Photo: John-Paul Pietrus
“Do you think you’ll be able to hear me?” asks Lianne La Havas over the buzz of lunch service at Camden’s Gilgamesh restaurant. Yes, I say optimistically, I think it’ll be fine. It’s more than an hour after the interview was supposed to start – not her fault, she was kept late while filming for Sky Arts’ Guitar Star - and I’m just grateful she’s turned up. “I don’t think so. I think we need to move.” Without waiting for a reply, La Havas whisks herself off through the crowd and disappears. It takes a little while to track her down to where she’s settled herself, sipping on a cup of tea, in a more secluded corner of the building.
In person, La Havas is both quieter and more intense than I had anticipated. She gives slow, thoughtful answers, never using more words than necessary. When I commiserate her on what sounds like an incredibly hectic day, she says, matter-of-factly, “That’s every day.” She has bursts of warmth too, receiving every compliment I throw at her (and there are a lot – her second album, Blood, was one of the best of last year) with a sincerity that belies how often she must have already heard it.
Ahead of her headline performance at this year’s LeeFest Presents: The Neverland, we talked misconceptions, her frustrations with being labelled a “neo-soul sister” and the one time she’s been truly starstruck. (I’ve been advised not to ask about Prince – who was a friend, and performed in La Havas’ living room when he came to London. His death is still too raw.)
Gigwise: I think ‘Green & Gold’ is my favourite track on Blood – partly because it’s a brilliant song, and partly because I heard it a few weeks before I turned 23. There’s a lyric from the point of view of six-year old you, “Trying to watch cartoons through the static / Thinking where am I gonna be if I'm ever twenty-three?”
La Havas: "It's all true. That's exactly what happened. There was a mirror in my grandmother's hallway, which was opposite another mirror, so I remember the first time I saw two mirrors opposite each other, and I did look at my nose in the mirror, or my whole face, and think how very much not like either of my parents I looked. My mum is from London but Jamaican, and my dad is from Greece, and they look so different. All of my friends really looked like their parents, so that occurred to me when I was looking at myself at six years old. We just took it from there.
“I should say, because I love saying it, that I also produced that one. It's basically how I want to sound, and I'm really proud of it, and I love the textures and I love the drums and I love the... everything on it. So I'm really proud because I was so close to the process - not that I wasn't close to the others but just, that one was different.
Do you specifically remember having that thought? ‘I don't look like my parents?’
“Yeah. Completely. I do now. But when I was a kid I totally didn't.”
My next question was going to be if there a song you're most proud of, but it sounds like it's that one.
"I think it is. There's two, there's that one and 'Midnight', which I'm really proud of the singing. It brought my singing to new heights. I didn't know I could do that and then I just tried it and I did it, and now I love doing it. But I get actual pride when people like yourself mention 'Green & Gold' because I know how much hard work I put into it."
Do you think for your next one you'll produce more?
"I'd love to. I'd love to be a producer in the future maybe. You know like help other artists - if they want me to - to realise their sound or to help them sound their best, or sound as true to themselves as they can. I feel like that's my personal quest, which is why I want to eventually reduce the amount of people I work with to a select few I really trust and love the sound of."
Are there any artists at the moment that you're mentoring in any way?
"No! I don't consider myself to have earned mentor status yet. But I absolutely love new music and I feel like people don't necessarily need mentoring, they just have to stay on the right track, and their right track might be very different to mine or anyone else's so..."
I guess people don't need someone to explicitly say, 'I am your mentor now!'
"Exactly. If anyone asks me a question I'll answer it as best I can, and if it helps then that's a bonus."
How did the second album process differ from the first one?
"It was different because I worked with lots more people. I met a few people on the first album, a few writers, but I ended up doing most of it with just one person, and this time I had a bit more free range, so I took that opportunity. I travelled to Jamaica and America again, I love writing in America - New York and LA specifically, and Miami."
I was talking to someone the other day who said Miami was his favourite place in the world.
"I did like it. I liked the weather, and it has... it's worth visiting because it's so unique."
In what way?
"It's just, it's like a paradise, but you know it's made to be like paradise."
I always feel like I wouldn't like Miami or LA because they might feel a little soulless.
"LA's different. I love LA. I think it has tons of character and it's got everything in it. It's got hills, it's got the beach, it's got the city. Everyone goes there because it's so cool! It is what you make it as well. If you go somewhere thinking you're not gonna like it, you're probably not gonna like it. I personally love it.
"I think a lot of people forget or don't realise that there are so many beautiful parts of America. It's so big that it has all kinds of weather, all kinds of terrain, completely amazing animals and it's amazing."
When I did a road trip across a few parts of America, it was like being in five different countries. You don't get that in the UK.
"I love England [though], and I love Great Britain, and I love that it has its own character. When I fly back in, I can tell it's my home because of how it looks from the patchwork of countryside."
You've said you want to quash the idea that just because your first album sounded a certain way it means you don't like other types of music - are there any other misconceptions about you that bother you?
"Yeah, there was a couple of - I mean, not that bothers me so much - but I find it interesting when, because of the way I sing or what I've said in past interviews, that people just assume I only like soul singers. I like so much music and I think musicians don't get enough credit for their eclectic taste, I don't think it's just me. It's very narrow minded to think that just because my music sounds a certain way, that I only think a certain way."
You've also said you don't like being labeled a soul singer yourself.
"It was more that I got called a 'neo-soul sister,' which I didn't like at all, and I don't think is accurate. I love soul music - when it's really soul music - but I think any genre could be soul music as long as it's truthful, so yeah I didn't like that particular tag because it implies... other things about me that I think it was inappropriate to imply."
The genre thing is tricky at the best of times, because it's instinct to want to put people in a box, and it must be irritating when people make lazy assumptions.
"The only way I think to get around it is to keep making music that breaks out of that."
Oh I've gone over my time.
*Peers over to my phone* "By... 45 seconds. No I'm joking."
I was going to talk about when you were on the Adam Buxton podcast.
"I love him so much. U have since I was a child. I used to watch Adam & Joe and just think, 'Who are these lunatics in their bedroom?', and then I never thought I'd actually meet and become somewhat friendly with Adam Buxton so I was very very honoured to have him in my home."
I think it was on the Adam Buxton podcast where he asked if you'd ever been star struck, and you said that you'd met Laura Marling and freaked out. She's one of my favourite musicians.
Me too. Basically, he would never admit this, but my friend, I turned him on to Laura. He’s a drummer, and she needed a drummer, and he somehow got the job as her drummer, and I was like, 'No way, you're playing for Laura,' after I had introduced him to her music. And he was like, 'Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited,' and I'm like, 'Exactly! You should be excited!'
"So anyway, they were both playing a show in LA - this is some years later now - and I was meeting with him just to have a walkabout because we're mates, and then she just, like, came to where we were. He was like, 'OK don't cry. Be cool, just be cool.' And I was like, 'Hi!' And I tried to be cool. But since then I've met her... a couple of times, and it's been no different. I am still very, very starstruck by her. I think she's so amazing.
LeeFest Presents: The Neverland takes place from 28 - 30 July. Get tickets and more information here.
