 Courtesy of the Artist
After a time-out working as a writer for the past five years, Dublin's Robert O’Connor returns with his latest single, "No Second Chances." Produced by Stuart Gray with Steve Hogan at Jealoustown Studios in County Meath, Ireland, the emotional shuffler has received major radio support from stations across Ireland, as well as plays in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany and France, despite O'Connor being an entirely independent artist. Here, get to know O'Connor as he answers his Essential 8 and shares the story behind the song, talks about his producer and mentor Stuart Gray, honest songwriting, radio play, and much more!
Did you have a musical mentor? If so, who was it and how did they influence you? My producer Stuart Gray sat me down at the beginning of this year right after we’d met. We were going through ideas that I had and I really wanted to come back with an upbeat country record but I was constantly questioning myself and what people would think and he just said, “make this for you, let’s make sure the three of us in this room are happy with this work when you’re leaving, and forget about everything and everyone else”. He was basically saying that you can never predict trends or what people are going to like, and when they’re going to suddenly stop liking it and move on to the next thing. That was re-iterated when I had a meeting with First Music Contact’s Angela Dorgan here in Dublin recently, a few times when I mentioned about doing things for a very specific commercial purpose she’d say to me “be careful”, and I do need to be reined in sometimes because I’m 50% about loving to make music on my own terms and 50% about wanting to gain that popularity that can take me to the next level! With any particular song, was there an “a-ha” moment when you knew the song was completed and perfect? When I went into the studio in January this year it was my first time recording in seven years, and it had been five years since I’d released anything, so it was really daunting. I went to my producers Stuart and Steve with “You Found Me” which would become the first single, and it was kind of ‘80s-influenced soft rock, and then we made it into this brooding downbeat track with industrial drums, and it lost its catchiness but damn it was cool, but the part of me that wanted a fun song to perform live won, and so we went back to the commercial ‘80s rock. Then we questioned the chorus, wrote a new one, I kept saying “I want a Coldplay stadium sing-along-chorus, so I went into the booth and did exactly that, and then we sort of said “well there needs to be a country element because that’s where we’re going with the next single, so Stuart made that happen and that’s when I really felt “These are the ingredients, this is my sound”. We really went back and forth on so many elements and disagreed on things too, but we got there in the end and I think because of that fusion of sounds, I’ve had people like it who mightn’t usually like country.
Your new single is "No Second Chances," is there a story behind the song you can share?
“No Second Chances” is about that moment in a relationship where you’re about to pull the plug but you also realise the danger of what you’re doing – what if you’re making a mistake? What if you’re filled with regret? Are you unhappy enough together to risk the things that are still good? What if you end up alone and they won’t take you back?! I think as well, when I was writing this song four years ago, I’d been in a situation where the same thing was happening again and again – that line “you said that things had changed with us, but nothin’s changed at all” – I think we’ve all been there at that point where you’re exhausted by past failures and you start to think you can’t believe anything the other person in the relationship says. The line “I’m the only one that works, without you here it hurts too much”, is kind of parody and Hallmark-like, and I find I go to that place often, one little dramatic moment at the climax of the song. The funniest thing to me, and I love it because it shows that they’re invested, is they people ask me, “did the couple in the song make it in the end?” It’s a story set in a song, like they say in country music “nothin’ but three chords and the truth”, and that’s the business I wanna be in now. When/where do you do your best writing? I like to be out and about – whether it’s a club or a coffee shop, I’m definitely more inspired when I’m not at home – I even love writing on buses and trains. I’m also a creature of the night, so writing in the later hours is a lot easier for me. I just feel like your brain goes to a different place. Getting hyped up on coffee isn’t a bad idea either, or maybe a few whiskeys! It’s such a temperamental thing, writing, you never really know when a song is going to come, though I have to say lately I’ve had weeks where I thought, I’m on the verge of something here, I can feel it – you could be on the verge of insanity or songwriting and you just really have to wait and see which comes! You might just feel like, am I going to a bit of a dark, analytical place here, and then you end up writing something and it’s real and honest – and people sense that. Someone told me recently “there’s two types of songs – honest and dishonest – and the honest songs are the ones that really knock people sideways and hit them the hardest, they can feel the honesty. I don’t like to edit my lyrics too much for that reason, because you can over-analyse them and think, “is that too much” or “does that reference sound stupid”, but you’ll always find that your own way of using language is the thing that will resonate with people the most. Do you write about personal experience, the experience of others, observations, made-up stories, something else or