SINGER-SONGWRITER Douglas Dare ON THE ART OF TRYING ON DIFFERENT SELVES

Singer-songwriter Douglas Dare signed to the independent label Erased Tapes in 2013, and has since released four studio albums, with his latest, Omni, released this month. Described by Pitchfork as making “earthly experiences sound otherworldly”, he’s toured globally, alongside indie royalty Nils Frahm, José González, Perfume Genius and Anna Calvi. He’s performed Robert Smith’s Meltdown Festival, David Lynch’s takeover at HOME, Manchester, featured on the grammy-winning For the Birds album and he recently collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for a special performance for BBC Radio 3.

We caught up for a chat about how he keeps his creative candlewick burning and why it’s important to try on different selves.

Poppy Cockburn: Okay, so let’s get down to it… My first question is, do you remember when you realised you might be more than a pianist, and how that transformation into becoming a songwriter happened?

Douglas Dare: Yeah. When I was eighteen, I went to LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts), where you have to choose a specialist instrument. I’d always played piano so I naturally went with that. I hadn't written any songs at that point.

When I got there, I met musicians who’d been writing songs for years, who were aspiring to be pop stars or alternative music stars. Very quickly I got swept up in it all. I joined a few bands. There weren't many piano players on the course so I was in high demand. 

I started a band with two friends called Greenwich Tea Party. One of the members was Fabian [Prynn], a producer and drummer who, ultimately, I still work with today. After that, I decided I wanted to swap to vocals. I had to re-audition, which was risky. But I got in. And to be honest, I think that was what I wanted all along.

PC: How come it took until then for you to realise?

DD: Well, I’d been a chorister when I was eight, nine, ten years old, and then my voice broke, and I lost confidence in my voice.

PC: You don't necessarily hear it spoken about that much. Like, when your voice breaks as a boy, and you go through puberty, you have to kind of re-find your voice, right?

DD: Totally. I sang angelic, beautiful soprano, and then my voice suddenly had no grounding whatsoever. But yeah, it was when I started penning my first songs that I started to feel like an artist. Because I hadn't written lyrics before, I started with the words.

PC: And storytelling seems vital to your music…
Okay, moving swiftly on, how do you maintain momentum, and passion? 

DD: Honestly, feeling like you're still striving for success or you're trying to get on to the next rung of the ladder is such a driving force.

PC: That makes so much sense. I mean, imagine if you got everything you wanted from life in your twenties. You might feel like you were done already. You’ve been involved in some interesting commercial projects over the years. Are there any you’ve particularly enjoyed?

DD: Yeah. One I did during the pandemic was for the Disneyland advert, when they were reopening Disneyland. I got an email saying they were looking for someone to sing ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’. But, as I’m a boy, it was suggested I sing ‘Someday My Princess Will Come’.  

I never thought I’d get it, because these requests come through and I mean, nine times out of ten they don’t come to anything. They ask multiple singers to do it. They ask multiple composers to arrange the music. There are lots of factors at play. Anyway, I said I'd do it, but on the condition I got to keep the lyrics, ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’. So that’s what I did. And I got it.

PC: I guess that opens up the question of artistic integrity and the notion of ‘selling out’.

DD: I was a guest on a BBC podcast along with a singer from a famous noughties indie band, and the question came up about selling out as a musician. The singer said the band refused all sync opportunities. But for myself, sometimes, I pay the rent because my music is being used on something. Like, last week, I was approached about an Italian drama series using my song Heavenly Bodies in an episode where a girl contemplates suicide, or something morbid like that, and I was asked, “are you happy with that?” It was a good amount of money, so I said, “Yeah, sounds great”. 

But it's not just a money thing. When I was sixteen, I remember seeing an ad on TV for the Audi A5 car. And the piano music was so beautiful. I remember rushing to the piano in my house every time it came on, because I didn't have any devices back then to record it. I'd listen to it and start transcribing it on the piano. And I'd have to wait until the next time I heard the advert to try and figure it out again.

I eventually put my own rendition up on YouTube, which had only just started. It was around 2006. It got about 100K views, and I had all these comments telling me who the artist was and it was Dustin O'Halloran. And it was actually from getting to know Dustin O'Halloran's work and following his career that I discovered Erased Tapes, because they signed him. So when I was approached all those years later by the label, I thought, oh my God, this is a dream come true.

So, I like the idea of my music being put on an Italian TV show because I'm thinking, ah, maybe some Italians will be humming along to Heavenly Bodies.

