James Bay shows up like a man who’s finally decided to back himself—“just a little,” he grins—after three records that turned strangers into lifers. “It’s such a wild thing to make music,” he says. “I have to like it enough to put it out, but I’m at album four and I’ve managed to make three albums that people like enough that I can start to back myself… just a little bit.” He talks about trust the way touring musicians talk about sleep: precious, hunted, occasionally real. “I recognize more about what my fans like,” he says. “I don’t want to play it safe, but I’m always testing the boundary—sometimes more for me, sometimes more for them.”
He likes to call what he does “emotional manipulation,” then laughs before anyone can clutch pearls. “There’s some part of that about every artist,” he says. “Hopefully it’s a harmless truth.” The point isn’t control, it’s contact. “I make music to help myself understand, mature, and heal—and then I share it to see if anybody can relate. Then we go and enjoy that together. I like performing the way a DJ likes playing 60 great songs back-to-back—I want people to feel stuff physically and emotionally in the moment.”
Headspace on the new one, Changes All the Time? “I wanted to come home to myself and stress less about what anybody else thought,” he says. Translation: guitar solos, earnest, soul-searching lyrics, fewer filters between the nerve and the mic. “Emotions aren’t simple, but I tried to be more emotionally direct than I’ve ever been.”
He points to “Speed Limit,” which already sounds like something found rather than made. “I remember the day I wrote, ‘I broke speed limit to get to you.’ It’s a metaphor—I bent over backwards to connect with you.” The recording chased that feeling into the room and refused to tidy it up on the way out. “We did one take,” Bay says. “I set my phone on a music stand and filmed it. My voice and guitar, and Gabe”—his producer—“on drums in the other room.” Except they weren’t quite drums. “He couldn’t find sticks light enough, so he used chopsticks from the Chinese takeout we hadn’t eaten yet. It felt right.” Bay tried to re-cut the vocal later like a responsible adult. The song told him no. “There was a brutal honesty to the imperfect first take. It was pointless to try again.”
Ask him about magic and he won’t get mystical; he’ll get mortal. “You can’t engineer the moment,” he says. “But if, in hindsight, you can tell the singer got lost in it, that might be where the magic lives. You can’t make yourself get lost—it just happens.” He’s not about to crown his own songs with halos; he’d rather talk Elton, Garland, or the opening chords to “One Headlight.” “It’s a wonderful reality that’s out of this world and superhuman when you’re listening,” he says. “But when you’re making it, you’re human. Let the fragile first take live if it hits.”
Lead single “Up All Night” arrived the chaotic, fun way: by accident. “We finished another tune, Mark the engineer stood up from the piano and just spritzed this little figure on the keys,” Bay says, air-plinking the riff. It wormed into my ear. I translated it to guitar, added chords, we started stomping the studio floor. There are no drums—just stomps and claps. We followed the spark before we could overthink it. Nobody expected it to be the first single, but unanimously it felt like the most exciting thing to lead with—and it didn’t sound like anything I’d put out before. That always excites me.”
The guitar—as he puts it—is his “fifth limb.” He’ll flirt with the Sinatra-at-the-mic move and then immediately miss the weight on his shoulder. “Nine and a half out of ten times, the guitar’s heavily involved,” he says. “I’ve tried the wireless-mic thing. I love people who do that, but I feel right when I’m standing there with a guitar.”
There’s camaraderie threaded through this era. Bay’s been orbiting The Lumineers and Noah Kahan—two artists who recently dropped stadium live albums while Bay hopped on those stages. “To have the privilege to have been at those shows, let alone join them on stage, is wild,” he says. “Music’s less tribal than ever and I embrace that, but there’s something sweet about what’s happening with that group of people.” He’s already willing a 21st-century Monsters of Folk sequel into existence. “I’ll keep saying it,” he laughs. “There’s always one guy with a little more time texting, ‘Do you want to… when you’ve got a little more time as well?’ If I’ve got to be that guy, I’ll be that guy.”
For an album about coming home to himself, Bay sounds pleased to have more company than ever. “I’m lucky that people want to hear the music I want to make,” he says. “So I reach out. If the song’s a little fragile, good. That means we can meet in the break.”
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
