Q&A: Taura Lamb Uses Adaptation to Her Advantage in R&B, Pop-Infused Debut Album, ‘Revisions’
THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD HAS REQUIRED CONSTANT READJUSTMENT OF OUR LIVES IN ALL FACETS — and for creatives in particular, the limitations of traditional physical communication may seem to be a perpetual barrier from a fully realized project. London-based singer-songwriter Taura Lamb initially found herself in this predicament and was hesitant to make it work. But her open-mindedness to create her first album virtually — starting from the first lockdown to now releasing it— culminated in what is now aptly named Revisions.
Lamb’s album has gone through the musical equivalent of a metamorphosis, originally starting off in one singular form and traversing through a series of unconventional methods such as Zoom throughout pandemic restrictions to reach their complete potential. Lamb is open to adaptation in many ways, such as meshing her old R&B and pop inspirations with the new and allowing collaborators from across the pond to nip and tuck away at songs she’s carried with her over the last few years. Even the contents of the songs themselves are a collection of experiences that are as much hers as her friends’, essentially serving as a channel of emotional expression on their behalf.
Revisions is silky, honest, and sassy at times, covering topics of relationships and intimacy as well as conflict and perusing over unanswered questions. Sonically, the album taps into glossy production reminiscent of the early 2000s and modern R&B; it would feel right at home in the playlists of fans of Victoria Monet, Snoh Aalegra, and Sinead Harnett, among others. Lamb has received recognition from the likes of BBC Radio 1, Spotify’s New Music Friday UK, and Apple Music’s New Music Daily, proving to be a welcome fresh addition to the current R&B scene.
Read below as we catch up with Lamb to learn more about the virtual album process, her musical inspirations, and her excitement for live performances in the future.
LUNA: How are you doing, and how was your most recent show?
LAMB: Hey! I’m doing good thank you! To be honest, I was thinking the show was going to be the end of the world. But when I got up there, I was like, “I love this! This is the best thing ever”, and it went really really well. But before, I was so nervous, and because I just hadn’t been on stage in so long, I felt like I was behind on everything. I was having whole days basically just being panicked about the show and trying to make sure everything was perfect for it, so I feel like I’m catching up a bit now!
LUNA: Do you have any more shows planned soon?
LAMB: I’m actually supporting an artist called — it’s spelled E-D-B-L — he’s the artist that I did “Nostalgia” with. He’s got a show on the 3rd at Camden Assembly. It’s actually pronounced “Ed-Bluh,” but some people call him “Edible” or just E-D-B-L. I’m supporting him, and then [I] might come on for a little sing-song of “Nostalgia” as well. I’m also hoping I’ll be playing some festivals this year, just British festivals — fingers crossed. Nothing’s completely confirmed yet. Then I’d love to do my own show, maybe in June? I’m going to aim towards June, we will see. I’ve got the bug for it now — I haven’t done it in so long. But after being back up there, I was like, “I love this!” And then I remember why I decided that music would be a good idea. It’s actually fun!
I had to keep telling myself that before — when I was being so nervous — like, “You know you’re choosing to do this. No one’s forcing you to do this. This is a choice — try and enjoy it!” I’m also genuinely just excited to improve, because I feel like it’s just been a long time since [I’ve had] to sing live, and I feel like my vocals have really adjusted to be very much studio vocals. I haven’t had to work them that much; I really haven’t had to control my breath or use any of the techniques that I’ve learnt when playing live. It’s just been sing[ing], and if anything goes wrong, you can just do another take. So I’m quite excited to improve on the live stuff and then record the next body of work and see how much my vocals have improved. I’m looking forward to practicing a bit.
LUNA: You will always get better, and I think that’s when the anxiety decreases. You’re just like, “Okay, I can do this” and “I can feel the energy of people.” I think that’s the biggest difference between doing something isolated in a studio and going out there and being with the people.
LAMB: You’re so right. I was thinking of it before as just being about my vocals and the sound of us together. I was just with two guys [and] we had never performed live together or performed these new songs. So everything was brand new, and I was so focused on how it’s going to perfectly sound that I didn’t even think about how the energy in the room was going to be like — half of the performance — and that I would feed off that. Even if not every single note was perfect, I mean, that’s why you’re coming to see a live performance anyway. It’s the energy of it and the performance of it rather than just exactly how it sounds. As soon as I realized that, when I was up there I was like, “This is fine!” No one’s expecting me to be perfect. I just need to feed off the crowd and do as well as I can.
LUNA: I want to know more about the artistic process of the album, because it was made during the first lockdown — mostly over Zoom, and then the fact that you didn’t even meet with people who were making it. That’s just crazy!
LAMB: Still haven’t! It’s really weird. “Post Your Body” was produced by a guy called Bit Funk and a friend of mine called St Luna, and “Love Song” was also done by Bit Funk. So the first and last song were produced by Bit Funk, and I’d never even met him. It’s funny how the lockdown, in a way, opened so many doors, because I had never even thought about working with a producer that wasn’t in London. I just didn’t think, “Oh, we could write it over Zoom” or “We could just send drafts back and forth” and see how it goes. It was always like, we need to be in a room together. So I was actually limiting myself to my location at all times. And as soon as that was out the window … working with someone in London is the exact same as working with someone in LA right now. We can’t see each other anyway. It just opened loads of doors, and I just reached out to all these different people, and I was actually able to write with way more people than I would’ve been able to if I had been able to be in a room with people.
But I still haven’t been to LA and I still haven’t met Bit Funk, so I just have all these tracks with people I’ve never met! But it was a really fun experience. I am definitely excited to write with people in a room again, but this was a really cool experience that I wouldn’t have had, had I been allowed to just carry on as normal. That’s why the collection is called Revisions, because almost all of them — there are a few that sound how they were initially intended to sound — but most of them, because there’s been this weird way of writing where it’s going back and forth a lot and a lot of it is over Zoom and cyberspace, it’s been like, “that whole section should maybe be changed!” You’re not feeding off every sentence that each other says. So we’ll do a whole draft, and then you send it over and the other person could say, “I just don’t like that verse” or “I don’t like that whole guitar part”.
So from the first version of what it was, most of them have gone through three or four big changes to get to where they are now. Big revisions. It’s really cool to hear the growth in the songs from the first version to the last version. It’ll be a completely different vibe, a different tempo, a different key. All different soundworlds, different verses, different lyrics — so many of them have completely changed from the first draft. So that’s a link between them all, which I really like. It was quite a long process… if I go back to the first moment I started writing one of the first songs on there, that was like 2016, 2017. And now I’ve gone back and changed it and made it more up to date to fit with the current sound of my music. But yeah, this has been an accidental five year process where I’ve released things in between and couldn’t let go of certain things.
LUNA: You take things that feel true to you and that you carry throughout time. Is the album about collective past experiences, or those of an individual?
LAMB: I would say, because of the time frame, parts are about one person, and to be honest I get a lot of inspiration from my friends’ experiences with love. They know, and I tell them and … I’ve never had an experience where I’m like, “I wrote this song about you!” and they’ve gone “I don’t like it.” So hopefully it’ll carry on staying that way and they’ll keep liking the stuff that I’ve written for them. But, some are very clearly personal, like “Beat Kicks In.” The Lucky Girls EP was a lot of dissing, so I was like, “I’m going to write my boyfriend a really nice song, because he deserves a really nice song.” I’ve done a lot of rude songs, so he needs a really nice one. I wrote “Beat Kicks In” and it’s all about him and I was like, “I wrote you this really lovely song.”
He was like, “Oh, it’s cool. It’s not my favorite one you’ve ever done, but I like it.” He just way prefers all of the diss tracks! Which I think is a very interesting window into our relationship. He was quite shocked that it had very nice lyrics for once. I love that song — it means a lot to me, I’m really happy with it. So yeah, Revisions is about different stages in relationships, and then some of them are completely not about my personal experience at all — maybe friends’ experiences instead, where I can draw on the same emotions that they’ve felt but not necessarily the same actual experiences.
LUNA: It’s funny, when I listened to the album, I thought, “I feel like I’m listening to a friend talk to me.”
LAMB: That’s amazing because I really wanted it to feel like that, especially with “Leftover Love” — that’s one that’s not a direct experience, and when I sing it I literally feel like I’m just someone’s friend and I just want them to be okay. So that’s really nice that you think that, because that’s the energy that’s gone into it, even if it’s not the direct lyrical narrative.
LUNA: The lyrics seem really detailed, like I’m having a “girl-talk” discussion and there’s ideas being bounced back and forth. Not that I don’t like sparse lyrics, but I do like when there’s a lot being said. It reminds me of Mariah Carey or Taylor Swift or, you know, people that say a lot. They’re very honest and blunt about it.
