Michael Kiwanuka on the 'wake-up call' that changed his music

BBC

When Michael Kiwanuka was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2020, he thought he knew the deal.

He'd been up for the prestigious album award twice before. Like most artists, he said it was an honour to be nominated. A win would be nice, but not particularly life-changing.

He was wrong.

When Annie Mac ambushed him on The One Show to reveal it was third time lucky, a switch was flipped.

"It sort of woke me up," the singer-songwriter reveals.

"I'd been desperately looking for approval from my peers and certain [media] outlets - and the Mercury freed me from that desperation.

"It allowed me to feel that, actually, I just want to make the records that come naturally."

The realisation was particularly powerful because his winning album, simply titled Kiwanuka, had grappled with his sense of inferiority as a musician, a black man, a partner and a friend.

External validation didn't silence the voices in his head - but it gave him a healthy dose of perspective.

"When you have impostor syndrome and you’re busy beating yourself up, you're actually using up all your energy doing that, as opposed to being like, 'Wow, how amazing it is to be making my own record?', or, 'How amazing that I'm playing the Pyramid Stage [at Glastonbury]?'

"The list is so long of how cool this job is, and I spent most of my time moaning. Winning the Mercury kicked off that feeling of, oh, I've got to sort this out."

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You could see that newfound freedom when he played at Glastonbury in June. Basking in the late afternoon sun, the 37-year-old took to the stage wearing a bright white kanzu robe - a traditional tunic from Uganda, where his parents are from.

And when a malfunctioning synthesizer forced him to abort a performance of his new song Small Changes, the former perfectionist just laughed it off.

"I could hear my friend Joe laughing, and I sort of forgot I was on the Pyramid Stage," he recalls.

"A second later, I heard the crowd cheer, and it lifted me up off the ground.

"It was an amazing feeling. I felt like I had a massive battery pack from these people. I could do no wrong. Wherever I went, they would hold me up."

Afterwards, the musician realised that one simple moment of fallibility had put the audience on his side.

"They saw the real me for a second, rather than what I thought people wanted to see," he reflects. "It was really eye-opening."

It’s a little odd to hear the musician describe himself as a people pleaser.

Since the release of his debut album Home Again in 2012, his music has worked in opposition to the trend-chasing virality of modern pop. His grooves are unhurried and thoughtful, his lyrics deeply introspective, and his inspirations - such as Isaac Hayes, Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye - decidedly old-school.

His second album, Love & Hate, brought him to international attention after its opening track, Cold Little Heart, was picked to be the opening theme for hit TV show Big Little Lies, starring Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman.

Kiwanuka, released in 2019, earned him the Mercury Prize and his first Grammy Award nomination. But the densely-arranged, sumptuous soul often pushed his voice back in the mix – something he has confronted on his latest record, Small Changes.

"I fell in love with my voice again, which sounds weird," he says. "But I realised being able to sing, and to have a voice that sounds good on recording, is a blessing.

"So I started to want that to be heard more than all the other stuff - the drums or the guitars or the strings. And that really aided the sound of the record."

The result is his smallest, most understated album to date. Aided once again by producers Inflo and Danger Mouse, he has created a suite of spacious, slow-burning confessionals that compel you to lean in and pay attention, slowly revealing their beauty on repeated listens.

Reviews have been ecstatic. Awarding a score of 9/10, Uncut magazine called it "rich, moving and inventive", while Dork said the "perfectly-balanced" collection was "genuine, gracious, and absolutely first-class".

The record is locked in a two-way battle for this week's UK number one album with Kendrick Lamar’s surprise release GNX – but you get the impression Kiwunka won't pay too much attention to chart positions.

For him, fulfilment came in the studio, surrounded by some of his favourite musicians - including legendary bassist Pino Palladino and Janet Jackson’s producer Jimmy Jam, who popped in to say hello and ended up contributing organ parts to half of the record.

Marco Grey

Each song is about a small change Kiwanuka has made in his life - confronting depression, rediscovering the innocence of childhood, and weathering the ups and downs of marriage.

His languorous voice can tend towards the melancholy, but the lyrics are full of hope. “Small changes solve the problems,” he sings on the title track.

Despite that, the album was written during a period of major upheaval, as Kiwanuka moved away from London, became a father, and stared down the barrel of middle age.

"I realised, at the age of 37, it’s the first time I can talk about something that happened 10 years ago, and I was still an adult," he laughs.

"You lose touch with some people, you gain new friends. Loads of stuff happens that you've got to deal with for the first time, before you realise that passage of life is full of these small shifts. And actually, that's OK.

"Some friendships are full season, some friendships are forever, but one isn't more important than the other.

"And that song, Small Changes, I just loved the feeling of it when I wrote it in the studio.

"It sounded the way I felt about change - part hopeful, part excited, but also with the melancholy of realising that, sometimes change is hard and it's overwhelming and you've got no control over it."

The biggest development is the arrival of two children – a change that's simultaneously "given me wings" and raised questions about his own priorities.

"I find that difficult," he admits. "When you're 18, music is all-encompassing. You don't really care about anything else. Now there's something in my life that's more important – and sometimes you worry about keeping the work up to a standard.

"You find that you can, but that's another big change."

Family is one of the album's central themes.

"Back when I was lost, stumbling around / You found me / Now I can see / My feet won't touch the ground," Kiwanuka sings over the dreamy grooves of The Rest Of Me.

"Commitment is a funny word," he says. "It's not really that exciting, but it does a lot.

"I feel like, in this day and age, it's almost revolutionary to stick something through to the very end. And, actually, it can negate that worried feeling the world is giving us right now.

"The last five years have been crazy, but that idea of committing to someone, whatever happens, until they leave the planet, is becoming rare. But it's something I want to hold on to."