INTERVIEW: Joshua Radin on Forthcoming Record ‘The Ghost and the Wall’

Joshua Radin needs no introduction – garnering an army of fans since 2004, selling over 1 million records and generating over 1 billion streams. Now, Joshua Radin is set to release his new studio album – The Ghost and the Wall – on the 23rd July. Here, we interview Radin, at home in Los Angeles, about the past year and how it has shaped the record and his outlook on music going forward. 

Hi Joshua! 

Good to speak to you today.

Wow, this record is something just so special. It must have been nice knowing that you’ve had something coming out this year and that you had a project in the works over the course of the pandemic.

It is, but it’s been done for a while. So, I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve sat on the beach near me. I’m not complaining about the Los Angeles weather, for sure. It’s been lovely but lonely.

I can imagine it’s been strange creating this record though – usually you’d have been able to test out songs as you’re writing them on your fans in the live scene. It’s almost like creating it in a vacuum.

So strange. I mean usually, when I’m at this point, after making an album, I’ve played almost all the songs live and I’ve heard reactions from audiences. I can tell which songs people like the most and which are translating more. Right now, I really have no idea. No one’s heard it, except for a few people, besides my label, and manager and agents, so my friends haven’t even heard it.

Personally, ‘Fewer Ghosts’ was a stand-out for me. Can you talk a bit about that track, because I thought it was just so special? There’s so much emotion in that track.

No way, that’s actually my favourite. You have no idea how happy that makes me that right off the back, it translated the way I wanted it to. The title of the album was originally Fewer Ghosts, but then I changed it. Songs for me are sort of like abstract paintings or something. I love if you paint it but you don’t tell the viewer what it’s about – you let them know and how they see it is correct for them. Even if the artist says no it’s not about that, it is to them.

It’s almost cooler when you can kind of see that people have a completely different interpretation to what you envisioned.

Totally, one of the first songs I ever wrote years ago is called ‘Closer’ and there was a line in it – ‘I take the blue ones every time’ – what I meant by that was that I am always more attracted to more depressed women. It’s like there’s something in me that wants to cheer them up, but so many people commented on Facebook back in the day asking if I was talking about the matrix. Hey, if that’s what you think, go ahead. With this song though, for me, it’s it’s about the tethering of romantic love and self love. I don’t believe you can have sort of romantic love – or true romantic love – without self love. I’ve been a late bloomer when it comes to both self love and romantic love, so that’s what this song is about to me. In the chorus is the tagline when I say ‘all I need to know is you’. For me, I thought people would very easily figure out what I’m talking about. It’s almost like looking in a mirror saying ‘all I really need to know is myself’ and when that happens, the world opens up to you romantically. But I thought also, some people might just see it as a love song that I’m just singing to a woman saying, ‘you fix everything’. So, I don’t know.

I love that idea. I don’t think people really talk enough about the importance of self-love in music. It’s nice to see that as part of this narrative.

I’m glad it translated. It’s interesting, because my best friends are about to have a baby, their first baby – and I went over to see them yesterday. I was playing the song ‘Fewer Ghosts’ to her and him and to the baby to see if it would move or kick, but there’s a last line on the last page of this book that my friend wrote that says ‘give yourself lots of love, be sure that you do, because you can’t love someone else until you love you’. I had just forgotten about it, I had read that book so long ago, and as I’m playing the song – I’ve been going through this whole thing throughout this pandemic, just working on myself, trying to figure out what makes me happier.

I guess from that I wanted to ask you about the title of the record itself – The Ghost and the Wall – is so imbued with meaning.

For me, ghosts and walls are the chicken and the egg. In my personal life, it’s which came first – the walls I put up around myself or the ghosts that are the people that were in my life, but aren’t anymore that affected me in some way? I always think about that – did I put up walls around myself as a young person, and what’s caused these relationships to fail and become ghosts? Or was I completely open, vulnerable and let these people into my life and then when they were gone became ghosts – was it then that I put up walls because of being hurt? When I started thinking about the themes of this album and what this means to me, that’s kind of what came up. I kept thinking about that. I feel like you can hear that in a lot of the lyrics throughout all the songs, not just ‘Fewer Ghosts’ but it sort of culminates there.

I know you worked remotely on the project with your producer Jonathan Wilson. When did he come into the project and how did it evolve with him? 

I had all the songs written – they were all done. What I would do is just take my phone – the little voice memo recorder – and open it up. I’d sit there with an acoustic guitar, and I would just play it live and then email him that with a few song references. For instance, I would send some old classic songs that I love, I sent him a couple songs of Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints album. I was like, ‘if you can kind of move into that world for the song.’ Then he’d send me back some ideas and we’d go back and forth. It was a total experiment. I have never, ever recorded any way like this before. At first the label and my manager were like, ‘Alright, well, you got all these songs, let’s make an album!’ I was like, ‘how are you going to make an album, the world’s shut down, no studios are open, I don’t even have a home studio.’ They said, ‘we got to put out some music.’ I took a couple of weeks, just shutting my phone down, but then I thought this could actually be really helpful for me to get through this pandemic – to have work to do and put all my anxiety into. It ended up being invaluable.

What do you hope then that people take away from this record in comparison to your previous ones? Do you hope that it’s an escapist piece for people?

Yeah, I think what I’ve noticed about my fan base throughout the years is that they’re very romantic, like me. I mean, most of the songs I’ve had in my life are either about falling in love or falling out of love. It’s always been the most dominant topic in my mind, not just what I want to write about, but what I think about. It’s interesting because my generation of American males were the first generation that didn’t have the draft to go to war. There wasn’t Vietnam to protest, late in life when I started playing music, I didn’t really feel like protesting. I mean, there’s obviously always things to protest, but for me, it was like, if I’d go through a breakup, and I was really sad, I’d write songs about it – as a catharsis. I think, throughout my 16 year run of playing live shows and putting out music, all the people I’ve met have been attracted to my music because of the stories that they’ll tell of falling in love with their girlfriends or partners to a certain song. It’s all usually about love. And a lot of the concerts, they’re always so many couples just holding each other. It’s always like, so lovely, you know, like, love-ly. This album does have romance in it, obviously, but I wasn’t really feeling so romantic while writing this album – I spent the whole pandemic alone. There’s a few moments in there where I mine some past relationships and things I thought about and  some things I hadn’t said yet that I needed to say. In general, I would say I would love it if people take away from this album that it’s more about self love, and people might listen to it by themselves on a long car or train ride. I love when people listen to my music with headphones.

Well, I’m excited for this album to be out. What a project to have come out of the pandemic, so congratulations!

Thank you that’s so sweet of you.

Not at all. Thank you for your time today. 

Enjoyed talking to you. I hope to see you in the UK very soon.

 

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