10 Things We Love About Humble the Great

It’s greatness done humbly, it’s Humble the Great. We caught up with the singer-songwriter-producer following the release of his debut album, ‘i don’t mind floating’, shortly after he finished his EU tour. He had an action-packed 2024, as his debut album was his second project of the year, with ‘Every Night Was The Same’ arriving back in March. It feels as though 2024 has seen a lot come to fruition for Humble. After many years with dreams of the stage or the screen, the young artist decided to switch lanes and music became his primary passion. A clear multi-hyphenate, since then he has showcased enormous skill as a front man, as well as a behind-the-scenes producer. 

The latter is possibly where Humble feels most comfortable, but with a stage background, you can be sure that his live show is something quite special. We caught his biggest headline to date, at the ICA in London, and the combination of startling vulnerability in his lyrics, and his easy-going, charming stage presence was refreshing, honest and captivating. ‘Angie’ was anthemic, whilst the title track ‘i don’t mind floating’, discussing topics of self-harm and suicide, was heartbreaking. A highlight of the show was a joyful appearance from his partner, and fellow artist, Amie Blu. Their collaboration ‘September Lightning’ is a sumptuous offering, and their creative chemistry is clear to see. Unsurprising really, as Humble revealed to us that his first time ever working with another artist as a producer was with Amie. The intertwining of their creative paths is divine, not to mention rom-com worthy. Here’s to many more collaborations between the pair. 

Collaboration is very much on the cards for Humble, as after two projects as the titular character, he now yearns for a supporting role that can be just as impactful. He exclusively reveals to us that he’s currently acting as executive producer on the debut album of rising star Kamal. These two friends coming together can only lead to exciting results that fans of either will be sure to enjoy. He mentions some other big collaborators that are best left to be revealed in their own time, but with the American-born making full use of his US passport, the Humble the Great super-producer arc is well and truly underway. 

And what a fantastic role that is for him to take. In his own offerings, Humble merges the heartbreaking and the joyful with masterful sincerity. He tells a story and makes it sound f*cking excellent. Applying these gifts to other wonderful artists is sure to unlock their potential and lead to incredible outcomes. For now, Humble has delivered two exquisite projects in 2024 that we can’t recommend highly enough. For his fans it’s plain to see the brilliance he possesses, so to rely on an overused phrase, if you don’t know, get to know.

We love what he’s working on at the moment

What are you up to now that you've finished touring?

I’m doing some executive production for an artist called Kamal. for his debut album. Working on the album is really cool, and it's kind of like my favourite thing to do besides my own music. I can really focus on building a sound for someone else, and getting musical fulfilment from that without having to worry about the promotional aspects of it. It's just like I get to do the music and the production side that I love, but I don't really have to worry about anything else, like whether or not it’s getting enough TikTok love or whatever! 

I’ve worked on about six of the songs so far, and I’ve been with him the last few days. The music is sick, he’s really stepped up. He’s a good friend, it’s nice to spend time and make music with people that I like!

We love his live shows

You’ve just finished your tour, with shows in Paris, Amsterdam, Manchester and London. How was that experience for you?

It was amazing, it was very surreal. I was actually saying this to my mum on the phone today, when we booked the dates and the shows in advance, everyone around me was saying it’s a bit ambitious in terms of venue size. Like for Amsterdam we don’t really have an obvious market there. But the venue that had opened up was really nice. And so the whole time I was thinking like it’s a learning experience, if I go to Amsterdam and there’s only ten people in the room, it’s part of the journey! But we ended up selling out the whole thing. Being in another country and seeing people there for you and spending their money on you, knowing the words, it’s a very tangible moment of like, I’m moving in the right direction, you know? 

Those moments come very few and far between in music now, in this very digital world, those tangible moments are really important to cling on to. So yeah man, it was great, but it was exhausting! I did four dates, and it was like a week of travelling and I was destroyed at the end of it! I could not imagine doing six months! I need to quit smoking bro, that was like my biggest thing, I was like damn… my voice!

We loved his London show at the ICA

How was the London show for you? And who designed the set, it looked incredible?!

The London show just felt very surreal to me. In terms of the amount of people that were there to see me. That was the biggest room I've ever played for a headline show. So it was just very like, I really believe that I can do this!

The set designer was Emily Leggett. She’s worked with me since I released a song called ‘Pink Dress’ and she was assisting on the set for that music video. She did my headline earlier this year… she’s just amazing bro she’s super talented. 

We love his stage presence 

Would you say that being on stage in your natural environment as a musician, or are you more comfortable in the studio?

As a producer I’m super comfortable in the studio, like writing or whatever, but when I'm writing for myself as Humble the Great, I find that quite challenging. I probably don't enjoy it as much as I should, just because I'm stressed about actually being able to write good stuff. So I find performing is my favourite thing to do with my songs, it feels like my bread and butter. 

