‘I USED TO LISTEN TO THE CHARTS AND THINK, WHAT’S ALL THIS SHIT? BUT I COULDN’T HATE SOMETHING I WANTED TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT’ He was the lead vocalist in one of Britain’s most hotly-tipped bands, before going on to join The Streets. Now, Rob Harvey is finding new levels of success as a pop songwriter...
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obert Harvey was once the frontman of The Music. Formed in 2001 in the city of Leeds, success came to him faster than he expected. Or even wanted. The band’s 2002 debut self-titled album was hailed as an instant classic. Harvey was a teenager at the time. It became a certified Gold record, released during a musical halcyon age for anyone who today calls themselves a millennial. It came on the cusp of a mainstream moment for UK indie music, a scene defined by skinny jeans, sweaty gigs, lead singers appearing on panel shows and guitar riffs from the Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines. 2004’s Welcome to the North came next for The Music, followed by 2008’s Strength in Numbers. Then, everything changed. Harvey left the band in 2010, and by the end of 2011 The Music had been turned off. The years that followed for Harvey were interspersed with moments of soul searching and general disillusionment towards the music industry. Harvey was done with being ‘The Frontman’, but wasn’t entirely sure what his role in music was anymore. He was in a funk, but it was one that he overcame thanks, in part, to Mike Skinner of The Streets. After writing two songs on The Streets’ 2011 album Computers and Blues – and featuring as a vocalist – Harvey joined the band on tour as a singer and guitarist. Harvey was still doing what he loved – music, mostly – but thanks to Skinner the eyes weren’t solely on him anymore. More
than that, though, Skinner aided Harvey in his self-described, post-Music ‘rebirth’. “I’ve got so much to be thankful for to Mike Skinner,” says Harvey. “He showed me so many things about songwriting that you can’t get on a college course.” After his period of holding the music industry in contempt, it’s perhaps unlikely that Harvey would go on to pen a number of blissfully joyous, unashamedly uplifting pop hits. Songs that, by his own admission, his former-self might even scoff at. But that’s exactly what happened. Since 2014, Harvey’s writing credits have spanned Clean Bandit’s Real Love and Gorgon City’s Take It All, to Rudimental’s I
In recent months, with a reunion gig set for 2022, Harvey has been revisiting some of his earlier works with The Music and is back rehearsing with his bandmates. “We’ve not played together for 10 years,” he says. “We never knew if it was going to sound good. My voice has changed quite a bit, too. But after 10 years, we played a song and we knew it was going to be alright.” Harvey had recently returned from The Ivor Novellos when we speak. Alongside fellow Head & Heart songwriters Jonathan Courtidis and Dan Dare, he was nominated for the PRS for Music Most Performed Work award. “We didn’t win, but it was nice to be recognised and nominated,” he laughs. Nevertheless, he’s in good spirits as he remembers his early years in The Music, how he turned mainstream disdain into pop music gold, and why writing a good song can be akin to writing a Presidential speech...
“I was in a bit of a weird place mentally, and was thinking some pretty dark shit.”
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Will for Love and Jax Jones’s All 4 U. And in 2020, while the world was shut down, Harvey co-wrote Head & Heart, recorded by Joel Corry and MNEK. With its obscenely catchy bassline, and lyrics that speak of being ‘frozen in motion’ by a fleeting crush, the single became a quintessential, would-be festival staple – however, as no festivals be held, it found new life in the living rooms and kitchens of bored Brits instead. It also hit No.1 in the UK charts, and picked up nominations at the BRIT Awards for British Single, and at the iHeartRadio Music Awards for Dance Song of the Year.
You recently took part in an online listening party for The Music’s second album, Welcome to the North. Have you listened to that record much since it was released all those years ago? That album was a weird one for us. The Music’s first album was all very positive. For the second album, we had about six songs and were sent to Atlanta to finish it. We had nine weeks to finish writing it, and to record it, produce it and mix it. We’d been on tour consistently, my grandma was not very well and then I was sent to Atlanta for nine weeks. It sounds nice, but not when you’ve been on tour for two years.
