We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with John Adams about his amazing EP “No White Lies”. Check out the interview below.
Hi, John! Thank you for granting the interview. Your music is amazing, and we’re excited to speak with you about your new EP “No White Lies.” How long did the production take?
Hi, I really appreciate you taking the time to listen and find out more about me. This EP was actually all written, recorded and released within 10 months. In the past, I have taken a long time to create tracks and by the time they were released, they felt out of date and almost as if they were written by someone else. I guess it’s a bit like choosing an outfit or a style to wear in two years time. I’m sure we’ve all looked back at a picture and wondered what the hell we were wearing. It can be a bit like that! I’m pleased that these songs are a good representation of how I’m feeling at the moment and it makes the release and the pride I have in the body of work a bit more honest.
Tell us what inspired your new album.
As I’ve highlighted above honesty is important to me hence the name “No White Lies”. Our whole existence is surrounded by lies that we consider harmless but I’m not quite sure if they are as harmless as we may believe. For example, we all put forward our best selves on social media to make us feel good, but does it? If we look at the bigger picture it can be quite catastrophic. We compare the worst of our own lives to the best of everybody else and I don’t think there’s any feeling worse than being the only one that knows how you’ve bent the truth to appear more successful than you are. I’ve tried to keep the whole thread of the EP really honest. The songs are written by me, the musicians are my friends, the artwork is just a mixture of furniture from my studio and I’ve done a series of Rug Sessions that shows every song performed live and stripped just as they were written.
You’re known as a songwriter. How important is it to write your own music?
I feel like I’m banging on about the same thing here but I personally think it’s really important. When you hear someone sing a song you presume they are delivering their own message and if they aren’t it feels a little disconnected. My favorite part of seeing my idols live is listening to the inspirations and hidden meanings behind the songs and all that would be lost if they weren’t involved with the creative process. Also, the most magical part for me is when you experience a feeling that becomes a song and one day that song becomes that feeling again out of the blue. Like a familiar smell. It’s my therapy and without all these aspects I would just feel like I make noises for a living.
Tell us about your songwriting process. How do you choose a topic to sing about?
I pretty much write all the time. If I’m at the cinema or a concert I’m noting down lines to inspire me at a later date. If I’m driving I’ll record voice notes to come back to and generally, I find myself latching onto particular phrases in a conversation or something I’ve seen on a bus stop. When I eventually get time to sit down with a guitar most of the pieces are already there and I just start putting them all together. I tend to write lots of half songs and only the ones that excite me ever get finished. That doesn’t leave a lot of whole songs so the selection process is pretty much done naturally.
What has been your biggest challenge as a singer?
Before I was a singer I was a Mathematics Teacher. I was raised with an education first policy and I was told: “Get good grades and you’ll get a good job”. I think my biggest challenge was deciding to ignore this advice and resign from a full-time post to pursue music. No regrets so far!
Which is your favorite track from “No White Lies.”
My favorite is “Million Lives”. I’m a big fan of the traditional love songs with minimal production and well-written strings and I think this is the closest I’ve come to writing the type of music that I listen to in my spare time. Sometimes when I’m writing I agonize over a lyric and eventually settle for the best I can come up with but when I wrote the lyric “If I had a million lives, I’d find you a million times” it was exactly what I was trying to say that day.
How can fans-to-be gain access to your music?
I’m on every platform imaginable and the best hub for all this is www.johnadamsmusic.co.uk
What are your musical icons/influences?
I’m a huge fan of the way Passenger tells a story and I’m a sucker for a really good voice such as Sam Smith, Emeli Sande, and James Bay.
When looking back on the production of your music, what resonated with you the most and why?
The most personal song for me is “First Line” and I feel like I’m able to keep the real reason I wrote it a secret behind a few well-phrased lyrics. For example, the opening line is “I should have seen it coming from the first line” and everyone presumes it is referring to spoken word and not the darker meaning of drug use that I picture when I sing it.
In your opinion, how could a singer make an impact on the world?
There are so many aspects of life that we are unable to control that I think we all need a distraction from time to time. Music and movies do that for me. For hours I can be so engrossed in other people’s storylines that I don’t give a second thought to my own. I’d be really pleased knowing that my music gives people a similar rest bite.
If you had to do it all over again, would you still choose this career? Would you do anything differently?
Yes, 100%. I sometimes wish I’d started music earlier but at the same time consider myself very lucky to have a job to fall back on and the habits of a hardworking job.
Do you have anything else you would like to share about your music or career?
Just a massive thank you! I’d trained for years to be in my career but I just knew that I needed to take the leap of faith and pursue a career in music before it was too late. I’m now able to do what I love full time and the amount of support is overwhelming. There have been so many people that have taken my dream as seriously as their own and there’s not a day goes by that I’m not appreciative to be in the position I am. I know how hard it is to arrange babysitters or travel to come to a show and how hard you need to work for the £10 people use to purchase my album so I’m beyond grateful for anyone that helps fund my music. I’m also unsigned so I don’t have a huge marketing budget but I can always rely on my fan base to share the new music and this year they pushed the new EP to number 2 in the songwriter charts. They’re the best!
Thank you for helping me reach new ears!
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