Maxwell
October 2009 | R&B
Maxwell has been called the finest soul singer/songwriter of his generation. In July 2009, his fourth studio album BLACKsummers'night entered the Billboard Top 200 at #1, an achievement even more notable as it was his first release for eight years! Recorded entirely live in the studio, it is testament to Maxwell's heartfelt desire to keep his music real and organic. In the UK this week for four sold-out dates and a TV appearance on "Later...", Maxwell was eager to share with we7 the reasons for the long break, how he balances his art with his real life and why he believes his new music is his best yet.
First of all, it's a great pleasure to meet you.
Thank you so much.
I work for a company called we7.com, which isn't in America yet. It's a UK music website, think of us like an online music jukebox, co-founded by Peter Gabriel.
Really?! Do you know how much of a fan I am of his? The Last Temptation Of Christ is one of my most favourite records. It's not one of his hits, but there's something about that record that still does it for me. The way it's mixed, the sound and just the tribalness of it. It actually inspired Embrya a lot.
I read that while you were away, you got to a stage where you enjoyed the anonymity.
Yeah I love meeting people for who I am as a person rather than who I am as a music person. It's a lot more genuine to me and it was a bit addictive - to not be known, to be actually loved for what I thought rather than my music. Don't get me wrong, I'm very honoured by the fact that people are excited by my music, and even that they even still remember me. But as a person who needs to make music from a human space, you need to be a human being for a while to get to that place. So by taking those years off, I galvanized a great deal of inspiration.
How do you compare your music now with your earlier albums?
I feel what's happening now is probably going to symbolize who I am and who I was meant to be musically as opposed to when I first started. Most of my heroes did their real music when they were in their 30s. I was like a child when I was doing Urban Hang Suite. I feel like I'm a fully realised actualised being now. When you are close to things ending and maybe never being what they were before, you really come to the truth of who you are supposed to be. And I think that's what BLACKsummers'night really exemplifies.
You've always wanted your new albums to be different from their predecessors?
Making "Embrya" was like that because it was clearly different to "Urban Hang Suite", and it was done on purpose. If my career ended because I didn't do part two of something, then sobeit, it wasn't worth doing it in the first place. So, once that worked, then Now came out and thankfully people were happy with that - it wasn't completely "Urban Hang Suite" but it was part of that and part something else - then, it was like okay let's take a break, and go live some life.
And "BLACKsummers'night" is part one of a planned trilogy?
Yeah the songs are already written and ready to go. Thematically, we already know what we want. The second album I want to bridge the gap between gospel and Africa - there's this whole history thing that I wanna play out. The third of the trilogy is a complete bedroom record. I just want the biggest baby boom to happen after that record comes out!
You take your craft very seriously don't you?
I think that probably the truest thing I can say is my responsibility is to use my life. What I owe the world is my music, not the reality show version of myself. I'm not here to be a celebrity; I just wanna be an artist and a creative person. I want my real life that I share with those around me to inspire the art I send out into the world. And I don't want the two to mix too much.
Thank you so much for your time today. Enjoy the UK tour.
No thank you. I'm really excited about the release and in having these kinds of conversations meeting people who really care about music. It's such an honour to be here, and to be considered and cared for like this, it's amazing.
