At 27, Toronto singer-songwriter Daniel Caesar sees time passing, escaping him, but above all gaining in value. R&B and soul, on his new album Never Enoughrevolve around these observations, in an artistic direction imbued with a new maturity and a disarming honesty.
“Basically, I wanted to do a kind of country folk album. » Daniel Caesar (Ashton Simmonds, real name) is the most serious in the world when he explains to us the vision he had at the start for his new album. It was about three years ago. The pandemic hit as his tour for the album Case Study 01 (2019) was coming to an end. “I have times when I have no inspiration, but this time, as soon as the tour was over, I went to my parents [dans une ferme en Ontario éloignée de tout] and I started the next album. It never stopped. »
We meet Daniel Caesar by videoconference, one evening at the end of winter. He returns from sunny destinations, Brazil and Jamaica (where his family is from), where he took the time to relax before the launch of his record and all that comes with it, including promotional campaigns. While this isn’t his favorite part of his job, he takes comfort in knowing he’s presenting the media and the public with an album he’s particularly proud of and one that has the potential to show just how far he’s come. in recent years, he tells us.
The singer is initially somewhat stingy with words when we talk to him about his new album, but a few jokes are enough to make him more talkative. He relaxes and talks with openness and honesty about what led him to create Never Enough. Honesty, moreover, is central to the work he has produced in recent months and which follows his two previous discs, the acclaimed Freudian And Case Study 01.
One of the things he admits is his tendency to never get enough (never enough). In life, his appetite is insatiable. In his work, he also seems to always want more, to want to explore and go beyond his limits.
So when he started working on Never Enough, he imagined himself taking a different tangent, going from the R&B that made him famous to a completely different genre. “I thought I knew what I wanted, but in the end it changed a lot,” admits the singer-songwriter. At the time, he listened to the albums Abbey Road of the Beatles and dreams by Fleetwood Mac. He was reading the alchemist and played chess, while working on his next work.
Eventually, the aspiration for a country folk-inspired album mostly dissipated when he opted to work with brand new collaborators.
“The world stopped with COVID and I felt like I absolutely needed to keep moving, I felt like I wasn’t moving forward the way I wanted to. I was working with the same two people from the start [de ma carrière], they are my mentors, but I knew that I had to go and discover things for myself. »
He co-wrote with Toronto’s Mustafa the Poet and partnered with Dylan Wiggins to direct. Ty Dolla$ign, Omar Apollo, Chronixx and serpentwithfeet also collaborated on the record.
“The sound continued to evolve, it changed a lot. I like to be versatile. At each recording session, I could try to bring my touch to what was offered to me”, says Daniel Caesar, who wishes to present with Never Enough a new chapter in his career, which can reach a wide audience while remaining true to his creative vision.
Passing time
Daniel Caesar is of course one of the voices in the play Peaches by Justin Bieber, a megahit of over 2 billion streams. He is also a Grammy-winning artist in the ten most listened to Canadians on Spotify for his song Best Part (with HER) and named to the Polaris Prize Definitive List in 2018. The last years of his life were a whirlwind.
I started noticing how quickly time flies. When I was young, it felt like the days couldn’t pass any slower, but now every hour of my life feels like just five minutes.
Daniel Caesar
“I guess it’s because time flies when you’re having fun!” »
He explores this idea of time which sometimes passes too quickly, of which he will never have enough, on several pieces of his new album. “While I was writing, my mind often went back to that,” explains Daniel Caesar. It’s not at all what I planned, that it becomes a theme. It happened all by itself. Somehow, every time I wrote a song, it came back to me. »
To coat these themes, Daniel Caesar was more involved than ever in the instrumental side. “I probably played 80% of the instruments you hear on the album,” he says. Usually, I write and I compose and then musicians come to play. I play, but I’m far from exceptional. »
This time, his co-director Dylan Wiggins convinced him to play his melodies himself. “You can notice that the instrumentation is no longer so perfect. But my personality shines through much more. It is voluntary. It’s less clean, but it’s me you hear directly. »
More honest, more personal, more accomplished, this third album by Daniel Caesar is full of promise. How does he feel, some time before the world discovers this “new chapter”? “I feel victorious,” he said. I feel like I’ve been through a lot. And it will be necessary to wait until the end of my career to really know if this is one of my greatest successes. But, at the moment anyway, this album is a triumph for me. »
R&B Soul
Never Enough
Daniel Caesar
Republic Records