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T.The problem with being an introvert at writing dance music is that you will eventually have to dance in front of other people. “I’m definitely a pretty shy dancer,” says Romy Madley Croft during a video call from the house he shares with his girlfriend, photographer Vic Lentaigne, in north London. In isolation, with no prospect of live performances, this wasn’t an issue, but now he’s starting to nervously ponder how he’ll perform his upbeat, debt-laden new music from the house. “It took a long time to get to the place where I really enjoy being on stage.”
Fifteen years, in fact. The familiar image of Madley Croft is that of bassist and singer of the xx, the band she formed with London schoolmates in 2005: dressed in black, protected by her guitar, an expression that ranges from thoughtful to tormented. Even performing a glittering dance piece on stage, such as Loud Places by her colleague wallpaper and bandmate Jamie xx (“I go to noisy places to find someone to shut up with,” she sings in the chorus), she has largely remained rooted in locating . Yet on the cover of her debut solo single, Lifetime, in an acid-colored image captured – like the ones accompanying this article – by Lentaigne, she is caught in motion, arms raised, hair shaken.
Rooted in the Euro-dance of the early 2000s, Lifetime is one of the most euphoric pop songs of the year. It has the distinctive intimacy that ensured the two xx two albums no. 1 and a Mercury award, but also the massive songcraft Madley-Croft used when writing for stars like Dua Lipa and King Princess during the band’s hiatus. She wrote Lifetime in April alone in her bedroom, bringing her back to the reasons she started writing songs in the first place, as a teenager exchanging messages with xx bandmate Oliver Sim. “It really reminded me of the time when I was confused and had all these things that were out of my control when I was a teenager, and I was trying to work them out. If I can write about it, I feel like I’ve calmed down. “
In that first block, “everything became so still and so simplified,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s the most important thing to me? The people I love. And if the world ends, I just want to be with those people. ‘It wasn’t my intention to write a really positive song about just wanting to seize the moment and enjoy life. I was pleasantly surprised that that was what came out. “Lifetime is such a wave of ecstasy, in fact, she almost chose not to release it in 2020, worrying that he was numb. But in the end she decided that joy is vital: her pandemic therapy was dancing with Lentaigne on Lady Gaga Chromatica’s album in their kitchen, lit by a disco light she bought online.
Madley Croft’s clubbing trip began at the gay club in Soho Ghetto, which she and Sim visited every Thursday night when they were 16 and 17. “It was great to have this life separate from school,” she says. “I stood in a corner, stared and watched. But it was fun for me! “
One night, someone who worked at the club approached her and asked her if she would like to DJ because she had seen her so often at the edge of the dance floor. She’s back with mastered CDs full of her favorite tunes and has discovered a new love for a lifetime: the joy of throwing a song like Ultra Naté’s Free, or Corona’s Rhythm of the Night, and watching your hands rise into the air. His upcoming solo album is a kind of love letter to those formative queer experiences, expressed in the touching context of 2020, when that experience was snatched from so many young LGBTQ people. “I really hope younger queer people can have these connections [in clubs] and learn how beautiful it is, “he says.
Madley Croft’s queer identity is considerably more prominent and central in her solo work than it was in the xx. She and Sim – who are both gay – have never used gender pronouns in the love songs they write and perform together. Finding themselves in what Madley Croft calls the “shared space of a song,” this gave their music its poetic ambiguity: were they singing to each other? Or for the title of their second album, did they simply “coexist”, two strangers who had different experiences?
That mystery was also a kind of protection. “I came out when I was 15, and my dad was really good, and I’m very grateful for that,” she says. “But I didn’t feel ready when we released the first xx album, when we were about 20, to be really, really open about my sexuality. Over time, growing up and even just noticing how the world is changing, I felt much more comfortable being more public. “One of her new songs is called Love Her.” Writing about loving a woman and not feeling scared or embarrassed … maybe it’s a growing thing, and just not caring so much about what people think. “She says the rise of fearless queer young artists like King Princess is inspiring.” She’s so young and so she doesn’t fear of being herself. “
He also wanted to create pop music for queer women that was cheerful and didn’t take itself too seriously. “When I was a teenager, and I was looking for explicitly lesbian love songs that I could connect to, I definitely couldn’t find pop-dance music. It was more like lesbian acoustic music. This is the stereotype, I think. How does a lesbian love song sound? Someone with an acoustic guitar! “
The album currently consists of 17 new songs, fluctuating in various stages of production and heading towards a 2021 release. Like Dua Lipa’s Chromatica and Club Future Nostalgia, the vision is for a pop record with the songs mixed to mimic a DJ set. There are ballads “in the context of club sounds” and songs that are “very fast and cheerful”. Like much of his work, he says the album will focus on romance. “I talked a lot about it with Oliver – let’s just say it’s my default theme,” he laughs. “I’ve always loved love songs, but a lot of the songs I’ve written [in the past] were of heartbreak. I enjoyed trying to write a few more songs about being in love, but also not making them look incredibly sweet, because there’s this fine line between sweet and sincere. “
Working on it was a liberating experience, not least because Madley Croft consciously surrounded herself with female, non-binary and queer collaborators, inspired by Björk’s work on Utopia with a team of women and non-binary people. Engineer Marta Salogni took Francine Perry to work on analog synthesizers, along with another engineer, Grace Banks. “I realized that I had never been in the studio with any women before, ever,” says Madley-Croft. “It was something I craved.” Lifetime’s upcoming remixes are from female and non-binary producers including Planningtorock, Jayda G, HAAi and Anz.
All this work on the album, he says, will eventually affect the xx. “It’s like a wedding,” he laughs. “It’s nice to keep it cool. To have some time [apart], get back together and have a conversation, like, “What have you learned lately?” I’ve known Oliver since I was three. We have practically spent our entire life together: kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, on tour. It’s pretty cool not knowing what he’s doing. I think this will help songwriting. “
Looking back on 2009 and the band’s catapult in the public eye when they were still just teenagers, Madley Croft feels a lot of tenderness and sympathy for her shy younger self. As he struggled with their newfound visibility, he was also struggling with immense pain: his father and cousin both died when he was 20. “That year was just blurry,” he says. “It felt like five years in a year. It was the most euphoric year I’ve ever had, and also one of the most devastating. ”In this context, his guarded and controlled public image and all-black clothing reads like a kind of armor.
Now, she says she wants to approach the next xx music “with a little more playfulness – which I think comes from being a little older and a little more confident,” she smiles. “I liked wearing black. It made me feel safe, and then I had more control. As we get older, it’s nice to be a little more creative and explore. “She self-mockingly imagines the headlines:” Next xx album is Technicolor, rainbows everywhere! “
Getting over the dark is more than just getting over a goth phase, though. Madley Croft says she wrote Lifetime about seizing the moment, because “sometimes you can worry about the distant moment. I’ve heard it a lot lately: that life is short. I think most of the time, with the losses I’ve had in my life, and especially with Covid, and all of that … to really celebrate life and live it to the fullest, that’s how I like to be. “
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