Jack Savoretti has reflected on the "most satisfying" year of his career so far in an interview with Music Week.
The 36-year-old was, quietly, one of the UK's major success stories in 2019, going gold with his first chart-topping album Singing To Strangers (129,867 sales, OCC) and playing his biggest headline show to date at The SSE Arena, Wembley. A new special edition of the LP was released earlier this month.
“To have a No.1 record and [play] Wembley in the same year is amazing and also quite scary,” said Savoretti. “How are we going to top this? Have we peaked? I don’t think we have.
“For my band to see the results; for them to get their gold discs; for them to get a No.1 album and get to Wembley; it’s made everybody come to work with a real fucking kick up their ass and I hope that’s going to show on the next record.”
Sales of Singing To Strangers comprised 74% physical, 15% downloads and 11% streams. The record was Savoretti's sixth studio album and third to be released via BMG.
"I knew when I was going to come back with this third one with BMG that there had to be something different," said the English-born, Swiss-raised singer/songwriter of Italian ancestry. "I didn't want to just make an album for the sake of making an album or because the other two worked and I think a lot of people expected we were going to do the same format and make a similar album, and I decided not to."
I insisted on going to Rome to make this album
Jack Savoretti
The album, Savoretti's third consecutive gold-selling LP, was recorded at Ennio Morricone’s studio at Rome in the summer of 2018.
"I got very caught up in my Italian heritage. I insisted on going to Rome to make this album," said Savoretti. "I just wanted to make an album that was full of feeling and was shamelessly arms wide open – give me the strangers, give me the sailing away in the sunset. That had quite a reaction and activated all of our fanbase.
“We’ve been building this for 15 years and we’ve seen it happen gradually, so we knew the people and the numbers were out there. We just didn’t know if I would make an album that would get them all so excited in the first week – that wasn’t something I had really thought about. But the label nailed it strategically.”
Subscribers can click here to read the full interview with Savoretti.
