Dave on his second album title: "Hans Zimmer said it to me on FaceTime"

Last night (5 July) Dave announced his highly-anticipated second album We're All Alone In This Together, which will be released later this month and will follow his 2019 Mercury Prize-winning debut album PSYCHODRAMA.

In a new interview with GQ, dave has discussed the record, revealing that the album title came from a FaceTime conversation with the legendary Hans Zimmer. Dave said of the title, "He was like, 'Dave, remember, we’re all alone in this together'."

On the album artwork, Dave said that it's "a reinterpretation of Claude Monet", specifically his Impression, Sunrise painting.

Speaking about the album as a whole, Dave told GQ, "It’s a long album title, but it’s about the time we’ve all just had. For my story, I get to delve backwards now, rather than forwards – that’s the sick thing. I feel like Psychodrama was me aged zero to 20. Now, I get to go from zero backwards in time and explore stories from before, stuff that led up to the events of the first album: heritage, history, culture, my family, the countries that we come from, the regressive state of humanity in where we are now. Migration is a massive thing for me – boats, freedom of movement. The artwork represents that – the journey – all at the same time, as delivering life from the perspective of someone who has just come off the back of all this... It’s a massive change in character."

He also revealed that the first single is the upcoming Stormzy collaboration landing this Friday (9 July), and at the time of the interview, it was titled "Clash".

Before the end of the interview, Dave said of the album, "I know in my head the album I’m creating... This is the most intricate and complex story from a kid who has just come off the back of all of this tension and perceived success in the general public, and an acting career, and this love of film, this main-character syndrome, delving back into where he is from and where his family is from. And that’s not just in lyrics and content; that’s in production, in sound, in features, in style, and using these things as a journey, a character development between love interests, the way we speak about the world."

He added, "This album, God willing, will explain itself. There is a magic to it! I feel like my first album was a concept, but this is canon. That’s the way I’d put it. In this album, it’s referencing itself; it is self-aware. My life inside of real life: what I do, my career, musically, acting-wise, my ambition – it’s self-aware. When you hear who I am by track 12 versus who I was in track one, that journey, it feels like a journey of years, like, ‘Yo, this person has been here, this has happened, that happens, I meet this person, the slang I use, the arrogance, the voice...’ It is canon."