Most people have their first encounter with the rich and achingly soulful voice of Sam Sparro upon hearing his platinum single “Black and Gold.” The Los Angeles based singer, songwriter and producer has spent the last few years touring the world in support of his self-titled debut album and writing collaboratively with artists like Mark Ronson, Cathy Dennis, and Adam Lambert. A video for his ‘handbag house revival’ song “Pink Cloud” premiered last month and he is currently putting the finishing touches on his second album, Return to Paradise, which releases this summer.

What do you do?

I write and produce my own records and I perform and tour as a recording artist. When I write for myself I am 100% of the time writing about my own life and experiences.

What about when you write for someone else?

Fantasy. It depends. I feel like writing pop songs has changed a lot since the 1990s, 80s, or 70s because everything is so literal now. I feel like there’s not that much metaphor in pop song writing and there’s not that much elaborate storytelling.

What’s an example?

“Bye Bye Miss American Pie” or any Dolly Parton song [sings] “I stumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition …”

Well, that’s coming out of a country tradition, which is always story related.

But the Mamas & the Papas, folk music, but also soul music – and that’s really my background and diet, growing up the music was soul based.

What were your favorite things?

Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan … I grew up singing in church. My dad was a musical minister

In Sydney?

In Sydney, Australia and then in the states. We moved here when I was a kid. I went to high school in L.A. then dropped out when I was 16 and moved to back to Australia for a while. I was thinking about this today, actually, I can’t believe my parents let me move out when I was 16. I don’t feel like I gave them a lot of choice, but I think that was it – that’s young.

What did you do when you dropped out?

I went back to Australia to live with my grandparents and got a job working for a music P.R. company. When I saved up enough money, I moved to London where I sort of envisioned my music career taking off and lived there for a few years. I worked in the mailroom at Universal and Sony, at a Toshiba factory, and a restaurant. I went to a lot of parties and clubs and gigs and got really worn out and then moved back to live with my parents for a while.

You started, like all classic soul singers, singing in church.

Strangely enough, when I moved to the states my family joined a church in the valley that was a very musical and the McCrary family, who ran the church, did all the music – cousins, aunties and uncles, brothers and sisters – and they sang with Chaka Khan and on Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. They were a big gospel family band in the 1970s and they have this huge lineage of being in and amongst all these great soul singers, working with Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson – they even sang at Michael Jackson’s funeral – and now they’re singing on my next record, which is kind of nuts. Essentially all these women taught me about controlling my voice and how to sing, how to sing with a choir, and how to blend and arrange harmonies. It was really cool to bring them back in and have them singing my songs.

How old were you when you started singing?

I’ve been singing since I was really young, five or six. I think the first time I got paid for it was when I was 12, singing on a soap opera with Ricky Martin: General Hospital. Oh no, maybe I had gotten paid once before – I had sung on some demos. But I was 12 and I sang Christmas carols on “It’s a General Hospital Christmas” with Ricky Martin who was then a soap actor post-Menudo and pre- “She Bangs”.

When did your solo career really start?

I started using the name Sam Sparro at around 19 and living in London recording bedroom demos- very different stuff from what I am doing now. I would give my demo CD to people at record companies where I’m sure it just got tossed in a pile. Once I moved back to L.A. I started collaborating with my friend Jesse Rogg who produced about half of my last record and is co-producing a lot of the next with me. We made an EP and put it up on MySpace, which at the time was the thing to do and it was starting people’s careers- and it kind of started my career. From MySpace all these Radio1 DJs found my music and started playing it on Radio1 before I even had a record deal and within a very short period of time, about three weeks, I went from having this demo played on Radio1 to having every single major label in the UK fly out here to L.A. to wine and dine me and I got swept up.

Who played it?

Annie Mac and Pete Tong.

What song was it?

“Black and Gold” – it was the same production, but a demo mix.

What’s that song about?

The universe … It’s not a love song – a lot of people think it is.

Because of the line, “If you aren’t …”

“If you’re not really here, then I don’t want to be either.” It’s actually addressed to God. I remember thinking at the time if there is no rhyme or reason to all this madness then it’s just bullshit.

Why “Black and Gold”?

Because I looked at the sky and it was black and gold.

How does the new album differ, or does it?

I think it’s more about melody and structure. Oftentimes I do the music first, I used to come up with lyrics and melody at the same time. I often even used to start with a bass line. Now I start with chords and then the bass line. I grew up listening to a lot of jazz. My grandfather was a jazz trumpet player, a really accomplished one. Everyone in my family, my father, grandfather, great-grandfather – they were all musicians and really geeky about chords and structure and ninths and diminished flats and heady music theory. That’s what I’m inspired by on this record: musicality and people playing music.

Is it all real?

Most of it, yes. There’s a lot of piano, bass – there are some 80s synth sounds, but they are real synths, not soft synths, they aren’t coming out of a computer. It’s different because I’ve had complete control and it really is a passion project.

Did you not have complete control before? I had a lot of control, but I got caught up in a major rush. I’m happy with my first record, I look back and it’s like a scrapbook of a period of time. It was three years ago. You know when you read your old journals or diaries and you chuckle to yourself over what you were thinking and where you were at the time and you think, “Aw, that’s cute.” I think that about the record. But this new one is an evolution of me as an artist and as a person. It’s very personal and it’s about how I have been living for the last two years- ups and downs, joy and pain. It will be weird to listen back to this one in two years and be somewhere completely different.

Sam Sparro official site

Sam Sparro MySpace

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