Louisa Johnson and Grace Chatto from Clean Bandit were on the Capital Evening show with Roman Kemp on Wednesday evening (29.06.16).
Louisa rapped and sung to Tinie Tempah and Zara Larsson’s chart hit, “Girls Like” after being asked by a fan to show off her freestyling skills. Please see link to view the video on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/CapitalFM/?fref=ts and the embed code below.
Louisa and Grace also told Roman about an interesting vocal tip Louisa shared with Ariana Grande, how they came to work together on ‘Tears’ three days after Louisa won the X Factor, the best and worst things about working together and performing to 80,000 people.
RK – Roman Kemp
LJ – Louisa Johnson
GC – Grace Chatto
An interesting vocal tip from Louisa…
RK: Louisa you did become a talking point at Wembley. You told me your vocal warm up tips, and one thing you said was you made a mistake by eating mashed potato. I told every single other artist, I was like apparently you’re not allowed to eat mashed potato and Ariana Grande was like ‘what, what, you’re not supposed to eat mashed potatoes, what?’
LJ: I’ll tell you the story. It was rehearsal day the day before. I was so hungry so I went to Nando’s and didn’t get chips, so I got mash. And the mash, it leaves a coat on my throat. [Laughter] You’re making me sound stupid but it’s serious! […] So when I was doing my rehearsals I thought I sounded awful and so I was letting everyone know not to eat mash.
GC: So did Ariana Grande take it on board?
RK: She did, she did! I understand it, it just sounds funny. Trying to explain to Ariana Grande that she can’t eat mash potatoes.
On how they came to be working together…
GC: We were doing a gig, me and the rest of Clean Bandit, and we were just waiting in the dressing room to go on stage and just had the TV on. I was in the next room and I heard her voice through the wall and just ran in and was like ‘who is that’? And we had this track ‘Tears’, we’d kind of been working on it for a while and just thought that Louisa’s voice would be perfect for it, and when she heard it, she liked it.
LJ: I loved it.
GC: And it kind-of all was so easy from then - as soon as she started singing it in the studio it kind-of felt right.
RK: Louisa what was it like when you had that phone call and the guys were like ‘we want to do this track’?
LJ: It was literally three days after I won (X Factor). So I’ve been listening to it for months, and I’m just getting excited. It was just amazing because they are such amazing musicians and the music they’re making is always so huge and everything is so spot on. So I was quite privileged.
RK: It's one of those songs that sounds like it’s made for a stadium. Is that what you set out to do? How long did it take to put together?
LJ: For me the vocals didn’t take that long. We literally had two sessions worth of vocals. It wasn’t a whole day, it was a few hours here and a few hours there. It was very scattered, and so when it was about to be released we didn’t know until it was like three days before, and then Jack was like ‘can you just come in and do this last little bit, we’ve changed it again’.
GC: We changed the key.
LJ: So I did this tiny little part, and then it was just out. It just happened so quickly but at the same time it feels like it’s been forever.
RK: You guys have smashed it.
On the best and worst things about working together…
RK: I’ve had loads of tweets when I told everyone you were coming in. First one: What’s the best and worst thing about working together?
GC: The best thing was when Louisa came out with all the ad-libs at the end of the song – like Mariah Carey. […]
LJ: The only worst thing was waiting for it [the song] to come out.
[…]
RK: (Listener) Callum called in yesterday and asked us: ‘You guys (Clean Bandit) always work with amazing artists. Who is your next collaboration going to be with?
GC: We’ve been working with loads of artists for our new album. We don’t know which is going to be the new single. So I don’t think I can say…it’s a man.
On Capital’s Summertime Ball with Vodafone…
RK: How did it feel doing the ball?
LJ: It was amazing. I’ve never performed to a crowd that big before, so it was so weird.
RK: You absolutely nailed it. Clean Bandit had played the Ball before.
GC: We did ‘Rather Be’ a couple of years ago, feels like ages ago.
RK: Was it as nerve-wracking or was this one even bigger because you have done it before?
GC: I felt more relaxed this time. I didn’t feel scared
[…]
RK: Did you guys get to hang out with any other artists when you were there?
LJ: We saw Little Mix backstage. I didn’t really see many people to be honest, I was just getting in the zone. I always try and do that before I go on.
