Team Sports

I offer to respect his lock screen privacy in this piece. “Please out me. They already know I’m a dork,” he laughs. “Something I’ve thought about my whole life is the balance between your craft and your altruism. Like where and how you connect what you believe to what you create and I just think Megan has done it in the most graceful, effective way of anyone I’ve ever seen. So I just became so enthralled. She’s the only person on my first album who I thanked who I didn’t personally know.”

In London for a run of small fan-focused shows in support of his second album A Grey Area, Saxe is light and smiling from the rush of playing new material live. The last time we spoke was in the summer of 2020 as “If The World Was Ending”, his seismic apocalyptic duet with Julia Michaels, was doing just the opposite for his career. At the time, he was balancing international notoriety with the confines of lockdown. “I was grateful but it was so cerebral, because I never actually felt present in it,” he explains. “How do you take in the magnitude of a stream count? Analytics don’t fill my heart. I don’t know what to do with them.”

Originally released the previous year, the single accelerated as the world really felt like it was over. It also launched Saxe and Michaels as a celebrity couple, the pair spending much of lockdown writing together. It was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2021 Grammy Awards. “You think a Grammy nom comes with an illuminati invite, but I haven’t received it yet,” jokes Saxe. “What the fuck? How successful do I have to be? Or did I just miss out on the illuminati invite because it all happened while we were locked in our homes so the illuminati was like, in sweatpants. Maybe you have to win one?”

Born in Washington DC and raised in Toronto, Saxe often jokes he gets the best of both worlds. “I got all of the pragmatic advantages of living in the United States without a visa, but all of the personal advantages of getting to be deeply pretentious about my Canadian citizenship. Anytime shit goes wrong in America I just get to play my moral Canadian high ground,” he laughs.

Growing up, he taught himself piano and guitar from two songbooks, one was The Beatles, the other was Gershwin. Saxe’s grandfather was János Starker, one of the greatest cellists of all time and a Grammy Award winner. Despite his influence, Saxe wasn’t drawn to the classical world. “It gives me such imposter syndrome,” he laughs. “I’m grateful to him because he made the concept of building a life with music seem less absurd. I never really believed what I was doing was outlandish in the way everyone told me it was. If my grandfather can escape the holocaust playing the cello, I can sustain a life that makes me happy writing songs in Los Angeles.”

Through his love of Gershwin he developed a passion for jazz and became obsessed with the music of Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans. From there, he fell in love with poetry, a fire he still holds to this day. “I’m more inspired by poets than I am by songwriters. I think on a whole, they’re better writers,” he says. ‘Hanging out with poets pushes me to up my game because if I sing something melodically beautiful by lyrically underwhelming to a poet friend, they don’t give a shit about how pretty it might sound. They’ll tell me I’m being lazy.”

At the age of eighteen, Saxe moved from Toronto to LA. His parents had just divorced and he found there was little keeping him in Canada, while in Los Angeles there was a thriving community of poets. He packed up and slept in his car for several weeks. “I think there’s a bit of a blessing in not having much stability to walk away from,” he explains. “It was never all that terrifying. The challenge felt more like an adventure. I would go to open mics and I would try and make friends so I could sleep on their couches.”

Within a year of moving he met producer Khris Riddick-Tynes at a poetry event. At the time he was working under the Grammy award-winning artist, songwriter and musician Babyface. For two years Saxe worked in their studio, learning and developing before making the break as a solo artist. Riddick-Tynes is now the VP of A&R at Saxe’s label. “I got to passback that karma, eight years later. I introduced him to the president of my record label,” he smiles. “He gave me my first job in songwriting and I got to give him the assist. It was really full circle and special. And the guy who introduced me and Kris, who’s still one of my closest friends, is now an assistant coach at the Lakers. That one I had nothing to do with.”

For Saxe, it’s not just music that’s a team sport, it comes into play in every aspect of life. “It’s something I’ve noted in so many different instances in my career where the joy happens when you share it,” he explains. “For example, this tour I’m doing with John Mayer is so surreal. Being on the tour, looking out on the audience is fulfilling and a really special experience, but the biggest joy is looking side stage at my friends being like, are you fucking seeing this? That’s when it feels real.”

Whether in his own music or through his songwriting, collaboration is a vital part of Saxe’s process. From his breakthrough duet with Michaels to writing sessions with acts like Lewis Capaldi and Ingrid Andress, it’s a defining part of his artistry. “Collaborations just feel so inherent to what makes me love my job,” he says. “I love storytelling, so I feel the most intimate connection with songs I’m writing from my own perspective on life, but it’s fun to step into someone else’s voice and help them be as sincere as possible. Like, I’m not going to speak from the same perspective as Sabrina Carpenter because I’m not a twenty-three year old girl. But it’s fun to have a conversation with someone extremely articulate and passionate about what it feels like to be them and help them shape that in three minute songs.”

