Name: Steven Bamidele
Nationality: Nigerian-born, London-based
Occupation: Composer, singer, songwriter, producer
Current Release: Steven Bamidele's new album THE CRASH! is out via Tru Thoughts.
Current event: Steven Bamidele is set to perform at Ronnie Scott's Friday 19th June 2026. For more information and tickets, go here.
Local Recommendations: I grew up in Long Melford, Suffolk - lots of decent pubs and food in the area, but it’s a pretty quiet place. Maybe Kentwell Hall and The Old Rectory in Melford. Also St Peters Church and Belle Vue Park in Sudbury.
I live in London now, I’d recommend Walthamstow Village, and also Shack Fuyu restaurant in Soho.
Things I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: I have intermittent passions that I pick up and put down depending on where my attention is. I really enjoy ‘trying’ to learn languages. I got quite into Japanese but if you’re not consistent it just disappears. I also did some Spanish at university and I know a bit of Yoruba, my mum’s first language from Nigeria. If it wasn’t for music, I think I would’ve lived to be a translator in another life.
Currently really into Pokemon cards again, I started collecting Japanese full art rares, and also Farfetch’d cards. It all makes me super nostalgic I love it.
I love NBA Basketball too, although my favourite team Warriors haven’t been doing too well. I’m excited to watch the finals though, whether Knicks or Spurs win, it’s going to be a historic year for either team

If you enjoyed this Steven Bamidele interview and would like to know more about his music and upcoming live dates, visit him on Instagram, tiktok, bandcamp, and Facebook. 



There can be many different kinds of emotions in art–soft, harsh, healing, aggressive, uplifting and many more. Which do you tend to feel drawn to most?

I definitely resonate with quieter, sparser, softer music. I think there’s an emotional grandiosity in minimalist production/composition.

Radiohead  are one of the best examples I can think of. ‘Videotape’, ‘Codex’ and Thom Yorke’s solo tune ‘Unmade’ - These are quiet, low energy tunes but I feel like I’m floating when I listen to them.



I have had a hard time explaining that listening to death metal calms me down. When you listen to a song or composition, does it tend to fill you with the same emotions–or are there “paradoxical” effects?

I totally get that!

I think this has changed for me as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger sad, emotional music would make me feel calmer and happier, because it was like I was being ‘seen’ or understood. As I’ve gotten more comfortable in myself, I do feel a bit more like I need to match my mood with the music I listen to.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Nigerian Afrobeat and Ethiopian Jazz, because I had a spring in my step and that accentuated it. But If I’m feeling gloomy I’ll put on some sad, slower pace stuff, etc.

It’s really easy for me to get into a depressed existential mood, and music can easily trigger it - so I find myself only going there sparingly - it can be a good creative motivator but I don’t enjoy walking around feeling that way too often.

In as far as it plays a role for the music you like listening to or making, what role do words and the voice of a vocalist play for the transmission of emotions?

Just to say initially, I don’t necessarily need vocal and lyrics to feel something. As I was writing this I had this tune ‘Impressions in F Major’ playing by a guitarist called Brian Green. It’s completely instrumental and it gives me chills.



When it comes to vocals though, sometimes it’s incredible lyrics and delivery. Kendrick Lamar is a masterful storyteller and wordsmith for example, but then there’s also pain, dexterity and versatility in his voice that make his message really connect.

Thom Yorke again - his lyrics aren’t as constructed, sometimes quite random - but just the timbre of his voice says it all sometimes, the way it’s used as an instrument - he’ll layer it in the background and chuck loads of effects on, or loop a certain section of a vocal etc and it just becomes part of the ‘world’ of the song. That was a big influence for me.

Last time I mention Radiohead in this, promise

When it comes to experiencing emotions as as a creator, how would you describe the physical sensation of experiencing them? [Where do you feel them, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or a build-up of tension etc ...]

If I hear something new that really hits me, or especially when I come across a new song idea that I love - I’ll physically feel it in my gut, it’ll tense slightly, I’ll get goosebumps too.

There’s also a dopamine strong release and I feel really happy

When it comes to composing / songwriting, are you finding that spontaneity and just a few takes tend to capture emotions best? Or does honing a piece bring you closer to that goal?

My process has always been a bit long-winded - letting songs sit and chipping away at them over time, trying to get them right in the production process etc.

I actually listen back occasionally to my stuff and it’s like I can hear all of the ‘decisions’. That’s cool, but for my next project I’m trying to write beforehand, and then I’d love to record everything in a short space of time, without too much deliberation over the small details

How much of the emotions of your own music, would you say, are already part of the composition, how much is the result of the recording process?

To follow on from the previous point - I’ve never really written and recorded separately - I’ve always produced/recorded the song as I’ve written it, pretty much - so I’ve just always seen the song and the production as the same thing.

I think the emotion is holistic - sometimes I want a certain line to hit, sometimes a certain beat or bar will hit harder because you layer it with certain sounds/backing vocals etc - but either way I always want the song to be a journey from beginning to end

For THE CRASH!, what kind of emotions were you looking to get across?

The main themes on THE CRASH! are loneliness, purpose or lack thereof, coming of age, love, human apathy.

The album was my attempt at making an album as a screenplay. It follows a young man (sort of myself), struggling to find meaning in his life, when a spaceship crash lands in his town, and he falls in love (and finds purpose in) an alien girl who was on board.

I wrote the album in 2024. I was 30 that year, Donald Trump was looking like the frontrunner to return to office, and the world was reacting to the aftermath of October 7th. I felt really nihilistic, in a way I hadn’t since I was 18 and lost my faith. This album was my only way of expressing it.

