As a songwriter he’s had Number One hits, earned multi-platinum certifications, broken the US and even been covered on Glee. But now Ed Drewett is finally stepping out from behind the notepad and properly launching his own artist career. AMAZEPOP’s Shaun Kitchener sat down with the 24-year-old mastermind to discuss label politics, the revival of live instruments and watching from a house in Bishop’s Stortford as a song he wrote went 3x Platinum in North America. Well, we should probably talk about the new single… how’s the reaction been to ‘Drunk Dial’ so far? Being honest, it’s been very positive. Then you get people who don’t get it. I think a lot of people from different countries haven’t heard that kind of 2-step beat, and they’re like “WHAT IS THIS SHIT?”. But, hey.. I’m just fucking enjoying it, to be honest. Whatever criticism, I’m like ‘cool, great, bring it’ because I’m going into it at a hundred miles an hour. I guess it must be better to get an impassioned response than like “meeeeh”… Yeah. Someone even said I was bald! I’m definitely not bald! But it’s been good. I know now to just fucking accept what anyone’s gonna say. It feels like this single release has been a long time coming. What made you think ‘Drunk Dial’ was The Song? This was the song for me two years ago when it was first written. But, being involved with major record
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labels, you don’t always get your way. And releasing anything was a ball-ache. I came out of the last label – I got dropped from Virgin, I got dropped from Polydor – I just thought, fuck it. The songwriting has, thankfully, been able to fund everything I’m doing now. I’m doing this on my own. I am. Literally paying every penny on my own. So that’s it. And now I can choose what singles.
I guess on your own you don’t have pressure from labels to sell a certain amount… That would be fine if they actually put something out! I only unfortunately have negative experiences from record labels. Just changing teams all the time, going in and out… and all the tine, I’m just trying to get an album written and out, but it doesn’t work like that. So I spent two and a half years at Virgin, ten months at Polydor… I’m