[Music] everything that i need to know about you is in your music and i think that one of the things that is kind of often overlooked because of the quality of the pop songs the melodies who you are as a performer and also your charisma is just how transparent and ambitious
you are with your words and this album is a huge leap forward man like a gigantic like if your last album was a big step this is a leap would you agree i i do agree it's always nice to hear your words yeah about the album because i know you really are listening from like uh
just like i think i think it's it's always interesting to hear reviews of people who don't know me but then also people who do know me because i think that you've also seen me kind of grow up as a from a boy yeah to a young man yeah and now and now a young man an
older younger man a slightly older young man the older young man yeah but i didn't really know you when you were a boy and when you were doing all that and dabbling around in in the free space and kind of finding your voice and finding your audience at the same time i didn't i didn't i didn't
really know me either you know i think i think that i still am trying to know me and and that's like the beauty of sometimes i think like am i going to look back at the music and how am i going to feel about it in 20 years right and then i'm i'm thinking oh this is
great this is like a an audio scrapbook that i have it's going to really show the things that i thought about and things that were on my mind and kind of how fearless i was at that time and how scared i was at the time you can only look at it as a time stamp yeah otherwise you will never put
anything out and not just you any artist if they sit there and worry about how it's gonna feel at the end yes why would you do it in the time yes and in the moment yeah right and isn't this just about capturing moments isn't that what this is all about
memories completely you know i i got off tour and i came to la and i had i think i had like two or three weeks um in a studio malibu malibu yeah where you were last time close i think i was like going up there being like okay coming off the back of of senorita and if i can't have you and
you know a really crazy tour and and i got up there and i was like riddled in anxiety and stress and fear and like i couldn't sing i couldn't think i was like i was like what am i what do i want to say i thought i had all these great things to say i thought i had this
beautiful idea and you'd also said to me when we were in malibu the first time i remember you were like man you know i didn't want to leave like i didn't want this process this album to end so i guess subconsciously maybe you're thinking let me go back to the place that i yearned for
yeah before this all became an international tour or whatever the place that i was able to do what i did before yeah how did you and how did that feel that i mean having that sense of anxiety like it was it was a successful time for you and by this point as well trying to put
the timeline together your life on paper looks great it looks like album is successful two are successful personal life successful everything's great and you go back to malibu and what are you feeling just closed like so close then i was like to my team and to everyone i was
like guys i gotta take a month off so i took a month off and i ended up camila was out in england she was filming a movie so i was out in england she had this house in the countryside and she would like wake up at like 7 a.m and go to set and come back around 5
and i was basically like in the countryside of england on my own and it was like at first i was like kind of losing my mind and then a few days in i started settling in really just like going for these walks like taking time to like just settle and reflect and um there was this amazing
driver that i had at the time he said you should listen to this master class by this author named elizabeth gilbert who wrote uh eat pray love is one of her books so i started listening to this master class and first of all elizabeth gilbert after learning more about her is just like
yeah this incredible incredible woman and i'm gonna botch this and get it all wrong but it's up to us to investigate it yeah at some point in the master class she leads you on to go and listen to this ted talk so i'm listening and she goes back in ancient greece if there was a
painter or if there was like uh any type of creative person and they would produce beautiful art the people of the town would say that there was a genius living in the walls of the painter and you know if it was amazing they couldn't take all the credit
because there was a genius living in the walls and if it wasn't amazing you also couldn't take all the credit because it wasn't all you and she goes on to talk about how your only job is to just like show up and to open up to the fact that like anything can come and nothing can come too and if
nothing comes like don't be upset about it because this is the creative process this is not mechanical this is not meant to be perfect you know and i think that for me i was really trying to beat everything i've done so i go through this whole kind of thing of trying to let myself go
and be more free and i show up to a studio in upstate new york now this is where i wrote my second hour you went back to you went back yeah i went back you were back and i walked into the studio i sat down on him i did a little meditation and i said to myself
i'm here and i was like i hope to god there's a creative genius in these walls because i'm here and i got nothing and it just happened it started flowing and it was like what did what was the first thing that happened i always felt like i had to walk into a studio and command the room
