The Voice UK | Interview with Will.i.am

How does it feel to be back on The Voice?

It feels great to be back on the UK Voice, and with a live audience once again. This is so important, and so great to have our audience back.

How does it feel to be back in the UK specifically?

I love being here, I like to go out for long walks and layer up to fit the weather. The UK has a great sense of style – every layer adds to it. I’ve been coming here off and on since 1998, since the 90’s, now it’s the 2000’s. I don’t have my roll necks, usually I have my turtle necks.

What is the talent level like this year, can we expect kind of bigger things this time around?

There are some pretty awesome singers this year so far. Anne-Marie’s well in form and not feeling as nervous as she was last season which was her first season. She was victorious her first season so she’s super dialled in. It’s great to see Anne-Marie, a thousand percent confident and she won feeling 300% confident out of a thousand so she’s a thousand percent confident, who knows what’s going to happen.

Is there anything you are looking for specifically?

I’m looking for someone I can coach, not necessarily to 100% perfection. Someone that I can really help craft their talent and build their confidence. You know I’ve been here for ten years, this is our 11th season and this time I want to try something different and that is to turn around for people that aren’t obvious. It’s amazing to see singers that were once shy and then gain confidence and what was it that sparked the confidence, so to be a part of that spark is what I want to do this year.

Who would you say is your biggest competitor?

I don’t really look at it as competition because the people that are competing are the singers and the ones that win are the contestants. So I’m here to encourage and give some nuggets of knowledge so that if they don’t win they have tools to go on and have a career like Becky Hill. Becky Hill didn’t win the voice but out of all the contestants that have been on The Voice in the UK, Becky Hill has a serious career. I’m proud of her.

Why do you think there’s so much undiscovered talent?

Because every year millions of people around the world, they get an ‘Aha moment’ when they realise singing is therapeutic for them and something spawns within people. You know maybe they had the talent, they had a hunch and then something happened. Some spark happened to where they are like do you know what? I can do that too! Or do you know what? I am going to get back on this Horse again! Or do you know what I believe in myself, fuck what everyone else thinks.

What kind of music and singer do you think is on the rise at the moment and on your radar?

Latin music on a whole is what’s happening. Latin is still the most explosive, most streamed, most shared form of music and genre on earth.

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who is trying to make it in the music industry?

Learn Spanish. Just kidding. Patience, hunger, find it and once you get hungry, hunt. Eat what you kill, don’t go killing anything though, that’s just a play on words.

Specific to this competition. Is there one piece of advice you always find yourself giving that you tell each and every one of your acts?

Take yourself seriously but don’t take it seriously. It’s a balance between the two, you know a lot of times when people take themselves too seriously, they put too much effort in and people don’t like that. The audience likes it to seem effortless so it’s a balancing act between taking yourself too seriously and not taking what you are doing too seriously where you put yourself above people.

Who are your favourite music group or artists at the moment and why?

At the moment, it’s a group called Fleet Foxes. So calming, this song is what I cycle to. You can go cycling and ride your bike to a traditional energy song but that means the song is doing a lot of the work. So if you have a song, that’s like anti energy in a traditional sense and you still find the oomph, then you are doing all the work. You go! And then it puts this counter emotion to your energy and then you are really swimming in something beautiful.

Now it takes that cycle and that ride and it makes it emotional. It’s nice. It’s great. The other day I rode around LA for five hours with that song on loop. Five hours listening to that song on loop on loop, on repeat. It’s empty enough for you to have thoughts, for you to like to complete whatever it is your thinking and work out your problems. There’s not a lot of sonic bombardment that steals your thoughts or takes you to a place that doesn’t allow you to complete your thoughts. It’s like atmospheric still. You can go into mental study mode, you can go into like analysing your introspect of yourself. I like doing that. I like driving my car. But right now, I like riding a bike through the city and just thinking.

Is that your way of taking time out to relax?

Either walks, four hour walks or three to five hour bike rides. I walk somewhere for two and a half hours, just aimlessly nowhere to only have to walk back home and I can do that now. It’s kind of cool that you’re masked up and people don’t recognise anyone and it gives you some personal space and freedom,And it’s cool to just walk and see the world and see people living, I like that. Hikes are cool, but you can’t really venture off and away from the trail too much on a hike or else you’ll get lost. And who wants to be lost and who wants to get lost in the woods? But you can get lost in the city and then find your way back and then when you are lost in the city, you’re like oh wow I’ve never seen this part of the town and I like that. That’s my new favourite to get lost in the city.

London is good for hidden spots, do you find that?

It’s kind of romantic, especially if you can go out and walk and get lost with someone out in the city walking, that to me is like that’s dope.

How would you say this series compares to when you had a virtual audience before?

Well for me it feels like home. For Anne-Marie it must feel magical because this is her first time doing The Voice with a live audience and that’s great but for me it feels ah, the way it’s supposed to.

Does the audience influence your decisions at all?

Yeah, it’s even that way for the contestants, because the audience helps the contestants be selected., There’s been several times where you know the contestant had someone in mind and the audience persuaded them to go a different path and the same for the coaches. We are kind of overthinking it, over-analysing and the audience shakes us up and says what are you doing? You should turn around for this person and sometimes we are so thick headed and we don’t listen to the audience and then the audience is angry. They need to have a new layer where the audience can throw soft projectiles our way to wake us up!

*Imitates* : ‘We’ve just added a new format to The Voice, the audience is armed with Potatoes no Tomatoes. They are armed with soft Tomatoes.’

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