As rising favorite Joseph Lawrence continues to shine this year, the U.K. singer has been racking up a number of singles over the past few months, including his breathtaking track "Empty House" and the recent cut "BeGod."
Lawrence (not to be confused with the American actor-singer Joey Lawrence) recently dropped his newest single "No Good For Me," the latest preview of his upcoming debut album Trials of a Dream, which is expected very soon.
Ahead of releasing the new music, Lawrence spoke with Variance about "No Good For Me" and the plethora of music he's been sitting on, anxiously ready to share with fans.
"It's about temptation and always being tempted by something quite beautiful," says Lawrence of the inspiration behind "No Good For Me," while noting: "Most beautiful things that are tempting are not great for you in the long run—or the short term. I guess it's about realizing that it's about realizing the temptation isn't worth the stress. But it's drawing from a very personal place for me."
While many songwriters are careful to write with a sense of ambiguity or even create "characters" in their music, Lawrence, who has built a reputation for his powerhouse vocals and earnest lyricism, says he wouldn't feel comfortable if he wasn't sharing his own experiences in his writing.
"I learned that from a young age, if it wasn't written from a personal place, then the song just seems to be lacking for me," he says. "It needs to come from an honest place, you know? But I will say, I do attach a 'character' to every personal experience so I can make my experience more universal for people to kind of digest."
And while that sense of vulnerability and transparency might frighten some artists, understandably so, Lawrence says he feels the opposite.
"I'd say it's much easier," says Lawrence. "Actually, I think when I was younger it always felt a bit like, 'Oh, do I want to talk about this and be honest and then people will know this about me?' And blah, blah, blah. But actually, when you've been doing it for a while, it's just an extension of yourself and then actually it's a blessing to be out there talking about something that's so honest to me and so real because that means it's never false. So it's never too tiring."
Lawrence also says after his previous project Joseph Lawrence & The Garden, it also felt important to release this new music in a proper album format, rather than just EPs or as singles.
"It is an album. I've written a lot of songs already in my life and I just felt like, to whittle it down to an EP, would be almost a disrespect for the music," he explains. "I'm trying to put out the right way. So it deserved an album, you know. Trials of a Dream. Yeah."
He says he believes the new record is "a great introduction to Joseph Lawrence," noting it is a reflection of himself "sonically, lyrically, emotionally." He adds: "It's about the journey of an artist, the trials you have to face and sometimes having to take a different path even when you feel like you were on the right path. It's a struggle but it's something dark and beautiful."■