As the songwriter and guitarist in one of the most iconic bands of the 80’s, Spandau Ballet, Gary Kemp is considered to be one of the most commercially successful writers of the decade. During their career Spandau notched up 23 hit singles and spent a combined total of more than 500 weeks in the UK charts, achieving over 25 million album sales worldwide.
As one of the band’s founding members, Kemp wrote the lyrics and music for all 23 of Spandau Ballet’s hit singles, including “True,” “Gold,” and “Only When You Leave.”
Now marching to the beat of his own drum, the now 61-year old Englishman explores the many personas he’s been over the years with his upcoming album, Insolo.
Twenty-five years after the release of his first solo album, Little Bruises, Kemp shared that his approach to songwriting has become immensely different.
“My whole approach to writing feels very different now. I still think ‘Little Bruises’ stands up as a good album, I’m just in a different headspace now. I’ve had the experience of working these past few years with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and developing much more to the front as a guitar player and as a singer,” he said in a recent interview with Soundstrip and other Philippine media.
Unlike his work with Spandau, Kemp says Insolo is more lyric and guitar driven, which allowed him to delve more on themes of the past and “to make sense of who I am today.”
“This album was a process of me coming to a few ideas that were bothering me. One I think was reaching a certain age and thinking how does this man here relate to his past and vice versa. How do I join the dots between those different characters that I’ve been in my life?” he shared.
With that in mind, Insolo becomes an autobiography that chronicles Kemp’s innermost thoughts throughout his life framed in exciting ways. From feeling isolated in a big city as expressed in “In Solo” and “Too Much”, to how he fell in love with music in “Waiting for the Band” to forgiving his past self in “I remember you” and “The Fastest Man in the World”, each song is like a snapshot of Kemp’s most intimate and personal moments that made him. The album’s first single, “Ahead of the Game”, is no different.
A sleek late 70’s esque guitar heavy single with classy and polished guitar playing provided by Kemp himself, the song has a sense of “innocence” and “lost youth” framed fondly through hindsight and self-reflection. While its bright tones accentuate the feeling of being young and invincible, his mature vocal gives the song a feeling of coming from an older, wiser place.
“I don’t have to lie anymore,” he said about the lyrics of the album. “ When you get to my age you’ve experienced highs and lows, you’ve experienced so much. So every song, even songs like ‘Rumor of You’ has elements of me in there. I’ve been that person but I exaggerate it often. When I was writing for Spandau in my 20s, I experienced so little in life, I experienced no failure, and so you make a lot of stuff up and borrow ideas. There’s no truth in what you’re saying.”
Gary Kemp’s Insolo album is now available in major streaming platforms.