lot of people that knew me as a kid what did you what did you say I mean obviously

when you're a teenager there's a you're a different phase in your life and and there's some amazing music that comes from teenagers I mean I think Olivia Rodrigo's debut album is a point of incredible

lyricism and Artistry um what do you what do you remember writing about were you writing about your own angst rewriting about because I've read that when you were a teenager you which is hard to imagine but but

that that you were overweight and that you had already have a lot of body issues which you still have today but um around that was yeah what were you writing about your anxieties and your insecurities

I wish I'd found a way to be more honest I think I think um I don't know I think I was just looking to other I think I was kind of writing in cliches you know looking around to

other other music and other other songs and uh trying to find interesting metaphors as I grew up as I went to went to University like in my late later teens I think I was I started to get

really into the idea of story songs and that's where I think the idea of escaping through writing came you know if anything for me it was it was never

really about me I think that there were writers who so brilliantly articulate their lives I think of you know people like Amy Winehouse who can write incredible poetry but also weave in you

know quite yeah Taylor Swift as well like there are so many incredible incredible writers um who articulate that moment in their lives people who write heartbreaks so brilliantly and and and self-diarize and

you know Chronicle their lives in an amazing way and I think for me it was always about I did I guess I I've never had a hugely high opinion of myself so I always thought you know if I'm gonna write I'll

write about things that interest me which tends to not be me so I that let's write about inspire you know that's been inspired by books that I love or films that I've seen or TV shows or things that have happened to friends or within

my friendship group but yeah I was never I was never that kind of I don't know I think you know Lord is another example of someone who really yes brilliantly and amazingly and poetically kind of articulates what it

is to be growing up in a small town you went off to study English literature at at College at Leeds in in the UK I know

that you did like a podcast or you did a radio show with your friend um Sophie um you even had the chance to interview like one of your Heroes Regina Spector who I mean yes I just let's just pause

for a moment and just a moment of respect for Regina Spector who's an incredible artist I mean I I mean I I get chills thinking about some of her

songs um edit remember that song you know it's just a way that she crafted music what was it about Regina Spector that spoke to you at that time I think I

think it was um her very unique voice her ability to play piano so as well as being drawn to people who you know had had I don't know I don't want to sound rude but like kind

of less conventional voices sure I also loved people who whose management was the piano because that was mine as well like you know I wouldn't have known what to do with the guitar if you threw one at me um so I think I was really drawn to her

for that and the kind of classical elements within her music and just how um I don't know the way that she's really percussive with with you know she uses her voice she kind of almost

borders into human beatboxing at certain points and uh it just was really playful and and clever and smart and referential you know songs like Samson that give

this huge emotional depth to you know to a Bible story yeah taking everything from history his history in the Bible and the modernity of New York and like

the punk scene and like just interweaving I thought it was I guess where she's been a huge inspiration to me is the idea that it's all of these things in life from history

and culture and and place and geography and and I don't know and biography all kind of international interwoven via her brain and I think that's what for me the sort of best songwriting is you can be

speaking to somewhere somewhere miles away and in a time that you know hundreds of years ago but um or you know or potentially never happened we'll be writing fiction but but do it in a way that's really emotional and and and

human and real and relatable and you know and and funny and doesn't take itself too seriously but she does all that kind of with this beautiful totally unique voice

um and yeah it's it's like it's pure Artistry to me and and having heard her albums that are you know relatively produced at points but having seen her live at the beginning in tiny venues you

know playing to a couple of hundred people um in Leeds or wherever uh just her on a piano the their her capacity to

have the whole attention of an entire room of people um just using her voice and and and her piano skills and some like hand claps I

thought was yeah just totally sort of intoxicating and um our music now isn't much you know doesn't really sound anything like her but at the time when I

first started you did I did yeah I was right he's quite quite odd linear uh bizarre narrative songs um inspired by her and and you know again I was using a loot pedal so I was

kind of layering up the piano and lots of arpeggios and weird percussion whatever I could get my hands on basically you have an early song and anyone listening um should check it out on YouTube called ignoring messages and

I'm I I know you might be a little embarrassed but but it's an amazing song It's a I think it's one of your earliest it's not your earliest sort of song That You released and

I hear so much of Regina Spector in that song and it's so clear that your influences are really starting to take shape it's a beautiful song I I by the way

I I was just blown away by it and you're just like wow you're you're like a 20 20 year old kid I guess I mean you were making music clearly and you were

getting better at it and quietly without anyone knowing but it's a part of me part of me thinks that you really did want the world to to see it because you you created a MySpace

page yeah I think in 2006 and still it was private but you know anybody could go and hear it and you weren't promoting it but it was it was an outlet

and yeah yeah towards the end of college um I that was an amazing thing that that that leads the the town I was in college at that council did this thing where

every year 10 artists they'd give kind of 10 artists the opportunity to record a song and they do a photo shoot in a little interview and you'd have to you know you'd be put on the bill at a gig at you know a quote-unquote proper venue

yeah um and in our second year of universities some friends of mine who were in a band um had won it and we were all so excited for them and then the following year a couple of friends entered some of my

music that they'd managed to get hold of into this into this competition and I was one of the people that won it which was a huge shock to me and it kind of forced me to then think about because because before then it had just been for

me it had been recording music I had this like 12 track and I was making these demos and layering stuff up and you know burning these CDs and playing them to a very very select set of people so obviously there must have been

something inside of me that that you know that that loved doing this and was kind of interested to see what people would think but obviously wasn't making I don't know I didn't have big Ambitions for it at all like I'm sure there's

probably a tiny subconscious part of you that wants someone to somehow hear it and be like yes this should be what you do but I also you know it was just this thing I did in the evenings and I did in

private and once I'd won this this thing or was part of the winning of this thing it kind of it forced me to figure out how to do a gig and for me I think back to it now and it was kind of ridiculous

like I sort of dip my toe into the water of doing a couple of Open Mic nights and I was so not up for it I have to get like almost blackout drunk just to get up on stage to do these things which was

terrible and I was obviously way worse but the fact that I I did I then did this gig and figured out the loot pedal thing and and you know it in my mind it was almost like a bit of a trauma because there's so I don't know it's

just like getting up on stage for some people is the most natural thing in the world and they love it and you know it's it's it's wonderfully enjoyable for me it was kind of a means to an end like I

knew that it was It was kind of part of people having to hear the music and yeah anyway it sounds I know I'm aware that it sounds completely not at all insane not at all I mean in in I mean the the

gift your your reward for winning this competition that they where they entered your music was you had to perform a gig that was the that was the and for a lot of people entering like that's what they

were going for for you that was mortified I totally relate to that as somebody who does public work and speaks to thousands of people and I was just did like a live show for a kids podcast

