Bruno Major has no qualms being honest about what he loves and what he doesn’t when it comes to his music — his art is innately honest, authentic and a universal reflection of the tides of the time.
Amid the music industry’s relentless search for the next big chart-topping hit lies an outlier community of artists who thrive in their own worlds, seeking a different kind of “sweet spot” in its listeners — the cross between sonic excellence and authentic expression.
Bruno Major — whose old-soul like tracks carry equal bouts of witty intellect and romance — has in his latest contribution to this community’s rich library of eagerly earnest music demonstrated the mass appeal of introspective art. From what inspires his poignant songwriting about the complexities of living, the making of his latest album “Columbo” was only possible thanks to pandemic-led self-isolation, and preparation for his upcoming tour, we speak to Bruno for a deep dive into the strange kind of beautiful that is the practice of making music.
Hi Bruno! Could you tell us what you do for a living in 10 or less words?
I write songs. And then I play them on stages around the world.
Who have been your biggest musical influences?
As a songwriter, Billy Joel, Carol King, etc, I can go on all day there is a lot. As a singer, Chet Baker, Nick Drake, etc. I have too many influences to name.
How about who or what inspires your songwriting? What do you read? Your lyrics have that universally specific quality that is exceptionally hard to achieve and as someone who works with words everyday, I’m such a fan.
I get my inspiration from everywhere. Which is a very facetious answer, isn’t it? But it can be a book I’m reading, it can be a film I’m watching, it can be an advert I see when I’m on the tube. I will say, a lot of the time I get my inspiration from my friends. I have a lot of amazing friends and they’re very intelligent, very artistic, very wild and crazy and witty and funny. And you know, a lot of times it’s just something that one of my friends will say to me and I’ll write it down because it’s really beautiful.
So how does a song come together for you? Your classical background surely structures that process of drawing word to melody (or vice versa) to some extent, but I also understand that no two songwriting experiences are ever completely the same.
I don’t have a songwriting process honestly. Generally speaking, I have a concept before start writing. So I do this thing where I write the title first – I have a list in my phone of just song titles. Like for example, “We Were Never Really Friends” off the new album. That was a title in my iPhone notes for like, years, and I never got around to writing it. I kind of base everything on the concept. Once you’re in the world, you have the idea of what the concept is, then you can kind of build around it.
And you know, most of the time the lyrics come before the music, but sometimes the music comes first. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to write a song, and sometimes it takes three years. So I wish there was like a very set structure, but there just isn’t.
How has being an independent artist helped you navigate the fine balance between producing for artistry and commerciality? Or perhaps help you go deeper into expressing what is most authentic to you as an artist? Has knowing you have such a big and diverse fanbase ever changed the way you make music?
I’ve never made music or for any other reason than to express myself authentically in an artistic way. And I think that’s conversely why I do have a larger audience, because people can tell, you know. I’ve always viewed it as like, if I make it my goal to express myself artistically and make something that represents me in an honest way, then if I complete that task I’ve been successful, then it doesn’t matter if I release it and no one listens to it. Or if I release it and a million people listen to it, it doesn’t matter, because the goal was just to make it.
Conversely, if you make something and your goal is to get on the radio, or to get a certain amount of streams, or to make a certain amount of money, if you do it great, fantastic, you’ve been successful. But if you don’t do it, which is very possible, and 99 out of 100 artists that make music don’t achieve those things, then you’ve failed. And therefore, by setting goals that are empirical, such as streaming numbers, then you’re setting yourself up for failure, do you know what I mean? And it also means that you’re not really expressing yourself. You might as well just be selling Hoover’s or lighters, it’s just not the same thing.
The making of “Columbo” saw you through the throes of lockdown and the release from it right after. Would you say that going through that period of isolation was what made this album what it is? You mentioned in an interview recently that “art is a product of its environment” — how has making this album proved that to you?
Yeah, I think that’s totally true. Like, what COVID did was it forced us all to return to ground zero. I think for me, I’ve always been very focused on becoming an artist or becoming a successful artist, or being the idea of this person that I wanted be on a certain level, and like COVID kind of wiped that out. So all of a sudden, my identity couldn’t be aligned with those things. Like, if I wasn’t the guy standing on stage, then who was I? And yeah, it forced me to kind of reassess a lot of things.
As a result, I was able to write “Columbo” from this very pure place. It’s almost like I got to write my first album all over again, which I’m actually really grateful for, and I think you can hear it in the music.
Of the tracks that have been released from this album so far, “A Strange Kind of Beautiful” is my favourite. The choral influences, the lyrics, work so well together. What is the story behind this song?
“A Strange Kind Of Beautiful” discusses the privacy of love. I always think it’s wild that when you’re in love with somebody, there’s a version of that person that only you get to see; And there’s a version of you that only they get to see. Because as soon as anyone else is in the room, the dynamic changes. So it reminded me of that proverb – “if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it fall, does it really make a sound?” It’s like when Chopin went to the pub, got drunk, came back and played his piano, and he played the most amazing thing that anyone had ever heard, except no one was there to hear it, there was no way of recording it and they got lost in the sands of time. So there’s something beautiful about something amazing happening that nobody’s there to witness. That’s really what that song is about.
You are going to be embark on your tour soon. What aspect of going on tour are you looking forward to the most?
So… I can’t wait to come and meet all my fans from all these different countries, even now it’s still mind blowing to me that I get to come to places on the other side of the world and there are people who want to hear my music.
What is one song from this tour’s setlist that you are excited to sing live?
Well, I don’t really know, because I haven’t done any shows for three and a half years. So I haven’t played any songs from my second album. So we’re going to have to see which one is my favourite one. But I do know that the new stuff is a lot more fun to play. And we just started rehearsals last week. So yeah, it’s going to be great.
Bruno Major will be playing in Singapore at Capitol Theatre on 17 August 2023 as part of his headlining tour. Once you’re done with this interview with Bruno Major, click here to catch up with our June/July 2023 issue!
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