FAULT Magazine in conversation with Drew Sycamore

One of Denmark’s most exciting emerging artists ‘Drew Sycamore’ recently set the airwaves on fire with her latest album ‘Sycamore’. While Drew has been perfecting her craft for many years, for many, this album acted as their introduction to the artist, and a slew of new listeners are excited to hear what Drew will be releasing next.

We caught up with Drew Sycamore to find out more about her process, her music and of course, her FAULTs.

Looking back on the melancholic environment in which Jungle was written, did the writing process help remove those emotions, or did it create even more feelings for you to work through?

I don’t think I was particularly melancholic. I think I just have a base code of longing in my body as a person, and that has a tendency to come through in music. I don’t write music if I’m sad because I can’t. I just don’t feel like singing, let alone dwelling on it, and honestly, I’m almost never in a bad mood. It’s Captain Hindsight all the way. Haha. ‘Jungle’ has captured something for sure. It’s like a nice little dense emotional capsule that probably totally out of proportion. That’s why it makes sense as a song.

The Jungle music video is a piece of art, do you maintain close creative control over the visuals that accompany your music?

I do indeed. I’ve learned to let the detrimental control of things go, and now I let the creativity flow with the people I work with, and better things come out of that. The idea for the video is all Andreas Landgaard, the director, and he is a maniac for coming up with it. I just had an aesthetic and a vibe I wanted to convey. I know it’s gonna be something that resembles me if I’m in it. I can’t not be me, so it’s always gonna look Drewy. I guess. lol.

How important was your upbringing in making you the artist you are today?

This is a good question. I don’t know the answer as such. A part of me feels rather disconnected from the distant past as I don’t feel like it serves me. But of course, my upbringing has had an impact on who I am. My parents brought me up to be who I am, and the friends I made as a kid formed me. I don’t know how it’s impacted the music I make. I really don’t.

What’s been the hardest hurdle you’ve had to overcome on your musical journey?

Getting into the music business… It’s harder than getting into Hogwarts (I’m still waiting for my letter). Yeah, that and I also think the day I realised that the music I made was to be heard by other people. That gave me a huge block for quite a while. Plain old overthinking got the best of me. Then I pulled my shit together and stopped caring what other people think and started working on truly loving myself with all I am instead of making myself feel too inadequate to be a legendary pop star.

What was the hardest song to write on your SYCAMORE album?

None of them were hard to write. It wasn’t a struggle at all. That’s the whole point of it. It doesn’t have to be. I get questions like this all the time. People wanna hear about the struggles and pain, which is the counterpart to music, which is flow, and flow is the complete opposite of struggle. I used to struggle and thought the music I made wasn’t worthy if it wasn’t a struggle. Now I just refuse to make anything hard. It’s fun, and it’s supposed to be fun. That doesn’t mean I don’t do this because my life depends on it; it just means I’m not building a dam of big old massive stones across my river of flow. So to answer your question: None of them were hard to write.

Can you tell us more about the inspiration for the track Bodytalk?

Haha, ahhh, Bodytalk. That’s probably my favourite song on the album. It happened mid-process. I wanted to like ‘the best album track ever’, and this song came to life. I think that’s why it has so much space for instrumental parts. I love that. There was no feeling of pressure. Only fun and feels. Bodytalk seemed like a great title, and I have often felt that I was just sort of standing in the right place to receive the song. It has all the feels of longing – I think that’s my speciality, haha. It’s carved from the same stone as ‘jungle’ in a way.

Can you describe where your head was at when recording Crying Wolf – and how it felt to be so vulnerable on a track?

I wrote this track when I met my now-husband. He had another girlfriend at the time, but we had fallen in love on tour. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I fell more in love than I had ever been. I was walking around for six weeks, not knowing what to do with myself, and I didn’t know if he loved me back the same. However, in the end, I was getting really fed up with not knowing, so I wrote this song. It worked. Obviously, I can recommend this method. This was quite a few years ago, and I decided I wanted it to be on the album. It had become quite a live favourite for me. So, when I was recording it in the studio, the situation was another when I wrote; however, the emotion still resonates a lot. When I sing it, I get taken right back to that feeling of being in love and out of control.

What are you working on right now?

At the moment I am preparing myself for what’s coming next. I’ve got a lot of shows coming up which I’m really looking forward to. I’ve already got my head on the next music I will be making. It’s a process, you know. The visuals and the things I wanna discover. I’ve got a music vid for Bodytalk coming up. That’s a secret, though, so don’t tell anyone. Haha.

What is your FAULT?

My only FAULT is that I don’t subscribe to the idea that I have FAULTs. ;)