| Interview: wonderstruck by ADAM YOUNG of OWL CITY. |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Saturday, 26 November 2011 01:22 |
 Musicians always wax lyrical about this country of ours... but no-one really loves Middle Earth, I mean New Zealand... the way that ADAM YOUNG of OWL CITY clearly does. COUP DE MAIN: Welcome back to New Zealand! How does it feel to be visiting us again? OWL CITY - ADAM YOUNG: Awesome! It feels great, I never thought I'd be here at all. So now that I'm back again, it feels kind of like home. <laughs> CDM: True or false? Apparently last year you came to New Zealand on a holiday? ADAM: That's a good question! I can't really remember... <laughs> CDM: Does Cape Reinga ring any bells? ADAM: Ahhh, yes! Yes!! I did, yes. Beautiful! Beautiful... CDM: Did you manage to get to Hobbiton? ADAM: I haven't yet. How far away is that? I would love to get there somehow. I haven't yet [though]. CDM: We'll take you next time. Promise! ADAM: Ohhh that'd be awesome! NEXT TIME. They are shooting 'The Hobbit' stuff right now, right? Awesome. It's all based in Wellington right, the operation and Weta [Workshop] and all that stuff? CDM: Correct! Apparently Orlando Bloom is down there right now, as we speak... ADAM: Whoah... WOW. Very cool. CDM: Just for the record, I love that you wrote the lyrics "kiwi pineapple parasol" into your song 'The Yacht Club' from your new album. ADAM: Yes! <laughs> CDM: Obviously my next question for you is... if you could be any character from 'Lord Of The Rings' who would you choose to be and why? ADAM: These are great questions! <laughs> Probably Gandalf because he's just so grandfatherly and so respectable... CDM: And you'd have magical powers! ADAM: Exactly! That's very true.  CDM: You've been busy touring your new album 'All Things Bright And Beautiful' - what's it been like playing the new songs live? ADAM: So far it's been very exciting. It's been very humbling and very cool to see [that at] each show I tend to see more and more kids lock onto the new lyrics and every night they start to sing louder and louder and it's just been very exciting. It's very cool for me to be able to get in an airplane and fly for fourteen hours and show up in a place I never thought I'd ever be and have kids in the same room singing these songs I'd written so far away. To me, that's so surreal. CDM: What was going through your mind when you wrote the closing-track on the new album, 'Plant Life'? ADAM: I was spending the Winter at home in Minnesota, where it's very cold back in the 'States and it's very, very kind of dreary in the Winters there. I was just imagining [and] kind of pulling from these endless harsh Winters and imagining what... and just kind of getting myself through those. Imagining what it would be like if I were living in this very secluded and very haunted house and I was dying to get out and see the sunlight. Kind of just imagining and putting myself in a place and asking myself: "What am I going to do to get out of this?" Kind of like a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' kind-of-story. My buddy Matt Thiessen and I wrote the song together and it was fun. CDM: Some of the lyrics on 'All Things Bright And Beautiful' seem quite adventure-seeking. Do you prefer your adventures pre-planned or to be surprises? ADAM: I really do like surprises. I'm not so talented at planning things out or having schedules before or sticking to the plan per se, but yeah I'm very much a spontaneous guy and it's sort of hard for me to multi-task and to have all these things going on at once. Usually, whatever's in front of me is what I'm focused on and it's 100% on that and then I kind of move from one thing to the next. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I order food, I always just eat one thing at a time. <laughs> That's me! CDM: if you were a real-life astronaut, where would you travel to in space first and why? ADAM: Oh, these are amazing questions! I'd probably go to see Saturn first-thing and see as close to those rings as I can get and see if I can fly by one of them and try and put one of my hands through them. <laughs> CDM: Are you much of a 'Doctor Who' fan at all? ADAM: I can't say that I know too much about it! I've been so busy... I should [though]. People have recommended it to me and I haven't had time to check it out, but I'll do that. CDM: If you were to discover your own galaxy, what would it be like and why? ADAM: It would probably contain a lot of different inhabitable planets that you could go from one to another with ease and different worlds you could visit and different... maybe like a water planet, and a forest planet, and a planet that's just one big city that makes up the planet. Different places that you could go visit and themed... thematic different worlds, that would be very interesting to me. CDM: Like the best parts of Earth each spread out over different planets? ADAM: That would be amazing, yes! CDM: What's the greatest adventure you've had so far? ADAM: I kind of tend to do most of my adventures in my mind. But physically, honestly I guess it's been touring and showing up in places like New Zealand and places like China and Japan and Australia and The Philippines and what-not. Places I thought I'd never see. Places I never really knew much about at all, even from school or studying, and I've never had friends that have been to some of these places so they're so foreign to me. I show up and it's like it is like this whole other world and it's meant to be explored. I just love it.  