and be like this is what we're going to do and i kind of just walked into the studio and i looked at the writers and the people who i love and trust and i just kind of hung out yeah and just sat there and kind of tried my best to let it come and it did and i feel really lucky for that
because i think the point of the creative genus thing is that sometimes it doesn't come but don't get down on yourself when it doesn't you know it takes some artists a long time to figure that out yeah once you create a framework around music that involves money
expectation yeah routine these are all man-made human-made constructs yeah art isn't really not art is divine inspiration totally so when you try to fit that into the constructs you try to put what is inherently something that is somewhere between the conscious and the subconscious and a
sweet space to be able to reveal something about yourself and what you're going through that you can't put into a normal conversation yeah again as a construct right let it flow then you put it into this framework it's like people get swept up in that expectation you touch on it a
bit later in the album will get to it the idea of what it is to be you outside of what makes you you which is that inspiration that waiting for something how much of this album on a basic kind of balance was subconscious and how much of it felt conscious in terms of the writing
i'd love to say 70 was subconscious but i don't i don't know if that's completely true because i was probably going from an 80 in my head you know um place and 20 letting it flow before this album and yeah i guess i had all these ideas of what i wanted to sound like and what
i wanted it to be like and it's like funny because if you set yourself up for what you want it to be like and what you want it to sound like and to mean the second someone plays a note that doesn't sound like that you think you fail it's thrown into chaos it's thrown into chaos so
if you start off like look whatever this is this is going to be whatever it's going to be let's discover it and then it starts coming and it starts flowing and also like this is like pushing into a bigger conversation but i think for a long time that i was spending so much of
my time just trying to get to the end of the process which was like how do i finish the album how do i have the big song that would suggest that you were searching for a result and the endorphin rush of getting a great result rather than the enjoyment of the process
exactly i think so i think that also from a young age i was like really shown what it feels like to have that gold and that success and that glory and it's addictive it's addictive and you miss out on the most beautiful part which is the process right when you start to lean into that
process the end result comes around and it's in this beautiful bow and it looks gorgeous and you're really happy with it and you're expecting this like big thing to happen and it doesn't happen but you're okay if you go in with an idea before you even start of how it's
going to look at the end what have you really learned in the process nothing because you'd learned it all before you started and want to present it yeah you were just yeah what do you think with it with the new elements of your life that got you to a place where you weren't so result obsessed
where you weren't trying to be the shawn people expected you to be that you were able to start to meditate at its most basic functional form and use that tool in order to embrace the unknown it's just that's a self-destructive way of being is is in constant pursuit of the the end
result even when you do get that end result the reward is fleeting yeah a lot happens when you fall in love for the first time yeah because you have you you really feel this like support this like grounded hey if everything goes away i'm going to be okay yeah it's got expected perspective and
it's beautiful and it really allows you to be like okay well if i'm going to do this i might as well be doing it for the right reasons and really really really enjoying it otherwise i'd just rather watch movies with you all day you know and to be able to share that
with someone who's going to benefit the same way yeah because you can get that perspective from someone who does something else all together different in life but in some ways it'll feel like a gift more for you than it is for them totally whereas when you're in a situation where
someone like camila who is as well at a similar stage in her life success all the similar kind of addictive potential of needing to work work work stay stay stay in and attention attention attention for you to both be able to take a step back simultaneously and say
what does that all mean really when this is really what matters exactly and you know the pandemic that's happening yeah um in the isolation and the quarantine has been terrifying and and really hard but something really beautiful for me came out of it which was you're not allowed
to leave stillness stillness i went to miami and i was living with camilla and her parents and her sister and i was in panic for the first week being like there's no way i'm gonna make an album and then when i started to settle into like how nice it is to like be in the
same place every night to like have a movie time to like cook dinner with a family and to do laundry i know it all sounds really kind of silly but when you've been touring the world since you're 15 years old like i don't remember the last time i smelled laundry yeah it's a nice smell it's a
nice really calming smell it feels like growing up feels like growing up that stillness brought a lot of anxiety to the surface that i had to work through and on the other side of that was like a real reflective period for me where i could be like oh this is what i've been doing this is
crazy like this is what i can do this is art this is bigger than me it was the first time i had a chance to even think about someone more than me like it was it was the first time i had enough space in my heart in my head that wasn't so consumed about how many
