Michael Kiwanuka is not here to give you your fix of retro soul nostalgia, even if his voice could make Marvin Gaye look nervously over his shoulder. Sitting fireside at Willie Nelson’s ranch, he seems far too chill for someone who just casually scrapped an entire album.
“It feels like a film set,” he says of the makeshift Western town where he finds himself. Turns out it was a film set, built for Willie’s Red Headed Stranger, which is either poetic or eerily on-brand. “I’ve never been somewhere like this before,” he says, looking mildly amused. “Kind of makes sense now, though.”
A setting like that practically begs for cowboy metaphors, but Kiwanuka’s ride through the last few years hasn’t been about shootouts or showdowns. It’s been more like psychological spelunking. “The stuff I’m doing now, it’s the most vulnerable I’ve been,” he says. “Some days, I go onstage and I kind of don’t want to sing the songs. It’s too much.”
You wouldn’t know it by watching him. Whether it’s Bonnaroo or a dive bar in Berlin, Kiwanuka somehow finesses heartbreak, racial identity, spiritual crisis, and sonic transcendence into one head-nod-friendly package. “It goes up and down,” he admits. “But most of the time, it’s worth every minute.”
The last record, Kiwanuka, landed like a time capsule from the future. Not quite soul, not quite rock, not quite psych. Mostly just human. “It had to feel brave,” he says. “Like, even if people hated it, at least they’d say, ‘well, that guy made a statement.’”
Before that could happen, though, he had to toss the first version in the bin. “There’s no wasted idea,” he insists. “Sometimes I start writing a new song and realize, oh wait, this is one I already scrapped. But now it’s better.” The man has a stockpile of half-dead melodies, waiting to reincarnate like spiritual B-sides.
And don’t talk to him about the pressure of sophomore slumps. “Second albums are important,” he says. “That’s the one where you step it up. That’s when Radiohead made The Bends, and that’s why they’re still around.” He’s also candid about envy: “You might be writing songs you love but no one cares. That’s real. So you’ve got to model yourself on someone who’s already ridden that wave.”
At this point, Kiwanuka could easily coast on his reputation. He’s already had songs featured in Big Little Lies and The Get Down, which he says helped him way more than radio ever did. “I know some artists aren’t into syncs,” he shrugs, “but for me, it’s a platform. Especially when the songs are long, and radio’s like, ‘nah.’”
For a guy constantly compared to soul legends, he has surprisingly little nostalgia. “If you try to make something sound like it’s supposed to be cool, you’re in trouble,” he says. “But if it’s just who you are—like walking or talking—then it’s never gonna feel fake.” He’s not reinventing the past. He just lives there part-time.
“I still care about albums,” he says, sounding like a man about to enter his Pet Sounds era. “Even with the EP I’ve got coming, there’s three songs, but I’ve spent ages thinking about the order. Like, what side is this gonna be on vinyl? I imagine my music on a long car journey. You can’t skip a vinyl, so it better be worth it.”
You get the sense he’s just warming up. There’s another album coming, sometime after the EP, and yes, it still sounds like him—just maybe a him with more guitars. “Some people like it,” he says. “Some people don’t say anything. But I love it. So that’s enough.”
It’s that kind of understatement that makes Kiwanuka the anti-hype artist. No grand mission statements. No trends chased. Just careful, deliberate music made to last. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. He’ll be over there by the fire, rewriting a song he threw away last summer, probably making it better.
And here's the full follow up conversation:
