Frankie Beetlestone used to declare he wanted to be “the biggest artist in the country”, but when NME meets him he’s singing a tune. The 23-year-old headed to London to record his new EP ‘Ignorance is Bliss’, which appears to herald a new perspective on life: “I want to be the best I can be – and for me, that looks like a room full of people,” he says modestly.
After all, a lot has changed since that ambitious statement. After releasing debut EP ‘Tasting The Sky’ in 2021, the Sheffield native would move into the caravan on his grandma’s driveway and release another EP named after the vehicle. The small moments of escapism narrated on ‘Get Paid’, from that project, suggested something darker was going on: “That lady on the tram has nothing left to lose but her liver / She’ll take about a gram of anything her dealer can give her, he delivers.”
‘Caravan’’s sunny guitar licks and penchant for escapism resonated with fans enough to nab Beetlestone an opening slot for Tom Grennan during his What Ifs & Maybes tour. Beetlestone’s nostalgic sound worked well in the giant arenas he played in, transporting his audience back into the hectic heyday of indie – by design: “I want a room full of old people to feel youthful and young people to feel youthful as well.”
The ‘Caravan’ EP also earned Beetlestone a BBC Introducing slot at Reading and Leeds Festival last year. The mainstage of that festival is exactly where Beetlestone wants to end up in the future, and it’s one ambition of his that hasn’t changed since he started out: “I’ve always said that I wanted to headline Leeds and I still feel the same way about it. It’s quite scary thing to say, isn’t it? But it feels natural to say it.”
Though Beetlestone is now based near Finsbury Park, he spent a while living just off Brick Lane when he first moved to London. Surrounded by the fashion subcultures in Shoreditch, the singer found himself exploring his identity and experimenting with his style, which in turn influenced the looser, liberating sound of ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’. Below, Beetlestone guides NME through his journey to personal and artistic freedom.
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
“Yeah, I do actually, it was… shit [laughs]. It was so bad. It would have been something like Ed Sheeran. I used to love loop pedals. It’s so cliché, but I literally thought because I was ginger, that was the one connection I had to him. So I proper got into him, I bought one of them little Boss loop pedals. I probably wrote a song on that when I was like, 12 or something.”
Why is escapism important to you?
“Because of my experience with it. I’m looking at my world, pointing at things and writing them down. People are drinking to get away from the reality of the situation that they’re in or doing drugs to soothe the pain of being a human, because I think being a human is a condition in itself from when you’re born.
“But the more I think about it, I’ve definitely found such a sense of peace with where I am. I feel like the older I get, I can be in any situation and witness my own emotions and not respond or react as much as I used to do – like, being on the tube at six in the morning or someone being a bit of a knob on the estate I live on.”
And what’s led you to that peace?
“My experience with psychedelics is a big thing for me, to be honest. Psilocybin and LSD, that combined with a lot of meditation. I was at a point where I felt so low in my life and my self-worth was so low. There’s a beautiful quote: ‘When the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of change, that’s when we change.’
“So I feel like my perspective on the world now had to come out of me being in a dark place anyway… and fucking meditation. Crazy what that’s done for my mind. I just don’t get angry with anyone. I mean, there is another saying: ‘If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.’” [Laughs]
You mentioned being in a low place. Could you expand on what was so depressing for you?
“One thing that was getting to me was my identity. I had a huge thing of growing up as a young man from a quite traditional northern place, and loving growing up there and feeling grateful to grow up there, but also never being introduced to people who were comfortable with their own sexuality or wearing makeup. It’s not the sort of place where a ten-year-old boy is encouraged to do those things. But at the same time, I also don’t think that the people who live in Sheffield think derogatory things. It’s just a time and place that I’ve grown up in.
“I’ve grown up being the guy who would wear wacky stuff. My best friends are pretty down-to-earth, British lads. We all like the same things – football, COD, going out to the park and having tinnies – but ever since I was 15, I’ve always liked dressing differently, and it’s always been a joke between me and my mates and my family that I’m just like that. But I don’t think I ever felt like a victim, either, just a victim to myself.
“I beat myself up about it, thinking that people are going to think a certain thing about me if I express myself in a certain way. And that’s my own work, it’s not Sheffield’s work. That’s my thing to work on for myself, which I have done. And now I can go out and I feel free.”
“I write from either a very harsh perspective of suffering or freedom”
How did this overwhelming freedom impact the way you wrote music?
“Apart from a song I wrote two years ago with a guy called Duncan Mills, I’ve done it all with one guy called Joseph Page. We set ourselves this goal: what would our new favourite band sound like? My last project’s all over the place – which is fine, I was figuring it out, but the songs are so eclectic that when I listen back to them now, I find it a little bit jarring. So I quite like that I can listen to this and everything has its place, and it feels like the same band in the same room, even though it’s me and a guy and a laptop.”
And what does your new favourite band sound like?
“Youthful. I just love it when you really hear a guitar, I wanted it to sound like the guy on my left, he’s got his guitar maybe a little bit too loud in my face. The drummer’s just, you know, insert bloody monkey-hands emoji, whatever.
“I wanted it to feel in-your-face and fresh, but also like you’ve heard it before. There’s a lot of guitar lines and melodies that really resemble bands that I like, like The Smiths or like Oasis or The Strokes or Pulp.”
What catches your attention the most in order for you to write songs?
“How I’m feeling in my living situation at the time has been the biggest indication of what I’m going to write about. A lot of this EP was written when I moved to London, living in a flat, with these two lads I’d met literally the week before I moved out. It was a brand new thing for me. I got a job and I was going to the studio because I’ve been back and forth down here a couple years, but living here was when I started writing these tunes.
“I think it’s a really weird thing and I’m pondering on it because I write from either a very harsh perspective of suffering or freedom. I’m always trying to be positive when I write anyway, I hate negative songs. But I think there’s a way you can get a feeling of a song that might be darker, but it’s freeing at the same time.”
Frankie Beetlestone’s ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’ EP is out August 16 via Distiller Records