LAMB: That’s really nice to hear, because sometimes I worry … I mean I’m exactly the same. Even with Taylor Swift, when I used to be obsessed with the Red album, I would listen to it and I would love the way she would tell a story and tell it in a way that didn’t sound cringe or done before. It was like she was making it sound poetic but in a way that you would just say in a conversation, rather than trying to find hidden meanings behind everything. I always loved it, and I always thought, “I’m going to try and write like that.” Then sometimes I worry that it’s too simple, so I’m glad that you feel like it says a lot, because I do try! (laughs)
LUNA: Who are your musical inspirations?
LAMB: A lot of my inspiration is the music I listen to now, mixed with that music that’s been in my soul from when I was 15 — that’s pure pop music. Like Taylor Swift and Rihanna. I don’t listen to that as much anymore, but I definitely feel it coming through when I’m writing music because I think I just listened to it so much when I was younger. Now I listen to Victoria Monet, Lucky Daye, and basically anything that D’Mile produced. Sonically, I hope it’s merged, because I’m trying to make R&B pop. That’s the goal. I’ve been listening to Cleo Sol, and there’s a girl called Leon whose voice is just insane. And then more of the electronic things … I do love a little bit of Charli XCX; I don’t feel like she influences my music too much to be honest, but when that sort of style goes in there, I’m like, “Okay I like it.”
I had a whole playlist of who influenced the album and that would tell me everything. Snoh Aalegra and, oh, Pip Millett, who was quite a big inspiration in “Lies” and a few tracks like that. I feel like she stripped everything back and it’s quite a raw sound. I just think [Mahalia] is so good. Kehlani, I mean she’s definitely R&B, but I feel like she has quite a bit of pop influences in her music as well. So, yeah, quite a lot of influences to be honest, but again, this whole playlist is so R&B, and then I think I just naturally turn it into pop. But that’s what I like, so I’m happy with that.
LUNA: What is one of your favorite lyrics from one of the songs?
LAMB: I do like the lyric, “you’re like the feeling when the beat kicks in.”
LUNA: About your visual for “Love Song”: I noticed it was paying homage to iconic album artworks of Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Adele, etc. What made you want to make it a lyric video, but also a montage of sorts?
LAMB: The main inspiration is because of [a] lyric in “Love Song,” which is “so now you’re telling me this could have been a love song all along.” So I wanted to take all of the love song singles or albums that have influenced me and that I love so much and that have played a big part in my life. It’s sort of a recreation of them in that this song could have been like those. All my songs in the past could have been written like those if we could have just communicated a little bit. That is the concept behind the video. I wanted to do it square, because I wanted it to be just as much like the cover arts as possible, and then the lyrics I created because I thought, without them, it didn’t feel like the cover arts. When you add the lyrics in with the text of the album, it’s like combining multiple concepts of a video, and also — because it links so directly to the lyrics — I thought it was nice to have the lyrics on there and visible so that you could link the concept to the song more easily.
Then for the Spotify canvas, it’s a moving piece of artwork, which I thought was a really cool concept. It’s a way of utilizing the opportunities that you have to use video content as an artist and showing the video in a different way. But yeah, it’s an ode to the artists I love and all the songs that I love and to pop music and pop culture in general.
LUNA: Do you have more planned singles and visuals in the rollout for the rest of the year?
LAMB: For the collection, as an independent artist and label, budget was something that I had to think about. So what I ended up doing was spending two days filming nine different visuals, and basically we’ve created canvases and loopable visuals for each song so that it develops the story of the song a little bit more, without having to do a whole music video. So every single song has a visual, but it’s not necessarily a video. If I had to pick another track to do a video for, I think I’d do “New Normal” or something that would be a really upbeat, fun one.
I think my main goal — because I’ve been releasing since last June — it’s just been a lot of constantly having a new track out. So I’m really looking forward to spending the next six months going back to them and sharing all of them more, because it felt sometimes like the four weeks were up so quick and I was onto the next one, and I wanted more time to talk about the one I just released. I’m also looking forward to doing it live a lot. Also just writing new stuff, because I feel like I’ve been dabbling in writing new stuff since releasing this, but I haven’t really had the solid time to just write, which I’m really looking forward to. There are already a few tracks where I’m like, “I just want to release them now!” But I think I’m just going to try and hold back for a few months because I want to give everything time to breathe.
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