I do in front of 5 000 people wow it doesn't matter how long I've done it I still get nervous and I totally understand that feeling of being

terrified mortified and and um how did you I mean how did you you mentioned you know early in the early days you would just drink alcohol because you didn't know how to deal with it but eventually

you couldn't do that how did you cope with with just the fear of going up there in the early days yes it's really strange isn't I had this kind of parallel things going on because

I was I I got into like a masters in journalism and was really going to pursue that and was you know post College was work I was working a bunch of different jobs

um and about to this Masters and and but also had started the band and and met met the other guys um and I think that was the thing that helped me you know I've I found myself

going around London dragging this piano like you know over my shoulder on the tube like you know accidentally smacking people in their heads with this massive really heavy piano with this backpack of stuff and

all these stupid percussion instruments and um but I was I kept doing it I kept going after work and I was I had to keep quitting jobs because I was doing little tours and like you said I had this Myspace page and

um obviously even after you won these competitions even after you were getting attention for your music you still didn't think of yourself as a musician you were still pursuing this dream of being journalist well for me for me

um growing up I I obviously there was so much music that I loved but I wasn't a massive music nerd and that I wasn't like reading autobiographies and

biographies and I didn't really know or understand anything about you know for me music was it was these were just you know cheese sounds and soundtracks to moments in our lives and you know things and Friends recommended and you know I

went to gigs but not like voraciously and and uh and so I didn't just I was just quite naively didn't really have any concepts apartment apart from you know with with friends of mine who were

in bands of of like what that kind of Journey or struggle or ambition like what any of that would be I didn't really have it as a narrative in my head I was like my head was so in film and it

was in what it takes to make a film and and and to write a film and that whole process that it just didn't it just didn't it didn't it didn't register you Russia film geek not a music geek like

David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick and right that was your world yeah massively massively um and those were the books you know those to the books I was reading it was like the detailed

um chronicling of how those films were made and directors lives so it was it was uh it I guess for me I was kind of like naively like bumbling through this situation where I was doing these shows

people were reacting quite well um and I was sort of slightly pursuing it but didn't really know what what I wanted from it or or what you know what

success would even look like yeah um but having gigs for a while with the loot pedal um you know particularly being being an introvert I just it's just someone

suggested like you know you should you should definitely um get a band stop being such a loner and get a band which is what yeah yeah which is which is essentially what what

you did right because I guess you came to the conclusion that you could not you didn't want to be Dan Smith this is this guy standing on stage that that it was really I guess it was

hard for you and it wasn't it wasn't part of your kind of natural personality and that is really what kind of led to the creation of Bastille you basically had these guys you were gigging with and

they sort of you sort of said let's just be a bass make it yeah so so having having been in London and I I you know I

decided to not do the Masters when I was struggling to sort of pay rent hold down these jobs and do these gigs in the evening and actually my it was my mum

who said like you should you should quit your job and take a part-time job live at home with us for like a year yeah so you don't have to be paying you know London rent and just just really

give give more time to the music because there's a there's a amazing charity sort of organization that was run under the Westway in West London called strummerville which was set up by Joe's

drummer's family yeah and and you know using using a bunch of um I guess the money that he left after he died that put on gigs and you know and was amazing amazing resource for kind of young

musicians in London um and they put me in touch with um Elton John's management company who who at the time took me on for a little bit and that was just pre start us starting

Bastille so that was a kind of interesting also moment of right maybe I shouldn't do this Masters like maybe maybe there's something that might happen here so I ended up yeah I I actually

ended up leaving them starting Bastille and it was a kind of fresh start you know we we put up a we put up a new Myspace page and yeah and we started rehearsing in these little rehearsal rooms after work and stuff and that's

that was the kind of beginning of it and it was really interesting I guess you know for me I've been doing it for for for ages but from when we started

Bastille it was that and from the moment we put that page up to kind of I guess the moment we released an album and got a record deal that was relatively quick in the grand scheme of things I um I've

met um your bandmates um Woody and and will and Kyle um and what's remarkable and anyone who follows you on social media what's

remarkable is um you spend a lot of time together like you're not just because a band I mean as you know I do how I built this which is a show about business but abandoned in a sense is a business it's

it's a partnership and and oftentimes that partnership is it breaks down or it's really just transactional but it it's remarkable to me how much you all

spend time together that is not connected to music making like you go hiking together and you go out together and it's amazing because these are not people that you grew up with like you

met Woody and will and Kyle like after you graduated college yeah yeah yeah and and yeah through friends and through music and I think you know but we were suddenly like it went from this thing

that we were all really excited about and passionate about but we're working really hard at but didn't seem to be going anywhere for you know for a year or so yeah suddenly it just you know like with these things it takes over your life and obviously it's a really good job that

we're all friends we all go on really well but yeah these work they're not like school friends or people people that we you know we don't have sort of super old bonds but now we've had 10 years of you know living on buses

together and being in advance and sleeping on Floors you know next to each other and all that kind of stuff I think it's interesting uh early on we played we played some shows with some much bigger bands and it was interesting

seeing them kind of helicopter or private jet in separately get into separate cars and all kind of drive up to stage and then go on and do their thing and yeah obviously we never you know our Ambitions Whenever there or

that but I think there was a little bit of us seeing that at the time it was like oh that's kind of like I get it but it's kind of sad like you know I think particularly given that we were all crammed in a car and like sleep you know sleeping on our sound guys floor in

Birmingham you know the like there was this kind of bond that existed and to see where inevitably it would go if you were to get that big but to see that I think there was a part of us even from the beginning it was like let's never

let that happen yeah you know um I think anybody who sort of who's who's been exposed to like um brands that release mixtapes or

musics or music or artists like you you'll see a bunch of artists or the next big artists or the next big thing and and and there was a I think you you had some music released by like a

