Imogen Heap - Interview
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MMR: Are you satisfied?
IH: If I were really honest, I could definitely, even now, do things that I think would make the album better. I'm quoting Guy who's quoting somebody else: "An artist's work is never done, it's merely abandoned." And I think that's true with anything, any art. You can always see something [else], or you suddenly aren't that person when you started writing or doing the painting a year ago, you're something else...so, there's always that problem.
What was really helpful is that at the end I did spend a month, basically, going over everything with a fine tooth comb, checking that I really wasn't letting the standard down at any point, that I was really happy. There was still a few sections that I was really struggling with, right at the end, but, literally, I didn't sleep for three weeks. I slept on [the] couch about an hour or two a night for about three weeks, because I'd booked the mastering date, and I was not going to let it go over that, so actually my most creative was in that last three weeks, because I really knew that I had to finish it, so I had to make real decisions. Actually, the record was 70% done, and then in that three weeks, it all came together because I was doing it as a body of work and just making sure everything, sonically as well, was perfect.
Obviously, I'm really really happy with it. I don't actually want to go back with this record. I've had enough of it. I don't want to spend any more time on anything.
With the Frou Frou record as well, working with Guy, I learned a standard. I learned quality control, that you have to really really think about the lyrics you're writing, and think of them as a listener. How would they really feel like, to be sung to you? And because I was listening to myself constantly, through the monitors, I would be reminded of that, all the time.
So, really making sure that what I was saying, in my lyrics, that I was really happy with them. Because my debut record, I didn't have that angle. I didn't understand that people would be listening to it. I was writing it for me, [and] it didn't cross my mind that people would actually be listening to it, on their stereos, going, "[I] wonder what that means?"
This record, even though I'm not going into detail, hopefully there is a border. I don't want them to be so personal to me that everyone else feels alienated when they're listening to it. I want people to listen to it and go, "I've kind of had that same feeling, same experience."
MMR: It's Speak For Yourself, and what are you saying?
IH: It's just about a girl my age, living in London, just going through every-normal-day things that everybody else does, and finding the beautiful things in the everyday. Things like the sounds of the trains. I like to have that in the back of the music because it just brings the feeling of the city. Somebody said that it feels like an album for London, and I like that. There's a lot of references in the lyrics to places in London.
Some of the lyrics are really personal, about my family. Obviously my family and the people that live around me and my boyfriend are going to be in there somewhere, [but] they're not all word-for-word, exactly what's happening in my life.
I mean, a lot of the times, I'll be honest, the lyrics do run away with themselves and you kind of maybe take something that's happened a little bit further, so obviously it becomes quite fictionalised. Like, I'm not actually stalking someone in my real life, like I am in Goodnight and Go, but I quite like the idea... Maybe it's the things I'd actually like to get up to, but I don't really. So, I'm kind of living out my little fantasies
.When I was little, one of the first songs I wrote was The Candlelight. I didn't actually know at all what it was about at the time, but looking back on it I can really, really see what I was saying. The Candlelight to me, now, feels like a song written [when I was] worried about somebody taking away my creativity, in some way. Which is kinda what happened, because I didn't want to write anymore, with a record label that I didn't like. And I did kind of have a real thing about putting pen to paper after that, for a long time.
MMR: Your last solo effort, I Megaphone, appeared in 1998. Your next album, a collaboration with Guy Sigworth, came round in 2002. I think we're all wondering: what were you doing during those 4 years?
IH: Well, basically, touring. Like, a year's touring, on and off. I did lots of collaborations. I did collaborations with Species, LHB, Way Out West. I'd go on writing weekends...What else did I do? It's funny when I look at, because I can't remember what I did, but I wasn't like sitting around going on holiday, spending the money that I never earned. I was really doing stuff.
MMR: It wasn't an intentional break?
IH: No, no...that's the thing, Frou Frou was released in 2002, but the record took 2 years. Ok. 1998: touring, collaborations. Then, I did actually write a whole another record. Like, a whole further record, and was ready to go - and that is another reason why I'm really paranoid about record companies.
I had this other record and it was pretty much ready to go into production, and I'd spent months writing it. My record company said, "Right. You've come off touring, now we want a record," so they asked me to do another one. I got into the studio and was working on it, on my own again, and then I kept giving them these songs and they kept going, "Oh, no, you haven't really got a single, have you?" And I'd be like, "I think I have. I think I've really got a single. I must have something in there somewhere."
So, there was this constant battle with them. I was just getting really deflated by it all, and then I was just like, for fuck's sake, what can I do, I'm stuck? They don't think I have a single and I can't continue with my career because they will not let me go further with this record. So, that is when I met Guy again. He was having similar problems with his label, so that's when we got together and had a big moan, and then we wrote Flicks. And that was the beginning of Frou Frou. Except we didn't know, at the time.
It took another four years after writing that first song. Everything just took forever. I'm not complaining. Because obviously Frou Frou has done amazing things for me and I love working with Guy, and obviously from hearing this record and hearing IMegaphone, people can hear the influence of working with Guy....But it wasn't my plan.
But that's what happens. Records do take time. And especially if you're really anal about everything, which we are.
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