If you are not familiar with Robert O’Connor, you should consider delving deeper into his catalogue and artistry. Hailing from Ireland, the eclectic troubadour has been rather productive in the past four years, slowly revealing himself as a specialist in catchy and uplifting EDM vocals. ‘Something Strange’ is the biggest evidence of it: Robert’s latest effort, the single confirms the contemporary and dancy character that has taken hold of his artistry.
It’s a good thing: O’Connor is made for such lush and luxurious pop anthems. And, seeing how our current world is heading into dark places, we do need a pick-me-up. ‘Something Strange’ will happily cater to that, once again enlisting the help of long-time collaborator Gareth Shortland on production duties.
Intrigued by the record, we caught up with the Irish creative to find out more about his musical identity and future goals… Interview below!
Hey Robert, how is it going? Congrats on the 60k streams on ‘Everything You Wanted’, we actually love its vintage vibe. How was your summer?
Thanks so much, that was a huge deal for me! Since 2022 my biggest single by far was “One Way Ticket”, which had over 30,000 streams, so I didn’t expect to beat that, much less double it! I really wanted to give the listeners a track with ’80s vibes because they have responded so well when I’ve dipped my toe into that genre before, but I wanted to hit it from a different angle this time. I was really inspired by the Sophisti-pop sound of bands like Johnny Hates Jazz, Prefab Sprout and Simply Red.
Listening to that music daily unlocked something in me and I had to tap into it. Summer was busy, I had started a new day job back in March and got a promotion in May so that took a lot of time and energy, and I was continuing to record my upcoming album during that time too, so I ended up mostly recording it on the weekends. I finally got to take a holiday in August and had 10 days in Barcelona and Sitges, which was exactly what I needed before the next single kicked off!
‘Something Strange’ is your latest effort, a worthy follow-up to ‘Everything You Wanted’. It is decisively more modern, is there a particular reason for that? did you feel like coming back to a contemporary Pop/EDM sound?
This upcoming album is shaping up to be a real blend of sounds, I’ve called it a “pop pic’n’mix” a few times now and that feels like the most simplistic but also the most accurate way to describe it. It’s like the favourite albums of my teens and 20s, where you’d have a wide range of styles, from the trance summer banger to the Christmas ballad single and the cover version. In choosing “Something Strange” as the follow-up to “Everything You Wanted”, the aim was to show another side to the album. It would have been easy to roll out another similar track and hope for the same success, but I think when the song is strong, it doesn’t matter whether it’s modern or retro, it will resonate with the listeners.
To be fair, I do hear some Eurodance references in it (the new single), but I guess it’s also a personal thing.
That will be coming from Gareth Shortland, my producer. He is known for his remixes, for pop acts like Steps and Sophie Ellis Bextor, and Eurodance is definitely his speciality, though I have to admit he has stepped out of his comfort zone numerous times on this upcoming album. There were times I’d be playing him a dream pop act like Still Corners or some bizarre instrumental from a chill-out compilation and while it wasn’t necessarily his speciality, he absolutely knocked it out of the park in his interpretation of my references.
Speaking about personal taste, what are some of your biggest inspirations? Also, is there a specific inspiration behind the new single?
For “Something Strange”, I was inspired specifically by Chicane, not for the first time, and I was also fresh off a year-long stint of listening to Alison Goldfrapp’s solo album, ‘The Love Invention’, which was produced by Richard X, who is a big inspiration to me in general. Everything he touches has that expensive, expansive sound. That was my aim with “Something Strange”.
Can you tell us more about the collaboration with Shortland? How did the creative process unfold on this occasion?
Yes! I’m big on pop records that have a clear, concise vision, and one producer. Or at least a really strong executive producer. In this case, Gareth Shortland is the producer across the board on this project, and I’m the executive producer, figuratively speaking hanging over his should saying “What if that synth went on a bit of a tangent there?” or “Can you make it sound like I’m in the next room in the club on that bridge?”
The creative process began in January 2023, just as “Separate Ways”, the final single from my last EP was released. I had decided I wanted to make an album, and Gareth decided he was up for the challenge. The challenge of working with me across ten tracks! At that stage we knew we wanted to do a cover, on account of how “The Last Time” had been received previously, so that’s where “Mysterious Times” came in. We also had a few songwriters knocking on the door after hearing what we did on the last EP, which was new to me, so we had those songs to consider, two of which made the final cut.
