About to Pop

In case you haven't noticed, there's an electrifying mega-pop resurgence going on in America. But what's been noticeably absent in this Gaga-fied world are the bombastic and brilliant Princes and George Michaels of the '80s. Until now. Our pop prayers have been answered by the UK's Dan Black and his penchant for art-house friendly videos (like his new "Alone") and synth-heavy, layered pop gems. Fresh off his supporting stint on the Holy Grail of pop extravaganzas known as the Robyn and Kelis "All Hearts" tour, as well as his Kid-Cudi-featured "Symphonies" recently snagging an MTV Music Video Award nomination for  "Breakthrough Video," PAPERMAG chatted with the busy Brit about writing "fucked up" tunes for two insanely (in)famous ladies, Radiohead as a pop act, and Beth Ditto's "life-saving music."

You just came off the All Hearts tour with Robyn and Kelis. It felt like a sweaty, gay dance party. How was it for you? 

It felt pretty much like that to me, which is good. It's hard for me to find the words. It was an amazing, fun tour. It's quite rare that I'm on a tour in which I genuinely love the other artists playing. I'm a huge fan of Robyn and Kelis.  I got to watch them play every night and was super, super into it.

I did massive writing. I'm writing for other artists and working on the second album. In the past, I thought it was quite difficult to write on tour. But in the last year, I found it to be productive on a plane or the back of the bus. I've now managed to take the energy of shows and sort of the high of a show and use that in songwriting. But it took me a while. Sort of a problem that I had to solve. I wrote a lot this time. If I wasn't performing, I had in headphones back stage -- working on some nonsense.

I'm "offering" songs for poppy people. What I do is quite weird so I guess they want me to give them some fucked up element. I've written with Ryan Tedder, with Dr. Luke... Offering songs to Ke$ha and Britney. It's massive! Why the hell are they coming to me? It's all kind of a real culture shock for me because it's so different over here from how people work in Europe. I'm a big fan of pop music with an experimental element. And a lot of those artists have that. But, on the other hand, I like to do stuff that will connect to a lot of people.

I'm still on the corner waiting for the bus, asking for pennies. It's fun, just even sort of the experience of doing it. It is fascinating and kind of weird and fun. And scary. Fun and scary. 

For me, pop music is quite a broad phrase. In many ways, Radiohead is as pop to me as Britney is. The differences are quite small. They both make songs that last four minutes, start at one place and build to a main place and before finishing. If it makes you wanna sing along and it's also emotional -- a happy song, or a sad song --  it's kind of pop. In terms of tradition, Robyn's last two records are like, "Oh, this is how it should be done." It's kind of immediate -- "Oh, I love this on a basic level." But then there's also "Oh, this is kind of heartbreaking and there's kind of something in here that's about horrible moments I've had in my life." Multi-tasking songs -- that's what pop songs are for me. You can jump around and be stupid or feel a bit better about things that are going on in your life. I like that kind of weird contradiction in terms of pure pop. 

It was amazing and kind of quite shocking. Is anyone gonna come out or know who the heck we are? But they were all into it. I loved the Robyn tour, I was the third on the boat, and I knew my place and it was an honor. But it was always like I was playing third and had to know my place. So to suddenly play Lolla, it was like about me and my band. So it was really special to see so many people come out. It was one of my favorite shows ever.

Massive! I studied art. I quit art school but that's what I was doing. All the artwork in the video and website, I do it all collaboratively with two friends from Paris. I'm massively involved with all of that. It's super important.

It was totally just an accident. A friend of mine plays for a friend of his. He really connected to it and contacted me and got the instrumental and recorded on it. And we were like, "What should we do with it?" And then we started in America, we were like, "Oh, he's big here. Let's use that."

Mind-blowing is the word. I'm like "What?! What the fuck am I doing with this bunch of people?" It's an amazing video and the people  I worked with are geniuses so I'm happy to have their talent in thrusted in the MTV awards.

Today, right now. Heaven in Las Vegas by the Cocteau Twins. It's amazingly beautiful, has crazy melodies and is the most beautiful record ever made. It's got the most unearthly, singing-in-a-made-up language thing.

Wow, this was really special. I'm not a massive fan of them but Gossip played a really old theater in Paris. Obviously Beth Ditto's kind of a like a gay icon and empowered and breaks loads of rules just being who she is. Seeing them made me imagine what it would be like to see The Smiths early because the crowd was full with young girls and the way they interacted with her and behaved felt like more than, "Oh, we're just here to have fun." It was kind of like, "You're making life easier. You're saving my life by doing this." It was just kind of like quasi-religious. It was kind of striking and quite moving -- this is music saving peoples' lives. 

I'm terrible. I'm always creating stuff, probably working on music. After we finish this phone-call, I have a holiday for like five days. The first holiday in like 14 months. I might go mad. I'm staying somewhere in Venice. I like films, I like art, I like seeing friends. Obvious things. Reading. But the thing that makes me calm and happy -- it's creating stuff. Knowing me, I'll be on my lap top and be creating songs.

Catch Dan Black at PAPER's Sounds Like PAPER concert at Roseland Ballroom, Tuesday, September 7th and at the Bowery Ballroom September 9th.