One of my favorite things is producing other artists because, in many ways, it's a lot more freeing than working on your own music.
St. Lucia
When you work together in a creative way, you have to be less selfish about your ideas and learn to let both parties feel valued. Of course, that's also a really great quality to have in a relationship, too.
When I start working on an idea, I immediately record without judging it.
The music has a very strong escapist quality to it. In the moment where you feel like you need to escape, or when you are escaping, that's a good time to listen to 'When the Night.'
You can only absorb when you look back at photos: like when we played Coachella, and there are thousands of people in the audience, and you just walk on stage.
I used to do this huge jump off the drum riser. I had a good way of landing so I wouldn't hurt myself, but then one time, I landed on my elbow.
I'm always very cautious, because I don't want St. Lucia to turn out like everything else. I want to have a personality and be unique in some way that maybe limits our appeal to everyone in the world but makes us more special in some way.
The name came about from me just closing my eyes and sticking a pen on a map of South Africa. St. Lucia was the fifth place that the pen landed on.
I think the job of the first single is kind of like being a diplomat for a country.
We've always enjoyed touring, which is fortunate because we're always on the road. The most difficult part is that time passes by so quickly. It's hard to pay attention to your normal life because shows are all-encompassing.
I feel like when you're in your late teens and early 20s, you just don't think about certain things in your life, and as you get older, you think about your parents getting older.
I feel like Hawaiian shirts have definitely made a comeback.
My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.
Hearing about a visual artist's approach can change the way you think about songwriting.
The upside to doing commercials is you have to work in a lot of different genres and make stuff that you never thought you'd be making.
We like to try doing new things in the shows and doing things that we haven't done before.
Even though we're really, really happy with what we do, sometimes I think - as an adult, you think, 'Should I be more responsible with my life choices?'
At a festival, some people are just there because they're waiting for, like, Calvin Harris to come on later.
I like to make bombueti, which is basically the South African national dish. It's basically a South African curry shepherd's pie kind of thing.
I really believe in albums, even though some people believe the year of the album has passed. I love singular pop songs or tracks, but what really affects me most deeply is if there's an hour of music or 45 minutes of music that flows really well and tells a story.
The '80s definitely influence my music in a big way.
Nothing beats looking out to a sweaty, packed house full of fans.
I think there's no way of avoiding the South African or African influence from coming into my music, just because I spent 19 years of my life there. Being a kid, my early musical experiences were there.
I feel like people associate us with the tropical Hawaiian print because, for a long time, we were wearing a lot of bright colors to exert our personality.
Everyone knows Earth, Wind & Fire. We know 'September,' all the big sort of hits from going out and dancing and stuff. When I was developing St. Lucia, I really started listening a little bit deeper, listening back to their stuff from the '70s and '80s, and really dug into it.
You can't be 100 percent selfish when you're working with somebody else.
It sounds kind of cliche, and a lot of people say it about our music, but I think a good place to hear our music for the first time is on vacation, or somewhere warm, on the beach or something like that.
With Prince especially... he was a really great songwriter and keyboardist and singer and was so good at so many different things, you couldn't pin him down. That really inspires me.
I went through all these different phases. But it always felt like I was impersonating something, so I went back to some of the music I grew up with, like music from South Africa and the '80s stuff. I stopped suppressing it, and I stopped trying to be cool.
I feel like, for me as an artist, it takes me a while of living with the tracks and living with the body of work to realize what it's all about.
I feel like a lot of bands have done amazing covers, but whenever we start working on it, whenever we try it in rehearsal, it never feels right for me to do the song.
St. Lucia was a place were we used to go on vacation - not every year, but we went there a couple of times. I remember the last time that I went there, I was really small, and the only memory that I have is that my dad was going swimming or fishing one day - and I really, really wanted to go - but I was too young.
I had to embrace just basically writing and recording on my laptop. On long drives through the Rockies, I would take my laptop and mess around with ideas and make rough sketches of songs.
One of the secrets of having a long-term relationship is realizing that even if you think the other person's great, at some point, they're going to mess up and annoy you.
I like my music to transport people somewhere.
I'm kind of a little allergic to that whole, 'Let's go to L.A. and write a bunch of hits.'
I'm very interested in how visual artists think because I think the way that I think about music is similar. I'm very inspired by aesthetics and space.
I find that when I'm under pressure, I work really well, but then you have those days where you sleep for four hours because you drive to a venue overnight and arrive there the next day, and you're cranky and not dealing with it very well.
When I left the country to study in the U.K., I suddenly realized, and I'm still realizing, how much other stuff is out there - like My Bloody Valentine, who millions of people are passionate about, but they're still considered an 'underground' band.
When I'm making the music, the songs that I get most excited about definitely make me feel good, but often, it's a really good feeling combined with some kind of melancholy element.
It is funny to me that people think of St. Lucia as this, like, feel-good band.
I was in this boys' choir for five years, when I was 10 until 15.
We love the idea of really putting on a show. It's not just a band playing on the stage. There's a theatrical element to what's going on.
A short story can be really interesting and enriching and powerful, but a novel just contains so much more information and richness and depth. That's what I strive for in my music. I want to create something that's like a longform statement.
To me, St. Lucia isn't just purely feel-good; there are these other juxtaposed elements as well.
I will readily confess that I'm a coffee addict.
With my own stuff, I've always held to the belief that it should take as long as it takes until it feels right.
In the past, I never wrote any love songs. That was not my thing.
I love so many songs from the '80s, but I'm obliged to the big ones.
The reason I decided to become a solo artist in the first place was because I always felt that the results that I got from working as a team where everyone had equal say... ended up with compromised, watered-down results.