Mercedes-Benz and and then it's at a certain point the band was signed you were signed in 2011 by virgin but we should be really clear like by no means does that guarantee success like the

vast majority of artists who are signed you know they may be incredibly talented but they don't for a variety of reasons their music just doesn't stick when you

were signed by by version 2011 yeah I mean which is a big deal because a major label but did you think that this was it like we've made it our this is going to

be our career we're gonna make a life out of being musicians we're going to earn a living from this or did you think well let's see if this works and if not I've got this other thing I can do yeah yeah well you know I'm I'm a

massive a massive cynic and pessimist so I think which is crazy because you don't come across that way but I I hear you yeah I think when it comes to us though I think I just always expect things to to

crumble and and and wither away and at any moment so so I think I I obviously I'm sure for kind of subconscious self-protection reasons I've always every time something good happens I'm

like what's gonna it's good yeah yeah which I'm sure makes me so much fun to be around yeah but but um yeah I think there's definitely a myth I think you know in the kind of London music scene

at the time getting signed to a record get you know getting signed or getting a publishing deal these were the sort of the Holy Grail it was like the next logical step and of course coming with that you know

particularly at the time was was very much I don't know this assumption that maybe that meant that you'd made it but like you said I know one in a massively guessing but like

maybe one in 20 artists that get signed properly get to release an album and have you know something that goes on I mean that's the most ridiculously stupid made up stat that's definitely not true but you know we the reason we signed to

Virgin was because um my best friends from University who were in a band called kidid that then became to kill a king they'd signed to Virgin and um and I just love the idea of being on the label with my mates and

you know and they're an interesting example like they ended up getting let go um by virgin you know in the same time that we were there and they they ended up self-releasing the album but that's

you know that's an example right there of of they were like our best mates and we literally signed to that label to build it with them and that ended up not being but the time virgin was part of Emi and

these things changed so much all you know that the sort of constant churning of the of the labels in the major labels but they were there's a small roster of people and and we were given the kind of

time and space to just keep releasing EPs and releasing music and and I was like kind of indulged in not wanting to be in the videos that much and wanting to make quite strange surreals you know

cinematically inspired music videos and yeah I feel I I you hear quite a lot of examples of people having a really rough time with major labels but particularly at the beginning for us it was it was

it was pretty great we were given the space to to be quite creative and and to get to get to a place where we've released pompe and released the album you know it wasn't there was an

expectation that we sort of out the gate be having big successful tunes and and it was you know I think again we were signed under the expectation that we were a

slightly weird pop band that made kind of Indie music and yeah up to that point it had been entirely DIY you know we just we sort of made the videos and designed everything

ourselves and and you know had been I guess it was at the time where like music online had its space you know there was kind of there were all the music blogs and there was like hype machine and we were putting out mixtapes

but then we were also gigging and touring our asses off as a kind of DIY Indie band driving up and down the country and you know like I said sleeping on floors and all that kind of stuff so we had these sort of two

two co-existing states of being and and then it was interesting seeing them intersect when we would play shows and suddenly people would be singing along to all the songs that were on the Myspace page and and or you know or on

Soundcloud or whatever and and tangibly feeling that connection that you know that started to arise which was obviously really satisfying and I mean I

wonder how did you you know certainly in those early days right because because I think you released your first debut the debut single was Laura Palmer and the video is so fun and obviously a knight to David Lynch and your influence

um you know Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive but that was a period of time I mean this is sort of a two-year period before Pompeii which we'll talk about in a sec

where you were kind of gradually finding an audience but you were still a small Indie obscure relatively obscure band I mean the album Bad Blood

um I think it it you know or the the the in the first track I think it hit like number 90 which is pretty great in the UK but you guys were playing Glastonbury the Isle of Wight the Redding Festival I

mean big festivals probably on smaller stages very small stages how did you how did you cope with with going to these big festivals and being on these smaller

stages where you were still introducing your music to probably most most of the people in the audience still didn't know it was that oh absolutely everyone I think a weird thing that we had at the beginning was our shows were selling out

and people coming to see us and you know that felt like something was happening but but the the media particularly in the UK just was like not interested in us at all so you know it was

that it kind of LED itself to this slightly Outsider mentality that we've always always had a little bit in that you know we were looking around to our peers who were getting played on the radio or being on TV or you know getting

press and all this stuff and we were kind of not getting any of that but we knew that people were coming to it and loving the songs and that so that was It was kind of confusing in that respect but um yeah we played it we were playing at

festivals and I guess like still to this day you know you see a festival crowd as let's not assume people here know any or that much of a music and it's about kind of winning them over in a hopefully

positive way but Kyle our keyboard player you know he used to his job at the time was building and packing down the stages at festivals as well as one time we played we played at the island

too yeah he was yeah so we played in the Isle of Wight first of all on this like small little tent that he'd built and then he had to like take off his overalls get into it get it get into his

like Jesus t-shirt come play the gig and then and then we finish the king who's like being back to work back to work but um yeah it was it was it was interesting I remember there was a point playing reading Festival when we had a song

called Overjoyed that had come out as part of a EP right towards the beginning and um that was that was a real moment of walking out on stage and this tent was completely packed and Overjoyed it's quite a weird song it's it's a piano

it's kind of piano song with these tripping Skippy electronic beats and I remember just playing the first chord and starting to sing the opening line and the entire tent singing it back on

us wow and me just thinking oh wow okay this is insane and then we went straight from that straight off stage upstairs into the BBC Radio one tree house and we did a sort of TV session for that of

another song of ours called Bad Blood um and kind of going from one to the other and you know two of the quite big DJs From that station were hosting the event and they sort of knew us but we're like oh wow I just felt like we won them

over and won the crowd over and that was a real kind of pivotal moment for us um where suddenly our music started getting played on radio one which is quite a big deal here yeah

um and yeah we had our first like proper amazing Festival set February of 2013 um so this is like more than six or seven months after the your debut album is released on Virgin Pompeii is

released as a single and that song not only blows up in the UK becomes a global hit a massive hit one of the biggest songs for the next 18 months

um uh before I ask you about um the reception of that song and your reaction to it I want to I want to understand how sort of break that song

down and how you how you thought about composing that song because it is so catchy you know forgive me because I'm a terrible voice but that sounds better than when I sing

