He’s a secret weapon for Stormzy, Adele and Dave – now famous producer Fraser T Smith is coming out of the shadows | News about Entities and Arts

Fraser T Smith is the producer you want on speed dial to make a hit. His CV of collaborators reads like a who’s who of chart-toppers, award winners and celebrities, from Adele, Sam Smith and Drake to Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue and Idris Elba, while his work with Stormzy, Kano and Dave has helped boost the sound of UK rap and grime.

We spoke on Zoom, talking about this year’s Glastonbury festival and the electric headlines of both Dua Lipa It is Cold game. He worked with both during lockdown, when they were among the 24 artists he brought together, along with Dave Grohlto raise funds through a coverage of Foo Fighters‘Times like this.

Looking at other British artists who have topped the list in recent years – Ed SheeranFlorence And The Machine, Kasabian, as well as Stormy It is Adeleand you can see a Smith-shaped pattern.

He laughs a little at the suggestion. “I feel extremely grateful to have met so many of the great artists I have worked with,” he responds. The most in-demand music producer is soft-spoken and unassuming, quick to give credit to others for his successes.

He describes the moment during Stormzy’s 2019 set when the star joined Coldplay’s Chris Martin on Blinded By Your Grace, Pt 1 as one of the many “pinch me” moments of his career.

“You never write a song, let’s imagine doing this, or winning awards or going to number one. When you fast forward to moments like this… wait a minute, we wrote this as a simple keyboard and guitar, and now Chris Martin is playing the chords and Stormzy singing to, well, 100,000 people, but also millions around the world.

For years, Smith has been the behind-the-scenes genius, quietly lending his talents as a producer and songwriter to the industry’s biggest stars without ever starving for the spotlight.

He co-wrote, mixed and produced seven UK number one singles, two US Billboard number ones and contributed to 18 chart-topping albums. He’s also a Grammy winner thanks to his work on Adele’s second album, 21, and a three-time Ivor Novello winner through collaborations with Dave.

In 2020, he ventured into the shadows as Future Utopia, releasing a concept album of collaborations titled 12 Questions, with the likes of Stormzy, Dave, Kano and Elba. Therefore, he felt like “conductor of the orchestra”. Now, the follow-up album, Django’s High, puts him front and center stage as lead vocalist for the first time.

“As much as people know me for collaboration and know that I’ve collaborated with a lot of great people in the past, I really felt like I wanted this album to have the stamp, the identity on it, that was very much ours,” he says.

It took a while for Smith to believe in himself as a singer and frontman. The record, which he describes as “a psychedelic Spaghetti Western”, was executive produced by Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, who gave Smith “confidence and tips on my vocals”.

“I started sketching ideas for vocal melodies, maybe for someone else to sing,” he says. “I’ve worked with so many great singers, like Adele and Sam Smith, that I find it hard to call myself a singer at this point.” He controls himself quickly. “I don’t want to put people off because I’m really proud of my vocals and I definitely have good melodic ideas. But I also love that kind of sound of multi-layered harmonies, and I worked with an incredible artist. called Molly J, who sings backing vocals.”

The result is a “mesh of harmonies”, he says. “I’m not claiming to be Lewis Capaldi, but… I’m really proud of this record and I really hope people like it.”

After performing a 12 Questions show on stage with collaborators like Kojey Radical and Simon Armitage, Smith discovered the joy of being on stage in front of a crowd. He’s a fan of the immersive experience, of artists communicating “with the audience as one, rather than being the typical kind of icon on stage and everyone else below.”

However, crowd-surfing may be a step too far. “I don’t necessarily know about crowd-surfing,” he laughs, “but I would love to feel like we could do a show that was round, you know, in the way that Taylor Swift does these shows and it just incorporates everyone into the whole journey. You never know, I might crowd surf… I don’t know, it always seems a little dangerous. What if people let you fall?

As someone who has worked in the background for so long, Smith is outspoken about some of the biggest issues affecting the industry. On streaming and artists getting paid enough for their work, he says this is an even bigger problem for songwriters and producers behind the scenes.

“Songwriters typically don’t go on tour, they don’t get branding deals and they don’t do corporate gigs,” he says. “I feel very passionately that the composers of these incredible songs, the co-composers and the teams of composers, are taken care of, or else this will become a kind of dying art – or an art that is, equally dangerous, excluding the working classes and this becomes a privilege for the upper classes.”

Streaming has leveled the playing field and eliminated “gatekeepers” from the industry, he says, which is “fantastic… I like the fact that creativity is open and anyone can create.” However, if artists are being paid “pennies”, it becomes “an unsustainable situation… we want to make sure that new young, talented bands can actually keep going and don’t necessarily have to be in the back of a public transport van” . [touring] for, like, 10 years before they even made minimum wage.”

About artificial intelligence, which has led artists including Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Jon Bon Jovi demand more protection In recent months, Smith describes it as “a huge wake-up call” but believes it has caused many artists to work harder to move away from synthetic-sounding music.

“If we don’t start going back to music that sounds more conscious and more organic, meaning played by real people, then I think we run the risk of… it’s almost like pop is going to eat itself,” he says. “Certain techniques in the studio make it very easy to create music very quickly, but this sounds like AI music.

“We can see through the popularity of artists like Taylor Swift – and Dua Lipa’s new album to me sounds much more organic and more sincere than her previous albums, which were fantastic but sounded quite airbrushed. new album that people seem to be really resonating with, and people are still running out and buying vinyl, people still like bands – not just bands that have been successful in the past, new bands like Fontaines DC or Last Dinner Party, there’s a popularity within a rawer kind of more human sound.”

So AI can be a good thing, he says. “Because in the long run, we will all make music that hopefully goes deeper into human emotions, something that AI will never be able to replicate.”

In addition to Future Utopia, Smith is still producing. Current projects include “an amazing record” from artist and spoken word poet Kae Tempest – “which I don’t want to talk too much about, but I think one of the amazing things for a producer is being able to join forces with an artist where it feels like that artist is going to have its moment” – and music with Bridgerton star and “amazing” artist Simone Ashley.

“I think in a way you are what you eat and I think I grew up listening to so many different genres,” he says. “I love this melting pot of different influences and genres.”

Future Utopia’s Django’s High is out now