Scott Helman just woke up and is still in bed.
He sounds a little groggy, but as smart and sharp and personable as the Canadian singer-songwriter has been since the beginning of his young but remarkably successful and fast-rising career.
Hell, the 22-year-old pop singer was a two-time Juno nominee — at the Calgary-hosted 2016 awards — before he’d even released his debut full-length Hotel De Ville, which dropped earlier this year.
But he remains the same grounded, genuine, open and likeable interview as when he was first starting out. Even when groggy.
In fact, at the end of the phone-to-bed-conducted 15-minute chat to support his local show at SAIT’s The Gateway on Friday, Nov. 3, he even apologizes for being a little too talkative and open.
“I hope I didn’t rant too much,” Helman says. “I just woke up. My girlfriend says I rant a lot in the mornings.”
Decide for yourself.
Here are excerpts from the interview with the T.O. star.
Q: The album has been out for some time now so you can gauge how it’s doing, how it’s hit people — what are your thoughts on it?
A: I think it’s pretty amazing so far. There’s always a feeling after releasing a debut record of (wondering) how people are going to take it or how they’re going to react. And (the single) Kinda Complicated did really well at radio, that’s one thing, but when we went on tour, we basically went on tour blindfolded. I didn’t really know. I mean I was getting tweets that people were liking the record, but there’s also that feeling that you’ll go play a show and people will come and you’ll play all your new songs and no one will give a shit and then you’ll play all your old songs and everyone will love them. But, man, everybody was singing along to every word of every new song so the energy’s still there. It feels pretty good.
Q: As your first full-length, is this a pretty good statement of you? Are you happy to have this as a full document of who you are as person, your thoughts and how you approach life?
A: Yes. I think so. I think that it’s a testimony to the old way of making records, which is taking two years and then putting out an album … I think that an album as a body of work is, in terms of music, the purest artistic statement because it’s like a memoir. I kind of look at albums as memoirs in the sense that it’s a focussed point of your life. And a focussed point of the focussed point. I was writing that album over two years and during those two years I asked myself every day, “What’s the most important thing I want to say today?” And those are the things that came out of it. I know that I’m capable of other music and I know that there’s a lot more that I want to say as an artist, but that record was through that time the things that I felt the need to say the most, so that’s what I ended up putting in my music.
Q: When I asked you if you were happy with this as a document of who you are as a person, I, personally, do get the sense of who you are as a person through the record.
A: Not only is that a compliment it’s also — the funny thing about music is when people say, “Do you wish you did this?” or, “Do you wish you did that?” People like to dig at that thing because they’re interested, which is fine. But my answer is always, “What is the purpose of this song? What am I trying to do here?” And I like to start off by making things as simple as possible. And I think that’s true about this record, it’s really not hard to follow, it’s truly just the expression of these really simple ideas that I felt it necessary to say. I think there’s a beauty in that.
Q: I do have to ask how are things with the girl you fell in love with and who’s the subject of much of Hotel De Ville?
A: They’re great. It’s good. (Laughs) Yeah. I’m about to go on a month-and-a-half tour, so there is that. She’s not too happy about that. But she’s excited for me and we’re a good team.
Q: You’ve just become involved recently with an anti-cyberbullying initiative with Telus. How did that come about?
A: They just asked me to be a part of it and it seemed like a fun way to help out with younger people. I remember being that old and the campaigns were so fucking dark. They’d come to our school and you’d walk away like, “Holy shit, man. I can’t even deal with this because it’s so dark.” Even those drug campaigns they used to do, they’d come and they’d show you a bunch of scary shit, you know what I mean? And you wouldn’t even go home getting it, you’d just go home terrified of the world. (Laughs) So I think it’s really nice to walk into a school — I’m working with this comedian (Jackie Pirico) and she goes in and does a bunch of funny shit and I go up and we hammer home a really nice message of, “Take a second before you post stuff online. Take a pause, just think about it.” If someone’s an asshole and they’re a kid it’s their fault, but it’s also hard because there’s that wall. If you don’t have the ability yet to discern what things hurt people and what things don’t hurt people it’s one thing. And when you’re online, you post something, that thing is not even in your brain yet to say, “That’s going to make that person really upset.” So I think just taking the pause and thinking about what you’re saying is really important to tell kids. And it’s fun. They have a good time. They all kind of freak out when I walk in, so it’s pretty fun for me.
Q: Have you been doing much songwriting these days?
A: Yes, actually. I’ve been doing more songwriting on this cycle than on my last one, and I feel like it’s because I’m more equipped now because I’ve put out a record and I know what it all entails — it’s super fun and really exciting, you never know where it’s going to go, where it’s going to take you. But also I’m not in awe as much as I was when I put out (2014 debut EP) Augusta, because before I put out Augusta no one knew me and I was just a kid in a studio in Toronto trying to make a record, so it’s sort of easier for me to write now because I feel like I have the ability. So I’m writing a lot, I’m always writing. It’s fun, too, it’s fun. I feel like some of the songs on Hotel De Ville, like 21 Days or Ripple Effect, I feel like they were foreshadowing this state of — I don’t know what to call the state that the world’s in right now — but this state that we’re in right now, they were kind of foreshadowing that … If it’s true that the world is going down a dark path, then I feel an obligation to write music all the time so that when it gets darker I have a reminder of what it was like when it wasn’t so dark and where it could be. When I think about a song like Bungalow, I know where I was when I wrote that song and I know who I was with when I wrote that song, and it reminds me that the world doesn’t have to be so fucked up. We can go right back to the way things were. I mean, we can’t, but can remember that and carry that with us. And it’s important. So I’ve been writing music all the time and, yeah, it’s good and it helps me.
Scott Helman performs Friday night at the The Gateway.
Mike Bell has been covering the Calgary music scene for the past 25 years with publications such as VOX, Fast Forward, the Calgary Sun and, most recently, the Calgary Herald. He is currently the music writer and content editor for theYYSCENE.com. Follow him on Twitter/@mrbell_23 or email him at mike@theyyscene.ca.