But growing up I wanted to be an actor my whole life. I wasn't really interested in music as a full time thing. I went to drama school and did a BA in acting and I did musical theatre, that's what I wanted to do. Performing on stage was always the main thing. And then as I got older, I just started to love music more, and then that love for being on stage translated into that. But you’ve just got to sit in the studio, or else you'll never be able to perform live, like, unless you're gonna be like a wedding band or some shit. That's my New Year's resolution next year, to try and find ways to enjoy it or to not be so self critical in the studio when I’m writing for myself.

Do you remember the first time you were ever on stage?

This is super cringe, but I'm just gonna tell you anyway. I went to an all boys primary school, and I realised the way to get the lead roles was just to play the girls in those productions. So my first role was Nancy in Oliver, then I did Talullah in Bugsy Malone, Ophelia in Hamlet, I didn't play a male role till I was, like, 15!

Because my sister was a musician, I used to definitely be inspired by her, and I would go and play in local pubs and stuff, and I would play songs I'd written on the guitar, but that was more just for fun, really. It was more just to get that thrill back when a school play wasn't on. But musically, my first thing that I did was at my primary school, I sang ‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars, and it made my science teacher cry! It must’ve been my unbroken pre-pubescent voice!

We love his debut album, 'i don't mind floating'

How are you feeling now your debut album has been out for a little while, and people have had chance to take it in?

I've dropped two projects this year, the new one that I just put out was halfway finished at the time I was dropping the first one, so my head was very much out of the door of the first one, looking forward to the new one. Whereas this time around, I don't really have that much new music, so I've been very focused on this, so I still love it in a lot of ways, and I still feel very motivated. 

I feel my heart in this album more than I ever have, and it feels very vulnerable to me. A lot of the topics that I go over, I've been expressing some vulnerabilities that I've never really expressed. So it's been really nice, on the live front and the album front, to be able to see people's reactions to some of those things, and talk to people that relate to certain things and have been moved by certain things.

I just want to get it to as many people as possible and I've got a long year ahead of doing that, you know, just pushing and pushing and pushing. So I feel very proud. And I feel like this is the right time in the year to just relax and take it in and enjoy it and be proud of it. You know, getting into Mariah Carey season, so there’s not much to do in terms of releasing new music!

We love the simplicity and rawness of 'i don't mind floating'

There's a raw simplicity to the album, does it feel exposing when there's not much to hide behind?

I think it's the first time I've ever written something where the lyrics were the focal point. I wrote this album with my two friends, Worm and Hargs, who's my guitar player and my keys player. Having Worm help me with production meant I didn’t have to put all my energy into production, and I was able to sit back and really think what I was going to write about. 

I've always listened to music and the lyrics have come second to me. I've always listened more to production. I guess this one, most of the songs there's almost no processing on my voice, it's super raw, it's very front and centre what I’m talking about. I think that's quite a scary thing, in the first instance, having a project that is very vulnerable and lyrically focused. I probably won't do that for a while now! I’ll probably go back to the production side of things.

But also, writing with those two… I can kind of play every instrument, to a fine level, but they are both masters in their instrument. They make complicated shit feel simple. They just find the space to occupy these complex parts and leave space for me to sit in the middle. Sometimes things like that can feel a bit overwhelming, but all credit to them for helping me with that, because that was a new style of production that I'd not really done before.

We love the vulnerability in his music

Did you find it difficult discussing such personal topics, particularly on the final track, ‘I don’t mind floating’? 

We had finished the whole album, and Wormy brought his amp into the studio because he had a gig that night, and he never usually had his amp, so he was just plugged in and playing. It was something about the chords he was playing. I'd actually said, I want to write an interlude between the songs, ‘i don’t understand you sometimes’ and ‘something that we can't give up’. I wanted to write like a little short voice memo type of thing. But these chords that he was playing… I actually have like a 40 minute voice note of me, just humming to this thing. And then I just said to him, I'm just gonna jump on the mic. I just recorded us both at the same time, and I freestyled that whole thing basically. It was just kind of like little bullet points, and we just kept it going and did it seven or eight times.

I started crying while I was singing it. Some of the middle takes, I was crying so much that you can't even really make out what I was saying. And then I kind of composed myself. I think the take we used was the seventh take. But when we did that, I was like, I'm not going to put this anywhere, this is just for me. I was like I just can’t, I couldn't even mix it or anything at the time, I was just like, we need to stop, I can't do this. 

Then my best friend Finn Phoenix, who's a poet, he wrote a poem for my album, just because he loved it so much. He sent it to me on text, and I was like, why don't you come in and let's record it and just see what happens with it. Then when I opened up logic, I remembered that I had this song, and I was like, oh shit, what if it went from that, and then I had the poem to kind of finish it off. We tried it, and it just worked perfectly. It’s funny, because the song ‘find your own’ on my album is about Finn, and how I wanted us to grow together. Sometimes it felt like when I was growing, he was holding himself back and then vice versa really. 