On his new record A Grey Area, Saxe partners with Colombian musician Camilo, folk-pop trio Tiny Habits, singer-songwriter Lizzy McAlpine and John Mayer to name a few. The album even opens with a collaboration, “Old Times Sake (Epigraph by Yesika Salgado).” Saxe smiles, “It’s called an epigraph, one; because I think that’s funny and two; because I’m a bit pretentious. I’ve always liked those poems that authors would put at the beginning of books. I picked one of my favourite poems by a friend of mine who’s just a brilliant, emotive, unique writer who lives in Los Angeles. She came to the studio and we edited it to make it more singable, and that’s how the album starts.”

Another track on the record, “Everything Ends” brings together Lizzy McAlpine and Tiny Habits. A strange mix, the origins of the collaboration took place on an Uber journey. Having hung out after a show in LA, the group all shared a ride home, playing each other new material en route. “Of the songs I played them, they particularly had nice things to say about ‘Everything Ends,’” smiles Saxe. “The next day I was like, you know what would make that song even better? If you guys sang it with me.”

While the record brings together people and influences from across Saxe’s life, the heart of the album belongs in Colombia. Saxe’s mother was a fluent Spanish speaker and after her passing, he decided to learn the language as a way of feeling closer to her. “I had a complicated relationship with my mom,” he says. “Something I’ve realised in losing people close to you is that your relationship with people who’ve passed doesn’t end when they die. You’re able to develop your relationship with someone even without them. So to me learning Spanish was so symbolic of me building my relationship with my mom, without her.”

After attending a wedding in Argentina, Saxe decided to spend a couple of months in South America. In the company of Colombians, they convinced him that Medellin was the place to do it. They introduced him to a friend with a studio space and showed him the best neighbourhoods, while Saxe booked himself into a Spanish class. Not only did he find himself writing new music, he also met a community of interesting, talented and vibrant artists. “The rooftop was the studio and I had it from noon till nine pm, then around nine creatives would just start showing up to the rooftop to kick it up there and smoke and drink on the roof,” he smiles. “There’d be graffiti artists and fashion designers and producers and painters and directors, photographers. I just met all of these extraordinary artists working in such a close-knit community and it was really moving, really inspiring. I felt grateful to be integrated into it.”

From the album’s creative direction to the suits Saxe wears in the artwork, everything was born from this newfound community partnership, his “Colombian squad.” However, another reason for escaping to South America was to find the space to process his breakup from Michaels. “When I’m there, I’m really fighting for this idea that love can be valid without being endless,” he explains. “That relationship was so wonderful and Julia’s fucking incredible. Someone you deeply love as a person and someone you love the compatibility with as a partner are not always the same thing. Which is something I can say thoughtfully now without having too many emotional speed bumps attached, but at the time, there were so many landmines in that understanding. I was really just fighting for this idea that it having ended didn’t mean it wasn’t fucking stunning.”

A Grey Area began life as a concept record, documenting the ways that love can be over and real at the same time. “I decided that talking about that for eighteen months sounded miserable,” he laughs. “The conversation you have as an artist with your fans is them responding to the things you’re saying in your songs. So if the topic of your song is very much a theme, the conversations you’re going to be having with your fans are going to be about that theme. I want my art to reflect what it feels like to be myself and this feels like too narrow a window of what my headspace is.”

Recent single “Caught Up On You” helped shift the direction of the record. Saxe invited a group of musician friends over for a hang, poured himself a drink and began to write. He let everything out, had fun with the lyrics and ended up with nine verses to pick and choose from. “That expanded the horizons of the album too,” he says. “An album I thought was about one thing, ended up being an album about how much more real and more colourful and more human life feels when you allow multiple emotions to exist at the same time.”

Not only is the record thematically diverse, but it pulls together different soundscapes, instrumentation and sonic touchstones. There are tracks like “Anywhere,” a stark piano ballad that echoes with capacious strings, and then there’s songs like “Moderación,” Saxe’s collaboration with Grammy nominated Colombian musician Camilo. Across the track samples pulse, flirt, grow and disappear. The sound of the album is brilliantly modest, allowing Saxe’s lyricism to take centre stage.

