Leroy Clampitt on his debut solo album ‘Get Happy’
Aotearoa-born, LA-based singer, songwriter, 3x Grammy-nominated producer and APRA AMCOS Billion Streams honouree, Leroy Clampitt’s new record Get Happy traverses themes of love, work, burnout, the highs, the lows, and all of life that takes place in between.
With Leroy performing the majority of the instruments and vocals across the album himself, Get Happy brings together the polished pop craftsmanship and meticulous production he’s become known for with an organic warmth, understated groove and intimacy that feels distinctly his own.
Beyond his own artist project, Leroy is best known for being the production, songwriting and multi-instrumentalist mastermind behind some of the biggest pop music of the past decade, with Madison Beer, Sabrina Carpenter, Lily Allen, Laufey, Ashe, Justin Bieber, FLO, Rachel Chinouriri, FINNEAS, RAYE and many more.
Hype Medium: I'm really excited to chat to you about this album - congratulations! After years of shaping other artists' records, what made you decide this was the right moment to come out with your own solo music?
Leroy Clampitt: There's never a right moment, I don't think. I feel like you either just get on and do it or you don't. This project has always been more of an artistic, creative endeavour for myself than it has ever been about commercially releasing anything.
So that’s kind of where it started but once I'd made it and gone through the journey of making it, it felt like, to honour the work, it would be good to figure out how to put it out. It kind of felt like time for me to also start my own record label, and so it all worked well because I need to have a record if I’m going to start a record label. It would be great to have my own record, then I could start the label off in a way that I want to represent it. If I put this record out, I can learn how to be a record label, can start one, and get a bunch of skills so that down the line I can help put out other people's records.
Hype Medium: Exciting! It sounds absolutely incredible. How did you land on this concept and album title Get Happy and what does that mean to you?
Leroy Clampitt: Thank you. That’s a great question - ‘Get Happy’ was one of the first songs I wrote for this album. I just like it as a title because it's a funny kind of phrase to tell someone to ‘get happy’. Obviously the song’s not quite like that, but I thought it was a strong, bold phrase.
I wrote this song right before I stopped making music for two months because I had this big burnout. I'd been making music with a lot of people and doing a lot of production work. I was pretty deep on a few projects and was very burnt out. My ears were tired and everything. Sitting in front of a computer was just not working, so I grabbed my guitar and wrote that song really quickly. It felt good to achieve something, and I think it explained what I was going through at the time. Literally the next day, I stopped working for two months and did some soul searching. It's kind of a weirdly potent song, even though it's quite simple and jolly.
Hype Medium: A hundred percent! And you mentioned burnout which I feel like is so common and relatable for other creatives out there. How do you work through that process? You said you took two months off. Was that a dedicated time you had for yourself, or was that just the length of time you needed to get through it?
Leroy Clampitt: It's so funny, I was talking to a friend about this yesterday as well. No one's dying around us because of what we're doing as a job. No one's life's on the line, but somehow we get so caught up in our heads. It’s very easy to and I think a lot of freelance creatives, and just anyone in general, a lot of people don't have the opportunity to burn out and take a break because they have to keep going. Their nervous system gives them enough to do it because they have a job and they can't afford to take time off.
I basically just cleared my schedule at that point. I had about four days of being pretty down, and then I went into learning tools to get back on track and help manage stuff like that in the future. I got really into meditating, which is something I still do on a daily basis. I got a really good psychologist who helped me rewire my brain about certain habits and stuff. Drunk a lot less coffee. All those sorts of things.
Hype Medium: Awesome, that’s incredible. I feel that all those things are absolutely important. Were there any major creative influences that shaped this album, including artists or sounds that you found yourself particularly inspired by?
Leroy Clampitt: I was listening to a lot of Japanese music, specifically 60s and 70s J-pop. I was obsessed with that era and there was this beautiful collusion.
It's a bit like the same thing growing up in New Zealand, where we're on this island and we're predominantly listening to American or British music. Then we're mixing it in with our culture and spitting out our own version of it.
I think Japan does that really well, especially in that era. I didn't really want to be influenced by anything American or English. It was being influenced by these Japanese people who were themselves influenced by English and American things (laughs). It's kind of a weird cycle of hand-me-down influences.
Hype Medium: (Laughs) That’s awesome!I'd love to talk about some of my favourite tracks on the album. ‘Easy Daisy’ is just an incredible song. I absolutely love the sax solo with Jacob on there. How did the song come about? What was the songwriting process for this one?
Leroy Clampitt: Thank you - this one is a little bit of an outlier because I use tape machines quite a lot, and I'd just gotten this new one, which was a four-track tape machine. It was the first time I was able to overdub onto the same tape. Essentially, it's what I do on my computer, where I can put in the drums, put in the bass and layer it up.
So this was truly I got it, set it up, and this was my first experiment just trying to make something. I basically was like, "I kind of need a song if I'm going to record a song" (laughs) so I just made it and wrote it at the same time. I did some post-production on it and rerecorded a couple of things, and then had Jacob play on it eventually as well.
Hype Medium: You said that you wrote it at the same time as making it. I guess some people see songwriting and production as two very different disciplines, whereas I feel like a lot of the time you’re intertwined with doing, you’re doing both roles. How do you see the relationship between songwriting and production, and how do those roles influence each other in the creative process?
Leroy Clampitt: It’s such a good question, and I would say half the time I'm producing songs that have been written, whether I've been a part of writing them or not, and then half the time I'm in there writing / producing at the same time.