it um and and the falsetto at the beginning you know um I was loved to my own and and when you wrote that song

did you think about how you could craft something that would connect with human ears or or was it just I mean break it break it down for me how did you think about it when you were

writing it so I guess I guess um like I said before because I wasn't kind of because I didn't kind of grow up studying songwriting or songcraft or

music I I had never thought I never really thought that much about about songwriting in in a in a sort of cynical or clinical way I think one

thing that changed from Dan Smith days to Bastille was I started writing structured songs and being like you know Verse Chorus Verse pre-chorus Chorus like that you know

probably there's less weird five minute tangential music and more great because you're more structured pop songs your early music was like was like just one

long story sung yeah exactly they were they were super weird but I you know I love them they're great thank you man thanks so much but yeah so with Pompei I guess I kind of

there was no sort of intentional movement to that but I'd started writing songs in a more structured way and and I guess for me it was never thinking like what makes this catchy or what makes this memorable but it was just the

Melodies that made me feel something and I I used to write you know by myself I used to record on my laptop pretty much straight away so writing in production always came kind of hand in hand and I

was never amazing technically on on on on the software but I you know I didn't use logic I used to use GarageBand which is basically like the company pre-loaded

on your Mac exactly uh but you know but it allowed me to you know as as rubbish as they may have sound to kind of explore all these different Sonics and and you know and layer myself

as much as I could and I think for me harmonies was always a huge part of Bastille and my music and our music you know with whatever we may have lacked in terms of

the ability to record live instruments or have you know a lot of equipment it was like well you can make things huge and epic and you can take take people somewhere with with layering and with Harmony so that was always that was

always a big thing and Pompeii I think you know it just it it would have been one of those songs I was writing you know at the time like either after work or like when I was staying at my dad's house and I remember it came about because

I've been reading a book and seeing these you know the images of of the famous famous images of people you know Pompeii and the idea that they were kind of stuck in these in these

positions forever and the stasis that came with that I quite sort of simplistically aligned with where I felt I was at in my life at the time and it

was I felt like I was radulus and directionless and uh and that time was slipping by and I wasn't really achieving anything and so I felt like they were a kind of

potentially quite funny metaphor for how for the stasis I was feeling in my life and it's remarkable because there's so many different meanings in that song right like like you are writing about

Pompeii and and you ask the question how am I going to be an optimist about this and and knowing you and your story you're also asking yourself that question you're fighting against your

own kind of internal pessimistic monologue and saying I need to be it's almost like you're saying how am I going to be an optimist about my life and you're you're channeling somebody

watching this volcano and lava come down and ask themselves that question am I going to survive yeah well I mean or actually in my head the conversation is between these two people who are you

know they're already dead they're already Frozen in this position and so it's kind of a quite messed up dark dark joke but a beautiful like uplifting song

at the same time yeah oh well thanks and I I guess for me you were asking about the chant at the beginning you know that came from originally I think it was like a keyboard Rift a keyboard riff sorry

um and it came again from my lack of ability to play guitar I was like I thought it would sound interesting trying it on vocals instead and

um yeah so I guess the song's all evolve evolving that way and then I'd also work with you know the first album I wrote by myself but the producer that we worked

with Mark crew um who's that you know a really good mate and long long time collaborator on pretty much everything we do but um he for me was always you know we didn't write together at the

beginning but I'd play him stuff and he'd be a kind of trusted ear and he was always really good if he thought something wasn't good enough of saying dude you can do better with that section you know or he'd help me pick the songs

apart sometimes and send me off and I would I'd come back wanting to impress him basically so that was always that was always my My Method and I was also never precious with our

songs I think I realized now that I've got into songwriting for other people and you know right with the songwriters and other artists that that for me I was I was almost like in a

in a one-man writing session where you know when you're writing with other people you're all in a room with the sole purpose of of making this thing and hopefully making it as good and as interesting as it can be and I was there

you know often a song would come and all these ideas would form but I would record and write you know maybe six or seven eight nine sections and then have to kind of self-edit and like re-puzzle

it together obviously sometimes they'd come out fully formed but other times I'd kind of Labor over it and be like oh gosh this bit makes me feel something this isn't how do I get from here to

here and kind of you know it was just hours and hours and hours spent with headphones on working on these things and um yeah that's where a lot of the first album sort of came from

when when you when you master that song in the studio and it was done and it was out was there any inkling that that it was going to be a hit like what was they may say this is it this is our hit song

this is going to be a global hit is there any way to even know that or were you completely stunned by the response of that we were stunned and it's it's it's quite funny how you know people can

be quite revisionist in their version of how things went down uh you know someone that someone that we work someone we worked with who's um you know claims that he sort of was

brought to tears the first time he had the song I was like dude I was there you definitely won it was you know it was one of it was one of a handful of songs and no one really knew I remember no one really knew what the first single should

be and and uh we'd released you know the Overjoyed ep the Bad Blood EP and then the floor zp and then when the album came out with Pompeii you know the beginning of 2013.

I think by then we kind of felt it there was a moment where we were listening back to music in the studio and our a r guy came down and we played the final version of Pompeii and we got the guys from tequila King we got our friends to

come in and help beef up the chant and you know the drums were massive and we got the first mix back and I remember hearing it and there was a moment in the studio and I know they always say that a lot of artists like to self-sabotage but

we we played the song and I was like I was like oh man to Mark our producer and Nick I was like guys is this a bit too ridiculous is this song like we're a four piece it sounds like I don't know

it sounds so massive and over the top I was like is this a bit embarrassing is this a bit ridiculous and they both were like shut up stop it no no no don't be an idiot this because yeah I think they could see me trying to potentially run away from what it could be but I don't

think we knew I don't think any of us really had any idea and and you know to be completely honest when we were signed to a record label they very much were thinking I remember this this is I remember them saying if over the course

of the whole album campaign you know if and obviously there label so they're thinking kind of in sales they were thinking you know if you can sell 100 000 copies of the album of in its lifetime that that would be in our minds

amazing success and you know we had no idea what would happen we didn't realize we'd be suddenly you know in the charts and in a kind of mainstream space and then I think the album in the UK did that in like a couple of weeks and so we

