Fresh from the huge global success of his song ‘Train Wreck’, James Arthur recently returned to the music scene with a well-received new single “Medicine.”
A song that blends pop punk and punk rock sensibilities with some added hip hop flavor, “Medicine” is the first song on James’ upcoming album and is considered to be the singer-songwriter’s most “autobiographical” to date.
“‘Medicine’ is an uplifting ode to self, to relationships, to community and connection, and to the healing, restorative powers of love over adversity. It is, you might say, the perfect song for spring 2021,” he pointed in a recent virtual interview with SoundStrip and other Philippine media.
The album’s conception came about when James suffered a massive panic attack last January 2020 in the middle of his European tour. The event forced him to cancel the tour and undergo therapy. By March 2020, he was strong enough to push through with his UK Arena Tour, which he describes as “probably the best tour I’ve ever done.”
This resulted in “Medicine” becoming a snapshot of James’ struggles with mental health in 2020 and how he lived and survived through them. It allowed James to think of what his “medicine” is, which he quickly found out was exercise, his loved ones, and of course, creating music.
“Writing music is the best form of therapy for me,” he recounted, “I’m very lucky to have an outlet such as music to channel any mental health issues I was going through. I think we wrote this song to encourage people to think about what their medicine is during a dark time. Anything that makes you feel better, I wanted people to think about that,”
Moreover, as someone “who made it to the other side”, he feels a “sense of duty” to raise awareness of the problem.
“Anything that I can do to use my voice and my platform to raise awareness is important,” he shared. “I feel a responsibility to do that, having been through mental health issues and trauma in my life and making it to the other side. It’s a very difficult thing to talk about your mental health or your health in general, but it’s the biggest step, just to try and speak because you’d be surprised at how many people would relate to you.”
In line with speaking up about his widely known mental health struggles, the album also allowed James to reflect on other things in his life, such as his thoughts on becoming a father. Though he stated that his upcoming album has no overarching theme, he did admit that writing the album made him do more “soul-searching” in addition to experimenting with “a melting pot” of pop punk and hip-hop trap sounds.
“I’m doing a lot of soul searching on this album. That’s kind of what it’s always been for me, especially when it comes to writing lyrics. With the type of music that I make, I think it’s important for me to connect to people and to relate to people. And in order to do that, I have to look inside myself and be introspective,” he said.
“Medicine” is now available on all streaming platforms nationwide.