We made an album, we made a baby... We had a busy year
Jack Savoretti enjoyed quality time at home during the pandemic, as well as tapping into European disco grooves for his new album, he tells ALEX GREEN
HOLIDAYS abroad remain uncertain. But Jack Savoretti has created an album that transports listeners to balmy Mediterranean beaches filled with upbeat European pop.
With an Italian father, GermanPolish mother and UK upbringing, the dashing, rough-voiced singersongwriter is well placed to do so.
The 37-year-old has even invented a name for this new genre – Europiana.
“I was definitely trying to recreate that feeling of being on holiday,” he explains. “I was trying to create this kind of escapism – this world that we weren’t being allowed to be a part of because of Covid and because of lockdown.”
Written at the rural Oxfordshire home he shares with his wife and three children, the album helped Jack stay connected to his roots during the uncertain early days of the pandemic.
This meant capturing the music of his youth – French tenor Charles Aznavour, Spanish singer Julio Iglesias, disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder, Daft Punk and Chic.
“I got really swept away by the idea of shining a spotlight on the music that has influenced me, but predominantly to shift it from me to a certain degree. I wanted to shine a light on the European music of the last 60 years – and how varied it’s been and how good it has been.”
Jack also had a less noble motive. “I wanted to tap into that and brag about it as a European,” he jokes.
“I wanted to celebrate it – not brag, but celebrate... I occasionally brag, but that is not always met with charm.”
Europiana was recorded at London’s famous Abbey Road Studios with a fittingly mixed group of musicians from Denmark, Spain and even England.
“There’s a familiarity with the album that I really wanted to create,” he offers.
“I wanted it to be like when you walk into a bar and you’re like: ‘I’ve been here before. I’m sure I had a great night here. I don’t remember it because it was a great night. But I’m sure I have been there before.’
“I want people to have that feeling when they hear the album.”
Jack – whose Italian family hails from Genoa – knows the pain of being separated from loved ones during the pandemic. The early months were especially tough, when Italy suffered a devastating first wave of the virus and Jack could only watch on from the UK.
“It was sad, it was scary,” he recalls sombrely. “It was very frustrating for me because I felt very far away from my father and from my cousins.
“It seemed very reserved to Italy. I remember having arguments with friends of mine here saying, ‘Don’t think we’re immune to this, this is going to come here too’.
“But I remember not everybody felt that at the beginning.
“Everybody thought it was just an Italian problem and that was quite frustrating.”
Lockdown wasn’t all bad though. For an artist used to spending months each year living out of suitcases and sleeping in anonymous hotel rooms, being at home with his wife, British actress Jemma Powell, was a blessing.
The working week would end with Fabulous Fridays where Jack, Jemma and their three children (one a new arrival during lockdown) would sit down for a themed meal – Mexico and Greece were among their dinner table destinations.
“We made the best out of it,” he
says, chuckling deeply. “It was amazing to have this quality time at home with my family. We made an album, we made a baby. We had a busy year!”
Europiana is a musical left turn for Jack. After years of hard graft finally delivered him his first number one album with 2019’s Singing To Strangers, he ended his tradition of giving his albums three-word titles and swapped guitar-based love songs for upbeat, discoinspired grooves.
Single Who’s Hurting Who even features Nile Rodgers of Chic, one of the pioneers of the genre.
“It was a tough decision to make,” he says, smiling broadly, suggesting it was quite the opposite. “Because there are a few songs on this album that have three words that I really wanted to use. But it was time for something different.
“This record in general was a real shift. I wanted to make something that was, excuse the pun, very universal in the sense that after Singing To Strangers I had taken my music as far as I wanted to go with it, when it came to being personal.
“But I had also introduced this idea that I could almost get across a bigger picture if I started thinking about things bigger, rather than just about myself.
“And Singing To Strangers really taught that to me – my last album – because of the experience of Rome, that was a real love letter to Italy and Italian music, as well as to my wife.”
After 15 years of playing cafes, pubs and mid-sized venues, Jack had by 2019 earned a fanbase large enough to fill Wembley Arena and funding great enough to record in composer Ennio Morricone’s Rome studio. It was a high-water mark in his career, which prompted him to consider his next step.
“I was planning to plough forward,” he remembers. “But even before Covid and lockdown happened, I pulled the handbrake and was like, ‘What next?’
“It was such a climactic feeling. I always go to work trying to go forward and bring everybody forward who works with me, and to always keep this alive.
“But I never truly thought about getting a number one record in the UK, especially with an album that we made in Rome. That really threw me. I never thought we would play Wembley and feel at home.”
Now, having pulled the handbrake and performed a sharp left turn, Jack seems optimistic about the future.
“This was a way of setting my ambition of showing my team and myself that the flame of ambition has not dimmed at all. It’s actually glowing brighter than ever before.”