Benjamin Clementine Quotes
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When I lived in Paris, I would shop at antique shops and buy these huge coats because I was very cold. And then I started performing in them because I felt safe. I never stopped doing that.
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Music is the reason I started talking to people. When I started singing in bars and trains, I began to learn the behaviour of people. Music was the bait that helped me get something from them and give myself to them.
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I just want us to understand each other. That's the point of my music.
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Music isn't a competition.
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The meaning of love is obviously huge - but for me, it means be nice to people, and people will be nice to you back. Love is a selfless place to be. There is no safer place to be than under the canopy of love.
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The greatest in heroes in life are the anonymous. That's what I believe. Your neighbours are heroes. People who, when you walk down the street, you see them feeding their little baby - these people are heroes because they are living under difficult situations, but they're still trying to save a life.
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If you have parents who can't show you love, a kid can grow up to look arrogant. Because they need to create a fake self. Or they think they're more powerful than they really are.
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I adopted this feeling that the stage is my home, so just keep my coat on and not wear anything else.
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When I first started singing in Paris, I sounded horrible: I was just singing to get some money to eat. And I wasn't singing my own songs: it was Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix. Eventually, when I wrote my own music, my style just came out of my own place.
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I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs.
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When I was a kid, I remember seeing Michael Jackson. I thought he was an alien. You don't grow up to be like Michael Jackson. I'm not saying I'm Michael Jackson, but Mercury Prizes are for aliens, basically. So I was very chuffed that I got nominated, and then I won.
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There are things that need to be said... and I think it's my obligation to say them.
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Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn't quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. All of his poems are all like songs, and that's how I always try to start my thoughts.
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I believe when the music is being sung or being played, at the end of it, there's some sort of grace and understanding. And that's all I want for humanity. I just want us to understand each other. That's the point of my music.
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I personally wouldn't want my second album to sound like my first; it might sound very rocky or hard rock - and that wouldn't be melancholy. So if people think my music is melancholic, then so be it. It's meant to be uplifting, and I'm just basically saying what needs to be said.
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With this sort of career, you need determination. You've got to sacrifice a lot of things: family, friends - not that I had any - but you sacrifice everything.
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I know, deep down, that what makes my music what it is are my words. It always starts from me wanting to say something. Once I've run out of things to say, I'll be done.
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It's amazing how people believe you if you use long words.
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Honestly, I still don't know a lot of artists, and I want to keep it that way for a while. I think that's why I might be quite original.
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Studying music involves a lot of mathematics and a lot of exercises of memory. Or you've got to be able to be like somebody, to play like somebody, to play Mozart's music the way he played it and how he intended it. You've got to make it perfect, and that's not what I want to do. Although it is beautiful.
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If you live in central London, that's probably fine for you, but in places like Edmonton, where you're almost out of sight of London, you've got to pay more and more to get into central London. How does that work?
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The minute I stop singing, I'm back to being shy. I'm soft-spoken because I never really talked to people. I didn't learn to do it.
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My music isn't mainstream music.
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At home and in church - which I didn't go to a lot, I was very rebellious, but my family was strict Christians - they would ask us, 'What's the shortest verse in the Bible?' and I was the one who always said 'John 11:35' straightaway. It stayed with me: the Bible has stayed with me.