James Bourne has been quite busy for the last twenty years. From a less-than-subtle beginning as a member of pop-rockers Busted to a surprise McReunion and a stint as a songwriter-for-hire to The Vamps and One Direction, there seems to be little that Bourne hasn’t turned his hand to.
Apart, of course, from The Dreaded First Solo Album. But that, dear reader, is all about to change.
Yep, you guessed it: Busted mainman James Bourne has just released his debut solo single, Everyone Is My Friend, and announced that he’ll be releasing a full-length album (!!!) in October. Naturally, we had a few questions…
Why did it take so long for you to record a solo album under your own name?
‘In order for you to be an artist, you need people to believe in you. I’m not sure if anyone really believed in me by myself before. Even though I always had faith in myself, you need a couple of people to say ‘yes’: personally, I’m only just feeling like I’ve got those people in my corner.
‘If you’re starting off, and you’re writing songs in your bedroom, and then you go and sing them to people and nobody’s interested in helping you, it makes things very difficult. Even if you do decide to persevere, it’s still very hard. If you upload your stuff without anybody knowing about it, somebody still has to come across it and think ‘yeah, I want to work on that’, and that doesn’t always happen.
‘Because music’s been my life, I’ve never really stopped improving. I’ve never stopped working on my own music; on myself; and on just playing the guitar and singing, and all of that has just led to me getting better over time. I couldn’t have written Everyone Is My Friend in the beginning – heck, I couldn’t have made this entire record in, say, 2006, because I just wasn’t good enough. Even though I had all the success with Busted when I was very young, it’s still just a bunch of chords and some singing: this album, on the other hand, is an album I’ve grown into.
It’s interesting how you felt that lack of validation when you were the primary songwriter in one of the biggest British pop bands of the Noughties.
‘It’s one thing to be a good songwriter: it’s another thing to carry your own songs by yourself.
‘I feel like this album happened naturally, at the right time. About six years ago – before McBusted happened, which was quite the happy accident – I was starting to focus a lot more on my own playing and singing. I was planning on doing my solo album at that time – but then, I popped up on stage at a McFly show, and the audience went so crazy that we just went ahead and did the McBusted thing.
‘My logic at the time was that McBusted was an amazing thing to be a part of, and that I could always go away and make my own music again once everything had quietened down: so, that’s what I’ve done.
Your new single, Everyone Is My Friend, has an optimistic, campfire-pop vibe to it – is it representative of the rest of the album? Or does the remainder of the record take an unexpected techno turn?
‘It’s true of the album lyrically. I’ve been searching for the truth in my lyrics a little deeper – maybe 5% deeper – but then as for the songs themselves… I think that the lyrics you write will dictate the sonic direction and the sounds you put to them. When you’re writing a song, I think a lyric tells you a lot about what a song’s gonna be.
‘There are a lot of different sounds on my album, but they’re all rooted in a live performance. When I record the songs at the start, just laying down an acoustic guitar and a vocal – when you strip away the production, that’s what’s at the heart of the songs, so that’s the vibe that’s carried throughout the album.
Were there any artists who particularly informed the sound of this album?
‘Weirdly, I listen to a lot of acoustic music. I listen to a lot of songwriters from the past – a bit of Bob Dylan, for example. Dylan’s fascinated me recently, just because it’s songwriting in its simplest form. It’s like a masterclass in songwriting. My stuff’s nothing like that, but I’ve definitely been delving into him lately.
You get the opportunity to take back one song you wrote for Busted or McFly and keep it for this solo album. Would you do it?
‘I really wouldn’t, you know. I think, looking back at the bands that I’ve been part of up to this point, I really want my solo music to be remembered as another facet of what I’ve done with my career. I’m gonna keep making solo stuff, because I’ve enjoyed it so much – so, it’d be nice for it to have become its own thing as the years go by.
And dare we ask about your touring plans?
‘Ha! Tough subject. For the first shows – whenever they may be – I’d like to just do them by myself, just because I know the songs can work so well that way. I think it’d be interesting to perform completely solo. Sometimes you don’t need anyone else.
‘I’m just kind of taking each day as it comes, really – I haven’t thought about live because I’m not allowed to do it. To be honest, I think I might even release another album before I tour…
Out of every song you’ve ever written, which one are you proudest of?
‘I’m pretty proud of Year 3000. I’m really proud of the way that that song has made it out into the wider world. People associate bands with the song now before they associate the song with the band: whether it be Busted, the Jonas Brothers or somebody else, the one thing that’s universal is the song.
‘The way that song has just become so global – people all over the world know that song, and that’s a beautiful thing. When you write a song, you want it to be shared: that’s been the most shared of all of my songs, and I’m proud of that.
‘A song like Year 3000 is still growing. It’s still out in the world getting streamed – it was a question on a game show the other day, for goodness’ sake. This is twenty years after the song’s been written. In that mind, it means that it worked. The song became a hit: a real hit. It wasn’t Number One for a week – it’s a worldwide hit, and I’m really proud of that.
‘You hope that you get that with a few of your songs, but it’s one of those things that the planets have to align for. You can’t make it happen on your own.
How many songs do you have written that have never seen the light of day?
‘So many. In 2010 I wrote 200 songs, and of those, about 10 of those went on different records for various artists. To be honest, it’s a horrible existence and I would never go back there: I’m much happier writing songs for myself than I am for other people.
‘It was a weird time in my life where people were like “hey, this guy knows how to write songs – we’re going to get him writing for all these bands!”. Being a songwriter for other artists is not a nice position to be in. You want a relationship. With the McFly thing, it’s different, because I was a part of the making of it. But to sit there and be like “oh, One Direction needs a song!”? That’s not a nice place to be in, because the whole world is trying to get a song on the One Direction album. If you’re going to write for other artists, you want to be in the room with them, writing together and vibeing with each other.
Who would you like to write with if the chance arose?
‘I think I’d write a really good record with Harry Styles. I like his direction: I like that he’s taking inspiration from artists from the past. I like that he goes to the Troubadour and sings with Stevie Nicks. I like his style, y’know? I just think it’s going to serve him well as he gets older. A lot of music right now feels so temporary and his music feels a little bit more enduring. I mean, he likes David Bowie – in my mind, anyone who’s drawing influence from David Bowie is in the right place.