just just it just completely blew our minds like we couldn't yeah comprehend what was happening and it wasn't ever really intended and going back to what we're saying before we weren't like hyped there was no you know as years

roll on at the beginning of each year there's always a kind of list of list of artists and bands that people are expecting big things from that year we were on none of those lists yeah and and so

um I guess because it hadn't really been teed up for us and it wasn't like something we expected to suddenly have this this song That Just

was you know it was in like in the UK it was in a chart battle with Justin Timberlake it was so surreal you know I I there's something that that you have

said many times in interviews and you've even said it in this conversation which is that you don't particularly have a high self opinion um that you don't particularly think that you're talented or whatever and and objectively anybody

can hear that and say that you know that's nonsense right and I wonder I I wonder if if in a sense right this idea that

you are not particularly you know you don't believe the hype around Bastille or Dan Smith which I actually think is really healthy and keeps you grounded but but it's almost like you you you

don't think that what you do is good and I wonder if that that combined with this kind of fear of of of performing is in a sense it's like

you're rebuilding the scaffolding every single day like you have achieved all these I mean we haven't even talked about happier and some of your other incredible hits and and also just the

Acclaim but it's almost as if you have to you're almost like rebuilding the scaffolding every day and then it collapses and you're like I'm just I'm not good and then where do you I mean not to sort of psychoanalyze it but

yeah I mean where do you think that comes from I mean do you do you think it's it's a it's a defense mechanism to keep you grounded or do you think that you really believe that

you're not as talented as other people might say you are yeah I don't know I I think it's I think it's probably I'm sure there's a there's a bit of defense mechanism than that I think early early

days in the UK uh the UK music press particularly at the time were pretty brutal to us as well so I think that was quite weird for me to to I was just painful quite yeah yeah I mean to quite

naively been building these songs that were you know uh probably yeah quite Earnest but these were it was just what we were doing it was like part of a you know it was part of this was just like a huge part of our lives and then to see

that reacted to um it was a real like wake up moment because you know by at that point I was someone that you know would read like a lot of music journalism at the time suddenly I guess you can kind of divide

in your head your life and that thing and suddenly when those things intersect um and they're not positive that was a real shock and I think I definitely believed them because for me these were

a lot of the kind of journalists and and and and Publications that I you were reading reading for my opinions of you know and there was like there's one particular I know it's such a like lame lame cliche to have been affected by a

bad review but there was one really nasty one in the newspaper that everyone that I know like all my friends like my family all like family friends like people that I barely know but you know

would have been reading and it was like the full back page a big photo of me and like a one star rinsing rinsingly horrible review and I was one of the things I remember reading it and thinking like half of the stuff in here

is is I think it was just a bit of a like they just didn't like us and they came to a gig so just take us down and it was so funny reading it because loads of the those are the things in the in the that they were saying about us kind

of weren't true and it was like they've not really mentioned the gig they just really wanted to have a big old pop at us and I wish I was I wish I was better at you know like there's a version of my life where that would have just rolled

off you know like rolled off my roll off my back but it didn't and obviously it got in my head which was which was a real shame because it was like just after the album would come out and gone to number one and was doing really well I mean we'd gone through the states with

this thing just like played on my mind and it's it's so lame I wish I was I wish I was more chilled out I wish I was cooler but but I think I believed it and and just kind of that's really stuck it's a human reaction you're talking

about a review from the guardian and I I read that review and it was from from when the first record was released and the the critic rights it's hard to work out why these songs have made a greater connection than those of hundreds

like-minded songwriters calls it mildly melancholic piano ballads that album that he's writing about was the biggest selling album of the Year digital album of the year and it's it's hard because

I'm the same way when when somebody says a mean thing or criticizes how I built this or my other shows I do focus on that and I think it's it's um both a

weakness but it's also I think a natural human trait because we're like why what did I do wrong even though hundreds of people and critics like the album and

clearly audiences liked it you we tend to just focus on that that negative review I know it's it's it's really it's ridiculous isn't it and I think I think um

you know as we've progressed the reviews have become nicer but and I I like to think I care less but but I've just you know everyone there's there are so many cliches that exist like don't read them

whatever but you know at the time at the time I did and it and it happened to really get get in my head and uh and I guess like potentially Praise on any insecurities you might have and kind of

exacerbates them and uh so I I think we had this really strange period at the beginning where suddenly you know this song was huge and this album was big and it was taking us all over the world and it was just such a you know such a

privilege to to get to basically chase this record around the planet you know from to Australia and to Asia and you know to South Africa and and America

eventually you know and and pretty much every continent it was it was wild and it was amazing but I I in the back of my mind was like this is all going to fall apart in a minute because you know because I'm terrible and we're we're

terrible which was uh you know I'm sure again a lot of fun to be around but uh but yeah definitely led to it didn't it didn't help with my already existing self-loathing

I'm I'm curious about your process and how it's evolved because in the early days it's you in your bedroom right playing um a keyboard and then it's you and your college dorm room and and putting some

things up on MySpace and then and then eventually you you have a massive hit and and you become a public figure even though you have managed to to very

successfully also avoid some of that because you're part of a band um but but you are I mean you know you go to award shows and and collaborate with some of the biggest artists on the

planet and so I wonder when it comes to your creative process right when you think back to being a teenager and kind of drawing from movies and weird things around you to where you are today and

where you began to move towards after you really started to find a massive Global audience where were you where were you finding your sort of creative spark where where

were you getting it from I think I think from from when Pompeii became big and the album came out I I think like a lot of people who were lucky enough to you know to spend

their lives making making things or making art or making music I think you're always really obsessing over the next thing and and so you know the album was out and it was doing well and you know things were delayed at that point

so we were we had a kind of year in the UK and around the world and then a full full year in America as well touring and you know as Pompeii was was becoming big there like as often happens it takes a

long time and I've been in my head I was like right let's make a mixtape listen kill the mixtape I've you know really started album two you know in my head I was kind of over it and and on to the next thing so there was there was

definitely that um but I've just completely deviated from a question sorry yeah no I mean it's just it's it's it's interesting because you're you're talking about where are you kind of

where do you look around for creativity yeah I mean I think I think at the time um I always had this luxury of of being able to to look to things I thought were

