Singer-Songwriter Jack Garratt Almost Quit Music, But New Album ‘Pillars’ Helped Him Kill His Ego: ‘The Person Singing Isn’t a Hero’

“F–k, I used to not like him,” says British singer-songwriter Jack Garratt, speaking about a past version of himself. “He used to not be very kind to me. We have a much better relationship now.” 

Sitting in a hotel room in Liverpool, Garratt is reflecting on how he’s shown up for himself over the past few years – ever since the pandemic brought his Love, Death, & Dancing Tour to a halt and he battled his own ego and negative self-talk. He explores that journey on his third album Pillars, which arrived in August on independent label Cooking Vinyl (he was previously signed to Island Records). 

Of his first new album since 2020, Garratt believes it to be the most “me-sounding thing” — the majority of which he wrote, produced and mixed himself. Below, he shares how he pulled himself out of a difficult time and killed his egos, while he continues to work on mastering self-love.

“I’m now in a position where I really do have more ownership over my music and over my output,” he says. “I’ve always seen albums as as a stepping stone that I’m landing on and the rest of the map is loading. I’m not thinking about album four or what the next step is. This album is just gonna paint the map a little bit.”

Ahead of releasing Pillars, you signed a new management team and new record deal. What was that process like?

I’m only interested in working with people who want to check their ego at the door and come in, and make something great for a purpose greater than any of us — not to self-aggrandize or overcompliment the artistic process or making a record or anything. It is not the most important work, but it should be when we’re in the room together. When I met with Cooking Vinyl, I felt alignment, choice. It wasn’t a desperate plea from either of us. It was good-intentioned, like-minded people who take their independent roles seriously. I don’t want to be right — I want the right idea to come out of the room. 

Before finding a new team and recording Pillars, you’ve said you were ready to quit music. Album track “Catherine Wheel” changed things for you – tell me what led to that song.

I was going through a breakup, a situationship that destroyed the boat — didn’t just rock it. I went to Los Angeles to stay with my friend Sophia Bush and we did Christmas together. I was still deeply, desperately infatuated with this person, then this thing happened that made me know it was done. It woke me up to their behaviours and needs not necessarily aligning properly, but also my selfishness and people pleasing and how manipulative that is. It was really sobering and I wanted to write. With a lot of songs on the album that deal with that part of my life, the person singing it isn’t a hero. There’s still a lot of toxicity and issues. Some of the things that I’m saying in that song like, “Just use me, because my purpose now is to be used by you,” — I mean, that’s a red flag.  

What inspired the overall sound of Pillars?

I remember listening to “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The drums are so self-aware and they just sit in this pocket. They’re so slow, but they’re so loud in the mix. I remember going, “I know that’s the drums I want in the big moments.” The character is just so infectious. I love when you can hear production that’s a storytelling device and just sounds f—ing good. I often forget that’s part of my job.  

Who else inspired you?

For this record, The Waterboys — the storytelling, the lyrics on “The Whole of the Moon”— were a big inspiration for me. Adrienne Lenker — I’m obsessed with her storytelling voice. I’ve really tried to knuckle down with this record that I wanted to be a better songwriter. That was the most important thing — to know I was writing the best stories that I could. 

On Pillars, you explore different kinds of love — romantic, platonic, self-love. Why was that important to you?

I don’t think I will be able to love myself loudly forever. It is cyclical. I’m in a good place at the moment and I’m loving it and holding it rather than worrying about it disappearing. That comes from work, having built that pillar stronger. The album is called Pillars because I spoke to my therapist and said, “I have these pillars to my love — the way I give and receive self-love, romantic love and then platonic or familial love. I think my self-love pillar is so weak that it’s putting pressure on the other two pillars in ways that I’m terrified is gonna make them crumble as well.” So the job became to build the self-love pillar. Make it stronger. Tend to it.  

“Flower Girl Confetti, Hopeful Fidelity Lasts” is a standout track, what was the concept behind it?

Pillars isn’t a concept album, but there is something conceptual throughout the whole thing, which is how I give and receive my love. The first half of the record is about really letting yourself go into something. “Ready! Steady! Go!” is a song that encourages someone to be like, “You and I are feeling something. You either need to let me go fully into the feeling or you need to let me go so that I can do this somewhere else.” And “Two Left Feet” is an encouragement song — “We could really love each other.”

If the first half of the album is more shiny and surface-level, the second half of the album is the grey of it, the depth of it. It’s the second and third layers of ground underneath the fresh lawn. “Flower Girl Confetti” is very much one of those layers of ground where it’s sticky, repetitive, and monotonous. And that lyric, “I waited, waited and it’s over now” embodies the confusion and the self-[flagellation]. It’s like a sister song to “Manifest,” the opening track.

How has your journey to self-love and acceptance changed your creative process?

With this record, I’m actively doing parts work, just trying to enjoy the present moment and surrender everything else. I suffer from anxiety, which focuses you so much on your past and uses it as an excuse as to why you should overthink your future. My job is to just quiet those parts. That’s why a lot of the songs on the record feel so isolated, so singular, because I’m just trying to exist in the present moment. Like “Big of Me (Flight the Bee),” that opening verse came out of my mouth already written. The rest of the song was just a dissection of that present thought. That exists on “Shaftesbury Avenue,” “Two Left Feet,” “Catherine Wheel.” There’s other songs on the album that are repetitive mantras.  

You made a vision board for this album. What was on that? 

I wrote maybe over 20-25 songs for this album. I didn’t know who I was, who was singing them, what the story was or anything. I had this title and was looking at these songs like, “Is it three albums? Is it three pillars? Is it this mammoth work?” My friend Lapsley [and I] just sat in my studio and listened to a bunch of them. She was like, “Have you made a vision board yet?” She showed me the one that she was making for her album, and I was immediately like, “This is so inspiring.” I made a Google Slideshow that night with photographs and artwork. It was a creative vomiting of what this world [was going to] be. I took that to [photographer] Wolf James. She was like, “It’s amazing. It’s all Dalí and surrealism.” I would have never seen that. 

“Joy is an act of resistance” was a phrase that used to come up a lot for you. What idea or sentiment is front of mind now? 

I ask the listener, “Please play loud in service of joy.” There is too much about this industry and this job that encourages joyless spaces. Having a campaign exist entirely on Instagram, a campaign that entirely exists around servicing streaming services, is joyless. And I need the joy. I have for so long punished myself and not allowed myself access to it, and this is me taking that back and reclaiming it. I lost myself and I couldn’t see the wood for the trees and I almost quit. But in making this album, I have found the joy in the job. It’s in the people. Of course, it scratches the ego a bit, but the joy that I’m watching people experience because of this record allows me to access joy as well.