As someone in my role, where I make my own music but also make other people's music with them, having the duality of those two skill sets is very important. A lot of the time, some people do their best work on their own with a guitar or whatever instrument they have. To be able to take a song that's written in that intimate, personal way and produce is really valuable.
But also, producing and writing at the same time is like a chicken-and-the-egg situation, where certain ideas and energies wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for that drum thing you were putting in, or that little lick you put in or whatever.
I think some really exciting things can happen when you're doing both at once. A lot of my career has been building the skill set to be able to do that, so that essentially whatever the artist requires of me, I can do.
For my album, most of it, apart from that one song, was written on a piano and then produced at a later point, or produced all together.
Hype Medium: And you're wearing many hats on this album. You're doing pretty much everything, and a lot of the instrumentation itself has your touch on it. It's really impressive, and I guess it helps being able to see the vision and do it all yourself.
Leroy Clampitt: Yeah, totally.
Hype Medium: Another one I love is ‘I Used to Be a Tire’! What was the inspiration behind that one?
Leroy Clampitt: (Laughs) Cool! I'm really proud of that song. I genuinely think that's one of my highest achievements as a songwriter. I honestly didn’t think much - it just really came out without having to put too much head-down, bang-my-head-against-the-wall work into it, which I'm really grateful for.
But the funny truth is that I saw a coaster in a hotel that was made of rubber. It was like, "I used to be a tire," as in, I'm a recycled tire and now I'm a coaster. I was just getting out of the shower and saw that and I thought, "that's funny to have that on a coaster." I just started coming up with that idea.
Hype Medium: (Laughs) I love it, it's so creative! And what would you say were your favourite moments working across this album as a whole?
Leroy Clampitt: It was sort of a long time coming in a sense. Like I said, I did the production mostly all at once, and I did it in Northern California at a studio where I could be away from LA. LA gets quite distracting just with my job and stuff always. Things pop up, and as much as it would be great to block out two weeks to focus on a personal project, it's not realistic so I had to leave.
It was just fun because a lot of the songs on the album were I'd written the verse and written the chorus, but I hadn't written the rest. I had this great one-man conveyor belt where I'd get up in the morning, make coffee and some granola, and sit out on the porch or “deck” as we would say (laughs). I keep translating for Americans but I forget that I’m not talking to an American.
I would spend an hour or two writing the rest of the song. I really like writing songs over a period of time, because my job is like you write basically a song in a day. Which is really great and I love that, because you're capturing a moment, but it's also fun to have perspective this thing like, “how do I feel about it now that I couldn't have felt about it back then?”.
So I'd just sit there and write the rest of the lyrics. I'd been at that studio working on another project so I had it all set up. I just had all of the things that I wanted on the album in terms of like I had that one synth I wanted, a Rhodes, the piano, the guitars and basses I wanted, and the drum kit set up in the way I wanted it. And so once I had the song, I could just go in one by one and record everything.
It was just a fun process. I love people and I'm with people every day working on this stuff, but at a certain point I'm quite reclusive. It was really nice to just be away and see what I came up with on my own without trying to get in someone else's head.
Hype Medium: You don't usually have that time to dedicate to yourself and create for your own project, so that's really cool. As we're a New Zealand music platform, I'd love to know: who are some of your favourite Kiwi artists, and are there any songs in particular that you especially love at the moment?
Leroy Clampitt: One of my favourite songs of all time Pokarekare Ana I have the St Joseph's Māori Girls College version from maybe the 70s. I've actually had two of them but I actually burnt out the vinyl of the other one (laughs).
I'm a big fan of the Nielson Brothers, The Mint Chicks, and UMO and Silicon, and everything they do. I'm a big fan of the Finn Brothers as well. That was one of the saddest things, not being able to go see Split Enz this year. I feel like that would have been so cool.
Also, Aldous Harding is another one - consistently on the record player. I love all her records. So many. Fazerdaze - I've luckily spent a bit of time working with her for her previous album, and she was just living with us for a couple of weeks in LA as well, which was nice.
Hype Medium: Amazing! Such a great list. So for the other artists, creators and musicians out there, what's one of the biggest lessons you've learned so far in your career, and what's one of the best pieces of advice you've learned along the way?
Leroy Clampitt: The thing that really goes without saying is that you have to work hard, and you have to work harder than anyone else.. That should be the basics, but I think a lot of the people that I work with at a very high level, I think a lot of people would be surprised at how nice, thoughtful and caring they are.
There are some people who filter through who are dicks, but most of the people at the top wouldn't have got there without being good people and looking after everyone. You know, just being good to be around. So I think having a really good mixture of ambition, but also empathy and care for the people around you and the people you're working with is very important.
Hype Medium: Yes for sure. Touching on that, going from your own solo music to producing a track like ‘make you mine’ by Madison Beer or any of the other big hits, is a pretty significant shift. How do you mentally prepare and switch gears between those different projects?
Leroy Clampitt: It's funny. I feel like variety is the spice of life in a large way, and I really follow my brain, just what it kind of wants (laughs). I have a very large bank of influences. I've listened to a lot of music over my time, and I'm exposed to a lot because I work for these young artists who are constantly showing me stuff.
So it's fun for me - literally it will be like I’m mixing this total dance-pop song with all these crazy synthesizers and programmed drums, and then I’ll open up the next session and it's some orchestral folk thing that's all live, with no click track or anything. There's a duality to everything, I think. A synchronicity. They kind of help each other.
Hype Medium: Last question that we ask all our guests. If you could say one thing to every person in the world, what would that be?
Leroy Clampitt: Get happy.
Thanks Leroy! Make sure you keep up with him on Instagram, Spotify or Apple Music.