interesting that weren't necessarily involving me so the idea of writing a second album that was all about how weird your life has become being successful you know which I think a lot of artists do to varying

degrees of success that was never really going to be a thing for us but we then started I you know we were making the second album in the lead up to you know

quite big Global political events you know the big American election that yeah that led to Trump being elected and in the UK kind of brexit and and a quite a strange time globally so we were writing

songs both songs about gangsters and songs about you know truma capote's In Cold Blood but at the same time a lot of the more personal songs were about that kind of Reckoning in your

head of of you know watching the news and seeing things happen around the world that are really confusing and trying to reconcile that with getting on with your day I'm not I'm not

you know not being up all night worrying about it so it made for I guess it yeah again it's that thing we've always had of wanting to write about things that are interesting to us

um and and so it I guess real life kind of crept in quite a lot you know there's a weird combination of fiction and that and I think from our second-hand moments we went

a bit more conceptual with our records and what they were about um and that's always been a really helpful framework for me to to kind of to write Within

there are there are bands um many bands and that are that move from one album to the next and they sound like they're different bands right like if you listen to YouTube's boy and then you know

zuropa right they're completely different bands or Unforgettable Fire to you know some of the things they made later on REM is another example

um how do you think about change from from records record I mean you I know are a big fan of pop music I love pop music pop music is popular for a reason

because it's really good and it connects with us and it's catchy and it's always been the case um and you sort of straddle this world of Indie alternative Pop I think of uh

the SiriusXM stations that I hear you on all three of those stations the alternative the Indie and the pop stations yeah so how do you think about when you craft music and when you go

from one album to the next how important is it to you that you guys sound different that you really push the boundaries of experimentation well it's always been really important to me but

but I've seen over particularly our first three albums what what I thought was us being really different was often not received as that and I think potentially my songwriting and my voice

over the top of anything make it sounds because I'm kind of labored with this quite distinctive vocal sound it I think it means that are our music maybe sounds more

similar than it ever did to us and I'm sure that's the you know I'm sure that's the thing for a lot of a lot of bands but you know for if you listen to the first album if you were to take my vocal off you know there are there's Pompeii which has a

huge chances things lost in the fire which is like you know big Toms and huge strings and then and then yeah really electronic stuff as well you know and and real weird minimal vocodary moments

as well so for us there's never been really any boundaries within our albums and and we've always wanted to bring in elements of kind of of rock and of pop and Hip-Hop and experimentation and electronic music

um I think we've always pushed I think on our second album we were like right every song needs to be completely different let's do like a heavier Rock song Let's try and do like a big ballsy like brass LED sort of hip-hop tune but

I think where we've maybe fell down was as soon as you put me over the top and my songwriting it it kind of it brings into that world our third album was meant to be this kind of Escapist Rave

record about you know the apocalypse is happening outside and I'm gonna choose to ignore it for the night by having a kind of house party with friends and try and shut off from everything that's happening which was

probably quite reflective of our lives at the time um but that one as well it was like right let's take it to a more kind of let's bring in more kind of dance influences as well and on our fourth

album give me the future you know it was like about making a retro futuristic science fiction via music as well so it's been uh uh yeah I don't know the experimentation has always been really important to us

in and amongst that we did four mixtapes that you know that were about collaboration you know they were all about collaborating with different artists you know we're fortunate enough to work with people like Heim and lizzo and um you know a

whole host of different artists across these you know from spoken word rapper rappers you know um vocalists producers those were all about like let's take whatever people's

expectations of Bastille are and like you said we're a band who have had some really mainstream moments and then a lot of other moments that haven't been at all um and I guess there's like a slight

frustration of you you're like I have I want you all see all of the stuff that we do and that's kind of been maybe one of the things that has always driven us to to to to change out what we do so

much we did the mixtapes of the kind of much more sort of produced electronic you know Frank Ocean weekend inspired you know free albums and then our albums

are what they are and then there are you know we've had like a reorchestrated project that we've worked on for years which is basically working with a friend who's a composer to entirely deconstruct

all of our songs and build them back up recorded totally restructured um as a kind of classical and gospel thing so like I think it's I don't know maybe maybe

that criticism at the beginning kind of always drove us to want to constantly try and redefine who we are what we are and it's definitely what drove me to you know

start a little label and work with other artists and write songs for other people and all those other things that I love um that's I don't know it's always been

you know Dan one of the things that was so I mean in the midst of the pandemic which was so dark because I I had seen you just a couple of months before and the pandemic happened I think you guys

were like on tour you had to cancel it but was remarkable following your Instagram was how prolific you guys were I mean you were constantly

um producing videos of new music that you were making you started a film club um I want to talk about this process of just creating and creating because you didn't it's it's like you just didn't

stop and actually it I think it was an incredibly like fruitful time for you from a creative standpoint you really were just experimenting and I wonder how

you think about the limits of what you do right because we're all we all have limitations right um I I there are things that I just can't do as an interviewer or or as a

you know performer on stage unless you're Jeff Buckley who had an infinite range or Beyonce all artists have are limited in their range for example right um

how do you think about your the the limitations you have and how it how it sort of informs the way you write songs I think um

I like I've entered the music industry in an incredibly naive position as you know as we've as we've talked about so from the very beginning it's all been everything that happened to us and everything I've seen happen to people

around me has been a kind of surprise and it's been an interesting education in it all in terms of songwriting and my limitations I think because I've always been really self-sufficient uh it's

taken me to stop it's taken sort of welcoming of collaboration for me to see where I fall short and where where I'm helpful and where I'm not and you know I love writing with or for

other artists but like yeah it's it's really confronting and helpful to see when you're in a room with other people what what you're good

at what you can what you can give what you can deliver in that moment you know I'm not like I love producing but I'm not crazy skilled in that respect like I

will use a piano to write songs but I'm not like virtuoso I I wish I was but I guess like I said I always get distracted by trying to finish the song and never practice enough um and and so in terms of the limits of

what I do like that's why I've as as time has gone on I've kind of just really opened up and chilled out in terms of collaborating with other people because I feel like if I'm going to write a song with someone I want

