Tom Chaplin hasn’t had the easiest time over the last decade-and-a-bit.
Sure, he’s the frontman of one of the most successful British pop-rock bands of the modern era – but he’s also battled drug addiction, a subsequent relapse, and more than his fair share of mental health issues.
Now, he’s returned with his second solo album, Midpoint – a mellow, introspective, and sonically sparse work that shows Chaplin at his most vulnerable. We caught up with Tom to chat about the new album, how he plans to slot these new, sonically sparse songs into his typically bombastic live shows, and the toll that finding fame took on him and those around him.
Your new album is sonically sparser than your earlier work – was this a deliberate creative decision from the start of the writing process, or was it something that evolved as the album came together?
‘A lot of it was down to working with Ethan Johns, who produced the album. When we went through songs, he preferred choosing things that felt softer and more reflective, and songs that weren’t particularly bops – that’s my default, and it feels grander. He wanted to steer me in a slightly different direction, and one that reflected the honesty in the songs.’
‘It’s a songwriter-style album with a retrained palette, and I really like that about it – it’s a rare thing to have a full album of songs that aren’t completely slammed, especially in a world where even the quietest songs on the radio are still in-your-face.’
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How are you feeling about translating these sparser arrangements to a live show?
‘My manager kept asking me that – it’s a good question! I was quite blasé, and it’s been interesting getting the songs rehearsed. This new record has a reflectiveness and a sparseness to it, and when you play those songs alongside tracks from The Wave (ed.: Tom’s first solo album, released in 2015), or Keane’s back catalogue, there’s a sonic gap there.’
‘The way around it is that we start the show very intimately and built it gradually as the show goes on – and it really works! You don’t batter people’s ears into submission with the first three or four songs, and you’re allowed to play something much more intimate – fans seem to enjoy that. We did a warm-up show in Tunbridge Wells recently, and I came out of it slightly breathing a sigh of relief that it worked! You make these creative decisions when you’re recording an album and not really thinking about the live show, so it’s funny how this sparser sound has influenced the live show and transformed it in a way that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I was nervous, but I’m glad it’s worked out.’
Do the nerves ever go away?
‘I’ve found the entire process of making this album quite anxiety-inducing. I finished it last December, so I sat on it for a long time – and that’s always scary when you’re sitting on your own creation for too long. You start to go round in circles and ruminate. And, because it’s such a different album, and it’s much quieter and sparser than my other work – and that the subject matter, of midlife, can be a slightly tricky one – you wonder if people are going to know where you’re coming from.’
‘The days leading up to release are terrible, but mercifully, enough people have appreciated the album and its sparseness to make it feel worthwhile. Sonically, it’s a break from a lot of the modern music; music that’s inexplicable, exhaustingly loud, and overly present.’
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‘If anything, the nerves have been worse with this album.’
‘When I did The Wave, I was quite literally on a wave of excitement about making my first solo album, and about the outpouring of a story and an energy that had been stored up – but now it’s a bit more nuanced, and I’m more concerned about perceptions and reactions, so things have affected me more deeply about this album than they might have done before.’
‘It’s not necessarily a simple thing to understand or process – but yes, I do still feel anxiety and nerves about everything about this. The release, and the live shows… It’s exhausting, but it can be worth it.’
You went to rehab in the mid-Noughties. I can remember you being tabloid fodder at the time – it seemed like I couldn’t open a newspaper for a while without reading a story about you and what you were going through. How long does it take a person to recover from that?
‘I was such an unhappy person from my teens onwards. I was deeply unhappy, and I think that I thought that once the band had achieved that goal of mainstream success, I’d be fixed. Of course, that didn’t happen.’
‘I was put under even more scrutiny and became even more self-conscious and self-loathing. Then the addiction happened… I still wouldn’t change anything about my experience because it forced me to go on an inward journey. The outward perception of my self-worth and happiness wasn’t working; money, fame, and success did not make me happy. The journey had to be inward, and I had to be true to myself and my loved ones – and now, I’m a content person, for the most part. Not that I’m not full of worries. Fame was just a very grand way to discover that my unhappiness was inward.’
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How honest do you allow yourself to be in your lyrics? And do you ever filter your lyrics, or consider how friends, family members, or people in your life might feel when they hear them?
‘No, I never really filter. Not these days. On this record, I’ve talked about my relationship with my wife. There are two songs in particular – ‘Overshoot’ and ‘Gravitational’ – that are about the two of us. We’ve been together for nearly twenty years and have been through a lot, but we have this deep, long-lasting love that you can’t just magic up overnight. A lot of shared history, and a bunch of unspoken stuff between us.’
‘We have all of that, but inevitably there are times in life when you question that – so I wanted to explore that. ‘Overshoot’ is about exploring that side of things – the question of ‘is this it, and are we bound together until the end of our lives?’. It’s also about deciding to celebrate the beautiful things. What happens to a lot of couples is that they hanker for a life they don’t have, rather than celebrating what they do have. That’s not always easy to do, but it’s something we all feel. I always feel that honesty is very important to the writing process. It’s something that people pick up on as being different, but it should be the default.’
Can you describe yourself in three words?
‘There’s a line from the album about being alive with grace – and how we should ‘salute the wonder of it all’. You’ve got to acknowledge it’s an extraordinary thing, to be alive.’