The Script singer and ex‑The Voice judge got a letter from the Queen. Is he trying to be Bono now?
company. It’s hard when you’re up against people that have been in the industry for so long like Simon Cowell but I have to say that yes The Voice has been a success, as a TV show. Of course it has. But as far as finding an artist, I take great pride in knowing that I’m the only coach off the show that’s taken their artist into the top 10.
One of my favourite moments involving the Script is when you performed in front of the Queen at Radio 1 and at the end she just clapped once and that was it! Quite rude.
No it wasn’t rude! We were told she wouldn’t clap at all. Seriously. We were told that when she’s there on her own without an audience, she doesn’t clap. We were told to keep the music really low and there were all these red tapes to jump over and she came in and she was cool. Really nice.
Maybe more than one clap would actually have been a signal to have you or Fearne Cotton killed or something.
In fairness I was happy with one clap. What was beautiful is that a week later a letter arrived to my house from the Queen thanking us for the performance. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. A touch of class that totally made up for any lack of clapping.
What we tend to do is concentrate on the lyrics and melody first and make sure the song is prepared. We’d be writing during soundcheck so you’re always thinking that there will be people listening to this song. I get to stand out on an empty stage and imagine all the people there.
The album title’s quite philosophical. Here’s what you said about it: “There is no sound without silence. You can’t have anything good to say if you don’t think about it first.” Don’t you think that sometimes just blurting something out is the purest form of expression?
I think so, yeah. I know what you mean and that’s the artistic approach of how you shouldn’t be thinking about what you do as far as art because then you access your inner child and children don’t think and they don’t have any conscious thought, but what we meant was the metaphor that there was silence before and there will be silence afterwards. I really do feel that today people blurt out too fucking much, people are on Twitter straight away saying I think this or that and they’re not really listening.
Say something to me now. The first thing that comes into your head. Go.