I want the other person to bring something properly to it you know and and to be challenged by them I want them to push for it to be as good as it can be and for it to be better because I can just kind of sit in the corner and write

a song but I you know would much rather be with in in a collaborative process with somebody who's gonna challenge everything and push it to be as good as it can be

um yeah so yeah I mean I wonder about I wonder about that because you know I I I wrote a book and it's hard because you just got to get butt in chair and just crank it out and there are days where

much of what I'm writing was was just rubbish right it was not good but eventually over time you have a book and when you are when you

I mean are you able to sit down like when this interview ends could you and you and if somebody were to say Dana we need you to write a song could you do it or is it more like inspiration strikes and you start to

write things down in a notebook or record them on your iPhone or ha I mean can you actually make yourself write a song

you know at any point I think so yeah I think I could I think potentially at the beginning no I remember trying to you know writing the second album there'd be points where I'd get a studio for the day and just nothing would come and that

would be a nightmare But as time has gone on I go through periods of having just inspiration kind of strike all the time and I was seeing things into my phone and I'm kind of obsessively have to get it down if it comes into my head

I can't let it go until it's recorded and yeah I've lost phones before filled with stuff that isn't backed up that's a kind of tragedy to me but you know but but like you know whatever

um but yeah I I have to write things down but then you know I had our fourth album I sort of suddenly was like right I'm gonna bring in a lot of the songwriting world that I've become involved in and into this album and so

it was really collaborative and it was a lot of co-writing and co-producing and which is really different for us because we did three albums of not doing that um but you know it was an intentional step towards trying to change what we do

and mix things up a bit um and uh and Midway through that process and during during lockdown um I was approached by this documentary

filmmakers who asked me to write a song for this film uh it's called from devil's breath it's I think coming out later this year but it's about tree planting in in climate change and I think Leonardo DiCaprio is a producer

yes yeah yeah um so I was asked to watch this film and and then write a song for the end of it and it's it's beautiful it's half an hour long but it's absolutely devastating and as the credits are

rolling and I was sitting there kind of shell-shocked like you know I couldn't help but think that the last thing in the world me or anyone needs right now is my voice to come in and a Bastille song to emerge out of the darkness of

the credits but but I but it was you know it was a day in lockdown and I sat there and picked up a Guitar which I literally cannot play um and I'm not that's not me being modest I literally cannot play it and

and and just and having you know throw myself heavily into kind of collaborating which was something I resisted for such a long time I thought ah I really hope I can react to this and write something good

um and yeah you had the guitar and and you just started to sing I mean sort of I started playing a lot of very bad notes but I ended up just writing this song in you know in like an hour and

recorded it did a sort of rubbish demo and sent it to the filmmakers and in an hour well yeah it was pretty you know it was pretty rough around the edges but um it's just yet seemed they loved it

and it seemed to work and we recorded it you know the next day and it's it's this song that now exists and you know we've been sort of sitting on it for a bit because it's going to come out with the film but we've actually started playing it on this on this Arena tour which has

been really nice like it's just it's a lovely thing to be playing a bit of music that people haven't heard before um and we play it after Pompeii and uh right towards the end of the show which

is quite you know going from this big euphoric moment where everyone knows the words to this tiny intimate moment it's been it's been really it's been really great in terms of I don't know twisting expectations again but but that for me

was a really gratifying reminder that I can still do it by myself if that makes sense you you also

you also don't write necessarily about yourself right you're sort of embodying a character other voices or other characters do you do you walk around

with a notepad and and write just shot ideas down especially when you're thinking about lyrics yeah I do and I'm kind of I guess tragically modern in the

I used to use my phone and right I have just endless endless notes and yeah sometimes and I do sometimes they'll be you know I watched a film um oh it's the amazing documentary about

Leonard Cohen and Marianne and their relationship and so I and I'd written loads of notes while I was watching it and had thought about it loads and was listening to loads of Leonard Cohen and so that was it was in my head that

though I really wanted to write a song about that and I'm definitely not someone that's like oh something happened to me in my life I need to go write a song about it which a lot of people think songwriters are um but but that was it was that film and

anyway I ended up doing a zoom session with this amazing songwriter um is based in La over lockdown I wrote with him and I kind of had this idea and again this song just like popped out and he really

helped kind of Shepherd it to to being finished in in the couple of hours that we were on Zoom which was a real interesting lesson in how you know that's not the ideal way to write a song but there's this there's this song

called Leonard Marianne that I absolutely love and it's one of my favorite things that I've ever worked on you know but it came from you know this

weird uh pandemic necessated uh necessity no I can't talk sorry but yeah this this uh just doesn't necessity yeah yeah this bizarre Zoom session

um but but yeah I I think there's definitely autobiography stitched into a lot of a lot of the music but um often I kind of use

pop cultural moments or stories to kind of help articulate what I want to say yeah Dan I wonder

um when you think about where you are going I mean you are you're young you've had incredible success as an artist and um and you seem to have really it's hard

because you were surrounded by tens of thousands of adoring screaming fans every night and it can have a psychological impact I mean in in good

ways and and bad ways but but it seems like you it's very important you kind of consciously work against sort of believing that I don't know if

that's a right phrase but but almost like you appreciate it a lot I've seen you on stage and you enjoy it but then you walk off and

it's like you could just walk home with the crowd and and hopefully they wouldn't even notice you yeah I think that's a I think there's been like a huge amount of denial like you know particularly at the beginning when we

were probably you know much more recognizable um I just you know we'd be playing at a festival and then my friends would come for I mean hang out for the rest of the weekend and I'd just walked straight out and they'd be like what are you doing

and I guess in my head it was like if you don't make it a thing it's not a thing and and so that's always kind of been the way that I've I've lived and um yeah I don't know I think you know

we've avoided the things that would make us famous for the sake of being famous and we've done the things that you know you'd want to do or are necessary or really fun um and

yeah I think because maybe you know we were when things blew up for us you know we were in like early to mid 20s we weren't 18. so we've always had like

weren't 18. so we've always had like pretty uh our sets of friends and our families and our relationships that are all kind of quite grounded in normality and had this slightly weird Jekyll and