Then it was a case of sorting through my own songs, those that I had already written, some that didn’t fit on previous projects for various reasons, and then those that I was yet to write. The record was finished and I kept saying to Gareth “something’s missing”, and eventually after a lot of brainstorming between us, I just looked at all the random lines I had written on my phone, and found the line “Something’s changed for the better, and now I know that we’re forever”, which I felt was really primitive but also powerful.
I had written it on holiday in Barcelona, but never thought any more of it. At that point, I was starting to lose patience with myself, so I sat down at my kitchen table and just said “I’m writing the single this morning”, and after a half hour I had the lyrics and vocal melody written and sent across to Gareth in a voice-note. He reacted brilliantly, and that gave me the validation and the confidence to say, “right, the album’s finished”.
Do you feel more confident writing music alone, or within a team?
In the past, alone, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out writing within a team, because if the past six months professionally have taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you really don’t know what will work for you, and fearing something and in turn avoiding it, isn’t wise. We should try everything before we decide it’s not for us, and that’s what I’m trying to do now.
This year I said yes to things I would have immediately turned down in the past. Taking songs written by other writers wasn’t something I’d have considered at all previously, but this time around, the songs just sounded like they were custom-made for me, and it didn’t make sense to turn them down! My producer lives in the UK and I’m in Ireland, and we’ve never actually met in person, which is fairly wild, so our working relationship is via WhatsApp 90% of the time, and the odd FaceTime when big decisions are being made, but it has worked so well for us, and my most successful singles have been made in this way.
I record my vocals here in Dublin, this record was split the vocal production duties were between my friend Julyo and in the later sessions Richey McCourt, who I recorded most of my ‘Severance’ EP with. We then send the session across to Gareth and he assembles everything, sends it back, and finally it gets sent off for mastering. It’s a very small team when you consider how many writers and producers are on most major label pop records today, but in my opinion, at least, we get as strong a result!
Looking at your catalogue with a wider lens, it’s obvious you have been very productive in the past few years. What does music – and art – mean to you? Where does your creative motivation come from? What keeps you going?
It’s only when I’m in between releases that I realise how much I’ve actually released over the last few years, this will be 17 singles since 2018! No wonder I’m tired! What keeps me going is the memory of 2013 through 2017, my wilderness years. For half a decade, I wasn’t recording or releasing music, and I have huge regrets over that, because it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be. I had gone from bankrolling and releasing my first album while I was in first year of college in 2008, to releasing an EP in 2012, and I was so burned out by the live scene, the pay-to-play gigs at the time, the scam artist A&R men, the idea that you could spend 3 grand on PR for a single and it might amount to nothing.
I had to walk away, and once I had, I couldn’t seem to find my way back. I knew the sacrifices I’d have to make if I returned to the industry as an independent artist, but the alternative was complete discontentment. It’s hard to explain, I wasn’t miserable, but I was incomplete. I would meet people at parties and they’d say “are you still doing the music”, and it was a horrible feeling to confirm that it was a thing of the past. I felt like I couldn’t consider myself an artist, because I had been inactive for so long. That is, quite specifically, where my motivation comes from.
Actually, I did plan to take a year-long break last year, while I recorded the album and got my finances in order to execute the whole project, but then I wrote “Summer Is Waiting” in April and the little voice in my head said “you should release it as a summer single, you can’t release it in winter”, and 2 weeks later, I was out shooting the video and commissioning remixes. I can’t be helped, it’s my addiction.
As a Dublin-based artist, how would you describe the local music scene? Anything interesting? 🙂
Absolutely nothing. I feel entirely on the outside looking in when it comes to the Irish music scene, because I’m not banging an acoustic guitar and singing in cursive. Actually, “Outside Looking In” is a nice song title, I reckon.
What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
As mentioned previously, all the focus is on my new album!
In reality, it’s only my second album, my first being ‘Distance’, which was released way back in 2008. I have released three EPs since then, so I consider it my fifth era, but if we’re being strict, it’s only my second proper long-player. It feels like my record through and through, it has my DNA all over it, and there are tracks on there that feel like a door that could open to another future record that delves deeper into that sound.
It’s a feel-good record, it acknowledges past struggles, and of course, there’s a sad banger here and there, but what I noticed when I was listening to the album to finalise the track list, is that it just made me feel euphoric. I’ll give you an exclusive too, I’m working on a companion project for the album, I want to keep it a secret because it’s not finished, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do forever, and it’ll allow me to carry this project through 2025.