PC: Getting deeper, what do you think has been the greatest challenge you’ve faced, that's affected your career or changed your outlook?

DD: It was when my second album happened. It was a dark, hard-to-access record. And it didn’t get the reception I’d hoped for. It was difficult to get gigs. It got to a point where I had to get a credit card and I maxed out £10K supporting the touring that I was doing. It was a strain. I ended up having to Airbnb my room and move in with my boyfriend for a bit of time. I felt like a failure. 

But, it taught me that life is not all plain sailing; that a career is made up of more no's than it is yeses. And about balancing the passion for it with the business side of it. 

No musician really wants to be a business person, but you have to be your own manager, even if you've got a manager. You have to be your own cheerleader, and be able to market yourself. You have to be doing all that stuff while simultaneously finding the headspace you need to be able to dream and create. 

PC: Although you talk about feeling like you were a failure and that the album wasn't so well received, looking back with hindsight, have you updated your perspective on it?

DD: Yeah, it actually did quite well in terms of sales and how many people listened to it and I often get requests for the songs from it. So yeah, you end up re-assessing what it means to be a success. And I continue to do that in my life. You have to update your own version of what success looks like. 

PC: So, if you’re comfy talking about it, I wanted to ask you about drag. I’m interested to know — why do you do it? What does it allow you to do or express that music doesn’t?

DD: Well, drag is quite an immediate art form. I put on the wig and makeup and I go do the show and that performance lives in that moment. And then you come home and you take it off. Whereas, with my music, I carry it around with me all the time.

It was actually after my second album, Aforger, came out, when I started doing drag in London properly. It felt like the antithesis to what I was doing with my music — going up and baring my soul, that people could review and tell me was good or bad. With drag, it feels like, if people don't like it, you know, so much the better. 

It still allowed me to perform. It still allowed me to be creative, and I honed a new skill.

PC: I’ve noticed you've started experimenting more with avant garde fashion choices for your music performances.

DD: When I first signed to my label, someone who no longer works there, who was high up at the time said to me “so happy we've signed you, just so long as you're not going to start wearing wings on stage.” It was a passing comment they probably don't even remember, but it stuck with me very vividly. I think it was a reference to Sufjan Stevens, who was wearing giant wings on his tours at the time. It stuck with me, and, you know, even though I'd come out when I was twenty-one, it wasn't like I was out and proud and that was done.

So since that, I've kind of been pushing the envelope with my label or just myself as an artist progressively and now the label is proactively encouraging me to be weirder and dress up and do that stuff.

PC: Do you want to talk a little bit about the new record? How do you see it in relation to your other outputs?

DD: The album's called Omni, which means ‘all’. I wanted to write about everyone that wasn't me, and to create something people could dance to, because I love dance music. I even put key-changes in, which felt very camp to me. It’s definitely the most queer record I’ve made, I think.

PC: And what about Erased Tapes – how do you see the relationship between yourself and the label?

DD: As a solo artist, I value having other people around me to bounce ideas off. And Erased Tapes has a dedicated fanbase. The label is almost like another artist or personality in its own right.

PC: I get that with independent book presses. There are certain ones I follow and I won't really know who the author is necessarily. I just buy the books they put out.

DD: You trust what they will put out. Exactly. So, there is that element. Plus there's a lot of collaboration between artists on the label. We’ve recorded on one another's work, toured together, travelled around the world, and become very good friends. For example, Ryan West, who performs as Rival Consoles, provided me with some beats to compose to for my latest record, and I've just produced my album with Daniel Brandt, who's also on the label. So yeah, there’s a huge amount of collaboration, and you know, it's a cliché, but it really is a family.

PC: We’ve not yet mentioned the fans. You have a very international fan base.

DD: Yes, they’re all over the world, thanks to the internet, and streaming on Spotify. It used to be that you’d be big in a particular territory, like, your own country, or some people might make it big in Japan. But music's very globalised now. It's a benefit for artists across the spectrum. It means they're getting the streams and the potential notoriety, but it's such a saturated market as well. Because everyone's a creator these days; everyone's a filmmaker, everyone's a writer, everyone's a musician, everyone's a model. Everyone's everything.

Audience aside, you still have to do it for yourself.

PC: What's the bit that you love the most?

DD: (smiles) Singing. 

Omni is out now with Erased Tapes. For more info and live dates follow @douglasdare