Hyde experience of going away being on tour keeping grounded within ourselves you know band and crew and all that but then coming home and you know to my friends we've just I'm like it's

fascinating to them obviously but also they're like just gonna absolutely take the piss out of me and rip me to shreds for anything and everything so there's that which I think really really helps but it's a weird one isn't it like you

know it it it's such a privilege this job but it takes up a huge amount of your time and your life and your head space and and it's something that I don't want to be

defined by but naturally you know it's it's pretty defining in a lot of ways so I've always kind of like struggled with that and and just wanting to to do as much as

possible I kept thinking like I want to go back to college and retrain as something else just to have done that and push my brain to be to be in a different place because I don't know so yeah that's something I've been thinking about a lot but then I

signed up for I signed up for uh French classes in the stupidly Tuesday nights seven till nine French clock like uh French Classes which it

was great for four weeks and then we had tour and obviously that's like classic gig time so that was never gonna work and I've completely flogged out of that course but the intention was there and

uh yeah the intention was that do you think that creativity is a gift or do you think that it's something that actually most

everybody can access if they if they wanted to I don't know I mean like for me writing songs is just

it was something that I just did and then I guess obviously over time I've put a lot more thought and Care into it and but uh maybe it's a kind of

me falling short in in terms of being able to imagine outside of my own head but like I I just it's not exceptional to me at all it's something that I just would assume that everyone can do

so I'd like to think that everyone could and that it's not that hard but this is always interesting chatting to people who are fascinated by it and can't I think that's the thing as well maybe

it's like the Perpetual normalization of all the things in our lives I think this is just for it to not be too mad or overwhelming I think I've just do my best to normalize everything and you

know when it comes to our shows as well like I want to take people on a journey I want to put on a big production and you know in recent tours you know take them into the future and other tours take them on this wild all nighter

during an apocalypse or whatever but I also like have always been as as a music fan who used to you know who goes to gigs all the time I don't love the barrier

between artists and and yeah and audience and so we've always from the very beginning done our very best to kind of break that down get in the crowd you know just chat to everyone all the

time and and not not create any kind of weird separation or barrier because that for me feels weird and it's potentially why like you know I don't have any uh like

there's a lot of other people in bands and artists and musicians and you know people who work in entertainment that I kind of know but they're not like my closest friends because I think um

there's something in some people who have success that I think is I don't know a bit weird yeah it can be it can be distancing it can be really

just necessary yeah yeah and I guess it's always been a real obsession with mine to not for for what we do to not create distance between us and and our you know

and our our normal lives um so that's been a real preoccupation and I hope you know I hope this works but hopefully people come to you know when they come to a show or or listen to

to music you know it's it's transportive and it's it's kind of Otherworldly in some respects but it's also quite a grounded like human experience as well and I think that's we've always tried to do is you know a bit like with Regina

Spektor going back to her you know to take you to these places and to weave these narratives but from a very human and relatable perspective Tim Smith thanks so much thank you guys

I have five quick questions for you and you don't have to answer them if you can't come off the top of your head but okay it's just an experiment we're doing um because I think it's pretty interesting quick fire yeah yeah I hate

these when people ask me them because I can't ever remember I can't no that's just my favorite songs you're like I've never heard music before what's the song so let me try it okay what's an what's an album you're listening to right now

that you like oh good question um I am loving the new Big Thief album

um it's it's 20 tracks long uh and it's absolutely incredible and they are a band who I love they were the last um

the last band that I saw live a week before lockdown hit in the UK and I also got to see them recently as well so it feels kind of weirdly cyclical to see them so much but it's called Dragon new

warm Mountain I believe in you is the name of the record by Big Thief what is a book that you've either read recently or maybe in the past that that inspires

you or you really loved uh oh the overstory by Richard Powers is from a from a few years ago I think is just like amazing it's so incredible and

I could not recommend it more highly go to your restaurant when you're at home in London there's a Vietnamese spot on uh burman's history in South London

called Cafe house CA phe house and it's just it's it's like instead their coconut Vietnamese

Curry is like amazing to Die For What is one thing you always pack in your suitcase or your luggage when you travel oh good question um

pants obviously um uh I I just try and take it like I try and take a load of books and I never read them unfortunately uh comfortable pair of shoes do you have

a comfortable pair of shoes oh my Vans yeah my old dirty Vans yeah um what is your go-to junk food Fried Chicken probably wow the absolute

best but also like pizza I mean I'm a completely obsessed with food and the unhealthier the better so Mexican as well um yeah any like most most Asian Cuisine oh it's that's sorry impossible for me

to pick one you're a runner do you go barefoot running or do you do like big thick Souls um yeah thick Souls I'm not a perfect Runner are you

yeah I've never done it it's great I don't run Barefoot or like I use like toe shoes the little toe shoes yeah yeah yeah do you have like a preference for the kind of running shoes you you like

I've just got these like I've just got these these really comfy Nikes that have like it's essentially a big Soul that's like we've got a bit of material holding it

to your foot so they're kind of really breathable but super comfortable and I've done you know I did the marathon in them I've done a half marathon in them and they're my like they they actually that's something that's always with me on the road

um a place you go to to get away from it all it could be in London a park it could be a hike it could be another city or country I think um maybe the cinema I know that's a weird

answer but I think that's just wherever you are you know generally there'll be one and you know for an hour and a half or these days three hours it can just take you like you know take you

somewhere somewhere very far away favorite Hotel um I was thinking of the Madonna Inn have you ever been there yes in California yeah it's awesome it's totally mad I

went on a road trip with some mates in San Simeon yeah yeah through through down through California a few years ago and it was like one of the best couple of weeks of my life but

um yeah we we're like we're done in was like high on our list and it's just the maddest most surreal Place The Flintstones room or whatever yeah it's amazing yeah that's a great choice

um Dan thanks again it was great seeing you we're gonna try to come see you in la oh amazing and mostly we can we can go down there and bring the kids and see and you'll see a familiar face down there even though I know you know lots of people so that'd be brilliant man

that'd be so good to see you thank you so much for having me always welcome to come to our house for dinner oh cheers man thank you Bo says hello by the way sends his love I will say he'll I'll send him a note okay cheers thank you

cheers guys thanks so much take care bye bye hey thanks so much for watching my interview with Dan Smith of Bastille here on the great creators for more

episodes like this one on YouTube please hit the Subscribe button below this video and if you want to get notified when we post a new video click the Bell Button as well and you can find all of

our episodes and links to resources at thegreatcreators.com thank you so much for watching I'm guy Roz this is the great creators and I'll see you right here next time