I WAS LOSING SIGHT OF WHO I WAS
JAMES BAY TELLS ALEX GREEN HIS STRUGGLE WITH ANXIETY LED HIM TO RE-SHAPE HIS NEW ALBUM
IN 2019 James Bay had not long come off a mammoth tour. He had played six weeks of sold out shows in America and toured around Europe with Ed Sheeran, opening 90,000-capacity football stadiums for the pop superstar.
The 31-year-old singer-songwriter from Hitchin knew this was a special moment in his career but underneath he was struggling.
“That year was a high, but deeper down I was experiencing one of the bigger lows that I’ve ever known in my time as an artist,” he recalls. “It wasn’t fun and I was struggling to know how to deal with it. I was trying to write about it, I was trying to make songs about it, and f ****** hell I wrote a lot of sad songs, to the point that a lot of them went into the bin.”
James had already started work on what would become his third album. But in the intervening three years, that record has shapeshifted into a different beast – one with a far more positive slant.
“It was an incredible experience that I don’t take for granted,” he recalls on our Zoom chat having just returned home to the UK following a whistlestop two-week visit to America – his first since before the pandemic.
“I’m trying to express in as honest a way as I can, that I was just feeling like I was drowning in a strange despair that I couldn’t shake off.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do next as an artist. I was losing sight of who I was and feeling imposter syndrome and anxiety and insecurity and all these different things that are difficult to talk about, that weigh pretty heavy even in conversation.”
He settled on the title, Leap, after stumbling across a quote by 19th-century American naturalist John Burroughs: ‘Leap, and the net will appear.’
James had found the perfect description for his recent personal trials. “You can’t take anything for granted,” he offers. “Every time I sit down to write, I have to give it my everything. And I can’t control the outcomes. That’s something that is hard to accept at times.
“It’s hard for a lot of artists. I can’t control that so it has to be this leap from me and this hope that the net will appear.”
James worked through these feelings by turning to the important people in his life – his girlfriend Lucy Smith, who he has been with since they were teenagers doing their GCSES in Hertfordshire, and his close friends. The result was new, more hopeful music.
“I am always trying to push a boundary in what I do and how I work. On my second record it was definitely visual and sonic, and the lyrics came along a little bit from the first album. But my lyrics on this record, that’s the boundary I have pushed the most and I’ve tried to speak from a more vulnerable place than ever, but also be more direct about what I’m trying to say.”
He was able to finish the record in the nick of time and return home to the UK before lockdown hit. But then the release was put on hold.
“I made these songs, I recorded this album, and it was a very strange process because in March 2020 I thought I was finished and I couldn’t put the album out.
“When the pandemic began we said we would wait a few weeks and then we’ll get on with this. A few weeks passed, and then a few months, and then the rest of 2020 was a write-off. And then all of 2021 was a write-off for me personally as an artist who needs to go and travel around the world.
“So all of that time passed and I ended up writing more songs, some of which beat the ones on the original album.”
Another producer James worked on the record with was Finneas (O’connell), the in-demand songwriter best known as the main collaborator of his sister, Billie Eilish. The pair worked together on the track Save Your Love, with James surprised to discover Finneas to be a long-standing fan.
“It’s crazy when anybody says, ‘I really like your music’,” says James.
Three years on from starting work on the new album, James is finally preparing to go out and promote it. But there has been another major change in his life. Late last year, he and his girlfriend welcomed their first child.
He says: “I feel like there’s an underlying sense that it’s changed everything massively in a brilliant way. It’s incredibly overwhelming. I don’t mean that in a negative way. Overwhelming is usually used as a negative expression. But it’s overwhelming in all the ways that it could be and so many of them are incredible.