Pushing Limits and Spontaneous Notes with Alfie Templeman
Photograph by Jessie Morgan
I wasn’t sure of what to expect chatting to Alfie. Having listened to his music for quite some time now, I was intrigued by the idea of chatting with him. When I would talk about Templeman, I would always say that his talent “reminds me of Charlie Puth”, he was so flattered when I said that to him. Jumping on that Zoom call was everything I could have imagined but 100x better. Templeman was so sweet and never failed to make us laugh. It was 9 am on a Tuesday in London and 6:30 pm in Melbourne, so we were both a bit tired from the day to come and the day that had been.
After some yapping and technical difficulties, I ended up talking to a blank screen with ‘Alfie’ on the screen, it couldn’t have been more fitting to the chaos of this interview. Having recently released his single ‘Hello Lonely’, Alfie shares how the song explores “checking in with yourself”. For Templeman, he used to think that the last two years had been “Radio silence in the forefront” but looking back, to be quite “busy”. Linking back to reflection, ‘Hello Lonely’ unfolds how much life had changed for Alfie in that time. Moving to London, growing up, and experiencing new things, there was also the challenge of finding your place in a new community of people. Alfie articulated this well saying “It’s like, whoa, what am I doing? There’s a lot of people that are good” and battling that imposter syndrome as a creative.
On the topic of singles, I also asked about ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ being the first single in this campaign. Alfie shared how it was quite nerve-wracking, to release a single with a new sound after some time away, not “knowing how people were going to take it” as “it sounds similar to a lot of my older stuff, but it’s also quite different”. However, this wasn’t a single that hadn’t been heard before. Like many artists across the globe, they’re performing unreleased songs on tour or sharing snippets on TikTok to see how listeners would respond. Alfie shared how performing ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ on his last tour made it the obvious choice to release it first as I’m sure fans had been waiting patiently to stream it 24/7. Alfie then attempts to articulate the “interesting song because it’s like little snippets of ramblings that I wrote down in the morning when I was on tour. Just like things I thought about within the first 10 minutes of waking up. I like that people can relate to it and just like the music as well.” But to me it made perfect sense, it’s just a snippet of Alfie’s incredibly creative mind.
Alfie’s second album ‘Radiosoul’ is officially out today, and it takes quite a different path from his debut album ‘Mellow Moon’. Being a “pandemic album, it was quite hard to have different experiences when writing for that album” and listening to the songs you can notice that “it was very much one consistent theme” lyrically, and that being “stuck in my house”. Whereas ‘Radiosoul’ has been a collection of experiences involving a lot of change over the last 2 years. Alfie also finds that growing out of his teen years allowed him to “naturally start writing better lyrics, and improving as a composer and musician in general”, which I noticed immediately listening to ‘Radiosoul’. I also noticed the change in direction of his sound, as the album landed with an acid-pop/rock twist.
The process of creating this album was also very different for Templeman. Writing and producing with Nile Rodgers, Dan Carey, Karma Kid, Oscar Schella, Will Bloomfield, Justin Young, Josh Scarbrow, and Charlie J. Perry (just to name a few), was a completely new experience. “I had a lot of really cool ideas, but I didn’t know how to execute them” Alfie shares, and reaching out to these producers allowed him to have more freedom and broadened the possibilities of each song. “It was kind of like going back to the drawing board really”, as Alfie used to think that if he wrote the songs, then he had to produce them. However, he got out of that mindset and it “was just f***ing awesome”. At first, Alfie was quite scared and thought “They’re just going to think I’m weird” However, as legend says “They ended up being weirder than me, so it was fine”.
It was interesting to learn how some of the tracks on ‘Radiosoul’ had been made from notes as early as 2017. Alfie said that he “always ends up going back to really old songs. If something sticks in my head, it just means that it’s probably worth messing around with still.” which I thought was beautiful. This happened to ‘This Is Just The Beginning” which was originally written when Alfie was only 14 years old, and was persistent with the idea of re-writing the song and it ended up fitting well into ‘Radiosoul’.
Recently announced as a performer at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend, I had to find out what Templeman was most excited about. “Charlie XCX is playing and I love her.” (mood), and playing on the same stage as her Alfie was super excited to experience that moment. Then I had to ask about any possible visits to Australia, which Alfie lit up as I said the word “Australia”. Having only visited as a support act for the Wombats, Templeman is keen to come back and play for his fans. As the interview was ending, Alfie’s voice was turning into static and as it cleared up I heard him mention his love for “VB long necks”, so fans may need to get a sponsorship from VB to get Alfie back to Australia quicker….
Being one of the most wholesome and funny musicians to chat with, you can’t help but fall in love with Alfie and his music. Make sure you pre-save/order ‘Radiosoul’ now and keep an eye out for any possible shows in your area.
