Ben Barnes on His EP Songs for You, Shadow and Bone Season 2, and Cabinet of Curiosities
294From Shadow and Bone and Westworld to The Punisher and The Chronicles of Narnia, along with a variety of independents and TV shows woven throughout, Ben Barnes is an actor whose characters are always layered on multiple levels and never fully just one thing. Now, as a singer/songwriter, he’s also carrying that same vibe over to his music, most specifically the collection of songs that make up the EP Songs for You.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, which you can both watch and read, Barnes talked about his more than 20-year journey to releasing such a personal collection of songs, the creative and artistic fulfillment he gets from music, his musical inspirations, how he knew when he had the right collection of songs put together, why he wanted to do music videos, and his hope of doing some live shows. He also talked about where things are at with Season 2 of Shadow and Bone and what he’s most excited about in that regard, as well as his experience doing an episode of Guillermo del Toro’s horror anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities.
Collider: How long had you been thinking about this music, these songs and this album, before finally deciding to actually take this journey and see it through?
BEN BARNES: I think the answer to that is somewhere between two years and 22 years. Twenty-two years ago, I had my first foray into music and music recording, and I signed to Simon Fuller, who was the managed who came up with Spice Girls. We were doing a jazz/big band project together, which never came to fruition, and I did a few pop band projects and did some recording with some other producers, but it just never really got any wind under its wings. I got quite quickly disillusioned with it. Meanwhile, the acting side of things was brewing and peaking my curiosity and I got excited about some of the storytelling.
Through the course of my career, you can see that I was navigating back, whenever I could, to projects that had something to do with music, but it was always impersonations of people. I was always doing impressions. Even at school, I would do these Sinatra tribute concerts and Stevie Wonder soul nights, and all of these things that weren’t really me, but just things that I loved. It just took this amount of time to find the confidence that my own songs can stand up in the canon of all music ever released and that I knew what I wanted it to sound like. Sometimes it takes some of us a bit longer than others to get to that place, especially when I’m so used to people seeing me in a certain light. Honestly, it just got to a point where I was talking to the 80-year-old version of myself thinking, “If I don’t do this now, I’ll forever regret not having done it.” That should far outweigh any other argument there is for not doing it.
#BenBarnes #ShadowandBone #GuillermodelToro
Read the full interview on Collider: https://collider.com/ben-barnes-songs-for-you-shadow-bone-season-2-cabinet-of-curiosities-interview/
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