Interview: David Usher Talks “Let It Play”, Global Warming, and Must-Hear French Artists

By: Curtis Sindrey –

David Usher.

Multi-platinum, Juno Award winning artist, best selling author, entrepreneur and keynote speaker, David Usher is back with his new solo album Let It Play. The album, which consists of English adaptations of French songs from new young pop artists to the elder statesmen of Quebec music, is a commentary on English/French culture co-existing, yet being so separate.

In our new interview, Usher discusses the making of Let It Play, what individuals can do to help combat global warming, must-hear French artists, and more!

After 11 albums, and with your newest album Let It Play, how do you keep things not only fresh for yourself, but also interesting for the listener as well?

I mean I work in a lot of different creative fields, I do music obviously but I also write books and I switch between.

Switching between jobs is really healthy because it keeps music fresh simply because I’m using different parts of my creative brain on different projects. Sometimes I’m doing music, sometimes I’m writing, sometimes I’m doing a technology project. And switching between those things makes everything seem fresh again. And then with this record, it’s a real concept record where…I mean they are not my original songs and most of the work is about trying to make an easy translation of the songs; adaptations of the songs that can still bring to life the songs in a different language. So that is a different challenge.

Have you done a concept record before?

There’s always a concept behind every record. I mean usually I start every record with a structured improv. Where I set up parameters for myself to work within and also to push against. But this is a very specific kind of experiment.

How did you come to select these 11 songs to appear on this album?

It was about, I mean I had to love the song and then the other thing is I had to really feel like I could do the song justice. I have very specific melodies that stick to my brain. And it was very important to me that the melody and the cadence of the words in French really worked for me so I would be able to translate and adapt them to English. There are not obviously translations because you can’t translate lyrics, you have to do an adaptations of lyrics. And sometimes lyrics stay similar to the meaning and sometimes they stray.

When adapting other artists’ work, what kind of consideration did you have to maintain each artist’s original sentiment?

I didn’t always maintain the original sentiment. Basically I would go to the original artist first and talk to them about if they were okay with me fucking around with their work.

Then I would go off and I would go to the song in French and try to bring the meaning of it. And sometimes little things can affect how things are developed and sometimes they would stay close to the original meaning. Then sometimes they would stray, it really depends on the sounds of words can be in French can bring other words to English. Bringing them to life. And that can put you on a different path as well.

Language is a very sensitive issue in Quebec. What kind of doubt did you have during the early stages of this project?

I had a lot of doubts. I talked to all of my French friends. No but the first thing I did was.. I have a lot of French friends that are musicians and I was like ‘Is this a great idea? Because it hasn’t really been done.’ If it’s a great idea, if it’s a terrible idea and they were really positive. So from there I sort of had the courage to approach specific artists that I really wanted to try and work with their songs. The reaction was actually really positive. And for me that was the most important thing. If the artist was happy that I was doing it then…I felt like I was on the right path.

David Usher released his new solo album, Let It Play, on November 4th, 2016.

Were there any artists that turned you down?

Yeah there were a couple, not very many but a couple of artists who were not into it. And I totally appreciate that because you know not a lot of people want to experiment with…you know…not into remixing or those kind of things. We live in a remix culture but not everyone felt it or wanted me to do it. Or for whatever reason but I totally respected that. It’s just not everyone’s bag. But most people were really into the idea and loved this idea of experimentation.

For English-speaking people looking to get into French music, what are some songs/artists that you recommend they check out?

All the artists on this record are amazing artists you know, you can go down the list of the people on this record Alex Nevsky, Karim Ouellet, Ingrid St-Pierre, Monogrenade, I mean they are all fantastic..going down the whole list they are all fantastic artists. And I mean that’s part of it as well living in Montreal…there are just these incredible songs and knowing that the English speaking world has never heard of them is kind of crazy. But language is a big divider, you know and I understand that.

Because you used most of the original instrumental recordings from the French songs, how complicated did the business side of things end up being?

Really complicated, I mean the actual creation of the songs was relatively simple. Because you just need to focus on lyrics, cadence, delivery, and sentiment. Those are easy things for me, you know. The recording was very simple. The business side was incredibly complicated because there are so many folders… publishing companies, record companies, writers..very complicated indeed.

What is it like to release this album on your own label?

Well I think it was partly because of do to necessity. Simply because they were other people’s songs and you know, people’s original songs a lot of the rights are not there. So for labels, you know there is just not enough for them there to grab on to. And because it is very much an experimental record… for me, I think it was another fun experiment to put it on it’s own label. So far It’s going really well. So I can’t complain.

It must have been great to have had that creative freedom in the sense of releasing on your own record label opposed to if you ended up partnering with a major label instead.

That makes no difference to me, I’ve always had creative control so it’s not…that kind of things doesn’t really make a difference.

While researching for this interview, I looked into your Human Impact Lab project, and the “climate clock” is a scary thing to look at because it acts as a public line in the sand and says that this is the date where bad things will start to happen if we don’t do something about it. What inspired you to combat climate change?

I mean…I’ve been involved with stuff… in fact for a long time. And sort of this concept about mixing art, technology, data together. And really building a lab that uses very specific methodology and stability. You know, we stick strictly to methodology to build everything. So we go through a lot of product, fasedineration and scale funding those kind of things to try and build things. So we are taking what is essentially business thinking and apply it to the world of ideas. In fact, impactful ideas. That is going to really…it sort of combines all of my ideas together in one place. Then the clock is one of the first projects and the clock is just the very beginning of that project. We have now set the time of two degrees time, and the next step is taking all of this climate data we already have and then putting it back into this relationship of time, so you can see how other data affects the time of two degrees.

What are some things the average person can do to help combat climate change?

Yeah, it’s a very difficult thing because climate change is one of those big data issues far away but the simplest things is to eat less meat. You know because people don’t usually associate eating meat with climate change, but it’s a very big component. I mean, so that is one of the simplest things an individual can do.

I think a point in the new “After the Flood” documentary was that if people stop eating something like beef and turn to something like chicken it would make a great impact?

Yeah, you know those are positive things for sure, for sure.

We last heard new music from Moist in 2014 with Glory Under Dangerous Skies. Are there currently any plans for new music?

No, I just rolled out this record right now. So I’ll be touring this record next and then we’ll go from there. Just one thing at a time, haha.