The life of a touring musician is often glamourised as one long music video filled with gratuitous fun and groupies. But life for American pop singer, Andy Grammer ( pictured), is a little different. Following the success of his self-titled debut album in 2011, the platinum-selling muso released Magazines or Novels in the latter part of last year.
The second single from this album is titled Honey, I’m Good and has become the ubiquitous jam on mainstream South African radio. With lyrics like: I’ve got somebody at home and if I stay, I might not leave alone, the song challenges the stereotype of pop stars.
Grammer explained that “there’s a nobility in being able to say you’re good” and would rather go home to the person you’re in a relationship with. But surely he gets women coming onto him all the time. What advice would he give people who want to go home with stars, but get rejected?
“Ooh, that’s a good question,” he exclaims. “I haven’t got that one yet. Hmm. Let me think. I’d say: ‘You deserve better than that. You don’t want me! I’m already taken.’”
The video is also quite cute as it shows various couples holding up boards indicating how many years they’ve been together. I ask him if he was making a statement about the recent same-sex law passed in the US.
“It wasn’t linked to that,” he admits. “I always want to be inclusive. I wasn’t trying to make a point, but I’m not trying to judge anyone’s relationship.
“It was a really fun video,” he continues. “A lot of my family are actually in that video. There’s something really overly sweet about cheering on people who have been together for a long time.”
Magazines or Novels was released in the year that Grammer – whose father is Grammy-nominated children’s performer, Red Grammer – turned 30.
“You know what’s so cool about your 30s,” he asks me. “You’re so much more open about being okay with being flawed.
“My second album knocked my ass really hard,” he confesses. “I was really nervous and trying to get a hit so I wrote about 50 ‘me too’ songs – the songs one writes that sound like what’s already out there. I’d never had success and had to do it over again before.
“So that was infused with fear and sounded horrible,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I can’t release this’. So I wrote another 50 songs that were about what I cared about. I was brutally honest in those songs and that was my escape – when I went with honesty instead.”
With a third album on the way sometime this year, Grammer is adamant that he’s going to stick with this formula.
“I also can’t wait to come to South Africa,” he adds, “you have the cutest accent. All of you! So I’m very keen on coming there.”
l Magazines or Novels is in stores.