CDM: Do you believe in love at first sight? ADAM: Maybe. That's a good question. I've definitely had a few moments in my life where I've seen somebody and it's blown me away at first sight, but I guess of those few scenarios, none of them have been like... I'm not married, so it's not like: "Oh I saw my wife and the first time I saw her I knew!" Maybe that'll happen... but it hasn't yet. <laughs> CDM: What went through your mind the very first time you heard Taylor Swift's song 'Enchanted'? ADAM: <laughs> I just remember smiling and thinking "Wow!" and feeling very honoured. It's such a beautiful song. I remember feeling kind of like... something that we had that was very much part of our friendship was suddenly shared with the rest of the world - and not feeling like cheated or anything like that, but - just feeling like WOW it's such an honour that somebody like her would treasure our friendship and relationship that we had enough, to put it out there. It's a very charming and sweet song. CDM: And Taylor's named her debut signature fragrance after you as well... 'Wonderstruck'! ADAM: Yes... it's very cool! I remember e-mailing back and forth with her and I remember saying that... the first time I met her I wrote her an e-mail because I was very shy and not very eloquent and I remember writing and saying: "I'm sorry I was so quiet, but I was kind of wonderstruck when I met you." And I remember her writing back and saying: "You're the first person I've ever heard use that word, it's a very pretty word." And here we are! <laughs> CDM: Do you believe in fate? Or are you a make-your-own-fortune kinda guy? ADAM: I think there's kind of both ways to look at it, but I think a lot of it depends on your perspective and what you do willingly with the time that you have. And I think that does play a big part in where you end up, just being very intentional about where you're headed and what you're going in. So yeah, I kind of think it plays out for both of them. CDM: When you get sick of reality, how do you go about escaping it? ADAM: I kind of tend to... I'm a very introverted guy, so I don't need to be around people for as long as someone who's very extroverted to get that sort of social fix per se. So for me, it's always best to just push everything out and just disappear by myself alone somewhere - and it's kind of like a need of mine. I tend to have to just get away from it all, so it is nice when touring to be able to come home for a week or two and close the door and not really see anybody. I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place. CDM: A lot of popular solo-artists co-write all of their music - is it really important to you to retain all creative control? ADAM: Yeah! I think that if somebody was telling me... like if I wrote a song or an album and I turned it into the record company and they said: "We love this, but it's got to be more commercial." Or whatever that means. There's been conversations... inevitably with any kind of music industry relationship these days, those come up. And it's always a little bit hard to not take personally, when someone says: "This is great, but it's got to be more like this." Or whatever, or try and influence you in that way. It's a little bit tricky because you work so hard at something to make sure that it's very pure and very genuine and very steadfast to who you are, so yeah, creative control for me is a big one. Thankfully, I've been able to retain 98% of it which I never really expected, so I'm very grateful to be able to control what I can. CDM: Especially now with record labels pursuing 360 deals. ADAM: Exactly, they have a hand in everything. But they've been very true to their word to me so far, so it's been very much a blessing. CDM: What's the weirdest dream that you've ever had? ADAM: I had one the other night... they're all very bizarre, but I was at a Summer camp and everyone was turning into huge flying ducks. <laughs> It was the best, it was a very good dream, but yeah there were a lot of flying ducks and there wasn't much that you could do to keep yourself from turning into a duck, but it was exciting! ADAM YOUNG'S FIVE MOST BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS... "My car keys."  "At home I have a Steinway Piano that's very bright and beautiful."  "I love my car at home. I could be driving my car!"  "I have a guitar at home that I really love."  "My Mom has a cat!"  OWL CITY's latest album 'All Things Bright And Beautiful' is out now - featuring the singles 'Alligator Sky' and 'Deer In The Headlights'. Click HERE to read our August 2010 interview with Adam Young. |