a combination? A lot of it is personal experience. Some of it might be present or it could be me digging into my past – sometimes I think you’d get some great songwriting out of doing therapy, because you obviously look at things that have happened in your past and I reckon you’d dig up some stuff you don’t even realise is there. I’m starting to write about different topics – on my first album it was pretty much all about love and relationships but this time I feel like I’m looking into myself a little bit more, on “You Found Me” it was very much about completely losing my way in life and trying to grasp my identity again – sounds dramatic, but I think we can convince ourselves into being “what’s right” or what we “should be”, and then you wonder after a few years why you feel like something’s missing and maybe it’s because you’re sitting in an office when you should be on stage! I also have a tendency to write songs after I’ve watched a great film or read a book that has got me thinking – so in that case it could be sort of made-up in that it might be about a character that has intrigued me. I’ll very often start off with a title. There was a painting in my living room that said “How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye” and I wrote a song with that title. The painting on the other side of the room says “Only A Dream Away” so I better get going on that one next. Don’t laugh, but one of the only things to get me emotional is boxing and UFC, there’s something so extreme about it, I love all the fanfare and how quick fortunes can change – I wrote a lyric about that recently that I will have to revisit I think. What has been your biggest success? Radio play. Over 60 stations now are playing my latest single “No Second Chances”. I had no radio plugger or PR and I had no contacts, it was just a case of approaching DJs that I felt would be the right match for the track, and building a relationship with them over the course of my releases this year. It’s also been Record of the Week on a country station and number one on the LGBTQ Music Chart, so I just think this song in particular has been my biggest success because its reached so many audiences that I never expected it to. I really want to get on a Spotify or Apple Music curated playlist though, I’m so hungry for it – I just wanna see my streams shoot up because they’re pretty abysmal compared to the radio play, and I really think that one great playlist feature could change things for me. Is there a recent release you cannot stop listening to? Wild Nothing’s ‘Indigo’. He’s doing indie rock like no-one else, and if someone else is doing it just like him, I wanna know who they are so I can listen to them non-stop too! I’ve been listening to it at the gym and often twice, I’ll just have it on a loop and I look at the clock and I’ve been there for over two hours. It just completely sucks me in to the world that he has created, the soundscape is so dreamy. Outside of that, I’ve been discovering a load of incredible new country music – from Dan + Shay to James Barker Band – and I’ve been adding it all to my Spotify playlist ‘Nashville Nights’. I’m a quality control nazi so it really is only the best on there – if country floats your boat definitely gimme a follow on Spotify and I’ll keep you hooked up! Song (of yours) you wish you would have released as a single and why? “Destination Anywhere” from my first album ‘Distance’. It was the only lyrical co-write I’ve ever done. I’ve co-written music, but never lyrics – except this one time – I worked with my great friend Emma, who I guess used songwriting as a form of self-therapy as so many of us do even when we’re not releasing the results into the world. She sent me this chorus all those years ago, and she had sent me a lot of great stuff during that time, but I was always a bit funny about recording other people’s words. Anyway, this time, I just really felt where she was coming from, and I wrote two verses and a bridge and sent it back to her saying “I really wanna do something with this”. I had no music written to go with it, but then I went to Amsterdam to record, and the producer Mourad, who was Moroccan and had all these eastern sounding tracks that were also kind of urban and way edgier than what I had been recording in Dublin, gave me this beat, and I went off on it, slotting the lyrics straight on to the beat. I did it in a hotel room at 1am after having a lot to drink at a big dinner with the producers, and we were due to go in and start recording the next morning, I thrive under pressure! There’s never been such an easy marriage of words and music, it was just meant to be. At the time I was being a bit ridiculous about not releasing it as a single because it was less “organic” – it was sonically different to the other singles I was putting out – electronic instead of real drums, guitar and piano, but I think it would have shown-off a different side to the album looking back on it now. There was also the small matter of everyone pressuring me to release my cover of Shelby Lynne’s “Killin’ Kind” from my label guy to family and friends insisting it was the most likely song to bag me a much-needed hit! I hated the production and I didn’t even want it on the album in the first place, but sometimes you listen to the people around you…and then you resent them! SOCIAL MEDIA Official website: www.iamrobertoconnor.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/iamrobertoconnor Facebook: www.facebook.com/iamrobertoconnor Twitter: www.twitter.com/robertoconnor YouTube: www.youtube.com/robertoconnormusic Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3cGgPditxbsHzV6v6jRAXC?si=QB3D9HbuRpGw28y27FMnyg Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/iamrobertoconno
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