Sometimes you lose sight of what makes you happy and have to reset
Frontman Tom Ogden tells ALEX GREEN how his battle with imposter syndrome helped shape the new Blossoms album
IN June 2019, Blossoms were preparing to play to a hometown crowd of 15,000 at Stockport County FC’S Edgeley Park. It should have been the crowning glory of their early careers but frontman Tom Ogden was distracted.
The frontman spent the run-up to the show fighting his imposter syndrome. “My head was elsewhere,” he recalls. “I was obsessing over the fine details. I was thinking, ‘I need to be a better frontman’.
“I went through a period of time where I felt a little bit down about myself... I’d lost a bit of what made me happy, which was weird. But everyone goes through these kinds of times at different points in their lives and songwriting does help you.”
Looking at Tom on stage with his powerful voice and foppish energy, you would never detect his internal struggles. But that sense of selfdoubt had been lurking since the band’s debut album went to number one back in 2016, winning them the approval of hometown heroes Johnny Marr and Ian Brown, and a legion of fans.
Since their rapturous homecoming show, Tom has channelled his anxieties into his songwriting. The results are audible on Ribbon Around The Bomb, their forthcoming fourth record, once again produced by James Skelly of The Coral. As he tells it, the pandemic forced Blossoms to “put the brakes on”.
“We couldn’t tour, we had nothing in the pipeline and that, in effect, made me reflect a bit more on what we have achieved, where we have come from. I looked inwards a little bit and wrote songs about what it’s like to do all that at such a young age.
“There’s a lyric in the last track called Visions which goes, ‘Was I complete at 23?’ which sums it up to be honest. I had just got with Katie, who I am now married to, and we had just got a number one album. I was 23 and I hadn’t had a chance to take stock, appreciate it and look back.”
Tom’s life has changed since then. He is now 28 and married to salon owner Katie – their wedding took place at Stockport Town Hall, naturally. But Tom still feels the weight of responsibilty. He says: “As the songwriter, I carry a lot of weight in terms of writing the songs,” he says. “If I don’t write the songs it could all fall apart.
“I remember feeling like that and obviously the bigger we got, the more people rely on you. You have crew that work for you and I am thinking, ‘F***, if I stop writing songs, all these people...’
“I am a bit of a worrier. That’s what I’m like. So I have a tendency to go to the worst case scenario, which is something I have got a lot better at.”
Tom got to grips with his worries just before lockdown. But some habits are hard to break.
“I would see one person in the crowd who looked bored and then that would just throw me for the whole gig,” he recalls. “Even though there are like 15,000 other people who are loving it!”
But Tom is loath to complain. “Obviously, no one wants to hear someone in a band moaning about being in a band, because it’s amazing. Don’t get me wrong.
“But sometimes you lose sight of what makes you happy and you have to reset things and appreciate what you have got.”
After their 2020 release, Foolish Loving Spaces, drew on Talking Heads, U2 and Primal Scream, Ribbon Around The Bomb looks in a different direction.
They enlisted a string section to evoke the sound of their favourite film soundtracks and turned towards the tuneful folk of Simon & Garfunkel and the laid-back blues of Dire Straits for inspiration. Friends of the band have described their new sound as “lush”, which makes Tom chuckle.
“It definitely does feel like an evolution,” he offers.
In another first, Tom is looking away from love and finding inspiration elsewhere. Foolish Loving Spaces took in heartbreak and the rush of first love. His new songs, however, are less autobiographical and, while love is still a fixture, more lyrically diverse.
“You always evolve as a band and songwriter, and the last album was a lot about being in love,” he admits. “Because in the past I had written a lot of break-up songs, because you tend to write what’s going on in (your) life at that period of time. The songs fall out of you. Whereas I’d always found it a bit more difficult to write some positive songs without it sounding cringy.”
All four of their albums have been produced by James and the multi-instrumentalist, Merseyside frontman helped Ogden go outside his comfort zone on the new record.
“Me and him spoke a lot during lockdown and we were like, ‘We need to do something different on this record.’ I suppose that’s when the personal songs came up more because I tried to force myself not to write love songs.”
In May last year, Blossoms were chosen to headline a pilot music festival in Liverpool’s Sefton Park as part of the Government’s coronavirus Events Research Programme. The outdoor gig saw 5,000 mask-less, young revellers dance shoulder to shoulder to live music for the first time in more than a year.
That concert still stands out in Tom’s mind as the start of a new era for the band.
“It felt amazing,” he gushes. “It was like playing our first gig all over again but everyone already knows all the words. It was honestly one of the best experiences we have ever had as a band.”
...the bigger we got, the more people rely on you. You have crew that work for you and I am thinking, ‘F***, if I stop writing songs, all these people...’ Blossoms frontman on the worries that plagued him