Passenger Interview- Fasten Your Seatbelt

What a difference a year makes. In 2012, English folk-rock singer Passenger sat down to record his third solo album, All The Little Lights. Having moved to Australia in 2009 and built a steady following through busking and intimate open mic gigs, the Sussex native was slowly becoming a name down under – but elsewhere, was unknown.

Passenger, real name Mike Rosenberg, had a song on his 2012 album, All The Little Lights that changed his life. ‘Let Her Go’ was picked up by a DJ in the Netherlands who championed it on his radio show. The single spread around Europe before crossing the waters to Australia and, eventually, Ireland and, finally, the UK. There, thanks to an endorsement from Rosenberg’s childhood friend Ed Sheeran, the tune snowballed, eventually becoming the only million-selling British single of 2013. It made a splash in the American charts, and knocked One Direction off number one in Ireland: a fact that makes Passenger grin devilishly. “I did it for us all! I did it for music!” he laughs, offering me a celebratory fist-bump.
Jokes aside, it’s been a whirlwind ride. Rosenberg admits he’s struggling to process it all.
“It was pretty bemusing. I went through quite a few emotions,” he reflects. “You’d think once you have this hit, all you’d feel is joy and wonder. It’s not quite true. I was a bit wary. Most songs that get into the charts are written and produced with that goal in mind. Katy Perry, Rihanna and whoever have glossy music videos, world-class producers and a massive budget: they hope and expect it to be big. With ‘Let Her Go’, it was never meant to be released. I recorded it in a tiny Sydney studio with my mate: the video cost nothing, it’s just us dicking around at a gig. We never thought it was going to do anything. We were never aiming to put the single out, but thought, ‘Hey, that’s the one song on the album that’s commercial, let’s shove it out.’ And it went mental.”
After the single gained momentum, he began touring as a supporting act to Ed Sheeran, catapulting him into the world of fame and arena gigs. Rosenberg admits he found himself completely unprepared for the pressure and those screaming crowds.
“The first few gigs, I was rubbish,” he acknowledges. “I played so badly. I wasn't used to the big arenas, the attention and the pressure. I did slowly get the support act down: you throw in some jokes and play funny songs like ‘I Hate’ to get the audience onside. I mean, you never kid yourself. They’re there to see Ed and they lose their shit when they do. But I wasn’t being ignored. The audience was really engaged, and I was spending two hours signing autographs after the gigs. It was incredible.”
Along with the extra fans and validation, his success also rewarded him with more funds and attention to invest in new album Whispers. He says it’s the first record he’s been truly happy with.
“With the other albums it was a bit panicked and pressured. They’ve been recorded in three days: the quality was a bit demo-y. The last one, which had ‘Let Her Go’ on it – I hated that album! This record feels better. It’s authentic, the emotion’s there, the performances are there, the production is good. It feels like a cohesive, coherent piece of work.”
There’s an edge to some of the tracks on the new album – not that Rosenberg has ever been one to pull his punches. Though his voice, and that plaintive hit single may be sweet, his back catalogue has hidden gems of biting insight and witty, acerbic observations. On his third album All The Little Lights, the title-track includes more than one well-placed f-bomb; ‘Staring At The Stars’ deals with the isolating effects of internet pornography, and contains one of Rosenberg’s best lines: “Who needs love when you’ve got silicone and strap-ons?” His go-to crowd-pleaser is ‘I Hate’, which disparages the emptiness of Facebook friends and The X Factor. This time round 27 sees him critiquing the commercial side of music, as he claims you’ve “gotta sell-out to sell.” But Rosenberg explains the song is a personal rallying cry, reminding him not to lose his creative integrity when times are tough.
“I actually wrote that before ‘Let Her Go’ happened,” he explains. “I was stuck in Glasgow, my songs weren’t working. I was frustrated. I was 27 and felt I’d been working my balls off for years. I didn’t want world domination, just some recognition. A sign that what I was doing was worth something. And no-one was giving it to me. So I wrote that song to cheer myself up, to re-assert that I wasn’t going to do The X Factor, I wasn’t going to sell out. I was going to keep writing music that connected with people and which I could be proud of. That’s still the case. Because I don’t expect to ever have a single as big as ‘Let Her Go’ again. You can’t expect anything in this industry, and with the music I do, you can’t expect it to cross over into mainstream culture. All I want is to reach the right people, who get where I’m coming from.”
The album also delves into Rosenberg’s nomadic, commitment-avoiding lifestyle, which often keeps him away from family, friends and relationships. A rolling stone is a reccurring image in his lyrics. In the track of that name, he sings, “I fear I’ve grown a rolling stone inside of me / I’m worried I know no-one / A thousand faces but no names.” He admits that he finds the demands of his job hard to cope with emotionally, and worries about not maintaining real connections with those he loves.
“There are so many brilliant things about this job,” he notes, “but there are those other times where you’re missing your mate’s wedding or it’s your sister’s birthday and you’re in Guatemala or somewhere. It can be heartbreaking. You just want to be back home, and relationships can be incredibly difficult, obviously. It’s the compromise you make; music swallows everything else. And I’m aware that for years, I put everything else second. I was so determined to try to make my music work that the life bit was dictated by that.”
And even though Rosenberg always had a sense of wanderlust, he admits that travelling has now lost the idyllic, Kerouac romance it once had.
“It’s different,” he nods. “There definitely was a romance to it, this beatnik freedom where I’d stay in hostels and hop a random train in the morning and see where I’d end up. It was hard and depressing at times, but fun – and it was mine. I decided what to do, whether I wanted to stay busking in Amsterdam for six days. Now, if I go to Amsterdam, I have two dates and soundchecks and then it’s off to the next place to another booked gig. You can’t have everything, you can’t have this whimsical Into The Wild-style existence and a really successful career. I’m constantly trying to strike that balance. That’s why I try to keep busking as much as I can – I don’t want to lose that sense of really being somewhere, of connecting with random people in cities you’re in, of winning over strangers. After all, I’m a songwriter, and to do that well you need to have a real life; you need to have experiences and understand what people are feeling. To be a songwriter you have to be a real person first, and I’m not letting any amount of success make me lose sight of that.”

Catch him live in the Dublin O2 (Nov 22)