Hello, thank you for your time, please introduce yourself in a few words!
Hey there Twisted Male fam! My name is Liam Cooper, I’m a singer/songwriter coming to you from Sydney, Australia. We’re in lockdown at the moment so it’s nice to be talking to someone – even if it’s not technically talking!
Please give us an update about – new single, new album, tour dates, new videos?!
I dropped a new single a few weeks ago called Another Lonely Night, which you can stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon – wherever you get your music. It’s about spending nights alone in a cold bed away from your lover and trying to pass the time until you see them again.
Another Lonely Night follows my previous single Out Of The Blue and both are my first music releases in over 10 years. They’re part of an EP coming later this year called Lonely Nights.
Name 5 things we all should know about you as an artist?!
I absolutely LOVE saxophone in pop music. A red hot sax solo after a bridge or in a final chorus really gets me.
I’m a huge fan of Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers. His lyrics, melodies and chord progressions are stunning. The production on his music is everything I love – timeless acoustic instruments combined with big 80s synth pads and leads.
I’ve been covering the music of Billy Joel, Elton John, Queen, The Beatles and other 1970s piano-pop artists for years – their songs are part of my DNA.
I’m a perfectionist, which means I really try to create and produce music that I love and would want to listen to myself. I’m also extremely creative in the studio, so combined with the perfectionism leads to long days and delays in production!
I just deleted 10,000 followers on Instagram. I had built up a LOT of followers when I went viral on YouTube, some came from automatically following accounts just to get a follow in return, and I bought a few thousand just so my account would qualify for putting swipe-up links in my stories. I just realised that all these people didn’t actually engage with my posts or care about my music, so I removed them one-by-one until I was left with the people I actually wanted to see my content. Best decision ever.
What fashion style or brand would best describe your music?
My style of music is like the ASOS men’s catalog. Such an eclectic range of clothing and footwear that is pushing the boundaries of what men can wear. I love a velvet top, boot with a heel, shorts that actually make my legs look good, pants that sparkle or shout with a bold pattern. My music is kinda like this – a mixed bag of looks where I’m always pushing the boundaries to make the biggest and most exciting sound possible.
Tell us more about your songs! Topics! Message!?
The songs on my forthcoming EP including the single Another Lonely Night mostly come from being away from my love, or being in love. Out Of The Blue is about marrying my high-school sweetheart and Another Lonely Night is being away from her and trying to pass the time. The next single, Red Wine Dreams, is about the particularly wild and vivid dreams I get after drinking red wine, which I also started writing while I was away from home. The other two songs on the EP are really close to my heart – Applause talks about only caring what the people closest to me think of me, and If You Were Here is about how it feels to ‘celebrate’ the birthday of a mother who passed away from cancer a few years ago. I really can’t wait to share these songs with you over the next few months.
Beside music, do you have any special talents?
My hidden talent is I can actually clap almost as fast as the fastest clapper in the world. Seriously. Also, I went viral a few years ago in a video I made proposing to my now-wife, Amy. It has 11 million views on YouTube and we still get new views and comments every week.
Being on stage feels like….!
…feels like nothing else. You can’t compare it. It’s the strangest feeling that you can really only describe in the moment. Having not performed live on stage for so long, I’m craving the opportunity to get up on stage again and perform.
How did you learn to sing/ to write/ to play??
I started playing piano when I was 5 years old, I’m now 29 so music has been in my life for a LONG time. I started singing in high school when the rest of my performing arts high school classmates were singers. I was no good to start, it’s something I’ve had to work really hard on since then. As a teenager I started writing songs and playing them on my own or with a band and I’ve just kept doing it ever since.
A question you’d like to answer, but never been asked in an interview before?! + Answer pls
Why did it take you so long to release new music?
I released my first EP titled Fly Alone in 2009. I was so proud of the songs I had written, I took a loan out from my dad to pay for the recording and production of physical CDs which I managed to pay back. After that, studying at university, working as a music teacher and performing 3-hour cover gigs every week really zapped my creativity. I was constantly surrounded by music, but just didn’t feel inspired to write. In 2019 I had the opportunity to leave my full-time job and travel the world performing a cabaret-style cover show I had written on cruise ships. Finally I had so much down time between performances and head-space to think that the creativity was overflowing and couldn’t be stopped. I wrote a bunch of songs that I then picked from to record and craft into what you’re hearing today. I just hope it’s not that long between this and the next one!
Instagram @liamcoopermusic