David Gray

Well, just be there, just being.

Being is at the centre of curing all the world's ills, really, in terms of our relation to the environment, nature and into each other.

It's about being aware.

So it's hard to be aware when you're being harried and sort of hypnotised by the flashing lights that we have in our hands and the mirrors that are constantly there that also make us much more narcissistic than we even were before.

So I think it's a big problem.

With this record, we were granted an extraordinary relief from some of modern life's pressures when COVID happened.

And for all the terrors of the disease and the people that suffered through it, for most of us, we had an extraordinary opportunity to slow life down and actually look at what it was.

What does a fish know about the water in which it swims?

Well, we had a chance to actually have a little think about that when we were sort of in our tanks and

And I think that's what deepened a lot of the sort of sentiment and the feeling on the Dear Life record.

It was definitely allowed to grow a little deeper because I had more time to think.

And I turned off the creative taps for a while and just tried to be like everybody else in this weird situation.

So that's partly the story of the record.

I think it's more important to do things that really matter to you.

And that's how it's beginning to govern my use of time.

So I write pop songs.

I'm doing big.

This is a big poppy.

I think it's a poppy record.

We're doing a big tour because these songs can stand up next to all the big hits, which they have to go shoulder to shoulder with during these shows.