Today, we sat down with The Purple Hearts to discuss their inspiration to write music, type of music listened to growing up, and much more.
Interview:
What is your inspiration to write your music? Is it your
surroundings?
I think now we draw inspiration to write from life experiences. This could be anything and everything such as relationships, love, loss, what’s in the news, sci-fi. Possibly an interesting chord combo, a personal event, an intriguing sentence and of course just a desire to write. It’s an eclectic mix.
As an example, Chris wrote the song “Criminal of Love” about how relationships can be repaired with the emerging power of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. It delves deep in its dreamy fascination of the topic discussing the self reflection and un-egotistical view of being a criminal or victim (of love) and how we are headed towards a path where AI will be used to help mediate and resolve these conflicts. This is highlighted in the middle 8 lyric, “With Machine Learning We Anticipate the Calm, and the Precipice is Fate”. It’s out there for sure, but we love it. Where else would you see lyrics like that today? It’s very unique and original. At the same time, he writes another pop song called “Moon Base Alpha” whose lyrics simply summarize the Season 2 intro of the 70’s cult favorite sci fi show “Space 1999”. It’s that simple and doesn’t really go any deeper. It’s just looking for fun and what might sound interesting lyrically and phonetically within the melody. In another example, Donnie has a song on the album called, “We Are The Ones Who Created This Mess”, introducing heavier and darker lyrical themes focusing on Western foreign policy seeding political, cultural, and religious divergence.
What type of music did you listen to growing up?
I think we all listened to a pretty eclectic line-up of music which evolved as we got older and were exposed to music beyond our parent’s collections. We’re all of course pretty big Beatles fans, Bowie, the Kinks and the Everly Brothers from song construction, melody, and harmonies. We’ve always liked the 80’s singles era with bands like Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, and The Fixx. Americana and Britt Pop resonate with examples like Tom Waites, REM and Wilco on one side and Oasis, Stereophonics and Kasabian on the other. We also love metal and hard rock. QOTSA, Eagles of Death Metal and Red Fang are always on our playlist.
Is there someone you looked up to as a hero?
Not sure we would say heroes but we definitely admired a number of artists. Again the Beatles are an obvious choice from endless earworms, song structures and amazing harmonies and then Macca through his solo career. David Bowie is up there with his songwriting, lyricism and presence on the stage….pretty cool dude.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing today?
Well we all have day jobs too. But to bide the time outside of work, I’d have to guess that Don would be a master seaman, sailing a motor cruiser on various lakes and waterways, Mike would be making home brewed beer and touring the competitive darts circuit, Chris would be an amateur comedian and start a business restoring old Land Rover Defenders and Jon would be a semi-pro thespian in off, off, off broadway productions of obscure European theatre productions.
What advice do you have for our fans out there that want to create
music?
They should want to create music that is authentic and from the heart. Nothing
contrived or manufactured just for the sake of trying to be popular and fit a
particular mould. Rather, music that is organically created simply for the love of
songwriting and playing music. The songwriting, melodies, harmonies, and lyrics should all come from the heart so that it’s real and organic. Find good people to create and collaborate with and who are honest with feedback and willing to take some risks that expand you to outside your comfort zone.
