X Factor’s Matt has battled back from the brink
IHAVE always liked Matt Cardle. I was there in 2010 when he won the X Factor. I was standing just offstage with Mary Byrne and we both agreed that he was a superstar in the making.
As it turned out it was Niall Horan and One Direction who landed the superstar crown while Cardle’s career stalled. He suffered a brief but cataclysmic fall-out with his mentor Simon Cowell which saw him dropped from his label and then a spell in pop wilderness. He became another of those talent show has-beens — easily written off and just as easily forgotten.
Cardle was in turmoil. Addicted to a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, he spent two years dependent on prescription medication such as Tramadol and Valium before almost fighting with his drug dealer in December 2013 when he was refused any more pills
Three albums in three years, the pressure of fame and, of course, winning the UK’s prime-time singing competition seemed to have taken their toll. But having beaten cancer as a child Matt Cardle is not one to give in easily.
Rehab saved him, he admits — and it also gave him the material to stage his comeback with a new album.
‘It’s not all been plane sailing,’ Matt admits. ‘There has been a lot of darkness over the last years and whether you are painting pictures or playing guitar, a lot of it comes from a dark place.
‘It is such an easy thing to get tripped up by and I have no shame talking about what happened to me. It is important to own your past and your history.
‘Prescription drugs are so easy to get hold of — they will grab you around the throat in weeks and put you in a really nasty place.’
And Matt admits he saw safety in the fact that the drugs he was taking were available on prescription.
‘I know friends who take them casually and when life is a bit tough they pop a couple of valium to get to sleep and take the edge off,’ Cardle says.
‘Painkillers and sleeping pills are a dangerous game. Crack or heroin, you know they are nasty and dangerous, but because these are prescribed you assume it is safe and it is so easy to get sucked in. Life can be s**t and you are going to lose people close to you and you will feel hurt.
‘But you can’t run away from your problems using these prescription medications. I learned that the hard way. Had I kept taking them, I don’t know if I would be here today.’
Cardle is blunt about how his addiction spiralled and admits the process of rehab was not easy.
‘You can get addicted to these drugs just as quickly as you can to heroin,’ he says. ‘And it is a painful experience trying to come off them. ’
Matt spent 19 months after rehab completely sober, but admits he is drinking again now.
His return to alcohol was also prompted by the crash of emotions that came with finishing his role in Memphis the musical in the West End opposite Beverley Knight in 2015.
Cardle is on the phone to talk about his new album, the aptly named Time To Be Alive. It’s an exploration of his battle with addiction, journeying through the recovery process to his current contentment. Although he took his guitar to rehab, he ended up not writing while he was in recovery. It took a while before he was ready to put his struggles to paper, but he feels more worth as an artist for doing so on the album.
‘Performing the songs is emotional and therapeutic at the same time,’ he says. ‘A lot of the therapy happened in the writing and recording process. Once I had come out from rehab it was six or seven months before I started writing.
‘I have crammed a lot into a short career. It was three albums in three years and in hindsight that was too much. It really burned me out and that played a big part with the drugs.
‘Leaving Sony and Simon after the first record I was swimming against the tide. Doors closed and opportunities were lost.’
Happily Matt has managed to get back on his feet.
‘It was soul-destroying having these doors slammed in my face but through it all I am back with Sony and I have an album that I am more proud of than anything I have done before,’ he says. ‘I hope this one is uplifting.’
It certainly seems like it is the second coming for Cardle.