Working with Grammy award-winning producer Malay, Saxe got to realise a career-long dream. “He produced Channel Orange and Blonde for Frank Ocean. Those albums were so pivotal to the culture of being a songwriter/musician. If you’re making music today, you’re in the shadow of those albums. So obviously Malay was an icon to me,” he smiles.

The pair originally met in a session, writing “Wish You The Best” with Capaldi. “I’m a fan of Lewis, but Malay was my dream producer from the day I moved to Los Angeles,” smiles Saxe. “So when I hear it’s you, Lewis and Malay I’m like, oh shit. I have to body this. I have to body this so I have a song with Lewis, but even if I don’t get a song with Lewis, I have to body this so I can follow up with Malay and ask him if he’d wanna mess with my shit too.”

Given the context of the writing sessions for A Grey Area, a post-breakup escape to a different continent, you might expect a heavy record of heartbreak. But across the album Saxe sounds like he’s having fun. Of course, there are serious moments. “Good Parts” is a raw but subtle lament, while “When You Think Of Me” aches with the pain of processing. But even when Saxe is unpacking the past, it’s with a light wit and an analytical vernacular. “It’s easy to write songs about the things you’re trying to figure out,” he says.

It’s the way Saxe tells stories that makes his music so sharp, arresting and exceptional. On the song “All My Shit Is In My Car” he kicks off with the opening gambit, “All my shit is in my car, makes me feel seventeen again,” flipping the emotions of a breakup. “It’s very easy to be analytical about the feelings you don’t want. Because you’re trying to not have them,” he explains. “We’re not as analytical about the feelings we do want. We just want to fucking feel them. But the exploration of that analysis is what becomes the art, because you have so many details because you’ve been obsessing about. If you’re just caught up in joy, you’re not obsessing about why. You’re just in it.”

On A Grey Area, Saxe details the full process of a breakup, of the moment, the pain, the freedom, the guilt and eventually the resolution. Not many of us will escape heartache in our lives, but there’s also hope and maybe a chance encounter with a communist (see “Caught On You”). “I think it’s the recognition that all those feelings are more real because the other ones exist,” Saxe explains. “The heartbreak is painful because of the joy. The joy is there on the other side of the heartbreak and the understanding is there because of the confusion and they all paint this picture of what it feels like to be a fucking confused, over-sensitive twenty-eight year old. Which is essentially what most of this album is written about.”

In writing lyrics so personal and detailed, Saxe shares a lot of himself. His relationship with Michaels was very open and public, and so too was their breakup with fans speculating over the aftermath and picking over social media posts. “I sometimes feel like, yeah, being particularly forthright and sincere can be frightening, but it’s also where I feel the most fulfilled because it’s scary because it’s important,” he says. “I think projecting confidence in the areas of my life where I feel vulnerable feels purposeful. If I can confidently step into stories that maybe you would associate more commonly with shame, but I can step into them with humour and confidence and a sense of self and that allows someone listening to recognise that maybe the parts of themselves that feel vulnerable or worthy of shame are actually just part of their human experience, that feels important.”

With A Grey Area out today, Saxe will now embark on a massive run of touring. First up, there are more support slots with John Mayer, including two nights at Madison Square Garden. Then he begins his own tour, having already announced forty-eight headline dates. For an artist who came up during the pandemic, it’s a huge jump into playing live. “I did a couple of tours pre-pandemic that were small, and I’m really fucking grateful for that,” he says. “I have a certain empathy for artists who popped off on TikTok during the pandemic and then their first tours were for two-thousand people. I played ten thousand shows for ten people before I played any show for ten-thousand people. I’m glad that happened.”

Looking back on his career to date and the work he put in before “If The World Was Ending” went multi-platinum, he’s also thankful for the time and experiences he had to develop and grow up. “I didn’t get signed until I was twenty-five. I’m thirty now. I feel like I’ve had a life and I’m grateful for that because if the shit that's happening now happened when I was twenty-three, I would have been overwhelmed. Because I’m overwhelmed now, but not in a way that I can’t move through,” he explains. “I’m grateful that there was a pacing to things. That I got to move through a process. Sometimes you get insecure, you get worried about things not happening fast enough but truly, if this year happened five years ago, I would have fucked it up. It would have been a mess.”

For all the trials and tribulations, the shade and spotlight, Saxe appreciates that it’s all in the game. “I think all professions come with their professional hazards,” he says. “If you’re a hockey player you risk concussions, if you’re a songwriter you risk people knowing slightly more about your personal life than you would generally want strangers to understand. But it means you get to do what you love.”