people were caring about what i was doing or how many whatever likes streams whatever you want to call it it was the first time i was quiet and i was able to be like what is happening in this world and how do i feel about it and what can i do and and where does this go from here and
that was the best gift i think i've ever ever been given in my whole life and that's like what's really spawned songs like wand wonder and in the whole album to an extent but especially songs like wonder you know was completely spawned from that reflective moment and
something that's a really big thing that i've been thinking about is everyone's got to give themselves a little bit of credit because there's so much input happening at all times news and so much input happening and it's really hard to settle down and to just be like well how do i
actually feel about this like my truth what is my truth about this and it takes work and it takes time and it's tough you know and i think that when i finally found this moment of stillness and clarity i was like oh this is like this is really what it means to be close
to yourself truth in that yeah how was the first time you meditated were you resisting were you just your mind was like no i've been meditating kind of off and on for like four years now until six seven months ago when i started really meditating which was then became a daily twice a
day thing but then became a way of being you know and just this conscious way of seeing your life and and also understanding your your own kind of self-destructive tendencies so i asked alicia keys a question the other day and the the answer was so interesting to me that
i asked bruce springsteen the same question and his answer was completely different but so interesting to me and so i'm going to ask you this question and it may be something i retire after this but at the moment i'm really enjoying it so i'm going to ask this which is that
in my experience of interviewing artists in many many years i love to speak the language and one thing i've noticed is that the artistic ambition ultimately is driven from some kind of whole some fracture something that needs to be fulfilled that can't be fulfilled by anything else
but a desire to express oneself and to find meaning through art but it comes from a place that is empty and now that you're in a place where you're starting to fill that hole with other things without attention and fame and success and ambition are you any closer to identifying what
started this journey for you in the first place and why you are an artist and what prompted you to want to pursue this with your life and what created the whole it's funny it's like when you're an artist and especially at a young age you kind of get filled up
with so much love everywhere you look someone's saying they they love you and they care about you and it's probably like 150 times the love any normal person gets because it's constant and it's from people who you don't know all over the world and it's interesting because
you can kind of get to a place where that can overwhelm and be like this is too much or you can like try to internalize that love and send it back out and i think that i love i mean i love music down to the simple form of it just is it's awesome and it makes me feel good and
and i've always loved it but for me at 22 it's definitely becoming about much more than music you know i think it's i think it's about becoming and and just being a beacon of love and and sending it back out because i've been given it for so many years you know but it's just rare for
someone at 22 to already realize that that's not the answer most people don't get to that point until closer to middle age when i realize i need to make a transformation here lifestyle-wise because this is just too much noise for me to seek clarity with it
you're at a point now at 22 where you've made this ambitious record which starts with an intro who does intros now yeah and the intro is just literally if i can paint a picture and i sure as heck hope this is how you start your live show of a piano in a single spotlight yeah like it's 1978
and you're just sitting there playing this thing i mean it's it's almost a really sad start totally really wide open experience i think so i think it's a very reflective star i think that like for me mainly the most important part of that song was the lyric which was you
you have a a million different faces but they'll never understand unless you let them in and that's you and that's me you've been a million different places so give yourself a chance to get lost in wonderland and the wonderland is where the genius lives this this reflective time gave me
a real moment of like breathing and thinking like okay you know if i'm going to do this i want to do this like as truth and as honest as i can and writing that song and letting it be the introduction to the album was basically me saying to myself all right man you're cool to just be
you just be you you know and as i wrote it like i remember writing it and sitting there and it giving me chills up my body was like a deep knowing in my heart was telling my mind you're going to be cool like this is this is it this is well just say these words
listen to your own words and move forward from it and i really hope that people listening to that song feel that way but it's the doorway to the whole album which is like a very me thing and it's like funny when we say that what is the most you thing because that
is quite me but there's definitely a lot of i i want i did that because i know people like that and i did that because i want people to like that i always said that because i know that will resonate and that's a lot of everyone else yeah and this time around i tried to remove the everyone else thing you