Backstage with AURORA — American Express Presents BST Hyde Park 2022
Words by Glenn Sargeant
Photo Credit: Kieran White/KWMEDIA
We at JLTT were very fortunate to attend American Express Presents British Summertime 2022 in the gorgeous surroundings of Hyde Park in London. The last day of the festival was headlined by Duran Duran and featured an array of established acts and rising stars. Although she and her team had to endure traffic from arriving at Gatwick Airport, the enchanting AURORA sat down with us for a quick chat before she took to the Great Oak Stage
JLTT: Hello. Welcome to Hyde Park first of all.
AURORA: Thank You.
How are you feeling about being here today?
I’m feeling very good about it. I love being in parks and I love being here. And I love that you can be in the middle of London and you don’t even know you know?
Yes definitely. One of the tracks of yours that I really like is on your latest album called ‘A Temporary High’ and I just wondered if you could explain what the writing process for that was like, please?
It was just a day of fun. It started with the guitar because I really like Ennio Morricone I think he was a very beautiful composer and I wanted something that sounded like a techno-cowboy song. Then I thought that kind of ugly and beautiful composition of sounds and styles made for me a very clear image of the world right now.
The world seems like a strange composition of all kinds of different things that we hate, we love, we don’t understand. Everything goes too fast and it is all too much. Everything is just so overwhelming. I wrote the song about a woman – The personification of Earth for our time right now. She is a lot and she is very hard to keep track with.
How do you look after your voice? Is there anything that you do in particular?
(Laughs) No – I should maybe. I’m very bad at doing things that aren’t driven by pleasure or fun.
Fair enough!
I’m very bad at doing any kind of warming up. I should take care of my voice more but I take care of myself. I sing barefoot, I stand very firmly on the ground and I mean everything I say so it comes from the deepest place of my belly. So I can sing forever I think because it doesn’t come from my throat it comes from my belly button.
I don’t know if anyone has ever referenced this to you before at all but I wanted to ask; Are you a fan of Iggy Pop?
Yeah, I like Iggy Pop. I met him a few years ago at a festival in Belgium. But he’s cool. I like the way he is extreme and I like the way he dances as well.
Final question – What makes you happy and what makes you unhappy?
Okay – So people make me kinda unhappy but also happy. I hate it when things are just bad in the world and we are not doing anything about it when things are just bad in the world and we’re not doing anything about it that makes me sad. It feels very pointless to just accept that things aren’t good enough. That makes me very sad.
But it makes me happy to see small things every day like people being born every day. Isn’t that amazing? Even now. It makes me happy to see butterflies and moths. It makes me happy to see sunshine in between the trees like now between the grass and pattern. Cold beer!
(Laughs) I agree with that!
Wind on my face and sex. That little guy that just flew past us. Dogs and computer games. Heavy metal. A lot of things! (Laughs) That was it!
Okay well, I think that’s all we have time for so thank you so much! Thank you for your time.
Thank you!
AURORA’S latest album ‘The Gods We Can Touch’ is out now on Decca Records/Glassnote. For more information visit: www.aurora-music.com
(Many thanks to AURORA, her team, Suzie and all of the team Outside Organisation, Halestorm PR and Kieran White/KWMEDIA for all of their help with this article)
