promotion

eading Ed Harcourt's third album song titles — "Strangers," "Loneliness," "Only Happy When You're High" — you might think the British singer-songwriter wants to throw himself off the Millennium Wheel. In fact, he's not out to bring you down. While he clearly loves indulging in the melodrama of emotional upheaval, the songs are too joyful to be cynical. "Loneliness," the album's first single, is a sugary pop confection; "Born in the Seventies," a generational anthem, giggles and sighs about the classic dilemma: "After a length of time / you're this parody / like the record's stopped / always repeating the past." But he comes around by the chorus: "You can count on me / I'm living for the now." In all his songs, the twenty-seven-year-old makes the case that the clichés we experience, loss and melancholy, love and euphoria, should bring us together, instead of making us feel alienated.
   Harcourt spoke to Nerve from West London after a night of heavy drinking. He still had the fortitude to discuss the extremes of his romantic side, the drama of obsessed groupies, and how threesomes can go wrong. — Sarah Harrison You don't sound so hot.
I'm a little ill. I had a late night. I mixed my drinks, I shouldn't do that really. Why is your new album is called "Strangers"?
I guess the idea is that it's quite a romantic album in a way, I like the idea of when two people are at the start of a relationship and they don't really know each other, and to keep the relationship alive, you never want to know too much about each other and get too comfortable. You kind of want to have that "stranger" element. It's about not getting too complacent. You released your single "Loneliness" on Valentine's Day.
Yeah. That was a quietly obvious subversive thing to do, like the song itself. It's a very poppy song. You can imagine people singing along to it. Of course it didn't really get much radio play, and kind of ambled into the charts at something in the fifties or something. Which is really depressing. Do you consider yourself a sad guy?
No. I think I'm pretty optimistic and positive. I really don't understand why people sometimes write that I'm miserable. I think my first few songs are kind of hopeful. Yeah, there's so many self-pitying or whining guys, like a lot of English miserablists. English miserablists?
Yeah, I'm not going to name names, but there are a lot of people that just whine. Shut up. But I have something that's like — you know, like "melancholia." It's the tired song that makes you feel warm. What's the craziest thing you've ever done in the name of love?
Ha. Oh. Wow. I don't know. Running around a hotel naked? Flying a remote-control helicopter in Glasgow? Also, when my girlfriend (we're getting married now) came back from there, we had just started going out, I was worried that she wouldn't come back because she was dumping her boyfriend, so I hired a limousine to meet her at the airport — like a massive stretch, to woo her. So you're a real romantic, huh?
I guess so. How did you meet your fiancée?
Oh, she was playing violin in the band and we just kind of hit it off. I'd just been dumped, but she wasn't like a rebound. I didn't really give a shit about being dumped anyway. I was like going out with someone for five months — and that was sort of a rebound — and then she dumped me, and I was kind of depressed for about four or five days and then I turned around and she was there. Did you ever date your fans before you had a girlfriend?
No way! No way. Do your fans get crazy? Do you have kind of obsessive groupies?
I had one person in L.A. And I had gone to bed and she saw my tour manager and was like "Where's Ed's room?" She just actually said "Where's Ed's room? Because I want to go and suck his cock." When I was told that the next morning, I was like "Oh my God, that's very forward." There was an incident that was very embarrassing when I was single like three years ago in Chicago. I did a gig and this girl was like on a first date with this guy and she was sitting next to me and he was across on the other side, and she started rubbing my leg. I was trying to move her hand away from my leg, getting really nervous because I didn't know what was going to happen. So I went to the bar, and she came to the bar! And she just stuck her tongue in my mouth and I was like "What are you doing?" And her date walked past and saw. So I was like "Jesus!" And I flew into the loo, and when I opened the door she was standing by the door and she was like, "Come on, let's fuck." I was like "Jesus Christ!" Then we got on our tour bus, and she was trying to get on the tour bus. How does your girlfriend deal with girls who have crushes on you?
Well, that doesn't really happen anymore. I'm not as good looking as I used to be. And basically my girlfriend is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Not even Monica Bellucci can take me away from her. And I'm not really worried about any kind of crush. I mean, for someone who's a very beautiful, some iconic ladies' man, okay, but I think I'm some kind of wolf-bear, a blind dwarf-boy, walking the scorched earth, with a curved spine. Flowers withering, children screaming as I walk by. Do you have a sex mix CD?
Sometimes, when I'm drunk I like to play my other band, Wild Boar. That or Queens of the Stone Age, or some New Orleans punk. And the normal kind of gentle stuff. There's a group called The Earlies from Manchester, they're country-psychedelic, Beach Boys-y music. The first Serge Gainsbourg album, and of course any Chet Baker or Billie Holiday. But sometimes it's nice to have silence. What's the most unusual place you've ever had sex?
Probably in the changing room of an Italian swimming pool. It wasn't very sexy at all, but it was outside and really nice, with flowers everywhere and those kind of saloon doors, so all you could see of people walking by were the heads. Unfortunately, I haven't done it up a tree or anything like that. What was your worst sexual experience?
Probably when I had a threesome with two girls, and it was really depressing because they were more into each other. I just kind of sat there, "Oh, hi, I'm the guy with the cock. What can I do?" Some guys wouldn't find that depressing, but I had wanted to get more involved.  n°

click to buy Strangers

© 2005 Sarah Harrison and Nerve.com.