So I found it fitting that in one part of the album, I'm telling him, “Come on, man, come join me. Let's do this together”. And then at the end of the album, in my most vulnerable moment, he was the one that metaphorically puts his arm around me, and says, "You're good man". It's really great to have him on there, and on my vinyl, his poem is written on the inner sleeve, in his handwriting. I have it tattooed on my hands as well. So, yeah, man, it means a lot to me that song, and what he did. 

We love ‘September Lightning’, featuring Amie Blu

What was the process of making this song, and what’s the process of collaborating on a song with your life partner, compared to a regular collaboration?

It’s actually very natural, because Amie was the first person that I ever did a session with years ago, as a producer. So she's been like my best friend and creative partner for many, many years, and I've produced every song that she's ever released, bar like two or three. We’ve always been part of each other’s projects in some way and I guess we wanted to continue that. When you’re with someone, it’s just about keeping those boundaries of professionalism there.

For example, before we lived together, we used to not travel into sessions together. We would never stay with each other the night before and try to keep as much professionalism as we can. ‘September Lightning’ as a song is like, very true to how our relationship started, so it just felt natural. We made our relationship official during the month of September, and it just felt very natural to us, she’s so talented. We’re as much in each other’s creative spaces as we can, me and the two boys who made my album are working on her next one as well, and it’s lovely, it’s organic, it just feels right, you know? 

We love his approach to releasing music

Where are you at with the state of the music scene at the moment, and the importance TikTok currently has?

You know what, I feel like my relationship with TikTok has been like a breakup, and I've been through the five stages of grief! It was obviously denial, bargaining, anger, all that, and I’m at acceptance now, like I genuinely don’t care. Also, my label has really facilitated letting me shoot visuals that feel real to me. So if I have to do some trashy, click-baity TikTok captions just to get the algorithm going, it doesn’t really matter to me. It doesn’t really bother me now, because I have those other things that I feel like I creatively meet.

It’s definitely led to some more online hate, in terms of people calling me a Dijon rip off or some shit like that. It’s fine because I don’t really feel like my music is that similar to Dijon, I really like Dijon, but I think it’s just because I have a song called ‘Angie’ and he has a song called ‘Annie’, but The Rolling Stones also have a song called ‘Angie’, like people be naming songs after girls, I’m not the first person to do that, and I won’t be the last! But yeah, you open yourself up to this by being on TikTok, and I kind of accept that, I’m fine with it now.

I think the best way to see it is TikTok is like the Daily Mail and The Sun. They have a trashy headline, and then my Instagram and YouTube can more like The Guardian or something, like the New York Times. It was actually Artemas who said that to me and it really resonated with me, I was like “Yes man! That’s really good advice.” It is a really good analogy. 

Is there anything you feel like is lacking in music at the moment? What do you want to see people do more of?

It kind of goes hand in hand with what I said, but I feel like people are very on one side or the other of this whole TikTok thing. I think that people think that because of TikTok you can’t be true to yourself, or vice versa, like why do I need to do this artistic shit if TikTok is the only way to do this. But I think people can find that balance and stop denying the reality of existence. Fundamentally, I think the most important thing for people is being true to yourself artistically, and TikTok will pick up on that. If you’re trying to do it purely for the algorithm, it’s just not going to work. But if you are doing stuff that’s true to you and artistically fulfils you, it’s like the karma of music, it will just pick up, and it’s never the video you expect it to be that does. 

And bro, I wanna see more musicians man. People that play live music, you know what I mean? I feel like it’s coming back. Even like Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Please, Please, Please’, that tune for me was like, yes, a live sounding song can be number one, a song that’s got like real fucking analog synths and live drums and bass. Also like Lil Yachty’s album was really like, fuck yeah, I wanna see more of that. But also you know, this is just my taste.

We love what he has planned for the future...

It’s been a busy year with you releasing two projects, what can we expect in 2025?

You know what, I really wanna get in my fucking production bag. I love the artist side to this, but it comes to me in waves, project by project. One thing about working with Kamal., is how fucking deep he is bro! Like he’s read every philosophical book, and every time we talk it just makes me deep my whole fucking life. With that comes this kind of, determinism versus free will, and has left me asking questions along the lines of, Why am I doing this? Why am I making music? What am I doing this for?

What it comes down to for me, is just escapism, and love. I couldn’t really imagine being an artist that doesn’t produce for other people, or being an artist that doesn’t produce full stop, because you’re so reliant on other people. I think being able to fill my time with creating other people’s sound just as much as my own is really what I was to get into next year. 

I was born in America so I have American citizenship, so I wanna go and spend some substantial time there. Also I wanna go on a big support tour bro. I’ve had a few offers, some conversations that have been promising. You know, just getting the fuck out of here for a bit bro, I think that’s what I really want to do. I don’t even want to say like, I’m bringing out an album, cause I just can’t be fucked for that right now. I really just want to make some music with no strings attached. But then I kind of said that before I wrote this one! I was like, fuck an album, and then it just kind of happened. Anytime I’ve ever tried to plan a project, it’s never quite worked out that way.

Words by Matt Sharp

Thanks to Sophia Hill & Never Better Agency