How do you capture the emotions you want to get across in the studio?

I try to just listen to my gut impulses. I used a lot of software synths/plugins in my production. It makes it really easy to cycle through sounds to get some inspiration. Sometimes you can play a ton of chords with one keyboard sound and feel nothing, and then with another sound, you just play one note audit just latches onto something within you, and speaks an idea.

I definitely always start with sounds when writing, and feeling/vibe of it will inform the lyrics and what I want to write about. I don’t think I’ve ever made music to go with pre-existing lyrics.

The analogy I always think of - it’s like if you get a bit of paper or tissue and wet it, and then touch it with a felt-tip pen, the ink just falls out of the pen onto the paper. The right sound/feeling in an idea is the paper, and the lyrics/emotion is the pen, if that makes any sense.

In terms of emotions, what changes when you're performing live on stage, with an audience present, compared to the recording stage?

I feel the emotion way more when creating and recording music than on stage. My creative process has always been something personal for me, that I do only on my own and behind closed doors. And the emotion goes into the creation of a song more than the performance of it.

I listened to Billie Eilish say recently that she doesn’t enjoy the writing process, but she loves having written songs so that she can sing them live. The singing is what she looks forward to. I find that fascinating because for me I enjoy the writing more than anything and I see the performance as a logical conclusion to writing the song. When performing live, I get a rush from showing people the songs I’ve written, hoping that they’ll go and listen to them later. In my mind It’s the writing I’m exhibiting, and the singing is the vessel for that.

That being said, sometimes when singing a particularly personal line, I will choke up, and I have to fight through it. I performed my song ‘Head Down’ for the first time at Love Supreme in 2023. The song is largely about my father passing away, and I couldn’t get through it because I was crying so much. The crowd were so wonderful about it though and I got a few hugs after.

So there is an element of dissociating at times so that I can get through certain lines or songs with crying or my voice breaking - but it’s only a few tunes of mine that get my like that.

How does the presence of the audience and your interaction with it change the emotional impact of the music and how would you describe the creative interaction with listeners during a gig?

I enjoy undercutting the ‘seriousness’ of my music with lighthearted humour between songs. Songs resonate with people more when they feel at ease with you as a person, I think.

I’m an annoyingly self-conscious person though, so my ability to do that changes depending on what day it is, some days I have more confidence than others. I’m so familiar with the songs at this point that when I’m playing, it’s pretty automatic, my mind can drift to really random places and the songs just come out as if I’m giving them full focus.

It’s literally talking to the crowd and keeping them engaged between songs that feels like the challenging performance for me, that no amount of experience seem to get me ready for.

Talking to people after I play is equally interesting. Just that awareness that I’ve been on stage performing creates an interesting social dynamic with people. If I gave into my worst impulses I would just leave immediately after playing - I really don’t like attention outside of performing live, I’m just constantly worried I’ll say or do something life-endingly embarrassing, but if you wanna grow and develop and connect with people you have to fight that and chat, and realise it’s not that deep.

That’s advice for anyone with severe social anxiety. I’ve gotten better at that for sure.

What kind of feedback have you received from listeners or concert audiences in terms of the experience that your music and/or performances have had on them?

I do get a lot of good feedback on my voice. I’ve been singing for almost 20 years now, and I’ve really learned how to write in a way that suits my voice.

As I mentioned, for quite a long time I saw myself as a writer/producer who ‘needed’ to sing out of necessity. But I was proudest of my compositional ability more than anything. For some reason I hated the idea of being seen as a ‘singer’.

But recently I’ve leaned into it, and it’s allowed me to do more collaborative work where I’m just the singer and someone else is producing, and it’s lead to some songs I’m really proud of.

Would you say that you prefer to stay in control to be able to shape the emotions or do you surrender to them and allow the music to take over? Who, ultimately has control during a live performance?

Hmmm it depends. Some songs I’ve written really felt manually constructed by me, and some do feel like they were handed to me by some ethereal power. Not that either is better or worse but just that some songs felt automatic, and like ‘pre-existing’ and others felt like a box of lego I was experimenting with.

‘Truman’ and ‘The Fool’ for example, both took me months to write. ‘The Fool’ because of the chords and structure, and ‘Truman’ because of the lyrics.



However I’ve got this new song I wrote recently which I came up with in a dream. I leapt out of bed and recorded the demo in about 4 hours. My song ‘Withdrawn’ was also very quick, maybe took a few days to put together.

But if I didn’t feel something from the songs, I wouldn’t be able to finish them - any song I’ve finished, I was only able to finish it because I felt something deeply while working on it.

I have a song called ‘Tethered’ that came out in 2021, but I started writing in 2013. I feel in and out of love with it constantly - I find it hard to use finish something for the sake of it - I have to be really feeling it at the time. I’m just always working on different songs constantly, so I never feel stuck on any particular idea, I just close it and open something else up.

The emotions that music is able to generate can be extremely powerful. How, do you think, can artists make use of this power to bring about change in the world?

I think be honest about how you feel, don’t chase quick passing trends, but make the music that really makes YOU feel something. I say things that resonate with how YOU feel, not what you think you should say in a song. Being honest and vulnerable feels weird, it’s meant to.

I think we need more rebellion now than ever. AI, Big money, politics, it all feels so against us, the people, in a way it hasn’t quite before. I think we need more anger, more punk ethic and more collaboration.

I’m kind of exhausted trying to get more attention for myself and my project, I just wanna write and perform and with people and be part of something bigger. Maybe that’s how we save music, I dunno.